The Daily Signal - Democrats’ Reconciliation Bill Will Cost Taxpayers $5.5 Trillion, Sen. Lummis Says

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

Democrats are trying to push both a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package through Congress.  While the former provides funding for traditional infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, the larger latter package provides trillions of dollars for a laundry list of left-wing priorities, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., says.  “They have fudged on other numbers within it, so it's probably more like [a] $5.5 trillion [bill],” Lummis says of the larger spending package. “It is the Green New Deal. It is new entitlement programs, and it really is a terrifying, inflation-causing, big government-motivated spending bill.” If the American government does not stop spending at such a rampant pace, the “best-case scenario is that our dollars will go less far,” Lummis says, adding that the “worst-case scenario is that we put the dollar at risk as the world reserve currency.”  Lummis joins the show to explain what you need to know about the two spending bills. She also share a bit about her journey to public office and what it’s like to be the first female senator from Wyoming.  Also on today's show, Doug Blair talks with Tom Jones, co-founder of American Accountability Foundation. They discuss President Biden's radical cabinet nominees and wasteful government spending.  We also cover these stories: About 50,000 illegal immigrants have been released into America without a court date, according to an exclusive report from Axios.  Republican and Democratic senators have reached tentative agreement on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.  The House of Representatives is reinstating a mask mandate for House members. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, July 29th. I'm Rachel Del Judas. And I'm Virginia Allen. Congress continues to debate over the $3.5 trillion spending bill. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummus joins the show today to break down what you need to know about the left's large spending package and the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. She also shares a bit about her journey into public office and what it's like being Wyoming's first female senator. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. And now on to today's top news.

About 50,000 illegal immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally have been released into the country without a court date, according to an exclusive report from Axios. Although illegal immigrants are told to report to an immigration and customs enforcement office instead, just 13% have shown up so far, Axios reported. The scoop from Axios notes that it's unprecedented for agents to release migrants without an official notice to appear in court. Where it has occurred recently, migrants have instead been given a list of addresses and contacts for ICE offices across the country and told to report to one of them. Republican and Democrat senators have reached an agreement on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. After weeks of debate, Senate Republicans say they are ready to hold a procedural vote on the package. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has served as the lead GOP negotiator on the infrastructure bill. He said Wednesday, we now have an agreement on the major issues.

We are prepared to move forward. The bill includes money largely for traditional infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday morning that the test vote on the bill would likely take place Wednesday evening. He said he wants the bill to pass ahead of Congress's August recess. GOP senators such as Tom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina and Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said they were inclined to support the infrastructure bill. Reporters asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if she would support the bill. She responded, I cannot commit to passing something that I don't know what it is yet, but I'm hoping for the best.

Meanwhile, Democrats are working to push forward their $3.5 trillion spending bill, which includes money for a litany of their priorities. The Left proposes paying for the bill by raising the corporate tax rate and increasing taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 a year. Brian Monaghan, the attending physician for the House of Representatives, announced that the House will bring back its mask mandate as well as fines for members who refuse to wear a mask because of the spreading Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. Guidance Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that vaccinated Americans who are in places with a high number of COVID-19 cases should wear a mask.

indoors. The Biden White House also appears to be reinstating its mask mandate. Fox News reported that a White House press representative was seen Tuesday swapping a sign saying people are required to wear masks if unvaccinated, with another saying masks are required regardless of vaccination status. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, as we discuss why the left's $3.5 trillion dollar spending package is a danger to the American economy. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at Letters atdailySignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. I am so pleased to be joined here today by Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Senator, thank you so much for being here.

It's my pleasure, Virginia. Well, I want to jump in by asking you to share a little bit of your background, of your story. You grew up in Wyoming. How would you describe your childhood? I dillic. I have sisters and a brother. We were raised on a ranch, so we were in 4-H, showed cattle, sheep, pigs. And so we'd get home on the school bus, throw our books in the house, and run down to the barn, and spend the time with our cattle and sheep getting them ready for the fair and riding horses, making up games like Pony Express on our horses when we were little kids. So it was truly idyllic. Yeah, it sounds very idealing, very special. Now, you, your roots go deep in Wyoming,

born and raised there. You also served in the House of Representatives in Wyoming. You also served as a U.S. House member for the state of Wyoming. And now you're serving as Senator for Wyoming. what first sparked your interest in policy and politics? Well, my dad was a county commissioner, and I sat next to him at the kitchen table because I was the messy eater, so they put me next to him so I would behave a little better. But as a result, he liked to talk about policy at the county level,

even when I was a little kid. And I loved it the most of my siblings, and later interned when I was a senior in animal science at the University of Wyoming, interned at the Wyoming Legislature. And I just fell in love with the Wyoming legislature. So shortly thereafter, I ran, and it was a good year for non-traditional candidates, and I was elected and served when I was starting at 24 years old. Wow. You started that young. That's wonderful.

I think that's a great message to all of our young, to be involved and to really take up that call, to be active and be passionate about the things that you care about. I love that you took action at such a young age. Well, and if you're ready at that point, I just say go for it. And some people aren't. Some people would rather get more established in their careers and with their families. But for me and for some young people, they're ready to go. And for those who are, I strongly recommend it.

Now, you have the honor of the honor of the people, the honor of being the first woman to represent the state of Wyoming in the Senate. What does that mean to you? Well, having been born and raised in Wyoming, being a fourth generation Wyoming native, it means more than I can say, I love Wyoming. I love my state. I'm a person who really identifies with place. Sometimes I'll be driving in Wyoming. And, And I'm by myself and I'll find myself smiling. And it's inadvertent.

It's just that I'm surrounded by such beauty that I can't help but smile. So I love it more than I can say. And so to be its first woman senator means a great deal to me. That is very, very special. Now I want to dive into one of the issues that I know you're very, very powerful. passionate about, and that is spending, and specifically reining in, out-of-control spending. So let's chat a little bit about the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, excuse me.

First, would you just explain the difference between these two bills? Well, right now, we're looking at an infrastructure package that is real infrastructure. It's roads, bridges, sewer, water, ports, airports, broadband. So things that we normally see as infrastructure. And that's the $1.2 trillion. Yes, that's the smaller of the two bills. Then the $3.5 trillion, which really is more like $5.5 trillion, because they've fudged so much on the eight-year versus 10-year window for scoring it.

they have fudged on other numbers within it. So it's probably more like $5.5 trillion. Non-infrastructure. It is the Green New Deal. It is new entitlement programs. And it really is a terrifying inflation-causing big government-motivated spending bill. Now, what we've seen is that these bills have been linked. But like you say, they're quite different.

You have one that's really for traditional infrastructure, and then another has kind of a laundry list of various agenda issues. So how did that come about, that these two bills were somehow linked together? Well, as you know, there have been some Republicans that joined with centrist Democrats to come up with the true infrastructure bill and to pull it out of the bigger giant spending package

so they could negotiate a true infrastructure bill because centrists in both parties would like to see that happen. And Nancy Pelosi, not wanting to see that happen, has said that she won't pass one without the other, and that is the position of the White House as well. So the Democrats have linked them, I think essentially to force their members who are working on a real infrastructure bill

to say the only way we'll do it is if you also give us this giant wish list of liberal spending. And where do these two bills stand right now? What's the latest? There's been a setback in the negotiation, even on the true infrastructure bill. There's a lot of transit, public transit, that the Democrats want.

that I think that what I've heard is they're trying to renegotiate after the true parameters of the deal were already struck. So that one, I believe we will get too sooner if indeed an agreement can be reached. And the Republican negotiators on that bill aren't even sure that they'll be able to reach a deal now that the Democrats have reneged on what they're. they thought was the final deal. But that's the one that is coming first. Then the Democrats will use a process that's called the reconciliation process to attach their

big spending bill to. And reconciliation is just a name for the Budget Act and then attaching spending to the Budget Act. Act. Okay. So as you mentioned, House Speaker Pelosi, she's trying to push both of these through, of course, as well, Chuck Schumer, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, he's trying to push both through. You and many other GOP members are voicing your opposition for this $3.5 trillion dollar reconciliation package. So speak a little bit more about why you're so concerned about a bill that is this large. And then also talk a little bit about why that 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure package is actually important for infrastructure. Well, the $3.5 trillion bill, as I mentioned,

is actually more spending than that. And it's spending on things that will make for big government, big environment, and cause inflation to further be fanned. So right now we look at the cost of rental cars, of used cars, of food, of just basic transportation, airlines. Everything's higher. There's a home builder that I know in Wyoming. He could build a house for $305,000 last year. This year, $380,000, just in one year.

So it's putting even attainable housing to the unattainable level. And this has happened so quickly, and it's not just lumber. It is cabinets. It is dishwashers. It's everything that goes into building a new house. house, door frames. It is the whole package. So what people in Wyoming and everywhere in the country that I talk to are dealing with is a spike in prices that they believe is not going to go down and settle down even when lumber prices do.

Well, you recently wrote in a Fox News piece, you cited a Washington Post article that relayed some of those inflation numbers, that car rental costs are up 87%, used cars and gas up 45%, airfare 24%, hotel prices, 16%. I could go on and on. What is causing this inflation, and what do we do about it? Well, some of it is probably caused by coming out of COVID and having the supply chains not catch up. But that's not all of it. I think the vast majority of it is so much money sloshing around in the economy. The unemployment benefits that are so generous that they have caused people not to want to go back to work.

So even restaurants can't hire workers. They have to pay more in salaries to get the few workers that will come back to work because it pays more to stay home. Only 21 states have rejected the federal benefit for unemployment. So it's all this money that's sloshing around in the economy, incentivizing people not to work that is causing inflation. Now, I know you wrote in that Fox News op-ed, it's a great piece, that we can really tackle infrastructure, we can pay for needed infrastructure,

infrastructure without spending more. How do we do that? There is between 700 billion and a trillion unspent COVID dollars still out there in the economy. So we could just repurpose or reallocate that money to true infrastructure and pay for it all. But unfortunately, Democrats don't want to do that. I I signed a letter with Ron Johnson and other fiscal conservatives in the Senate asking that that approach be taken and that approach was rejected. So more money will be put in the economy. It will overheat the economy. With that much money just sloshing around in the economy, inflation is going to grow.

Now what do you say to individuals who say, well, yes, we're spending the money. a lot, but we've been spending a lot for a long time and we still have the largest economy in the world. So it's not a problem. We should just keep spending. What's your response to that argument? Well, we are debasing the value of the US dollar. It will not go as far. And in doing so, we are ensuring that people who are working now and saving for their retirement will not be able to retire in the style that they wish they could, or the style that they could now because the dollars they're saving are going to be worth so much less when they retire. And for people my age who are within that range of retirement, it's a really scary proposition

because all the money that we saved throughout our lives suddenly is unable to provide us with the level of retirement living that we had hoped to attain. And it's simply because the federal government is being irresponsible and spending so much money. So if we don't put the brakes on, where does this leave us? Where are we headed as a nation? Well, certainly the best case scenario is that our dollars will go less far. The worst case scenario is that we put the dollar at risk as the world reserve currency, that we help give rise to China and the Chinese Communist Party,

and that we diminish our ability to have a lifestyle that we work so hard to attain. So what's the first step to really rein in spending in a business? America and start to get our economy in order? Certainly the government needs to create, I believe, another commission to figure out how we can rein in spending. We cannot create more entitlement programs. We have to reform Social Security and Medicare in order to save them. And that should be the goal, is to save the existing entitlement programs through reforms,

and then not create new entitlement programs, as the Democrats would like to do. We have to protect our job base. We can have clean air, clean water, and use our natural resources. So we need to be smart about this, and we're not being smart about this. In fact, I believe the Democrats agenda

is going to take a giant step towards reducing jobs, reducing good-paying jobs, I mean, why would we stop the Keystone XL pipeline at the same time we're letting a pipeline go from Russia to Germany? That is the most absurd decision that anyone could make with regard to energy. Anyone. Then you look at people streaming across our borders. We know now that COVID, they are super spreaders. and that they are coming into our country unprepared to join a strong workforce

and relate to our economy and step in line in front of people who've been waiting for a decade or more to become Americans. So our irrational judgment that is occurring, I believe, in part because of the change of administrations, is hurtling us more quickly into a very precarious situation economically. Those on the Hill, you all certainly have your work cut out for you, no shortage, and we appreciate your leadership, Senator. Before we let you go, I want to ask you a little bit of a lighter question. Wyoming is a beautiful state. Share a little bit, what would be maybe the top three places you would say everyone should visit one in Wyoming?

Well, since Chey and Frontier Days is going on right now, that is certainly on the list. It is the world's largest outdoor rodeo. This is the 125th annual Chey and Frontier Days. So if you're a rodeo fan, that's definitely on the list. And, of course, the area around Sheridan, Wyoming is extremely beautiful. Northeast Wyoming has Devil's Tower, the first national. National Monument, as well as Buffalo Sheridan, fabulous communities. The Big Horn Mountains are gorgeous.

And then I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Cody, Jackson, those are the Gateway Communities to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone was the nation's first national park. The First National Forest, the Shoshone National Forest, is just adjacent to that. So Wyoming's spectacular scenery is what prompted this nation to recognize the importance of having fabulous outdoor venues for our nation, for people of our country, to use and enjoy. So I encourage you to come use and enjoy them. I will. Thank you. Senator, thank you so much for your time.

really appreciate you coming. My pleasure, Virginia. Thanks for having me. And don't go away because up next, Doug talks with Tom Jones, co-founder of the American Accountability Foundation. They talk about President Biden's radical cabinet nominees and wasteful government spending. Never has been more important for us to fight for America. Each day, we see the penalties of progressive policies across our nation. Our elections are under assault. Our economic freedom is on the decline. And our culture is turning. its back on the founding principles that have made us the freest, most prosperous nation in history. That's why the Heritage Foundation developed a plan to take on the left and take back our country.

The Citizens Guide to Fight for America provides a series of heritage recommended action items delivered on a regular basis to your inbox. Make an impact in your community and in our country. Sign up for the Citizens Guide at heritage.org slash citizens guide. and join in the fight for America today. Our guest today is Tom Jones, co-founder of American Accountability Foundation, a nonpartisan educational organization that conducts research into government oversight

as well as fact-checking to hold government accountable. Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, Tom. Hey, thanks for having me on. Excellent. So let's start with a little bit about your organization and President Biden's nominees. So you are closely monitoring the president's nominees for his cabinet,

and you've set up a whole website called Bidennoms.com that highlights some of the problems with the nominees. One of those nominees is Tracy Stone Manning, which is the nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management. And she's pretty radical. So why don't we start there? What can you tell us about her and why she's so radical? Sure.

There's a couple problems with Tracy Stone Manning. We'll kind of put them in two buckets. There's first the problem with her radical leftist agenda. And this is some of the issues that we've seen filter up with her affiliation with Earth First and other leftist groups like that. So we can talk about those a little bit. And then there's kind of a different bucket of personal improprieties, particularly pertaining to some loans that she's taken.

I think they're really worth exploring as well because they're a little bit unique. So happy to talk about either of those. Which ones do you want to go into first? I think we should definitely start with Earth First. So for those listeners who don't know what that is, what is Earth First? Sure. So Earth First is the most radical of the leftist environmentalist groups. These guys make the National Resources Defense Council look like, you know, the patrols.

They're going to do is what they call monkey wrenching. And these are guys who go in destroy private property, literally pouring sand into the gas tanks of bulldozers. And one of their most egregious behaviors was this thing called tree spiking. What they would do is they take the railroad spikes and they drive them into timber on lands that being logged. And you kind of like, well, that's where, why would they do that? So what happens is it creates this situation where if you want to go out and log and you take a charge, chainsaw into one of these trees, you end up catching this spike. And it's really pretty grisly because what happens is the chain on the chainsaw breaks, and it can be really, really deadly.

So what they'll do is they go spike trees, and then they tell folks, and you'd have to go pull the spikes out. It'd be really problematic. But it was their way of taking forests offline. But you never know if you've got all of them. So you could be out there just cutting down a tree and you catch this spike. And it could really maim a logger. It's a really irresponsible and dangerous practice. So she was involved with that. And so you could be out there. And you could be out of group and part of their tree spiking activities. Oh, wow. Okay.

So she was part of this. I mean, it's an eco-terrorist group. Exactly. It sounds like what you're saying. But you've also described that she's maybe had a little bit of impropriety in her past. So can you maybe expand a little bit further on that? Sure.

So a little bit of background. I'm a former Senate staffer. I worked in the Senate for 12 years and worked in a number of positions. And in 2008, Tracy Stone Manning and I were both working in the U.S. Senate. She was working in Senator Tester's state office as a state rep. But a Senate employee. And I give that background because it's important because when I was a Senate staff or all Senate staff were taking very extensive training on the gift and ethics rules in the Senate. They were a really big deal.

We come out of this Abramoff era with a lot of really problematic things going on with influence peddling. And we had adopted a really aggressive policy on gifts. So we got training on it. I sat through it. I mean, look, it was long train. They were very clear. Everybody from, you know, the staff assistant answering the phones on Social Security payments to the senators. We were all taking these trainings.

They were very serious and we were giving very clear instructions on what we could take on gifts. Where it becomes a problem for her is her and her husband had a business back in 2008. And the economy went sideways. A lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of Americans had to go bankrupt. And it was terrible. There was a lot of irresponsible things going on in the – in the mortgage lending industry.

His business fell on hard times. Now, what happened for most Americans is they wouldn't have to file bankruptcy. It's terrible. It ruined your credit. You've got to really go into rebuilding it, and there's a lot of long-term consequences. Well, that's not what happened for them. Tracy Stone Manning, she has an influential developer friend. He comes in over the top and says, hey, you know what?

I'm going to give you $100,000 loan for this business. I mean, I got a lot of great friends. They're not giving me $100,000 loans. But even if you do have friends giving you $100,000 loans, where that becomes a problem is if you work in the U.S. Senate, anything over $50, you can't take that as a gift. And this is lunches, this is, you know, presents for whatever. And you're not allowed to take gifts. It's a bright line clear prohibition. And the language in the gift rule includes loans in that.

So it says you cannot take a loan unless it's at market rate. So if I wanted to take $100,000 loan, I've got to go down to Bank of America and say, hey, I need to borrow a loan for my failing business for $100,000 so we can stay afloat. You're never going to get that loan. And what happened is she had this friend that came in and gave her the $100,000 loan. They paid all $40,000 of it and converted it to a $60,000 loan. And then it becomes even more problematic. So she's got the $60,000 loan. She goes on, leaves Tester staff, goes and serves at the Department of Environmental Quality in Montana, eventually becomes Governor Bullock's chief of staff.

So serving government, why we never find out about it is Montana's unique. They're one of the few states in the country that don't require senior officials in the government to file a financial disclosure form. So we never find out about this. So she gets nominated for this BLM position and she has to disclose. She's got a $60,000 outstanding loan. We're like, what's going on here? We don't know what this is. So questions go back and forth, and we finally find out from the Senate.

She had the $60,000 loan. All that she was making for payments was annual interest, about $360,000, I'm sorry, $360,000 per year on this loan, never paying down any of the principal. Now, look, I couldn't get a loan like that. Nobody's going to give me a interest-only personal loan unsecured right after my business went. Like, it's nutty. So what we, I think what's clear happened here is she had never had any intent to repay this loan. This guy, Stuart Goldberg, who's a big developer in Montana, had just waived it off. He's like, whatever, I don't care about this.

This guy's worth a ton of money. He's like, I don't care about it. She got into this process and suddenly discovered, oh, wait a minute, I got to disclose this thing. And it's created all these problems because I think there's a number of issues. in addition to this that she hasn't really resolved yet, I think that she never disclosed the loans to her lenders when she borrowed money for houses that she's bought in the interim years. That is a federal crime. I've pulled all the records on her deeds in Montana.

They're all federally insured loans. So unless she disclosed this information to the banks, and I don't think she did, she's committed mortgage fraud. That's a serious problem. She hasn't answered that. She says, oh, well, you know, I don't have those records anymore. Look, I bought my house in 2007. I can go pull every record on the application I have.

It's sitting in my email and it's sitting in a stack in my closet with paperwork. The idea that she somehow can't find the applications for the three mortgages that she's applied for in the interim years is just not realistic. So that's deeply problematic. She's probably committed from mortgage fraud. She took an unacceptable gift while a Senate staff or something. I couldn't even take a lunch from my buddy over at the Monaco, much less a $100,000 loan. And what's really telling is she admits, I never asked the Ethics Committee about this. There's a reason she never asked the Ethics Committee about this because they just would have said no.

Sure. Now given that she has this eco-terrorism in her background with Earth First and she has this loan that we can't explain in the gifts, how did she get this far in the process? Yeah. Yeah, and I think a couple of things going on. We've been vetting a lot of people because Senate staffs overworked. They've got a really high tempo. So part of the mission of my organization is to fill that space in vetting. So we've been looking at a lot of people.

And unfortunately, I think there's either one of two things that's happening in the Biden administration. Either they don't care about vetting and they're just going to kind of ignore it or they do the vetting and they're so confident that they can just push these candidates through that they send up. people who are deeply flawed. And I'll give you kind of a couple examples. So Kristen Clark, we started looking at her. She's now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. We started looking at her a couple months ago. And I started doing background research on her and she's divorced. So it's kind of the traditional part of when you do a background investigation, whether it's for security clearance or at the presidential personnel office, you call up ex-spouses because they may have something to provide. They may just be

angry and annoyed, which is entirely possible, but you call them up and you do the due diligence. So I found Reginald Avery, her ex-husband, talked to him and I was like, hey, these concerns you've just related to me, did you share them with the FBI when they came by? He said, what are you talking about? I never talked to the FBI. So, you know, after talking to some folks on the hill, they're like, yeah, the FBI said they couldn't find her. And, I mean, look, I'm good at my job, but this wasn't like, you know, some super sleuthing here, like the guy had a LinkedIn profile.

So they just didn't care about it when they did her. Same thing with this guy at ATF, Dave Chippman. This guy's a former federal employee. They know where his records are. He worked for the U.S. government for 22 years. Like they just need to go, hey, send me Dave's file. We asked for the complaints against Dave Chippman, and we sent over a Freedom Information Act request for them, said, I want to see the complaints in his personnel record because those disciplinary records can be disclosed in a FOIA.

Their response back was, we don't know where they are. We think they might be in St. Louis at the National Personnel Records Center, but we're not really sure, which leads me to believe that they didn't bother with the vet him. Because if they did vet him, they'd be sitting in ATF because they would have looked over these things. And I think that's what's happened here with Tracy Stone Manning. They surely knew about the eco-terrorism stuff because this came up in 2013 when she was confirmed for the director of environmental quality in Montana and Chiefs. It's been out there. It wasn't probed as deeply as it's being probed now.

You know, I really need to brag on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The oversight that that committee is doing, both at the staff level and at the member level, is unusual and very impressive. They've really gone out and dug into her past to really give the American people a full picture of who she is because the Biden administration isn't going to do it and they didn't do it, but the energy and natural resources committee really is. But I think she's indicative of this pattern in the Biden administration of where they're just not. not bothering and they're just pushing through. And look, I mean, it's working most of the time. The Biden administration has only had to pull down really two candidates. So they probably figured out that this works. They can just ram things through. Maybe that'll work with Tracy Stone-Manny. Maybe it won't. Well, in terms of an update as to where we are with this, as recently as the

recording of this episode, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee divided along party lines, voted her out of committee. They gave her a pass on that one. So it looks like she, she is going to go up for a confirmation vote. Despite the baggage, it does appear that Senate Democrats are comfortable with doing this as you've described. What is the consequences if, you know, she gets confirmed? What happens if she is able to take a position in the cabinet? Well, yeah. So I think her past behavior is going to inform how she's going to behave in the future.

This is somebody who just didn't take these things, these ethics rules, seriously. And BLM has some seriously important decision-making roles on how public lands can be used by commercial, recreational conservation interest. This is somebody who took $100,000 from a developer, never disclosed it to anybody. She's not somebody who's going to be driving between the lines and calling balls and strikes on the rules as they're written because she clearly doesn't have a respect for them because she knew she couldn't take this loan, but she took it anyway. So I think that's, I mean, look, that should be the reason the senators should not vote for it, but unfortunately, I think they're going to push her through. And I just don't think you can trust somebody who has a pattern of unethical behavior to lead an agency that's so involved in so high profile, high consequence decision making. Like, you know, can we do mineral extraction on land, oil and gas? Should we be locking this up for conservation?

Should we have public easements here? All of those decisions are weighty and very consequential financially, but she's just not played by the rules in the past, and I don't think she's going to do in the future. Yeah, I think that that's a good point to know that we've seen what she is capable of already. You know, why would we be shocked if there was this behavior in the future? On a slightly different topic, I'm surprised that Senate Democrats seem to have no issues with advancing this type of nominee. Are you surprised? And then a follow-up question to that be, what should sense? Senate Republicans do, what advice would you give them as they're navigating this scenario?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm not surprised. I mean, this is, you know, the Democrats seem to be much more disciplined than the Republicans, and they've been very good about this. So I think what Republicans need to do, I think Republican leadership in the Senate, what they really need to do is you start holding their members together. The thing I learned when I worked in the Senate was it's a body that works on collegiality and unanimous consent. And if you blow up the process and if you use procedural tools to frustrate things, you can actually have positive outcomes.

What our leadership needs to be doing is holding all our guys together and making sure the vice president is camping out off the floor having to cast tie-breaking votes on this. It sounds like it's a tickey-tacky thing, but it's really not. It really blows up the process. It complicates it. It makes it much harder for them to move nominees through. If they know every time they get somebody that's even close to a flawed nominee that they're going to have to pull the nominee, that they're going to have to pull the process. the vice president out of, you know, Guatemala or wherever she is this week and make her come sit on the Senate floor and vote, it'll really kind of chasing them on casting these type of votes

and pushing these nominees through. So, you know, I really hope that that Leader McConnell holds our guys together and says, look, this is going to be 50-50 every day on these knobs because you're putting radicals up here who are just unacceptable. So basically you're going to, you encourage them to hold sort of the feet to the fire and make sure that these people are put up in front of the American people. Yeah. One of the things I would like to talk about in addition to your work with the Biden nominations project where you're basically looking at all Biden nominees is you have something called the congressional pork map. Yeah, porkmap. Which great name, by the way.

I love it. It's got little pigs on it, which I think is just so great. It basically highlights wasteful government spending, right? So what is the most important thing for our listeners to know about government waste? And then what are some of the most egregious examples in your opinion of government waste that we do? seen. Yeah, I think the most important, one of the most important things for them to know about earmarks is that they're not the members of Congress calling balls and strikes on the best things in their district. I mean, even if they were, that's not what the federal legislature

should be doing. But I think what your listeners need to really understand is these offices that are making these decisions on these million dollar, $5 million, $10 million projects, they're usually staff. The average age of the staffer is 27 years old, when these transportation None of them have background in transportation. What they do have background in is meeting with lobbyists for special interests in their district. And that's how these things get up to the top of the stack. It's not because this is the most important road in, you know, Paduca, Kentucky. It's because this lobbyist knows the 26-year-old staffer who's assigned to do appropriations earmarks and they get it to the top of their stack.

Or a wealthy donor in the district knows the congressman is like, hey, you know, I really need you to help me out on these things. And they get it to the top of the stack. So I think your listeners really need to be disabused of the notion that there's some kind of merit process in this. It's a bunch of young staffers and then lobbyists and wealthy donors making decisions about what gets requested. Now, what ends up happening is you get these ridiculous, wasteful projects. We've got, you know, I give you a couple examples, but, you know, we've got thousands of them on pork map. You've got things like a sheep research institute in Idaho. Ho. It's just nuts. Like, we don't need to, like, we know enough about sheep.

We've got a cranberry research station up in Wisconsin. Like, look, I love ocean spray. I like cranberry cocktail. It's great. That company does not need $600,000 to research cranberries. One that really esteems me is the sugar industry is getting $10 million in Louisiana. Like, the sugar, the sugar industry is one of the worst crony capitalist offenders in the federal. They're getting subsidies on imports. You know, they're getting special advantages on land use. They're one of the most well-heeled lobbying organizations in the country.

They're selling a lot of sugar. They don't need $10 million from the federal government in a Republican district in Louisiana to research sugar. Again, we got a pretty good understanding of how sugar works. You put in a candy bar, it makes you fat. Like, it's not rocket science here. So why are these really – I mean, they're kind of goofy, and we snicker about them. What becomes problematic is that each one of those has a congressman associated with them.

And some of these congressmen might make the right decision on these bloated spending bills, but now they've been bought off with some earmark for an important constituency in their state. They might vote against a minibus or an omnibus spending bill, but now they can't because if they vote against it, they know, everybody knows that they're going to lose their earmark in the conference committee when the bills get worked out between the House and Senate. So they're stuck voting for these terrible bills. And look, this is not me like seeing, you know, black helicopters and crazy conspiracy theories. This is the reason these things exist.

The Democrats have said, we need to bring back earmarks because it helps us pass bills. That's exactly why we need to get rid of earmarks because it helps us pass bad bills. Right. So given what we've talked about today, which is his personnel or President Biden's personnel, and we've talked a little bit about spending, why should Americans be focused on these things? Why should we be focused on personnel policy and spending decisions from the Biden administration? Yeah, no. So personnel is policy. The people that execute the agenda are the people who draft the agenda. So it's important who comes to Washington.

We saw this with the Trump administration. The people that you appoint make a difference. Mark Meadows better than Reins-Preebus. So you get a better quality decision-making when you have better people in the administration. Same thing works with the Democrats. When they have really radical leftists, you're going to get really, radical policies. That's what you're going to see with Kristen Clark, the young lady I spoke about at DOJ. She's going to go in and she's got this anti-police attitude. And she's going to go in and be the one investigating the police, whether it's in Louisville or Portland, Minneapolis. You're going to get a really negative outcome when you have somebody who is hostile to police investigating the police. So that's why it really matters. On the pork map, on the spending stuff, people should be really paying attention because this is how we get $35 trillion in debt. It's one wasteful spending.

bill after another. And you look back, you're like, how this all happened? Well, it happened one bill at a time. It happened one earmark at a time. It happened one bad vote at a time. So you need to have a zero tolerance approach to these. You need to say no to everyone as they come through. I think that's great advice. Now, we are running a little bit low on time. So I wanted to give this last question to learn more about your organization. How can our listeners learn more about you guys and how can they get connected? Sure. So the most straightforward way is to go to one of our two websites. American-A-F.org is the main site for the American Accountability Foundation. If you're really interested on the NOMS, go to Bidendoms.com. But that'll give you all the

information on what we do. We're an investigative organization. We're digging into the details to help educate the American people. There's a lot of good information. There's also PorkMap. If you're really excited about earmarks, you want to learn about those little piggies. There's PorkMap.com. But we put that information out there to educate the American people so that they know what's going on inside their government and the people that are leading their government. Excellent. Thank you so much. So that was Tom Jones, co-founder of American Accountability Foundation, an educational and non-partisan organization that conducts research into government oversight, as well as fact-checking to hold government accountable. Thanks, good for joining us, Tom.

Hey, thanks a lot. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and have five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks so much for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.