Yeah, I was bad, of the bold, bad of the old,
the now Billy Cunningham. Of course. Congressman Thomas Massey is from the fourth
Congressional District in Kentucky. I look at his history in bio, as I
do with most guests. He's brilliant. He's an engineer. He's an electrical
engineering and Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. He's won many prizes. I want to know why in the
hell is he in congress Congressman Massey, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
And first of all, Congressman, can you answer the question why does
a guy like you end up in politics? H poor judgment. Frankly,
this is unbelievable, So listen. I actually I built a debt badge that
I wear on my lapel. It's a little computer that displays the debt in
real time and the digits are just spinning by. And I brought twenty copies
of this debt badge to Washington, DC this week, and I'm going to
give them away to Congressman. Maybe they'll wear them as well. We'll do
a little debt badge diplomacy up here. Well, we're going to ask about
the speaker of the house. But you got your bachelor's degree and you wrote
a thesis on the quote design of a three degree of freedom force reflecting haptic
interface. What the hell is that? It allows you to touch three dimensional
objects? You know? You they talk about virtual reality. Well, twenty
five thirty years ago, actually thirty plus years ago, I built a device
that lets you feel three dimensional objects in virtual reality and it's still the state
of the art. They used it for surgical simulations and then carving virtual clay
and printing on a three D printer. Maybe I should have stuck at that.
Well what about Hakeem Gates? What dimension is he in? Well,
you know, I had some discussions with Matt yesterday and via text. He
and I are friends. I've gone to Florida and campaign for him, but
I vehemently disagree with his judgment on calling the motion to vacate on Kevin McCarthy,
and I told him, I said, you own what comes next,
and it ain't going to be pretty. We're going to get an omnibus,
I'm afraid. And we were a lot better off with Kevin McCarthy. We
were working on the twelve separate bills. He did get a one percent automatic
decrease in spending that kicks in the spring if somebody else doesn't screw it up.
And now I'm afraid they're going to screw it up. Congressman Massey,
Will there be white smoke or black smoke over the Capitol? What we have
a pope, a speaker by the end of the week. My weather prediction
is forty percent chance of speaker this week, so I'm not too optimistic.
Frankly, put I put all my eggs in the Jim Jordan basket last week.
I was in his inner circle, campaigning for him, working for him,
making phone calls, you know, doing strategy, and he came up
just a little bit short. And eventually the Republican Conference met and voted to
withdraw his nomination, which I thought was premature. I would have he went
three rounds on the floor, got up to two hundred votes and needed two
seventeen. I would have voted yest for him every time. I wish we
could have kept going. But here we are. We've got nine candidates.
Tonight We've got I call it. The beauty pageant will be tonight. There'll
be the candidates for him, and they'll all try to tell us why they
should be speaker. May I give you an idea? Sure, when you're
in your conference with what about you have about two hundred and twenty two something
like that? Yep, how about saying let's have a unanimous vote on this.
We're going to stay here until we have a pope, and we're going
to go from nine, then the top three. Then the top three are
going to give their presentation whatever it might be, fifteen to twenty minutes each
and all to twenty two agree that whoever gets the most votes, even if
it's not a majority, whoever gets the most votes of those final three will
be the speaker. Can you get that done? I love that idea.
The way they're going to do it Tomorrow, we'll have the voting tomorrow.
By the way, I think we should be locked up here until we come
up with the speaker tomorrow. I presumably all nine will still be in the
race. There'll be a rounda balloting, they'll drop the lowest vote getter,
There'll be a vote among the eight, they'll drop the lowest vote getter.
Presumably we'll have, you know, at least eight rounds of voting tomorrow,
which is going to take some time to get to our speaker candidate. But
you know, people just refuse to vote for Jim Jordan. Last week the
chairman of the Appropriations Committee didn't vote for the conference selection. That you know,
that kind of in transigen and reviewal to go with the party used to
get you kicked off your committee. But now I guess you can be chairman
of the most powerful commit and still vote against the Republican nominee. So you
know, I've taken a lot of grief over the years for not going along
to get along, but this is this Now it's I guess it's fashionable and
anybody can do it and there's no repercussions. You know. At least I
didn't ask for to be a chairman of a committee and then go and do
this kind of stuff. But I wish of eight had never vacated Kevin McCarthy.
I wished the two twenty one of us could have voted for Jim Jordan.
I would have voted for him a thousand rounds and did vote for him
three rounds. So we'll just see where it goes from here. You know,
Bill, I got one vote for speaker in the first round last week,
I vote for it. What have you thought about becoming the speaker?
Have you? I would vote for you. You're a bit eclectic. Of
course I'm a bit eclectic too. I get eclectic. But nonetheless, when
you're in the middle of the conference, I think that's a good thing.
But why won't Tom Massey throw your hat the ring to become the speaker?
Well, listen, one vote caused me enough problems. I had people calling
the office they thought I had voted for myself. Was actually victorious Sparks from
Indiana who voted for me. But people were mad because they thought I voted
for myself and had derived deprived Jim Jordan of a vote. Listen. My
ideology isn't always the same as the mainstream Republican ideology. I'm not for any
funding of any wars. For instance, I don't vote for sanctions. I
think we should try to have peace with all nations. You know so anyways,
but your ideology, frankly shouldn't matter if you're going to be the Speaker
of the House. I think they do well to have an engineer. They
need somebody who can put this stuff in order and follow rules. And have
a good process and let the House work its will. But I may be
too far outside of the Republican establishment mainstream to get to two seventeen. No,
you're not normal, but not being normal as good, as far as
as far as the issue of that, people ask me, can you tell
me again what's happening in the House, Because if you're in the cauldron,
you're right there in the belly of the beast, you may not see what's
happening outside. The average American looks at this and says, a Republican party
in the House is representative of chaos and confusion, It advocates and cannot govern.
So can you tell average Americans listening right now in Covington or Newport,
or in Mason County why did McCarthy get kicked out as the speaker? What
was the reason? Well, there wasn't a good reason. Look, they
said that he had violated promises he had made. But here's the problem with
that claim. I was inside the room when the deal was negotiated in January
that allowed him to be speaker, and according to my math, he kept
every promise that he had made. We were working on the twelve separate bills
that's what we need to do. Look, there's a Democrat in the White
House. The Democrats control the Senate, and the House is the only branch
that's controlled by Republicans. This is why we need to get together and get
our you know, get the House going. But it's also why we need
to do the twelve spending bills, because that's the only place we can affect
policy. We can pass all the nice bills we want. HR one,
which was about energy independence and bring down the price of energy in America.
HR Two, which was about securing our border. The problem is the Senate's
not going to bring those bills up. The only bills we know they will
bring up are the spending bills, and if we do a giant omnibus,
they'll jam us and we won't get our things that we want that the American
people need, like border security and energy independence. But if we do our
twelve separate bills, we can get that policy in the spending bills. And
that's what we need to be doing. That's what Kevin was working on,
and he got kneecapped by some folks up here. Congressman a couple of minutes
remaining as far as the budget accumulated debt. I've said many times in many
places the two things that will destroy this country. And just because we are
now a great country and a great civilization doesn't mean it will continue for ad
infinitum. Number one is unbridled immigration on the southern border. And number two
is the accumulated debt that in the last twenty two years, since twenty oh
one, it's gone from about four or five trillion up to thirty three trillion
dollars, and it's meant to go up at least to one and a half
to two trillion dollars for the next six or seven years. Can you tell
the average American driving a truck somewhere in Butler County as to why the accumulated
debt is the arsenic that will poison the American way of life? Well,
yeah, it's about to. The interest on the debt is about to eclipse
all of the money we spend on national defense, and that that should scare
everybody. It's good at you know, it's going to be in the hundreds
of it's in the hundreds of billions, but we're going to be above seven
eight hundred billion dollars in interest here pretty soon. The fed raised interest rates
to try and stop inflation. Why do we have inflation because we spent more
money than we had. They couldn't borrow it our all, so they printed
five trillion dollars in the last few years. We're chasing our tail here,
and we're not going to be able to borrow all this money at these high
rates, so they're going to print morm of it, which is going to
cause more inflation, which for the people out there working, if you're if
you're not getting a ten percent eight percent raise, you're you're going backwards due
to the inflation that we have now. And people know that. So the
only way to stop this bill is to rein in spending. We can't tax
our way to prosperity, we can't print our way to prosperity, we can't
borrow our way to prosperity. We've got to spend less money. And that's
you know, as part of the condition of raising the debt limit this summer,
Kevin got built in an idea that I gave him, which was an
automatic one percent cut that kicks in the spring. If we're still doing continuing
resolutions, if we haven't done our twelve bills, I'm afraid the next speaker
is going to wipe that deal away because and frankly, you know, Republicans
got to hear this too. We've got some Republicans up here that want to
spend thirty billion dollars more on the military this coming year than they did last
year. And the only way you do that and divide the government is that
the Democrats have thirty billion for their pet projects. We got it. Instead
of getting together and agreeing to increase spending across the board, we've got to
get together and agree to decrease spending across the board. Congressman Massey. Last
week, the President said he wanted like one hundred and ten billion dollars hook
together Ukraine and Israel AID and so much more. We're paying everybody. We're
paying Jordan, We're we're paying eleven, and we're paying Egypt. We're paying
everybody money, including Israel. Why is it wrong to put in one bill
almost like an omnibus, spending for Ukraine and for Israel. Shouldn't they stand
alone? They should absolutely stand alone. And the border. And while they're
spending all that money, they're not doing anything about the border. Biden wants
more money for the border. But frankly, I think he's just going to
use that money to process more illegal entries into the United States. So this
should be separate. The reason they put them all together is to put pressure
on people up here. There's gonna be a lot of pressure to do something
for Israel, and so they'll pressure Republicans who wouldn't vote for the Ukraine money
to vote for the Ukraine money. But frankly, bill the House already passed
add APPROBX bill and in a State and Foreign Ops approbed bill within that are
containing three point eight billion dollars for Israel. It's sitting over there in the
Senate. We don't need to stand alone bill. They've already got the authorization
to pass the House versions of those two twelve two of the twelve separate bills
that would send the money to Israel. They don't need more money. We're
going to go bankrupt if we keep sending money to every You know, the
first year I was here, I offered an amendment to approached bill to cut
the money to Egypt because in twenty thirteen they were in a coup. There
was a military coup going on. We didn't know who was controlling the government,
and the State Department still wanted to send a billion dollars to Egypt.
I'm like, can we wait to see who who's the government? But if
you were, we vote to send him a billion dollars and I got overruled.
Congressman Massey. In about six years ago, you sponsored a one page
bill to abolish the US Department of Education. Since that was created under Jimmy
Carter, education public wise in this country has gotten worse and worse and worse.
At some point as the normal Americans, will you, American, will
you wash your hands of all of this and simply come back home and say
I can't take it anymore. Every day I'm running that calculation, but the
other people praying for me, because when I start thinking that, for some
reason, I stick with it. I've reintroduced HR eight ninety nine. That's
the bill, the one sentence to build to abolish the federal Department of Education.
Those decisions need to be made locally by parents and school boards and states,
not by the federal government. And we're they're just squandering the money here
in Washington, DC and causing more bureaucracy back home in the school systems get
rid of the federal Department of Education. There'll be more resources for our kids
and they won't be indoctrinated by some federal one size fits all curriculum. But
that's why I fight. If I'm not here, who's going to introduce it
HR eight ninety nine. Nobody. In fact, Washington politicians are committed to
the continuance of the bureaucracy and the state of the DOJ, FBI, Department
of Education EPA. Every state, every county, every city has its own
EPA. Pollution largely has been defeated. Now it's about spending money, collecting
power and dispersing it to the states through the EPA. Makes no sense.
I'm betting now, Thomas Massey. At some point you say to with it.
I can't take it anymore. I want to stick with it for as
long as I can, but it is tough. I better not come on
your show too much and you talk too much common sense. You taught me
into coming back home. I'll tell you what it is. If you was
on my farm for thirty thirty six hours this week, and that's how much
time I got on my farm, and I'll tell you what it was hard
to leave those beautiful hills with the leaves changing to come back up there.
Oh, so you leave northern Kentucky, go into the belly of the beast
and fight Hakeem Jefferies and Nancy Pelosi. I mean, I'd rather be with
the farm animals. They have more cognitive ability, frankly, than a lot
of my colleagues. My farm animal du It's like reading Shakespeare to my cattle
up here sometimes. Well, tell them that went in disgrace with the fortunes
in men's eyes. I all alone, bewaiting my aucast state. I trouble
tough having them with my bootless cries to look at myself and curse my fate.
Just tell the cattle that for me, will you? Well, we'll
have as much understanding in their eyes as Jamal Bowman did when I talked to
him about the Safer Schools Act, where I want to get rid of the
gun free zones. He went nuts on me. I don't know how you
put up with It's I'm glad you do, But bright guy, and good
luck, and we'll have a pope you think. Bye bye. November seventeenth,
which is when the cr runs out, we have to do something and
the speaker pro tim we have does not have the power to spend money or
to put a bill on the floor to do that. So we better have
it by November seventeenth, is all I've got to say. And it better
be one who's not going to do an omnibus, because that's given up all
the power that we have here in the House. When we do an omnibus,
stay as long as you can take it. Thomas Massey of Northern Kentucky,
once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Thank
you, Thomas, Thank you, Bill. Bye bye, God bless America.
I let's continue with more. Doesn't that guy make sense? I'd rather
do Shakespearean sonnets than listen to him, came Jeffries Bill Cunningham, News Radio
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