00:00:00.000Hey, everybody, who's the third person at the negotiating table for the debt ceiling?
00:00:03.000We go through the debt ceiling in great detail and give you the latest news from the legislative fight brewing in Washington, D.C. As always, you can email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
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00:01:02.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:02.000Okay, so the first thing is we have to remember how this all started.
00:02:06.000Democrats wanted a complete and total debt ceiling increase, no negotiation at all.
00:02:12.000And that's typically how the unit party operates.
00:02:15.000Now, this is worth recognizing and noticing because the mandate that we, the conservative base, gave to our elected officials, at least some form of a negotiation process began to unfold.
00:02:25.000Remember, they wanted to use the 14th Amendment to increase the debt ceiling.
00:04:16.000So, this will raise the debt ceiling through January of 2025.
00:04:21.000Now, many people were going into this battle hoping on a 10-year cap on spending.
00:04:25.000What came away with was a freeze on spending for this year, followed by a 1% increase next year, which, if we stuck to it, would probably be a cut since our inflation rate is about 6% to 7% right now.
00:04:36.000After 2025, though, there's no actual cuts on spending.
00:04:39.000Instead, they're non-binding suggestions as the New York Times described it.
00:04:44.000Now, let me just be honest: full transparency here.
00:04:48.000I spent three hours reading this darn thing, and I'm still not certain on some of it.
00:04:53.000It is written in like Orwellian doublespeak, thou shall not.
00:04:56.000I mean, it's like the new King James Bible, not even New Kings, it's like original King James Bible: Thou shallest cut thou spending in thy future.
00:05:39.000Okay, unspent COVID relief funds are now being returned now that the COVID emergency is officially over.
00:05:45.000That's about $30 billion in spending reform.
00:05:49.000Now, some of these suggestions are just a little opaque, definitely needs some clarifying.
00:05:54.000Republicans want a tougher requirements that people receive in government benefits, like Medicaid, SNAP, or food stamps, or TANF, T-A-N-F.
00:06:03.000So, if you hear TANF, which again, it's very hard to say that three quick times, TANF, TANT, TANF, is welfare, had to be working for looking for work.
00:06:12.000In the end, there were no changes of Medicaid, unfortunately.
00:06:16.000But for food stamps, the age range where recipients have to be working or in training programs to receive benefits will be raised from 49 to 54.
00:06:26.000The government also tightened the ability of states to grant waivers from this requirement, but the deal would also exempt veterans and homeless who previously were not exempt from work requirements.
00:06:36.000Now, for TANF, T-A-N-F, there aren't expanded work requirements.
00:06:40.000But once again, the deal would make it harder for states to grant exemptions to them.
00:06:43.000Now, this is the most debated point is here.
00:06:46.000And we have Chip Roy that has an opinion on it.
00:06:49.000And Speaker McCarthy has said one thing.
00:07:09.000The other side of it is that they're saying, no, no, no, it cut $1.3 billion out of the $80 billion to the IRS agents, so they can't hire any agents this year.
00:07:39.000So officials say the IRS might simply pull forward some of the money earmarked for later years, then return it to Congress later and asking for more money, according to the New York Times.
00:07:47.000Now, there are no new tax increases that we know of in this, no closing of loopholes.
00:07:56.000So here's the debt ceiling kind of talking points, if you will.
00:08:03.000HR1 energy permitting reform as passed by the House, which could go both ways, by the way.
00:08:09.000That could also make green energy work programs approved quicker.
00:08:13.000$131 billion cut to annual spending next year, shrinking the federal bureaucracy to pre-COVID cap for 10 years.
00:08:20.000Now, that is a win, but we want to make sure we're clear with you, though, that we're cutting rates of growth based on an increased leviathan.
00:08:28.000So it's like saying, okay, our budget is 50% bigger than it was six years ago.
00:08:33.000And instead of growing by 6%, we're going to grow by 4%.
00:08:36.000Now, obviously, I'd rather have it grow by 4%, but that's important clarity.
00:08:41.000It repeals Democrats' $1.2 trillion IRA, unreliable energy tax break for the rich corporations and for communist China.
00:10:50.000But you have to simultaneously do the other thing.
00:10:53.000I believe you actually have an obligation, which is to support women in need and babies in need that are at risk of being aborted.
00:11:01.000Look, when you introduce a girl to her baby by providing an ultrasound, you're giving her the truth at the most critical and important time in her life.
00:11:10.00085% of the time when they actually see the baby, they choose life.
00:11:16.000Now, mind you, pre-born provides resources.
00:11:22.000And I encourage you, if you're pro-life, to pray about this, are you giving money to actually support the unborn if you are voting for pro-life?
00:11:28.000Look, $140 gives five mothers a free ultrasound and saves babies.
00:11:32.000$280 can save 10 babies, and just $28 a month can save a baby a month for less than a dollar a day.
00:11:37.000I'm a donor to this organization, and you should be too.
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00:11:45.000Whether you want to save one baby or five or hundreds, this opportunity is just a phone call or click away.
00:11:51.000I think the world of pre-born, I give money financially.
00:11:54.000And every one of you that are pro-life, I believe you have a duty and an obligation to go to preborn.org slash Kirk and give as you can, give your best gift or call 833-850-2229.
00:12:43.000In fact, part of the mess that we're in, if we're honest with ourselves, is created thanks to Republicans.
00:12:48.000And that's going to be the illuminating aspect I'm about to share with you.
00:12:52.000So as I'm working the phones here, especially with people that would non-traditionally come on this program, I said, okay, why couldn't we get more domestic cuts?
00:13:01.000Why couldn't we get, and they said, look, Charlie, and this was very important.
00:13:04.000They said, you understand that a third aspect of this was Lindsey Graham in the U.S. Senate holding the neoliberal neocons hostage in the Senate, saying that we're not going to pass anything unless we get military increases, military increases of money to Ukraine, saying that we don't have bullets, we don't have ammunition.
00:13:24.000So a third element here that's very important that I learned through private phone calls and talking to people that were intimately involved in the process here is that Lady Graham was threatening to blow anything up and saying, I don't care about your domestic stuff.
00:13:40.000We need to have increases of what's happening in the defense.
00:13:44.000So if you think it's a terrible deal, I'm going to say, Charlie, this is a terrible deal.
00:13:52.000However, you must understand that blocking up against driving a harder bargain is the fact that we have to spend $880 billion on Millie's military.
00:14:03.000Now, mind you, some of you guys might say, oh, come on, you know, the military is sacred.
00:14:35.000So interestingly enough, we could have drove a much harder bargain and we still can if Republicans would just get off of their fascination with the war machine.
00:14:46.000I just, you know, learning about, so here's you have McCarthy and Biden, but peeking over the shoulder of Kevin McCarthy is Senator Lindsey Grant saying, no, no, no, I'm not.
00:14:58.000And by the way, there's a huge block of Senate Republicans that basically Lindsey Graham represents the neocon hawks, Joni Ernst, people like that, that were threatening, saying, hey, we're not going to put up with any sort of cuts.
00:15:13.000Why do we have as many military bases that we do?
00:15:16.000These are questions that we need to ask that if we're serious about cutting domestic spending, why aren't we saying, hey, Mark Milley, am I going to give you unlimited amounts of money?
00:15:25.000In fact, Lindsey Graham has gone to Twitter and he is bashing this deal, but he's not bashing the deal in the way that you would.
00:15:32.000In the grassroots, in the grassroots, you're emailing me, Charlie, it's not enough spending cuts in here.
00:15:36.000Do you know what Lindsey Graham is saying?
00:15:38.000He's saying that it doesn't increase military spending enough.
00:15:42.000He's saying that we don't have enough ships and all that's all a bunch of nonsense.
00:15:46.000Ryan, get that cut from the Raytheon CEO that says the reason that we are depleting our military stockpiles is because we're involved in a proxy war against the Russian Federation.
00:15:57.000Here is Lindsey Graham telling you his true motivations.
00:16:01.000Lindsey Graham and the warmongering Republicans were more involved in this than you could ever imagine, including Gallagher from Wisconsin, threatening to blow up the entire deal, which then was a limiting factor for us to be able to get serious domestic spending reform.
00:16:18.000Play cut four, the best money we've ever spent, according to Lindsey Graham.
00:16:42.000We have $80 billion going to militarized IRS agents.
00:16:46.000And Lindsey Graham is in a foreign country while threatening to blow up progress that we can make on domestic spending to make sure that Zelensky and Ukraine have an uninterrupted line of funding.
00:17:00.000I hear your frustration, but make sure you understand that it's much broader than the picture the media is painting.
00:17:09.000Balance of Nature, changing the world one life at a time.
00:17:13.000I work in a school, so I'm around like a thousand kids a day constantly.
00:17:17.000And so I wash my hands and use alcohol on them probably 100 times a day or better.
00:17:23.000And my hands are always cracking open and splitting.
00:17:26.000And I did not have that this entire winter.
00:18:13.000Speaker McCarthy in these negotiations was up against a limit.
00:18:18.000And the limit, the limitations that was put on him is not only by the House Freedom Caucus, which I support a balanced budget and I support radical spending cuts, and I know you do too.
00:18:29.000No, the limitation, quite honestly, was being put on by defense hawks that wanted Millie's military to receive uninterrupted funding or the Department of Homeland Security to have even more money to be able to spy on Americans or the FBI.
00:18:44.000You see, the Warhawks and the domestic Warhawks were heavily involved in this process, and it wasn't always materializing.
00:18:52.000You see, the fixation on supporting the American war machine makes it very hard for us to negotiate in good faith.
00:19:02.000Now, the Democrats don't negotiate in good faith.
00:19:04.000They're a bunch of fraudsters and criminals.
00:19:06.000But at the same time, we must be honest about our own side, which is, okay, we are a nation that is verging on bankruptcy.
00:19:13.000We are heading towards that cliff very quickly.
00:19:16.000And we talk about fiscal discipline and fiscal responsibility.
00:19:20.000But why are we also not being honest about that our defense budget, the Department of Defense, is the Department of Invading Other Countries and the Department of Offense.
00:19:32.000If Republicans are serious about fiscal responsibility and fiscal discipline, then you have to be willing to cut spending across the board.
00:19:39.000And I believe there is an appetite actually amongst you in a way there wasn't five or six years ago.
00:19:45.000The biggest ongoing harm in 9-11 is how it has made the Republican Party on this permanent war-industrial complex footing, a permanent security state.
00:19:57.000There are so many things that we could achieve if we left those things behind.
00:20:01.000And it would put the Democrats on defense because here's what happened in these negotiations.
00:20:04.000Again, the Democrats, I don't trust them as far as I could throw them, but this is a true story of what happened in this negotiation.
00:20:11.000The Biden team meets with the McCarthy team, and McCarthy is starting to say, hey, we could cut this.
00:20:18.000And Biden says, well, you know, let's do some military cuts.
00:21:47.000It's about imperializing the world around an increasingly perverted, left-wing, radical, post-modern, post-structuralist view.
00:21:58.000It's not about liberating people from tyranny or authoritarianism.
00:22:02.000And the hilarity is that we are becoming more like the countries that we are trying to seek to liberate people from, even though we're not.
00:22:10.000We're becoming more like the authoritarian Soviet Union.
00:22:14.000We are becoming more like the Gestapo power-hungry Pullet Bureau that cracks down on dissidents.
00:22:21.000And so I've lost my patience because I can't honestly deliver to you, an audience, a critique of this plan without telling you that the entire negotiation process was flawed from the outset.
00:22:33.000It was not a good faith negotiation on behalf of Republicans.
00:22:37.000And again, you might say, well, it's not good faith on Democrats.
00:22:41.000They're revolutionary Marxists that want the destruction of the country.
00:22:44.000I want an opposition party that walks into the room and is willing to cut the GAE, the gay, the great American empire, so we can have a balanced budget.
00:22:54.000We're not going to get anywhere until we call out that the inputs into the formula of the negotiation are significantly fraud.
00:23:03.000Why is it that the deal is like, well, we could have got more here and we could have got more there?
00:23:07.000For example, Lauren Bobert says, look, I think McCarthy did the best that he could to some extent, but we made it clear this would not continue.
00:23:15.000Business as usual, just listen to this.
00:23:16.000This is the vibe that I'm hearing from you.
00:23:43.000As far as I'm concerned, I think McCarthy did the best that he could do to some extent with this deal, but we made it clear at the outset of this Congress that we would not continue business as usual here in Washington, D.C.
00:23:59.000And so I was working on the phones yesterday, and I was just trying to get some clarity.
00:24:03.000And some of the sources I have of people that were very, very close to the negotiation right in there, they were like, look, the conference is not going to put up with any defense cuts.
00:24:12.000In fact, right now, Lindsey Graham's tweet, Lindsey Graham has come out and he is bashing this deal.
00:24:20.000So if you don't like this deal, you're in agreement with Lindsey Graham, except he is the polar opposite.
00:24:25.000So if you're the one, you're firing up Charlotte, doesn't cut enough spending, doesn't do this, doesn't that?
00:24:28.000You know why Lindsey Graham has resorted to Twitter to say this is a bad deal, this falls short.
00:24:37.000He says, I'm going to use every lever in the Senate to amend this.
00:24:42.000He says, I have total disgust for political leaders' decision to make it remotely possible to gut our national security apparatus at a time of great peril.
00:25:10.000So Lindsey Graham goes out and he says, unfortunately, Speaker McCarthy have made this Biden defense budget, the Republican defense budget, with this disastrous deal.
00:25:20.000Even though it increases military spending, Lindsey Graham says it does not increase it enough.
00:25:26.000Let's get that clip you guys just sent in here.
00:25:29.000So you have to realize all the different components here.
00:25:34.000Let's go to another piece of tape here.
00:25:37.000The Democrats are complaining it doesn't go far enough.
00:25:40.000Number one, we need to stop drilling for fossil fuels completely.
00:25:45.000But number two, we need an expedited way to get us to clean, renewable energy, or we will continue to have these severe weather events that we have been having for quite some time because of the warming of the planet.
00:25:59.000You see, if you vote for the debt ceiling bill and if you cut any spending at all, weather is going to intensify and the world is going to end.
00:26:08.000I, in particular, do not like the catastrophization, say that three times fast, of American politics, that everything's always going to collapse, that everything's always going to fall apart, that we're always sitting on some sort of fragile set of circumstances.
00:26:26.000When you believe that you're under crisis and you are driven by emotion and not by reason, you tend to not make the best decisions.
00:26:34.000I think we all know this in our personal lives, that if you think that things are falling apart and there's a nonstop fiasco and you're under complete and total collapse, then you're going to act in a frenetic fashion.
00:26:46.000That's what Washington, D.C. always wants to create.
00:26:50.000They want to create the conditions of a crisis, albeit 99% of the time manufactured, so that we do not think rationally or reasonably.
00:26:59.000And the actual crises that are happening, like inflation and the southern border, they just completely ignore.
00:27:05.000Like there's a crisis of terrorism against trans people.
00:27:22.000It calms us House conservatives are criticizing the bill, calling it, quote, the fiscal irresponsibility act and not a win for Republicans.
00:27:31.000On the Senate side, Republicans Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee have vowed to impede the bill's passage over their own concerns.
00:27:40.000And Texas Senator Ted Cruz called the legislation a quote blank check for Democrats.
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00:31:23.000I have a lot of problems with neoliberalism, but if you could replace a bad idea with a worse idea, if the Soviet Union taught us anything, it's like, okay, you don't like the czars.
00:31:34.000They're not great, but Lenin is a lot worse.
00:32:27.000If you think there is a sacred, if you think that the military is spending their money perfectly and precisely, we took away all of our negotiating strength right away from the drum, from the jump.
00:32:41.000If we were really ready to tighten our belts in this negotiation, we should have entered and publicly said, Joe Biden, more important than money to Ukraine or gay poem readings on warships or Mark Milley's white rage seminars or Zoom calls about trans identity, there is not a single penny of the budget that is off limits.
00:33:31.000What is the geopolitical reason we have a base in Peru?
00:33:34.000So if we would have entered this negotiation saying we are now a party of fiscal discipline, we will cut not just COVID emergency stuff, not just IRS agents, but yes, we will be willing to cut the gay, the great American empire.
00:33:49.000Instead, we were unable to drive the hardest possible bargain.
00:33:56.000And look, you could make an argument that Japan, Germany, and South Korea are strategic, but there's a lot of fat on that bone.
00:34:01.000Again, I'm not like this radical isolationist, cut it all and do all this stuff.
00:34:09.000You have to be willing to call the bluff.
00:34:10.000You have to be willing to be honest that when you have $880 billion and we're spending money to that uppity foreigner, Zelensky, in a t-shirt, like, oh, everything's fine.