Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 15, 2026


The Path Forward: How to Fund DHS, Secure the Border, Pass Election Integrity & Win Historic Conservative Victories


Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

189.68803

Word count

6,437

Sentence count

265

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz and Ben Fergusons discuss the scandals of Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez stepping down from Congress, and the impact it could have on the balance of power in Congress. They also talk about the devastating loss of an 8-year-old girl who tragically took her own life.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.740 A little too relaxed during yoga?
00:00:07.340 That's embarrassing.
00:00:08.640 You know what's not?
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00:00:19.880 Welcome.
00:00:20.560 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
00:00:23.760 and we've got a packed show for you,
00:00:25.660 including predictions that we made in the last show
00:00:28.340 that are spot on.
00:00:30.000 And if you could be king for a day, I've got something I want to make that we should just ban in politics.
00:00:35.460 We'll deal with that a little bit later.
00:00:36.860 But we have big news.
00:00:38.220 It looks like Republicans are actually going to stand up and win on a big issue in the Senate.
00:00:43.160 Senator, fill us in.
00:00:45.000 Well, let's say, first of all, Monday's pod, we made a prediction.
00:00:48.560 We made a prediction that, number one, Eric Swalwell would resign from Congress.
00:00:53.520 And number two, Tony Gonzalez, a Republican, would resign from Congress as well.
00:00:58.340 It is Tuesday night.
00:00:59.620 It is, what time is it, 12.22 in the morning, and both of them are gone.
00:01:05.240 Both of them have resigned.
00:01:06.600 Both are in scandals.
00:01:08.200 Look, Gonzalez's scandal was really ugly.
00:01:11.300 It was not pretty.
00:01:12.800 He had an affair with a staffer.
00:01:15.520 Tragically, the staffer took her own life.
00:01:18.140 She literally poured gasoline on herself and lit herself on fire.
00:01:22.740 She was the mom of an eight-year-old child.
00:01:24.920 It was horrific.
00:01:26.900 Tragic.
00:01:27.100 and so his stepping down it is not a surprise to anyone it needed to happen
00:01:32.940 uh and then swalwell swalwell almost like pushed gonzalez aside said hold my beer 0.99
00:01:39.520 i can be more slimy i could be more nasty than you uh at this point then the number of women
00:01:45.800 who have worked for him who've come out and accused him of sexually harassing them 0.99
00:01:49.720 sexually assaulting them raping them the the number keeps spiraling and so it is fairly
00:01:56.320 amazing. A few days ago, Eric Swalwell was the leading candidate to be the next governor of 0.91
00:02:00.380 California. He is now unemployed, and I think there's a good likelihood he'll be facing criminal
00:02:06.300 prosecution. So, wow, the world can change, and it turns out if you're a dirtbag, it can change 0.84
00:02:13.340 really, really fast. That prediction we told you about on Monday, we were accurate. And look,
00:02:19.500 part of what we laid out is the hesitancy. Democrats a day ago were calling on Swalwell
00:02:26.180 to suspend his gubernatorial campaign, but they were not calling on him to leave Congress. And
00:02:31.320 that's because the balance of power in Congress is exceptionally close. I think part of why this
00:02:37.960 happened today is Gonzalez stepped down as well. So you had one Republican, one Democrat, both
00:02:42.780 stepped down so it didn't alter the balance of power. And I believe every one of the members
00:02:49.640 of Congress is glad they did so. That was the right decision. Yeah, no doubt about it. We've
00:02:54.800 also got a big deal that's going to be happening, it looks like, with Republican leadership. And I
00:02:59.580 want to talk about what that looks like. But before we get to that, I want to tell you about
00:03:03.120 our dear friends at Compassion International. I want to be honest with you for a second about
00:03:09.220 how an act of compassion really feels a couple of years ago I made the choice to partner with an
00:03:15.520 amazing organization called compassion international why because I wanted to sponsor a child in need
00:03:22.480 it was a nice idea sure but I had no idea just how much that simple act would change my life as well
00:03:30.120 I sponsored Nadia and got to watch her life change right in front of my eyes going from starving 1.00
00:03:37.120 literally alone on the streets to getting the health care and education she needs to reach her 1.00
00:03:43.080 God-given full potential. I got to be a part of that change and the light of that compassion not
00:03:49.840 only illuminates in her, it illuminates now in me. That is the power of compassion. The light of
00:03:57.240 Christ shines on all of us. Feel it for yourself and change literally a child's life. Change the
00:04:04.540 world and you also change yourself you can sponsor child today visit compassion.com that's
00:04:12.160 compassion.com all right center so you're there in dc it's basically just let's round numbers here
00:04:19.500 about one in the morning uh john thune seemed to as i was it was described to me earlier got some
00:04:25.660 cojones and said he's had enough and and by golly we're going to fight now and we're going to get
00:04:30.360 funding that we needed it's going to be done through reconciliation is what it's looking like
00:04:34.860 can you explain what has been being said behind the scenes how we finally got to this point and
00:04:40.760 now what actually happens moving forward well ben i want to start by saying you said it's about one
00:04:46.100 in the morning i i said literally three minutes ago that it was 12 22 in the morning i said rounding
00:04:51.400 i said rounding okay that's not how you round you round down to 12 i i'm just saying that i always
00:04:56.760 Let's ground up here.
00:04:57.500 I was giving you more credit.
00:04:58.820 Your dedication to the show at 1 a.m. just sounds better.
00:05:01.520 And you're in Texas, so it's barely 11 o'clock in Texas.
00:05:05.500 Barely 1125 if we're going to get right at it, right?
00:05:08.860 So we're going to restamp the time for you.
00:05:11.480 This is a podcast that's going to insist on truth in advertising.
00:05:15.260 It's going to insist on accuracy.
00:05:17.280 So it is now.
00:05:18.720 What time is it now?
00:05:19.460 1225.
00:05:19.860 I love that he gets off the mic to get his phone to make sure that he knows what time it is.
00:05:24.140 My phone is down there.
00:05:25.060 I've got to see what time it is.
00:05:26.180 So those glasses and those hearing aids, we just got to get them for your next birthday.
00:05:30.820 But keep going.
00:05:31.440 I'm ready.
00:05:32.860 All right.
00:05:34.120 You know, Ben, I'm tempted to hold up a finger to you, and it's not the thumb.
00:05:39.560 It's not the thumb.
00:05:40.280 And we're going to save that for later in the show.
00:05:42.120 We're going to save that for later in the show.
00:05:44.000 I was trying to give you a segue there. 1.00
00:05:46.880 Make your damn point. 0.99
00:05:48.120 So I'll give the segue. 0.99
00:05:48.880 Before the show started today, we'll just pull back the curtain.
00:05:51.860 I said, I would like to see a poll that is done on how untrustworthy people think politicians are, both sides out, if in every picture you take, you're doing the thumbs up pose.
00:06:04.900 Like, maybe it's just me because I see more political pictures than average Americans, but I despise all of them.
00:06:11.820 Find a picture of me with a thumbs up.
00:06:14.140 Like, you will not find that on the internet anywhere.
00:06:16.860 I'm not going to do that pose.
00:06:18.220 I don't care who's standing next to me.
00:06:19.600 And I think you would trust Americans more, as you described it, with a middle finger than you would a politician with a thumbs-up picture.
00:06:26.500 So if I was king for a day, I would ban it.
00:06:28.880 So I will confess, Ben.
00:06:30.940 You've done the thumbs-up picture.
00:06:32.400 I Googled it.
00:06:33.360 It's out there.
00:06:34.260 I don't do a lot of it. 0.99
00:06:36.320 And the most common place I do a thumbs-up picture is if I'm taking a picture with Aggies.
00:06:40.660 So Aggies will do a gig'em.
00:06:42.660 And that's the symbol for Texas A&M.
00:06:45.680 And I'll do a hook'em for Longhorns as well.
00:06:48.260 so i will my guess is neither of those just for the record uh yeah you know that that that that's
00:06:54.840 okay you you came to texas but it took you a while it did that's true that's true and and so
00:07:00.860 i my guess is 80 percent of the pictures that are thumbs up that i've done have been with aggies and
00:07:07.380 then there have been a handful where someone really occasionally someone was like hey will
00:07:10.760 you do a thumbs up and i'm like all right fine like if you really want to but but that is not
00:07:14.680 But I will tell you an interesting story.
00:07:18.820 By the way, do you want to know how strong I feel about this?
00:07:22.080 Not really.
00:07:22.580 In the first Trump administration, when I was in the Oval,
00:07:26.460 somebody said, are you going to do the thumbs up?
00:07:28.720 I was like, I will not.
00:07:29.660 I will not do the thumbs up.
00:07:30.980 And if you look at the picture that they sent, I did not do a thumbs up.
00:07:33.780 I smiled.
00:07:34.540 I did not do this.
00:07:36.040 I do the thumbs up very rarely, but I will tell you a funny story about thumbs up.
00:07:40.160 So this is like six, seven years ago.
00:07:42.000 i was down at the border and i was at a border patrol checkpoint at our southern border where
00:07:47.360 there were a bunch of 18 wheelers crossing from mexico over to the united states over to texas
00:07:52.940 and i was just standing at the checkpoint and i gotta say if you're a truck driver
00:07:56.940 and you're driving across the border there are a lot of things you may be expecting to see at
00:08:01.580 the border patrol checkpoint but the u.s senator from texas is not one of them yeah it's not not
00:08:07.520 on the list yeah and and so the the looks of startled shock from every truck driver it was
00:08:14.820 really quite amusing because i i stood there probably an hour or so and and like greeted
00:08:18.240 every truck driver and i took an informal survey so a number of the truck drivers gave me a thumbs
00:08:24.820 up and the remaining one gave me a middle finger yeah and it was i gotta say i actually felt pretty
00:08:32.480 good about the truck driver survey because i think it was about 80 20 so about 80 got the thumbs up
00:08:38.000 and about 20 flipped me off and i was like all right i'll take those odds like truck drivers
00:08:42.720 are my peeps yeah the good number that's the republican party has become a blue collar party
00:08:50.040 like truck drivers steel workers construction workers cops firefighters waiters and waitresses
00:08:54.640 that's our base but it was still a fun because it literally was it's amazing almost every truck
00:09:01.400 driver it was one of two fingers and i got it uh you know i don't remember how much but it felt
00:09:07.260 like close to 100 that they would give me one finger or the other you know what that's good
00:09:11.980 odds there by the way on saturday i worked out i did get a middle finger in the gym from a liberal
00:09:16.760 um story and i mean i'm sitting there and i have my headphones in and i'm listening
00:09:22.340 to music and this guy just you just you could just tell he just was wanting to talk and
00:09:27.260 he just decided he'd had enough and he just he just put it right out there and i was like all
00:09:31.740 right well i'm gonna go back to lifting weights now okay but that was a random dude and it wasn't
00:09:35.720 like anna who was pissed at you no it was not that at all no it was just a random a random liberal
00:09:40.560 who if he's listening to the show like that was probably the highlight of his whole year and i'm
00:09:45.280 glad he had that moment i'm glad i could facilitate that for him all right i feel confident we don't
00:09:49.800 have a lot of random liberals listening to this podcast we have reporters because when i walk on
00:09:56.240 capitol hill and people ask me questions i'll say oh i just addressed that in the podcast why don't
00:10:00.280 you listen to the podcast and then they go listen to the podcast and they write stories and like
00:10:04.140 break news because we break news all right let's talk reconciliation because we're actually going
00:10:08.000 to talk about real and hard news so department of homeland security has been shut down for two
00:10:14.760 months yep the democrats do not care so understand for two months coast guardsmen have not been paid
00:10:23.020 secret service agents have not been paid fema has not been paid department of homeland security
00:10:30.720 the people that are fighting cyber terrorism the people that are fighting bioterrorism they have
00:10:35.040 not been paid about 200 000 federal employees have not been paid for two months and the sad
00:10:40.860 reality is not a democrat i believe cares and a big part of the reason they don't care is the
00:10:46.920 media is not holding them accountable so they're having no consequence so brian shots who is
00:10:52.300 democrat senator from hawaii he's widely viewed as the democrat leader in waiting after chuck
00:10:57.420 schumer he said about a month ago he said democrats are serene during this shutdown
00:11:03.000 longest shutdown in american history about six weeks ago i stood up to to to my colleagues in
00:11:11.680 in the senate and i said the republicans and i said look the democrats are wildly unreasonable
00:11:17.920 It is bizarre.
00:11:20.400 But I think where Democrats are right now is I think they will never, ever, ever vote again to fund ICE.
00:11:26.480 Their base just hates ICE.
00:11:28.620 And this is an open borders, pro-violent criminal party.
00:11:33.280 And I think from their perspective, they will vote against funding ICE forever.
00:11:38.800 And they're perfectly happy to shut down all of DHS to do it.
00:11:42.260 Now, the irony is, DHS is defunded.
00:11:45.860 You know what is funded?
00:11:47.920 ICE?
00:11:48.820 ICE.
00:11:49.800 And explain that quickly for people that may have missed those episodes.
00:11:53.460 When we passed the reconciliation bill last summer, the working families tax cut,
00:11:58.340 we funded ICE and we funded Customs and Border Patrol for the next three years
00:12:04.080 because we knew Democrats were getting unreasonable.
00:12:06.360 And so the rest of DHS is shut down, but ICE is alive,
00:12:11.140 and it is literally the case that Democrats are voting to cut off funding for Coast Guard and FEMA
00:12:15.420 and secret service and all the rest because they're mad at ice and ice is fully funded
00:12:19.680 that being said here's what i said six weeks ago to my colleagues i said listen
00:12:24.220 this is where democrats are it is wildly unreasonable it is indefensible but it's
00:12:29.380 where they are so here's the approach forward that there were some republican senators they're
00:12:34.760 saying oh let's do nothing the pressure will build on democrats and eventually they'll cave
00:12:39.060 and i said you know what they will never cave they will leave dhs shut down for the entire year
00:12:43.960 And part of it is if the media were functional and real, they wouldn't because they'd feel heat, but nobody in the media is blaming them.
00:12:50.640 And by the way, the standard media trick is they blame both parties.
00:12:53.900 Oh, Congress is broken.
00:12:55.640 That's how they give cover to the Democrats.
00:12:58.660 To be clear, I have voted 16 times in the last two months to fund DHS.
00:13:03.420 Democrats have voted 16 times to defund DHS.
00:13:07.800 It's not both parties.
00:13:09.200 The people who are voting to fund it are not responsible in the way that the people who are voting to defund it are.
00:13:15.660 The reason DHS is shut down is it takes 60 votes.
00:13:19.060 We only have 53 Republicans, which means the Democrats can shut it down, and they're doing so.
00:13:24.160 Now, what I urge is I said, you know what?
00:13:27.580 Let's pass a bill that funds DHS, and if the Democrats are so unreasonable they will not fund ICE and CBP, let's exclude them.
00:13:35.900 Let's fund everything else.
00:13:37.900 That's what the Senate did two weeks ago.
00:13:40.940 It then went to the House.
00:13:42.520 And I got to say, House Republicans, they kind of lost their minds and they began screaming, we're not going to defund ICE.
00:13:47.960 Now, that claim was always false because ICE is fully funded.
00:13:51.720 ICE is funded through the reconciliation bill.
00:13:54.200 But I understand the sort of shock because the position of the Democrats is so wildly unreasonable that House Republicans were pissed.
00:14:03.820 But the consequence, they voted down the Senate bill, and it meant DHS stayed shut down.
00:14:09.220 And I just think House Republicans had not gotten to the point where they have accepted, where they've internalized. 0.93
00:14:15.300 These are the crazy-ass Democrats in the Senate we're dealing with, and they're never, ever, ever going to fund ICE again. 0.50
00:14:22.460 So here's what I suggested. 0.97
00:14:24.560 Fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP, and then immediately take up a budget reconciliation.
00:14:30.800 Budget reconciliation cannot be filibustered.
00:14:33.200 The Democrats cannot block it.
00:14:34.520 We can pass it with just 50 Republicans in the Senate, and we should fully fund ICE.
00:14:39.960 And I will tell you today, so every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, when the Senate is in session, Senate Republicans have lunch together.
00:14:48.380 So today, Tuesday, we had lunch.
00:14:50.840 Let me ask you a question.
00:14:52.140 When you say you guys have lunch, is it working groups at tables, or is there like a big speaker?
00:14:57.680 How does the lunch actually work so people understand?
00:15:00.320 So, there are two rooms that you have lunch in in the Senate.
00:15:04.460 One is the LBJ room.
00:15:05.720 That's a smaller room.
00:15:06.760 It's just off the Senate floor.
00:15:08.220 The minority gets the LBJ room.
00:15:10.400 And then the bigger room is the Michael Mansfield room, named after Montana Senator, Senate Majority Leader Michael Mansfield.
00:15:16.980 And it's a larger room.
00:15:18.160 So, whoever's in the majority gets the Mansfield room.
00:15:21.080 I just want to know, for personal reasons, what do you eat there?
00:15:25.480 So, there's actually...
00:15:27.260 Are you catered in, or is it different senators that do it?
00:15:28.920 How is that, like, is there a host?
00:15:31.320 So Tuesday and Wednesday, there is Senate catering,
00:15:34.660 and there's, like, a catering office in the Senate that brings in food.
00:15:37.460 It varies.
00:15:38.160 Like, today we had some beef and some chicken and broccoli and green beans.
00:15:42.240 I mean, catering's actually pretty good.
00:15:43.740 I mean, one of the things that I'm surprised,
00:15:45.820 just like the food they provide at the Senate lunch is surprisingly decent.
00:15:51.220 And those are Senate employees that do the catering on the Capitol.
00:15:55.220 And so events there, they provide catering for any meal.
00:15:57.980 We have dinners and lunches and things that are on the Capitol.
00:16:01.700 So Tuesday and Wednesday, the Senate catering provides that.
00:16:05.700 And then Thursdays, the way it works among Republicans is it rotates among different senators who hosts.
00:16:11.960 So typically, like I host about once a year and when you host, you usually fly in food from your home state.
00:16:21.120 So, for example, when I host, I fly in food from Texas.
00:16:25.700 it's typically either barbecue or mexican are the two things that i've done i've done
00:16:29.820 i usually do barbecue i sometimes do mexican so i'll fly in either you know different barbecue
00:16:35.540 places in texas where where i'll fly the food in um and then what actually happens when you host is
00:16:43.040 you send a gift bag to your other senators and the gift bag is usually a collection of stuff
00:16:48.940 from your state so i'll usually pick pick up some stuff like some you know heb tortilla chips and
00:16:57.000 salsa and you know kind of different and you kind of put a gift bag together that i don't know is
00:17:02.180 about a hundred bucks worth of different stuff from the state that you collect and and you send
00:17:08.960 it oddly enough senators send a lot of booze to each other so i actually have i have a whole shelf
00:17:14.800 in my office filled with booze that senators
00:17:16.820 have sent me. And I don't drink the booze very
00:17:18.820 much, so it just sits there. It collects faster
00:17:20.740 than I drink it. But you
00:17:22.700 have varying senators that will send, like the
00:17:24.760 Kentucky senators will usually send
00:17:26.560 Burbin around. Yeah, I was just saying, Kentucky would have to win that ball game, right?
00:17:28.660 And then I'm assuming Texas, you're like, here's some
00:17:30.580 Tito's. I've done
00:17:32.580 Tito's. I've done Scheinerbach is what I usually
00:17:34.780 send. I'll often send a six-pack of Scheinerbach.
00:17:37.140 I have done Tito's in the past.
00:17:38.780 Those have been the two that are kind of
00:17:40.360 you pick a collection of
00:17:42.660 stuff that sort of reflects your state.
00:17:44.800 Um, and so today we had, and, and the Tuesday lunch is the leadership lunch. So leadership
00:17:51.880 runs it. The Wednesday lunch is the steering lunch. Steering are the more conservative senators.
00:17:58.440 Rick Scott is right now the chairman of steering. There's about a dozen of us that are on the
00:18:03.200 executive committee of steering. I'm on the executive committee. Uh, they are by design,
00:18:07.600 the most conservative senators. So the Wednesday lunch tends to be more policy driven,
00:18:11.940 but we typically meet from about 12 30 to two so it's anywhere from an hour an hour and a half a
00:18:20.000 lot of people get there about one so it's typically one to two sometimes it's 12 30 to two but you
00:18:24.700 have a good hour of robust discussion and it's not it's not a bunch of quiet room where someone
00:18:31.160 has a floor and is talking than someone else so at lunch it's not like you're sitting there
00:18:34.700 hanging out with your buddies and then for 15 minutes someone speaks it's the floor it's
00:18:38.820 it's actually a real working lunch. It is a working lunch and actually a lot of work gets
00:18:43.700 done. And so I try to make the lunch every day because you have real debates and discussions
00:18:48.760 with your colleagues. And so today we had, this was the leadership lunch today. And so you had
00:18:54.580 a presentation from John Thune and from Lindsey Graham about the plan. And the plan is to take
00:18:59.540 up a reconciliation bill, which is what I proposed six weeks ago. They are planning right now to fund
00:19:05.280 dhs and ice for three and a half years through fiscal year 2029 um and they want to keep the
00:19:13.480 bill very narrowly limited to just ice and and cbp and so i stood up i actually talked at length
00:19:21.320 today and i made a pretty vigorous argument i said listen this is a no-brainer we need to do it it's
00:19:26.520 the right thing to do absolutely all of us agree with this but i said i think we're making three
00:19:31.720 very serious mistakes number one i think the proposal to fund ice and cbp for three and a half
00:19:37.840 years is a mistake meaning not enough yes we should fund them for 10 years 10 years is the
00:19:44.860 limit under the statute for how long you can fund anything under budget reconciliation and i said
00:19:49.380 the democrats are going to vote against border security against ice and cbp for the foreseeable
00:19:54.220 future if that's the case let's fund it for a decade let's take the opportunity we have right
00:19:59.260 now to ensure that border security is funded for 10 years i said secondly if we simply respond to
00:20:07.640 the democrats legislative terrorism shutting down dhs by funding what we would have funded
00:20:14.160 ordinarily i think that's that's really dumb what i have argued is we ought to increase the funding
00:20:20.440 for ice by 10 so that the consequence and this is it's a policy decision but it's also a political
00:20:26.900 decision the consequence of elizabeth warren and bernie sanders shutting down the government for
00:20:31.720 two months and going nuts on border securities congratulations elizabeth you just increased
00:20:36.740 the funding for ice by 10 that that's just rather than be on defense let's go on offense and say
00:20:43.860 you know what we are the party of border security we're going to fund it and because you guys were
00:20:48.520 wildly unreasonable we had a bipartisan agreement on dhs funding until the democrats backed out of 0.99
00:20:53.700 it so the consequence of your stupidity is you increase the funding advice i think that's a 0.99
00:20:58.700 no-brainer i don't know if my colleagues will agree with either of those points the 10 years 0.99
00:21:03.300 or increasing by the way why would they not agree the 10 years and my cynical uh view is always i'm
00:21:08.740 going to go there first is it because they'd want it to be an election year issue within the next
00:21:13.400 10 years so therefore they're saying hey let's fight on this in a couple years again no it's
00:21:18.200 not that it's it's you like how cynical politics has made me sir i just want to be clear yeah like
00:21:22.940 immediately i'm like i could see somebody like i don't i don't want to i like this issue i want i
00:21:27.520 want it to come up every couple years so i can fight over it yeah look that there's a natural
00:21:32.120 instinct of essentially playing small ball and and this is the outcome of negotiations between
00:21:38.980 john thune lindsey graham and the white house and i think the white house is playing small ball too
00:21:44.260 and and so i am urging the white house let's go 10 years let's up the budget i've made this case
00:21:49.800 to the White House, they're not there yet. And so they're focused on the challenge right in front
00:21:54.220 of us rather than the challenge tomorrow. But here's the big case that I made, and I leaned
00:21:58.640 in really aggressively. I said, listen, we should do a reconciliation bill. We should fund ICE, do it
00:22:06.140 for 10 years. We should fund CBP, do it for 10 years. We should up the budgets. But we shouldn't
00:22:11.340 limit it to just those two. We should do a much broader reconciliation bill. In the case I made
00:22:18.120 to my colleagues i said this is the last meaningful chance we will have to pass republican priorities
00:22:25.480 and there's a very real chance right now it's substantially more likely than not
00:22:31.580 that we will lose at least the house in november we may lose the senate too
00:22:35.560 if that's right then we have just the remainder of 2026 to pass conservative victories because
00:22:43.640 starting next year the house will be nothing but all impeachment and all investigations
00:22:47.880 all the time and so we will not be able to pass conservative priorities so my case to my colleagues
00:22:53.020 was we ought to take this up and use reconciliation just like we did last year on the fourth of july
00:22:58.660 where we passed the working families tax cut and had a massive number of conservative victories we
00:23:03.500 ought to do it again and i suggested there are a lot of things we can do so for example i have a
00:23:07.120 bill called keep america flying that says the democrats will never again be able to shut down
00:23:13.840 uh civilian air traffic so they won't be able to defund air traffic controllers they won't be able
00:23:20.880 to defund the tsa they won't be able to defund the federal workers that are critical to keep
00:23:26.240 planes in the air by the way september 30th budget funding is going to expire again right now the
00:23:32.320 democrats are going to force another shutdown 100 i will wager right before the elections they will 0.96
00:23:39.280 force a shutdown i think we're idiots to do nothing to prevent them but the problem is a lot 0.99
00:23:45.540 of folks in congress just look an inch in front of their nose and they can't look 10 inches in 0.99
00:23:51.100 front of their nose so if we're headed to a shutdown in september we'd be morons not to do
00:23:56.140 something to forestall it so one of the things we can do is make sure that the the four-hour lines
00:24:02.100 at airports the people missing their flights for spring break that doesn't happen again
00:24:05.580 We could pass funding that says we're going to keep planes flying.
00:24:09.780 Democrats no longer get to destroy your vacation or destroy your work trip just because they're mad.
00:24:15.960 That, I think, makes a lot of sense.
00:24:18.380 What I've urged is we ought to do things that make sense for the economy.
00:24:22.100 So, for example, an idea that I have been pushing hard is indexing capital gains to inflation.
00:24:29.280 So the way it works, let's say 10 years ago, you bought a stock for $100.
00:24:36.220 And in the course of 10 years, inflation has driven the cost of that stock to $200.
00:24:42.500 Now, if that's all inflation, you don't have any meaningful gain.
00:24:46.540 But if you sell that stock at $200, you pay capital gains tax on the difference between $100 and $200.
00:24:53.240 And that's a phantom gain.
00:24:55.540 And so what I believe is you ought to index capital gains to inflation,
00:24:59.540 which means whatever the inflation is, you raise the basis,
00:25:03.580 You raise the cost of whatever it is you've invested.
00:25:07.060 That would have a massive positive stimulus effect for the economy.
00:25:12.040 And affordability is a huge issue for the voters.
00:25:15.140 It has an enormous impact on housing.
00:25:18.620 So here's what's interesting.
00:25:20.180 If you have a house, let's say you bought a house, and the house is appreciated massively in value.
00:25:26.060 Same principle is true.
00:25:27.160 If you sell it, if the appreciation is due to inflation, you pay taxes on that.
00:25:31.440 and so what happens is a lot of people don't sell their house when you die if you pass your
00:25:38.740 house on to your kids the basis steps up which means your kids take it not at the cost you paid
00:25:45.540 but whatever the the cost is when they inherit it so that capital gains tax disappears when you die
00:25:51.600 what it results in particularly in high-tax states is people holding on to houses a really
00:25:57.640 long time and not selling them reno mishap that's embarrassing you know what's not embarrassing
00:26:05.940 using fig for home improvement loan a quick simple and transparent offer in minutes
00:26:11.000 borrow better with fig visit fig.ca here's an amazing question ben california which has among
00:26:18.400 the highest taxes in the country yes what percent of hopes do you think are passed on at death in
00:26:26.260 other words are held on to so long because the the the capital gains tax would be so high i'm not
00:26:32.940 gonna i'm gonna totally guess i would say at least 40 now i may be wrong but i know people that they
00:26:39.280 get they that's how they got their parents house for the same reason you just described it so you
00:26:43.820 are wrong that's a little too aggressive it's about 25 but 25 which is still insane by the way
00:26:49.120 because like in texas what is it three percent four percent it's much lower i don't know the
00:26:54.180 texas number but it's much lower and and the consequence let's say you have a family that
00:26:59.060 has a bunch of kids they buy a big house and they raise their kids in it and then their kids
00:27:02.980 graduate go off into the world you've just got an older retired family now many like an older
00:27:10.240 retired couple doesn't need a big house with a bunch of bedrooms in a normal world they would
00:27:15.640 sell that house they'd put it on the market and they'd buy like they'd buy a smaller little town 0.98
00:27:20.000 home or a condo. They'd buy something that is more appropriate to their stage in life.
00:27:24.260 But especially in California and other high-tax states, they don't do that because their tax bill
00:27:29.060 would be huge. So the effect of this would be to lower the cost of housing for people that are
00:27:35.120 buying. What it means is a young married couple that wants to buy that first house, if there were
00:27:39.960 more houses on the market, it would drive the prices down and they could afford it more. So
00:27:43.680 that's an example of something we can do. I also suggested we could plus up the school choice
00:27:49.400 provisions. We could plus up the Trump account provisions. There are lots of things. Ron Johnson
00:27:55.660 has advocated for the Shutdown Fairness Act, which says that, number one, when there's a
00:28:01.780 shutdown, all essential workers will be paid. Number two, there's another bill that says we
00:28:05.700 won't have shutdowns. In the case that you don't have funding, you will continue at the prior
00:28:10.500 levels or maybe you'll ratchet down slightly. My point, look, what I stood up to my colleagues and
00:28:15.840 I said listen I am not today advocating for any one particular policy and I told them the story
00:28:24.420 so back in 2018 we had a Republican House a Republican Senate we had a Republican President
00:28:30.960 Donald Trump and in August of 2018 I gave a presentation to the Senate Republicans and it
00:28:36.600 was a PowerPoint about 50 pages long and I called it Carpe Diem seize the day and I went through in
00:28:43.840 the last hundred years what had happened every times the democrats had had the house the senate
00:28:49.840 and the white house and they passed fundamental transformations of this country they passed the
00:28:55.800 new deal they passed the great society they passed obamacare and dodd frank like when they have
00:29:00.960 control they push the pedal to the metal and they floor their socialist left-wing plans
00:29:06.000 republicans we are piddly we don't do nearly as much we did the working families tax cut that was
00:29:11.820 a big big victory but we haven't done a whole lot since then and the case i made in 2018 as i said
00:29:19.340 we ought to take up another reconciliation it was the vehicle for the biggest legislative victories
00:29:24.880 we have and i had a chart that i put together of like 50 bills that different republican senators
00:29:30.040 had introduced and i said listen i'm not being crazy i'm not saying we should pass all 50 of
00:29:34.740 these i'm saying let's pick five my case was not we should do something specific my my case was
00:29:42.480 simply we should do something and i turned to my colleagues i i said that when i said it in 2018 i
00:29:48.360 i talked in particular the class of 2014 there was a big class nine new senators republicans
00:29:54.640 were elected in 2014 and i said listen you guys if we don't take this opportunity we had 183 days
00:30:03.780 left in the Congress. This may be the last opportunity you ever get to pass meaningful
00:30:10.060 legislation. If we lose the House, you're done. No more legislation, forget about it.
00:30:15.460 If that's the case, don't we have an urgency to do something? And as I look back at my entire
00:30:24.280 tenure in the Senate, the most indefensible legislative decision was Mitch McConnell's
00:30:28.520 decision in 2018 not to take up another reconciliation. And I fear that we're repeating
00:30:34.800 the mistake. And by the way, so look, for the last couple of months, I have been searching around for
00:30:40.760 how do we do another reconciliation? I've been making this case for a while. But I've said what
00:30:45.160 we need is a tentpole. What do I mean by a tentpole? I mean an idea that is big enough, that is bold
00:30:52.600 enough, that is important enough, that it will unify 50 Republicans in the Senate and 218 Republicans
00:30:58.120 in the house because because we have really narrow majority so you've got to have something
00:31:01.520 big enough that everyone gets behind then you could have other provisions carry along if you
00:31:07.660 have a tentpole in my view ice and cbp are the tentpole there is not a republican i don't care
00:31:15.740 if you're the most rock rip conservative or completely squishy mod no republican wants to
00:31:22.240 vote against funding ICE and CBP. Yeah, that is a tentpole that can carry the rest of it. And so
00:31:27.960 that's the case I'm making to my colleagues. Right now, the White House is not on board. And my
00:31:32.820 intention is I'm going to make this case to President Trump directly. I have not done so yet.
00:31:37.860 Today was the beginning of it, making it to my colleagues in the Senate. But I think this is a
00:31:42.660 decision. Do we swing for the fences and get victories, economic victories that we can campaign
00:31:49.080 on and win elections in november or do we play small ball and by the way one of the things that
00:31:54.680 leadership is saying is no no we'll do another reconciliation after this well you know what
00:31:58.600 the next reconciliation will fail because without a tentpole without something like ice and cbp
00:32:04.880 you ain't getting 50 and you ain't getting 218 because the republicans will scatter on all sorts
00:32:10.520 of different grounds so you've got to have something big enough to bring them together
00:32:14.380 and then we can win real victories.
00:32:17.140 That's the case I'm trying to make to my colleagues.
00:32:20.200 Yeah, it's going to be really interesting how this plays out.
00:32:23.140 And you're right.
00:32:23.700 I think Americans are like, what are you doing for me right now?
00:32:26.300 I wish all the Republicans would understand that and be bold like you described it.
00:32:31.080 We'll see if that happens.
00:32:32.760 Otherwise, some of your colleagues may not be your colleagues after the election this
00:32:36.780 coming November.
00:32:38.000 And Ben, by the way, one of the things that I'm also urging my colleagues to include is
00:32:41.820 election integrity to include as much of the save america act as we can now now it is limited
00:32:47.500 because of reconciliation there are rules under statute as to what you can include in reconciliation
00:32:52.500 it has to be budgetary and not policy and so how you get you can't get the the full save america
00:32:59.660 act in reconciliation but you can get election integrity provisions you can for example condition
00:33:05.940 federal grants for example the help america vote act grants which are grants that go to help fund
00:33:11.560 elections, you can condition those on election integrity. You can condition those. You can take
00:33:16.320 those away from Sanctuary City. So I'm arguing we ought to be using, like, let's take this
00:33:22.280 opportunity to pass legislation that Republicans agree with. Let's win victories. Let's not give
00:33:28.400 up the chance to win victories. Yeah, great point. We're going to keep covering it, and we'll keep
00:33:32.520 you up to date on what's happening in Washington, D.C. Don't forget this show we do on YouTube as
00:33:37.320 well so you can watch on youtube you can also download it as a podcast wherever you get your
00:33:42.980 podcast we do the show monday wednesday friday and a weekend review on saturdays as well for
00:33:48.280 what you may have missed during the week and the center and i will see you back here on friday
00:33:51.440 morning this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human