Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. Now you know me. I don't get into
the predictions game mainly because I am terrible at it, terrible,
and there's really no value to making predictions unless you're
going to actually keep a scorecard and say, here's all
the here all the times I got it right, and
then you also have to give all the times you
got it wrong. But nobody ever does that. No one
ever comes out and they're like, oh, you know what,
I got wrong again this thing, and then I got
this other thing wrong and whatever. They'll tell you when
they got it right. Though. That's why I don't get
into the prediction business. I do warn though, Okay, I warned,
and so I warned, and I warned and I warned
for like fifteen years I've been warning about expanding Medicaid
in North Carolina. Republicans used to oppose it, and they
opposed expansion of Medicaid under the Obamacare plan, and which,
by the way, as I understand it, it that fixed
that fixed the healthcare industry, which is why now Medicaid
is going to be completely destroyed by the Republicans or
something so like, which is weird. I don't know. I
thought we fixed it all, but now it's not fixed
again or something. I guess it's like clearing out the
backlog of the rape kits at the State Bureau of
Investigation's crime lab, where Roy Cooper said that he had
cleared it out, and then Josh Stein ran on a
campaign of clearing out the back law and then touted
his success at doing so. So I'm not clear when
they got cleared out, if they got cleared out with
somebody lying about it, but whatever. Same thing with the
Obamacare saving the healthcare industry, which is now apparently more expensive.
But I warned the North Carolina Republican legislature do not
expand Medicaid, and for fifteen years they were solid on it.
Then what two years ago, I guess it was they
finally caved and they gave Roy Cooper his holy grail victory.
The one thing I mean to listen to Roy Cooper
when he was governor, expansion of Medicaid was the solution
to darn near every single problem that faced the state.
In fact, that's why he brought so goes the rumor
up in Raleigh. That's why he brought on Mandy Cohen, who,
as I understand it, has it going on. But brought
on Mandy Cohen to lead the Department of Health and
Human Services because she was supposed to be there to
usher in the expansion of Medicaid, which did not happen
while she was in charge. Happened only after she left
got the gig up in Harvard and then went to
work for the Biden administration, or maybe that was vice versa,
but either way, she was gone by the time Cooper
finally got to drink from his holy grail, and that
was the expansion of Medicaid. And the Republican legislature folded
on this and the claim was that, well, things have changed,
and the federal government is still doing this ninety percent
federal match, which isn't a match, it's a subsidy, right
if you're paying ninety percent of it, and so we
should go ahead and do this, this ninety percent subsidy.
So we should do it because look, it's been around
now for what ten years, they've been offering this and
we haven't taken it, and we should go ahead and
do it because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
And I said, you don't know that. You don't know
that because the reimbursement rate, I want to say it
was somewhere I'm trying to remember what the Medicaid reimbursement
rates are off the top of my head, I want
to say it was like between seventy and eighty percent
something like that that Obamacare did, and then they jacked
it up to ninety percent as a big fat carrot
to try to get states that were holding out, basically
Republican states that were holding out expanding Medicaid. And so
you have now these two populations on the Medicaid rolls,
the pre expansion folks and then the expansion folks. And
the pre expansion folks represent a lower subsidy from the
Feds for the Medicaid. The expansion people represent a ninety
percent subsidy. And when the legislature voted to expand Medicaid,
they said, look, the program hasn't gone anywhere, it doesn't
look like it's going anywhere. It's now the time to
do it, and we're going to be able to expand
the roles with all of these people and some astute observers,
if I do say so myself, like, well me pointed
out like number one, that is going to be an undercount.
Your projection of how many people sign up for the
free service is going to be an under count. This
is what's called the woodwork effect, where people come out
of the woodwork. Right, People you did not expect to
show up for the free service show up for the
free service because it's free. And the expansion population are
a different class of people. These are younger, they are
able bodied, they can work, right, and so like, why
are we extending these benefits to people who now have
an incentive not to work. When you incentivize people to
not participate in productive means of self sufficiency, they will
not do so unless they are personally motivated through some
sort of you know, moral ethical, you know, compunction to
go out and work because there is dignity and value
in work. But work is hard, work is boring, and
it's annoying when you've got to sit next to that
person that brings the smelly fish and puts it in
the microwave in the office, Like, yeah, work stink sometimes literally, right,
So you incentivize people not to work. And there's then
you have a part of this, which is called the
welfare cliff, where you layer on so many benefits to
people of low income that they get to a point where,
if they are working and they are progressing in their
career path, they get to a point where they would
need to get somewhere. I think the cliff is somewhere
around sixty grand I want to say, and then you
would need to jump, or maybe it's forty k and
then you need to jump to sixty I forget. It's
like a twenty twenty five thousand dollars jump or cliff,
which is you're making the money, but as soon as
you go past a certain income, now you start becoming
ineligible for various welfare benefits, whether it's food stamps or
medicaid or whatever. And the drop off, the value of
that drop off is so high that you would essentially
need a twenty five thousand dollars pay raise, and that
doesn't happen. People don't move from I guess. Maybe at like,
if you're making six figures, you know, two hundred and
fifty K a year or something like that, then yes,
you could move twenty five thousand dollars in a year,
I guess. But people generally, when you are you know,
working class, you're not making that kind of an income jump, right.
An employer is not going to say, hey, you know what,
we're going to now basically give you a fifty percent
pay raise. And so you've created an incentive for people
not to want to work because if they go above
a certain amount of money in income, they lose their benefits.
It is a completely rational decision for them to make.
And so people like me, we're arguing against this expansion
of medicaid. Even when Republicans in the state legislature started
making the moves that, oh, you know what, we might
be open to it now, they wanted to take the
issue away from Democrats and lo and behold, here we
are the obbb A, the one Big Beautiful Bill Act,
the Abba or I don't know, obah baba. Anyway, this
big beautiful monstrosity that now Tom Tillis said, you can't
do this because it's going to jam up the states.
That was his reason for opposing the Oh bah, bah bah,
you're jamming up the states on Medicaid. And why because
of the ninety percent subsidy. Because the thing that North
Carolina Republican lawmakers said wouldn't happen. They were confident and
wouldn't happen. Now it looks like it's going to happen,
and it may have just cast Tom Tillis his seat. Well,
let's be fair, there were a lot of reasons. There
were there were other reasons that people were not too
thrilled with Tom Tillis as their Republican US senator. All Right,
if you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do, and you've probably heard me say
get your news from multiple sources.
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All right, So we've got the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
It passed the House and went over to the Senate,
and US Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina, at least
for the next eighteen months, he voted against it. I
have his floor speech. We'll listen to that later on
in the program, and I will offer a not a
defense of him, but some food for thought, a particular
angle that I thought of as I was watching it,
and I'm curious what you think of it. So let
me start though with this because this was June twenty eighth,
so this would have been Saturday. I was as shocked
as anybody that the Senate was working on a weekend.
But they have this vote. And Tillis puts out a
statement and he says, I will always do what is
in the best interest of North Carolina, even when that
puts me at odds with my own party. When Senate
leaders of my party presented this bill, I did what
every American should expect from their US senator. I worked
to gather the facts and comprehensively analyze what the impact
would be on the people I swore an oath to represent.
I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and
I cannot support this bill in its current form. It
would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost
funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.
This will and by the way, I am going to
go into some detail here about the scams that states
have been pulling regarding the Medicaid reimbursements, Okay, and that's
part of this issue. By the way, he says, this
will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating
Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population,
and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional
Medicaid population. Now, defenders of the OBBBA, they're saying, well,
this is to kick illegal off to make sure they
can't get access to this stuff. But also if you
are a young, able bodied person, there should be work requirements. Right.
So there are all different arguments about the Medicaid population roles.
And to the left, they don't discern between anybody. Everybody
should be able to be on Medicaid, Medicare doesn't matter.
Government run health care for everybody. That's what they want.
They want to ration by access, not by price, because
those are your options people for health care services. Everything
is rationed. Everything is rationed in this life. Okay, it's
either rationed by access or by price, pick one. And
what the left would prefer is that everything be rationed
by access. Why and they get to pretend that they
are morally superior, that they care more than you do.
Because they want everybody to have access to free health care.
It's not free, right at all. It's not free. Number
one and number two. When you make a service free,
as I outlined, earlier with the woodwork effect. When you
make something free, you have more demand for it because
now people will go and try to take advantage of
the free service. Because it's free. There's no cost to them.
They're not going to make responsible decisions about their prioritization
of certain health care and access and procedures and whatever
because it's free. It's a rational response.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So you have people then that say we want to
have it all rationed by access, although they don't say
that because that sounds terrible, particularly if you have examples
like the UK, you have Canada where it takes you,
you know, two years to get a hip replacement. Right.
He says, we can and must do better than this.
The Senate should return to the House's medicaid approach. That
plan includes common sense reforms. By the way, anytime I
see this term common sense reforms, like, I know that
you are bsing me because what people say, Oh, it's
common sense, is it, though? Or is that just you
telling me that I should just accept what you're telling
me otherwise I don't have common sense. It's almost like
this this implicit insult. You know, common sense reforms, he says,
to address waste fraud, and abuse and implements work requirements
for some able bodied adults to ensure taxpayer funded benefits
are going to our most vulnerable neighbors. What he's talking
about here is the amount of money that the hospitals
get back. That's what he's talking about. The House had
a lower or a higher number, the Senate cut that number,
and so he's trying to protect hospitals. That's what that
sounds like to me. Anyway. He says there is a
lot for North Carolinians to love about the rest of
the one Big Beautiful bill, including extending the Trump tax cuts,
increasing the child tax credit, providing historic funding for border security,
and ending wasteful spending. We can and must accomplish this
without hurting our rural communities and hospitals, and without jeopardizing
access to care for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians
who need it the most. He doesn't say anything in
there about the price tag. That's a major objection that
I have is that the OBBBA does not seem like
it's reducing the deficit. And I understand reconciliation process, and
you can't do it through this process. Otherwise, you know,
you can have the Democrats and the filibuster, and I
get it, but nobody's talking about the amount of money
this is going to cost, this bill will cost. Now
Trump World says, don't worry, We're going to grow our
way out of it. And I don't believe that to
be the case. No, I could be wrong, but I
just don't see that happening. The amount of money that
we are spending is on an epic pace, and very soon.
What we just saw last week or two weeks ago
turns out Social Security not going to be able to
pay out its benefits and like what ahead of schedule,
like twenty thirty two or something like that. It is unsustainable.
We are going to go bankrupt. I am with Elon
Musk on this, Like this is the number one threat
that America faces. It is the profligate spending and the
interest on the debt. We will be spending like a
trillion dollars just on interest payments. It is unsurvivable, and
we have leadership that does not want to address it
because you end up with these kinds of arguments like
Tillis is making here. We can't get rid of this
government program because the hospitals will have to eat more
of the costs or something. Yeah, lots of bad decisions
have led us to this point. Making more bad decisions
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to welcome to the program Doug High. He is a
veteran Republican strategistic political commentators, worked on US Senate races,
and I believe, if memory serves correctly, you are a
native North Carolinian? Are you not?
Speaker 3: Doug from Winston Salem? And I worked for Senator Helms
in his ninety race, Lock Faircloth in his ninety two race,
which is a way of saying I'm old, and Richard
Burr in his four race.
Speaker 1: All right, so I think I think you're you are
properly vetted and qualified to speak on this issue. First off,
I as were you. Were you expecting anything like this
out of Tillis or did this come as a surprise
to you?
Speaker 3: It was both a shock and not a surprise. If
those two things can happen simultaneously. I'd say a shock
because whenever news like this come or comes around and
it's not leaking your surprise by it. And I know
a lot of people on his campaign team were caught
by surprise. His own top campaign consultant, Paul Schumaker didn't know.
He heard it through the media the same way everybody
else did. But also not surprising because Tillis had made
it known for a long time, as so many members
of Congress do, that they just aren't happy in Washington
present day, and so that he was looking for an
exit regardless of what was going around with this bill
or previous nominations means it wasn't a terrible surprise.
Speaker 1: Well, and some of this comments echo those made by
Congressman Dan Bishop from our area when he decided to
leave his safe seat and run for Attorney General last
time around. He said, look, I'm one of four hundred
and thirty five people up there. It's like you can't
get anything done. It's like nobody wants to get anything done.
And he wanted to go get stuff done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're one of four hundred and thirty five in
an organization that just does less and less seemingly every
two years. Regardless of what parties in power. Washington isn't
a place where things get done these days, and so
there's a fatigue that really wears on I think a
lot of members.
Speaker 1: It is the dynamic different over in the Senate versus
the House, or are they are they more insulated from
that because of the longer terms.
Speaker 3: Well, you're not running for reelection every two years and
you're one of one hundred, which is a little different scenario.
But Washington is broken. I don't think anybody Republican or
Democrat would argue that Washington is really firing on all
cylinders these days. And it does wear on members, and
it's why you've seen several resignations. There was another member
of Congress who announced they're not running for reelection this morning.
Congressman Don Bacon, Republican from Nebraska, announced his retirement just
a couple of days ago. And this is sort of
the time when some of that is going to happen.
Speaker 1: So looking at the nature of North Carolina voter registration
and performance, Tillis sort of created this brand as like
a more moderate Republican. I know my friends on the
left would say that's not true. But there are a
lot of people in the Republican camp that were not
happy with him. I mean they censured him. His own
party censured him a couple of years ago, and so
he kind of built this brand as like, oh, I
can win in a general election. I don't think he
ever actually cleared fifty percent of the vote though. Is
that kind of a brand for a Republican Is that
even possible to win in North Carolina? Or was that
the right formula that the next Republican needs to try
to emulate.
Speaker 3: Well, it certainly could have been in a general election.
But one of the problems that till Has had very
clearly was he was on the wrong side on Donald
Trump on this bill, and almost was with Pete Hegseth
when he was nominated, and with Donald Trump every day
as a loyalty test, and he lets people hang in
the balance at his pleasure, and certainly Tillis was experiencing that.
And I don't think you can win. You don't necessarily
need Donald Trump's endorsement to win a Republican primary. We
certainly saw that with Chuck Edwards beating Madison Cawthorn not
too long ago. But you can't win in a primary
if Donald Trump's going to oppose you. I think that's
pretty clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just ask Pat McCrory exactly. Okay, So, now what
do you think does this become more of a toss
up state? I think I saw cook political report just
moved it to a toss up from a leans Republican.
Speaker 3: North Carolina is always a close state. We haven't had
a blowout ten point victory in any Senate race since
nineteen seventy four, and we're not going to have one
this cycle either. So we want to sort out who
the candidates are. But it's going to be a close
and a very expensive race.
Speaker 1: So let me first start on the Democrats side, because everybody,
it seems like, is waiting on Roy Cooper or as
I call him my good friend Ray because that's what
Hillary called him. We're waiting on him to decide. And
he has played coy and this is sort of like
his playbook when they wanted him to run for governor
like eight straight years and he just played coy and
just stayed in the Attorney general's post. So I guess
that's the first step for the Democrats to wait to
see what he does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, everybody is sort of on standby. Obviously, Wiley
Nickel has announced. Yeah, but Roy Cooper. Roy Cooper's the
great white whale for Democrats. He's been elected statewide repeatedly,
and he can raise money in the state and nationally.
I'd argue Cooper's never really had a tough race. But
certainly if you're the Democrats, this is the guy you
want on the ballot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's a you know, white male, Southern Democrat, talks
in a way that is attractive to you know, more
rural or more blue dog conservative types. But in his heart,
he'll go along with leftist policies. He will do that stuff.
Speaker 3: And he was very close with Kamala Harris. We know that,
and she was he was nearly her pick, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I think to your point, he has not
ever faced the kind of campaign that I think he
would be subjected to with you know, hundreds of millions
of dollars pouring in from out of state. His record
on COVID is going to be an issue, his record
with the rape kit backlogs not getting cleared out. I mean,
all of these, His hurricane is disastrous response to the hurricanes.
Matthew Florence Helene like, all of that stuff will get
dragged out. I'm not sure he's completely prepared to withstand
all of that, but I think it's also going to
matter right who the Republicans put up too. So what
are you looking at for the republic inside of this equation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, at this point, And let me let me say
about Cooper. If I were advising Cooper, i'd tell him
to stay out because ultimately, look, you know, he retires
as a successful two term governor, former attorney general. If
he runs one, he could lose, and if he wins,
he goes into the Senate as a freshman in the minority.
That's not a fun existence. So I personally would tell
him that he'd probably be better off staying out on
the Republican side. Right now, all eyes are on Laura Trump.
If she wants the nomination. It is sort of her
right of first refusal because she can go to her
father in law and say, I'm your person. And if
Donald Trump backs her, it's hard to see anybody else,
you know, getting in there. But if she doesn't run,
you got a whole lot of people potentially who could
run from Michael Wattley, the former State Party chair, former
Dole aid where I first met him. To Richard Hudson,
who you know talking to Charlotte right now, former class
president at UNC, Charlotte long time now House member. A
lot of House members are looking at it. Folks from
outside the House are as well. And it could be
about a royal yeah.
Speaker 1: And also the Lara Trump candidacy was something that was
floated the last time around, and everybody waited to see
what she was going to do, and then she announced
she wasn't going to be running for the seat that
Ted budd ended up winning. So all right, hey, I
appreciate your inside thanks for joining us today. Happy independency
to you.
Speaker 3: Doug High, anytime you too, Thanks, all right.
Speaker 1: Take care. That's Doug High. He is a veteran Republican strategist,
political commentator, and a longtime Senate campaign worker and Comm's guy.
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dot com. Let's jump over and get George. Johnny's been
waiting patiently, I assume, maybe not patiently, but George, welcome
to the show. Hello George.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for the chance to blabber for while.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: So just two quick things. One one, Tom Tillis was
the big dog in the North Carolina Senate. I wasn't
too impressed with him and then one day I was
in Asheville and I caught I didn't know who it
was because I came in the middle. I caught an
interview with this guy and I thought, Wow, this guy's amazing.
I love this guy. I'm going to vote for this guy.
And then they ended and said, well, Frank you Senator Tillis,
and I went, you got to be kidding me. Nothing
he said in that interview lined up with the policy
positions he took in the North Carolina Senate. So I
say to Senator Tillis, God bless you. Don't let the
door hit you on the way out.
Speaker 1: So Martin, well, my big question for you after hearing
that story is do you remember who was doing the interview?
Was it in the afternoon drive time up in Ashville,
because that could have been me doing the interview with
No it was.
Speaker 2: I think it was a ring broadcast. I was up
there on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 1: Okay, so then that would have been Mark, Yeah, the morning.
Speaker 2: Guy probably Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Well, I mean that's okay, and Mark's
that's a guy. So I'm not you know, my feelings
aren't too terribly hurt there.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you're in Charlotte, wet me just tell you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am.
Speaker 2: He's the second thing. On June the fourteenth, Pat Harrigan,
who I supported, donated to, and campaigned for, was at
a Republican men's meeting and I asked him how he
could vote for a bill that projected spending seven to
eight trillion against revenue of five to six trillion. And
he had no answer for me. And I told him
my first election as a voter was nineteen sixty eight
Nixon versus Humphrey. And every election, every two years or
every four years, every election, they all say, yeah, the deficit,
that's the next thing. But first we've got to do this.
And now we're at, you know, approaching forty trillion. And
I told Pat, I said, because I've met him, his wife,
his children, I said, Pat, I'm not worried about you
and me, but I am worried about my grandchildren and
your children. They are going to go broke in America.
So I am so appreciative of you hitting this deficit thing.
It's like they go to Washington and their brains they
leave their brains at home. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Well because there are a number of reasons, right, there
are so many people, competing interests, competing incentive structure. You
got people that are there because they are you know,
narcissistic psychopaths basically, and they will say whatever they have
to say in order to get the power and control
that they seek, and so the ideology doesn't actually matter
to them. And it's very difficult to get people to
vote in a way that will cause pain to their constituents.
Pain being we're going to have to cut back on
the spending, and like nobody wants to hear that. No,
but Americans do not want to hear that their favorite
thing is going to get cut. I remember, like when
I just remember George W. Bush and when he won reelection.
You remember he touched the third rail of politics, which
was what to let us take like one and a
half percent of the money that's going to social Security
and allow that completely voluntary basis, to let me take
one and a half percent and stick it in a
mutual fund basically and let it grow over there. And
I just saw, because it was like twenty years after
his initial proposal, that like you would have made five
times or something the amount of money that is now
in your Social Security account, which isn't even really there.
They're just IOUs so like it was. And that's the
kind of pushback that we get from the left, and
you get these you know, jelly spined as Mark Robinson
would call them. We need Republicans that can't follow through
on just some basic fiscal restraint and some reform efforts.
And yeah, it's going to be tough for a little while,
but it has to be done well.
Speaker 2: And here's my comment COVID and President Biden. Yeah, I've
been hurting financially. I mean it's been tough. Yeah, and
the price of gasoline alone compared to when Trump left
office is killing me. But what I asked Pat Harrigan
was why can't we go back to pre COVID spending
levels as a first step? No answer for.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, I mean it's so frustrating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I just I told him. I said, Look,
I'm not I'm not coming out against you, I said,
but you know, we need fiscal responsibility above all other
concerns right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I agree with you, George. I appreciate the call.
Speaker 2: Sir, Thanks so much, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: All right, take care. So, yeah, so Pat Harrigan is
actually one of the names that's floated as a potential
candidate for this seat. I do agree with Doug High
and him is an expectation that this is Laura Trump's
if she wants it, she has right a first refusal
if she says she's going to run for the seat.
She's a North Carolina native, but she doesn't actually live here,
so that will actually open her up, you know, to
the accusation that she's a carpetbagger. But North Carolina has
elected people like Elizabeth Dole for example. New York did
it with Hillary Clinton, right, So you don't have to
be a longtime resident of the state in order to
run for the seat. Now, again, she is a North
Carolina native, so she does have a lot of roots here.
So I'm not sure that that's going to be that
big of an obstacle for her. But if she, you know,
she's got her Fox News Channel gig now, right, So
it's a lot to give up to go to work
in the US Senate. Michael Wattley that Doug mentioned, Michael Wattley,
the Republican National Committee chairman. He's former chairman of the
North Carolina GOP. And Greg Murphy. His name is thrown
out there. Congressman from eastern North Carolina mentioned Pat Harrigan
as well. You got Don Brown from the Charlotte area here.
He's an attorney, former Navy jag officer. We've had him
on the program. I've known Don for years and he's
got a statement as well. I'll read to his statement
next hour. Tim Moore, former North Carolina Speaker of the House,
he's up in Congress now. He is a potential candidate.
Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. And
then also Dan Bishop, he's you know, former congressman, but
he's been in the obit budget management, I think working
for RUSS vote. So I don't know, but he ran
statewide last time in that attorney general race and lost
to Jeff Jackson, who also if Roy Cooper doesn't get in,
Jeff Jackson is his name is being floated as a
you know, a strong contender for this race. It's wide
open right now, but I think like the first refusals
are going to be coming from Lara Trump and Roy Cooper.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
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