Speaker 1: If you're just joining us, you missed some audio that
Speaker 1: I just played one from Congressman Thomas Massey predicting back
Speaker 1: in November that we would be sitting at the end
Speaker 1: of December with a giant crap sandwich as a continuing resolution,
Speaker 1: and he was absolutely right. And joining me now to
Speaker 1: talk about the crap sandwich, although he may call it
Speaker 1: something different. Kurt Couchman, he is a senior fellow in
Speaker 1: Fiscal Policy for Americans for Prosperity, and he looks for
Speaker 1: innovative solutions to federal and state budget challenges. How about
Speaker 1: Congress being the problem with our federal budget problems.
Speaker 2: Kurt, Congress is absolutely the core of our federal budget problems.
Speaker 2: I'm calling the still of the cr isthmus bus or
Speaker 2: the Christmas Boss. Oh nice, but yeah, it's not. It's
Speaker 2: not the way that Congress should be legislating. You know,
Speaker 2: the appropriations bills, which fund which which are collectively a
Speaker 2: quarter of federal spending and none of the revenue. Those
Speaker 2: are supposed to be done in August with YESCR, they
Speaker 2: won't be done until at the earliest March, mid March sometime,
Speaker 2: so agencies will have half of a fiscal year to
Speaker 2: carry out their stuff with normal appropriations maybe, and there's
Speaker 2: all this extraneous stuff that I'm sure some of it
Speaker 2: is fine. Some of them might not be, but some
Speaker 2: of it's fine. That's just sort of stuck in there
Speaker 2: based on what the chairs and ranking members of the
Speaker 2: different authorizing committees. So yeah, we were probably with that
Speaker 2: being in there, But like, why isn't there an authorizing
Speaker 2: process that lets them bring this stuff to the floor
Speaker 2: as routine business and get Congress to vote on and
Speaker 2: all that. It's such a mess and Congress really doesn't
Speaker 2: need to fix the system.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, Kurt, I mean you kind of you
Speaker 1: know the answer to the question of why we can't
Speaker 1: do the bills the right way? With these omnibus bills
Speaker 1: or these giant continuous resolutions. They do stuff them full
Speaker 1: of all the crap sandwich stuff so they can slide
Speaker 1: it through on a mus pass bill. And now we've
Speaker 1: got this is my frustration. We talked yesterday about some
Speaker 1: polling that was post election polling about voters voted the
Speaker 1: way they did, and they voted the way they did
Speaker 1: because they perceived Trump to be a more effective leader
Speaker 1: and therefore would have a more effective government. But the
Speaker 1: reality is neither Republicans nor Democrats have shown any real
Speaker 1: backbone when it comes to tackling deficit spending. So what
Speaker 1: has to happen here?
Speaker 2: Oh, there's so much that has to be done. I mean,
Speaker 2: I wrote a piece back in January twenty seventeen when
Speaker 2: President Trump first took office talking about how he can
Speaker 2: help make Congress responsible again, and none of those things
Speaker 2: got fixed, unfortunately, and so there's still a lot of
Speaker 2: work that needs to be done. I'm actually pretty excited
Speaker 2: about this Elon musk devek Ramaswami Doze the Department of
Speaker 2: Government Efficiency, even though it's early governmental commission, because it's
Speaker 2: just the constant drum meat that there's all this stuff
Speaker 2: that the the federal government has no business doing, that
Speaker 2: it does wastefully, that it does inefficiently, and for that
Speaker 2: to be just hanging over the heads of everyone for
Speaker 2: the next well however long it last year and a half,
Speaker 2: at least, that will help with discipline Congress and helping
Speaker 2: them make the tough but necessary decisions. There's a lot
Speaker 2: more that needs to be done, but that I think
Speaker 2: could be a really powerful messaging framework for people to
Speaker 2: be thinking about things.
Speaker 1: Under I heard a pundit kind of poo pooing the
Speaker 1: notion of dog's effectiveness. But we're in kind of uncharted
Speaker 1: territory with Elon Musk and vivike Ramaswami and social media.
Speaker 1: We have never been able to directly vent our spleens
Speaker 1: in the fashion that we're now seeing on X and
Speaker 1: other social media platforms. And for Elon Musk and vivike
Speaker 1: Ramaswami to be heading this up and they're already dripping
Speaker 1: stuff out on the daily on X dot com, this
Speaker 1: is a whole new This is a big difference than
Speaker 1: what we've seen before. I'm kind of hopeful that that
Speaker 1: kind of pressure that you're talking about where people are
Speaker 1: going to look at their Congress people and say, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Because now they're more informed because of DOJ.
Speaker 1: But Congress loves to protect its own power to spend,
Speaker 1: and I am not hopeful that that is going to
Speaker 1: be enough. I mean, I hope it is, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, if we continue to go like this,
Speaker 1: how much longer can we sustain this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean people are worried about the fiscal crisis.
Speaker 2: Former Congressman Jeff Penclin had a peace in the Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal just today talking about how, you know, we
Speaker 2: can't keep borrowing like we are, and so we're going
Speaker 2: to have to cut spending in order to you know,
Speaker 2: keep the bond markets happy. So that's absolutely true. The
Speaker 2: thing about the Doge and the broader Trump administration's focus
Speaker 2: on the wasteful spending and the spending that is not
Speaker 2: just wasteful but like actively harmful to the American people
Speaker 2: and getting all that out of people's way is that
Speaker 2: it's a big megaphone. And yes, it's truth that the
Speaker 2: Doge won't have a lot of formal power. They can
Speaker 2: come up with ideas and then promote them within the
Speaker 2: administration with Congress, but it's that extension of the bully
Speaker 2: pulpit that they'll have on task they're dogged. It could
Speaker 2: be something that will create more space for Congress to
Speaker 2: actually put in place the processes that will help them
Speaker 2: fix things in the long run. So we need to
Speaker 2: be looking at this in a whole lot of different ways.
Speaker 2: Do the tax extensions, cut spending, cut regulations fix the system?
Speaker 2: These are all things that are possible for Congress to
Speaker 2: do in the next year, year and a half.
Speaker 1: But I think the frustration is is that I gotta
Speaker 1: somebody just hit me up on Twitter and said, Kurt,
Speaker 1: where did the seer come from? Who wrote it? And
Speaker 1: I think people are starting to ask that question, where
Speaker 1: did it come from? It didn't just get birthed, you
Speaker 1: know yesterday somebody had had a say in this.
Speaker 2: It's about a dozen members of Congress and the White House,
Speaker 2: and that means that four hundred and no, oh sorry,
Speaker 2: five hundred and thirty five members minus those twelve were
Speaker 2: barely involved, if at all. I mean, that's one of
Speaker 2: the things that gets people like Thomas Matthews so upset
Speaker 2: is that they have ideas, they have perspectives, they have values,
Speaker 2: they had they represent seven hundred and fifty thousand people
Speaker 2: each of them in the House and then depending on
Speaker 2: the Senate. But they don't have a seat at the
Speaker 2: table and crafting which policies actually advance, and they don't
Speaker 2: have an opportunity to make them better or like weed
Speaker 2: out nonsense. So they're there, but they're not really able
Speaker 2: to act as legislators, and that's the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1: Why is that, I mean, is it because Speaker Johnson
Speaker 1: is too willing to do the CRS or which I'm
Speaker 1: more mad at the Republicans on this stuff than I
Speaker 1: am the Democrats, because at least the Democrats are honest
Speaker 1: about wanting the government right, Like why can't my Johnson
Speaker 1: get this done? Why can't they do twelve separate bills?
Speaker 1: Why are we still doing this again?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the centers and the system are bad. I mean
Speaker 2: the I think that the leadership has done as good
Speaker 2: of a job as it is possible with this system,
Speaker 2: but that just tells you how bad it is. Like
Speaker 2: all the committees should be managing their stuff every single year,
Speaker 2: not just the appropriate. There shouldn't even be shut downs,
Speaker 2: don't They don't. They'll only started happening because of the
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter administration, and it creates all the wrong incentives.
Speaker 2: It encourages leadership to wait until the last minute and
Speaker 2: then jam everybody with it, Whereas if you didn't have shutdowns,
Speaker 2: you'd actually have to earn the votes for the new
Speaker 2: bills instead of forcing them on people right before a
Speaker 2: holiday deadline.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what they're doing. So, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: obviously this bill is going to pass. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: all just a zero percent chance it's not going to pass.
Speaker 2: Correct, Oh, I guess we'll see. I've seen some reporting
Speaker 2: by Chad Pergram at Fox News that Republicans are having
Speaker 2: a hard time, you know, being sure that they're going
Speaker 2: to have the votes. So we'll see what happens. It's
Speaker 2: already a left leaning package, probably just because that's where
Speaker 2: the votes are. They had to make a bunch of
Speaker 2: concessions to Democrats because there are enough Republicans that will
Speaker 2: refuse to vote for any sort of cr appropriations bill.
Speaker 2: And then Elon Musk has been out there talking about
Speaker 2: how it's so bad. So I think it remains to
Speaker 2: be seen what will pass. It might be this large bill,
Speaker 2: or it might have to be something scaled back. But
Speaker 2: I don't think it's certain right now what will happen.
Speaker 1: From your lips to God's ears, Kurt Couchman, he is
Speaker 1: with Americans for prosperity. You are more optimistic than I am.
Speaker 1: I really, you feel more optimistic to me than I am.
Speaker 1: I am at the point now, I've been screaming about,
Speaker 1: you know, the deficit and debt spending, and how people
Speaker 1: basically say, no, it's no big deal. It is a
Speaker 1: huge deal, And I just knowing history, I'd hate to
Speaker 1: see us become the next victim of our own hubris
Speaker 1: in thinking that we can't spend ourselves into oblivion.
Speaker 2: We absolutely can send ourselves into oblivion, and I hope
Speaker 2: we don't find that out. If we do, though, we
Speaker 2: need to make sure that the least bad way of
Speaker 2: sorting that back out is possible. So, you know, I
Speaker 2: am optimistic, at least in the long run, because America
Speaker 2: is an incredible place for generating ideas, and you know,
Speaker 2: free speech is one of the greatest blessings we have.
Speaker 2: So I'm hopeful that people can get the word out
Speaker 2: and we can figure out how to fix these things
Speaker 2: and move forward. But it's going to take a lot
Speaker 2: of work, and there's a lot of risks and a
Speaker 2: lot of dangers along the way.
Speaker 1: Kurt Jasman, I appreciate your time today.