The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guests: Sen. Mike Lee & Nicole Solas | 8/2/21
Episode Date: August 2, 2021Pat Gray joins to discuss Glenn’s art show and woke Olympians like Raven “The Hulk” Saunders. Stay-at-home mom Nicole Solas joins to discuss how her school board threatened to sue her for asking... too many questions about critical race theory. Utah Sen. Mike Lee calls in to discuss the newest trillion-dollar spending bill in the Senate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to the podcast. Today, we talk about the Olympics and some of the fun stuff going on with that wonderful patriotism being viewed by all of America as you watch the Olympic Games.
We also talk about the troubles of DaBaby. I know you're a huge DaBaby fan, as Glenn and I are as well.
We have an update on Glenn's art show, which I tried to keep as short as possible, because it apparently went well.
We have Ronald Pristrito on as well to talk about the similarities between the Widrell Wilson administration and the Joe Biden administration.
And Senator Mike Lee joins us to tell us why we're spending $1.2 trillion with the sign-on of Republicans.
We get into all that today on the program.
Don't forget to subscribe at blazTV.com slash glen.
Promal code is Glenn.
And take a minute to click subscribe on this podcast as well as Stu Does America.
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He joins us from Pat Gray Unleashed.
Yeah, so how'd the weekend in Park City go with the art show?
With the art show, yeah.
It was pretty good.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, just for the audience, we really do need to get to the news of the day today.
There's a lot going on, Pat.
He is.
I mean, I was listening to your show today.
What a great show.
Pat Gray on Leashed.
It's available on Blase TV.
What in particular did you like?
Where do people download that?
Pretty much anywhere.
Anywhere.
It's really interesting.
What I was wondering was how many paintings.
Friday, he said people would come in and spit on the painting.
I don't think I said that.
So that turned out to be, that was inaccurate?
Inaccurate.
Nobody spit on any painting?
No.
And he said like no one would show up.
I may have said people should spit on the painting.
I don't know, but I said that they would.
And it was all he could talk about last week.
It's all he could talk about.
Now, strangely, he doesn't want to hear it.
I'm sorry if the news is more important than your little art show from the weekend, Glenn.
I'm sorry, you know, our country right now is on the edge.
Yeah.
And you want to talk about your paintings?
Right.
Well, yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, is it a big deal to talk about it for a couple of quick.
He's wasting much more time.
No, no.
No.
Inflation.
terrorism,
pandemic.
Let's let's spend some time on you drawing.
Okay.
Your heightened level of glorified coloring book.
Yeah.
All of all of my proceeds going to Mercury 1.
Wait, for what?
I don't.
What?
For what?
Like, what are they?
Is there any important issue that maybe we should talk about?
Like, I don't know.
The global sex slavery.
Yeah.
Maybe the murdering of Christians around the globe.
Maybe we could spend some time on that instead of your stupid paintings.
Anyway.
Anyway, I don't have the final number, but it's about $250,000 raised this weekend.
Really?
Just Saturday.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, it was a wild success.
I think we have a generous audience to put that sort of money into this cause at the expense of also taking home your painting.
I mean, what an incredible honor.
It was very, it was, and it was wonderful.
It was packed all day.
Saturday.
Yes, Saturday.
And was taking, you know, people about 30 to 50 at a time through the gallery and, you know, talking, telling the stories behind each of the paintings.
And it was just great.
So many people came from, drove a long way, you know, didn't even buy anything, which I was totally fine with.
And it was, it was great.
And we should, I've had a lot of questions from the people who have purchased your paintings.
And the answer is, yes, you just have to put it up when?
Glenn comes over. You don't have to have it up
all the time. Right? Just put it
up. If Glenn's coming over your
house, put up the painting. Be kind.
All right. So, Pat,
did you watch
the Olympics at all? I have
watched about two minutes of coverage.
Really? Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
I haven't watched it. Darned second
of it. I do know that the women's
soccer team lost. Oh, no.
To Canada. Gosh, gosh.
I was torn apart by
that. Tored apart. They
seem like such a lovely group. Don't they?
Don't they though? They do. So patriotic and
wonderful and loving and
dedicated. Wonderful. Wonderful.
They do. I hope they got
equal pay for that loss. I actually
would have liked them to have won.
I would not have. They're from the U.S.
Oh, I really? I'm past that.
Are you really? Yeah, I'm past that. I've always
been past it with soccer. Because soccer
I want them to lose. Because
the more U.S. soccer teams
win, the more I have to watch highlights
on ESPN or wherever I'm watching sports.
They treat it like it's a real sport.
Well, then you should be against Ted Lassow.
Ted Lassow is doing that, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
He's normalizing soccer.
You're right.
I need a new stance in my life.
Anti-Ted Lasso seems like the right thing.
Yeah, it does.
Don't normalize soccer.
Don't do it.
Did you see the, what was her name that?
Oh, you mean the beautiful trans woman?
The Victoria Secret woman?
Yeah, she's so beautiful.
She's lovely.
She's lovely.
She's a Victoria.
Wait a minute.
Hold it.
Or are we talking about the same woman?
Well, if she's not.
The shot putter.
The shot putter.
Oh, the shot putter.
Yeah.
That's not the trans person.
Oh, okay.
The weightlifter is the trans person.
Okay.
What is she winning?
No, she crashed out.
Oh, darn it.
A stunning development, though, that a trans weightlifter would excel.
Yeah.
To get to the Olympics.
It seems like such a, what it's, of all the sports.
And was expected to medal.
And so who would go figure that the person who used to be a man might have a leg up in that competition.
And again, no reason to change my stance of I'm glad to see the U.S. lose.
Because when they win, that's when you see people like Raven Saunders.
She was sporting a neon green and purple buzz cut.
and she made an X sign with her wrists up at the podium.
She just crossed her arms and made her.
And she said later because everybody said,
what the hell does that even mean?
And she said,
I'm glad you ask,
it's the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet.
That is right at her wrists?
Right.
Weird.
They stand on her wrist.
That seems like too many people for one set of wrists.
And then,
and then after she decided.
decided to twerk.
And it was sexy.
That is what I can imagine.
I wanted to meet on her wrists after that.
I did.
I was like,
I think I was oppressed by that.
I don't know how to go on.
She said,
I just wanted to be me not to apologize,
to show younger people that no matter how many boxes they try to fit you in,
you can be all you can and you can accept it.
People try to tell me not to do text.
tattoos and piercings and all that.
But look at me now.
Look at her now.
I'm popping.
I'm popping.
She said she, you know, she's been, she's had a lot of things weighing on her for 22 years.
And she was finally able to process it.
And she was finally able to separate Raven from the Hulk, which was really.
Okay.
Wow.
Good.
That's so Raven.
That is so Raven.
That is exactly the type of behavior you'd expect for Raven.
Right.
She's a delight.
She's a delight.
You know, I have to tell you, Simone Biles, and, you know, I'm not going to tear her apart because she's gone through a lot, et cetera, et cetera.
But, you know, as I was doing these tours about the painting, one of the paintings that I did was Jesse Owens.
And I painted him so his eyes would follow you in the room.
And I have him at the starting line at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
And don't talk to me about, you know, oh, I've got so many things I'm oppressed.
He was oppressed.
He was oppressed.
He was living in America at a time where he had to use a separate water fountain if he wanted to drink.
So half of the population in the United States loved him.
The other half didn't love him.
When Hitler invited him and the U.S. to come over for the Berlin Olympics,
half of the black community said, you can't do it.
You can't go because you can't support the Hitler government
and you can't support the United States government.
The other half said, you have to go.
You have to go because you have to show that black man is human over in Germany
because he says you're subhuman.
So you have to go.
FDR didn't want to meet with Jesse Owens, didn't want to support Jesse Owens.
Hitler, he's in the stadium with Hitler staring at him.
You want to talk about pressure?
Shut up.
Talk to Jesse Owens.
And what did he do?
He won the gold.
And then he stood there proudly as the National Anthem played.
And he came back.
That's why he's a hero.
He twerked afterward, though.
He did twer.
He had to twerk.
There was twerking going.
Wouldn't have been any good if he didn't twerk.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
There was a ceremony.
Let me tell you, let me tell you the same story with Jesse Owens.
Do you know why he won the gold?
Because he was faster.
Past his time.
Across the finish line.
Yeah, before the others.
Yeah.
So that's what happens.
You turn your mics off and turn your headphones on.
You're not allowed to listen anymore.
Let me just share this with you, okay.
Here's the reason why I won.
the long jump is because the guy who he was competing against
notice that Jesse Owens was jumping too soon.
And he kind of sneaks over to Jesse's side and he's standing there.
And he says, hey, listen, you're jumping too soon.
And Jesse said, what are you talking about?
He's like, don't look at me.
Hitler's looking at me.
Don't look at me.
You're jumping too soon.
So I'm going to saunter over to the pit and I'm just going to drop my towel where you should jump.
And so he does.
And this is a German competitor, I believe, wasn't it?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And he puts his towel down right where Jesse Owens should jump.
Jesse Owens jumps and wins the gold.
It didn't take long for that guy to be sent to the Russian front.
that guy was sent to the Russian front
because he lost to Jesse Owens
and he helped Jesse Owens.
Jesse Owens and he became friends.
He was sent to the Russian front
and the last thing he said to Jesse Owens was
please, one thing I ask,
please tell my children
when this madness is all over.
I was not one of them.
So don't tell me about your oppression
Hulk
Raven
Don't tell me about your oppression
It's an intent
Two thing
They had to deal with
Well yeah
And she was told not to
Not to pierce
You know
And I'm sure that there's a lot of people
Who are oppressed
That were really sad to hear
That that that kind of oppression
Was going on on her
People don't look at this anymore
But the Nazis were very anti-piercing
Very
That was one of the things
People don't even discuss
They don't even discuss
What was that horrid
He rose to power
Based on the non-piercing theory
Oh, we're such cry babies.
Thank you, Pat.
Pat Gray on Leaks, wherever you get your podcast.
The Best of the Glenn Beck program.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Nicole Solos is a stay-at-home mom in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.
She enrolled her five-year-old daughter in kindergarten in the South Kingstown School District
and then said, you know, I want some information because she had heard that
the teachers were starting to teach critical race theory.
And so she said, I need some, I need some information from the school.
Now, she is, it's perfectly legal for her to request.
In fact, they have it on their own website.
If you want information, blah, blah, blah, you do it.
Well, she requested the information.
Then she figured I should probably pull my daughter out of school after they,
they threatened to sue her because of her public record request.
about critical race theory and gender theory, which the district told her to submit.
She's now being represented by the Goldwater Institute, and she is on the phone with us now.
Hi, Nicole.
How are you?
Hi, Glenn.
I'm good.
Thanks so much for having me.
So not only they threatened to sue you, they told you had to pay $74,000 to find out if the school district is teaching CRT.
Right.
And this isn't the first time that they have given me these very high estimates to get public information, which, frankly, we already pay for with our taxes. First, they had given me a $9,000 fee to get information when I first started submitting my public records request. Other information was $2,000, $3,000. The Goldwater Institute resubmitted a public records request on my behalf with much more specific terms that were more likely to turn up information, and that was now $74,000, which is insane.
because this is public information and it shouldn't be a government secret. It's information that
really the public has a right to access and a public record request is just the way to get that
information. In my town, 80% of the budget goes to the school and it costs $27,000 for student
to educate. Wow. And now I have to pay $74,000 to know how they're being educated. It just
Seems like this is not the way it's supposed to work.
So you asked for lesson plans and course materials used or assigned at any school within South Kingston School Department in the 2021 school year that include any of the following terms, 1619 Project, Zinn, Zinn, Equitable Math, Gender Theory, White Privilege or Whiteness, Systematic Racism, CRT or Critical Race Theory, Ibram Kendi or Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, or Just.
DeAngelo.
They said that
that they could do that, but it would take them
eight hours to retrieve.
Yeah, I think it was a lot more hours.
I think it was like, like, 693 hours or something like that.
And that's, you know, they have under the statute,
they can charge $15 an hour to compile and retrieve all this
information, but it still has to be a reasonable fee.
And when you're asking for lesson materials and instructional materials, that shouldn't have to be requested under the APRA to access to Public Records Act.
These are not just public documents.
These are lesson materials.
They at any point can just email this to me of their own volition.
They can just respond to my questions that I asked in an email without having to charge me money because this is really just a conversation about what our kids are learning.
So they're the ones that constrain me to this public record request process.
And I believe they're doing that to evade my questions and not answer them.
Now, what did you hear that the teachers were incorporating all this stuff in?
Well, the principal from the elementary school where my daughter would go, I've since pulled her out and placed her in private school,
said that they integrate values of gender identity in every grade.
and she said that they have a certain line of thinking about history that they teach children in every grade.
And she told me this after I said, do you teach anything with anti-racism?
And as we all know, anti-racism really just means racism, a critical race theory.
It's all the same thing.
So the principal told me that they do, in fact, teach these values.
And when I asked, well, how exactly do you do it in every grade?
They said that they have these common practices that they use.
And when I asked, well, you know, when did this common practice?
start, it was all non-answered. Either I don't know or let me get back to you, and then finally
it was submit a public records request. So I know they're absolutely doing it, and I have tons of
evidence that I've uncovered through these public records requests and with my own research,
showing that the school district believes that all white people are racist. I just found a document
saying that, and that part of their goal is to have implicit bias trainings with students and teachers,
and they're 100% committed to this,
but they're not telling me exactly how.
And so I want them to be completely transparent
so that people can decide if they want to enroll their kids in this district
or opt out of certain lesson plans.
And we can finally engage in a robust public debate
about the values of critical race theory or anti-racism
or whatever you want to call it.
I tell you, you can file for a Freedom of Information Act
and you don't have to pay for it.
I mean, it's, it's again, on our time, on our dime.
And you ask for all records of communications, including email communication, to or from any South Kingston School Department official,
principal, teacher, teaching assistant, counselor, any other person from January 1, 2020, to the date of this request,
which includes any of the following terms, 1619 project, Zen education, Howard Zinn, Equitable Math, Gender Theory, blah, blah, blah, all of these things.
that is that is public record i know that um here in texas when we finally did get the freedom of
information act from a school district called south lake it showed that they were
mocking the parents and saying we're just going to do it anyway and let's one of them said let's
keep this information away from the parents uh and two of the people went to jail over it
and nobody had to pay for that information because it came from
a government source?
Yeah, so the Freedom of Information Act is different from the Access to Public Records Act,
which is a Rhode Island statute, and that Rhode Island statute carves out this $15 an hour fee
that a public entity can charge you for.
They can also charge you 15 cents for hard coffee.
But you're right that this information should not have to cost taxpayers money.
They're already paying for the information just, you know, by having the public
entity do their jobs. So I think that that's going to be a point of contention that it's not
reasonable to have the $74,000 fee. And it's certainly not equitable for all of this talk
that schools have about equity and everyone having equal access. I don't know how you justify that
kind of fee just to know what your kid is learning because it sounds like they're saying that only
the extremely wealthy are privy to information about what their kids are learning.
So what did the Goldwater people say? And what are you doing?
about this now? Right now we're determining what our next step is. We're still talking about that
and I'm sure we'll make a decision soon on whether we want to go to court or if we want to
take some other legal action. How is the community responding to you and the people in the school?
Are they with you or against you or is it split? I only have overwhelming support. I have parents.
and even teachers emailing me and thanking me for putting myself out there.
I also get lots of tips from parents about what is being taught in school here,
and it's sometimes hard to get verification.
So if they say, oh, my kid had to do something with Black Lives Matter in class,
and I'm telling you, I'm hoping you can do something with it,
but they're scared to actually tell me the name of the class,
the name of the teacher, the actual assignment,
because they don't want to be retaliated against it.
that I was retaliated against, but you know, you can't just go out there and say something
is happening and have, you know, no proof. So people are still scared, but they are extremely
supportive. Well, stay brave. This will only get harder. If people like you don't stand up now,
it's only going to get harder and you most likely won't win in the future if we don't stand up
now. I wish you all the best of luck. Is there anything that our audience can do to help you?
I just want to reiterate what you said, that more parents need to start standing up to their school boards and just to remember that school boards are made up of ordinary people.
They live next door to us.
They're our family members and our friends.
These people are not working behind the iron curtain of the Kremlin yet.
So we need to stand up to them now and let them know that we're not going to tolerate this indoctrination of kids in our school.
Were you ever, I mean, are you an activist?
Would you ever see yourself doing stuff like this?
No, I've never been politically involved.
This only happened because I enrolled my daughter in school, and then they publicly threatened to sue me.
So I had to respond publicly because they were trying to destroy my reputation publicly.
They are getting so bold, so bold.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
God bless.
Thank you so much.
You bet.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
I'll tell you, who wasn't at my art show this weekend was Mike Lee.
Oh, geez.
I mean, he's got this infrastructure government spending bill.
He couldn't put a little padding in there for the art.
Yeah, put a padding in for a private jet flight to your art show and then back.
Yeah, and maybe a couple of paintings along with him.
But, oh, no, I'm too serious.
I've got work to do.
People don't want us spending money.
Mike?
You're leaving out the real reason I didn't come, Glenn, which is that I'm still offended
that you didn't include any of my art.
I mean, I know stick figures get a bad graphic.
in American art culture these days, but it's pretty good.
Yeah.
It's come from me.
Yeah, no, that's good stuff, Mike.
Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, you were up late last night,
working on this bipartisan government spending bill.
How many of you guys voted against this thing?
There were about five who voted against it at the earlier stages.
Here's the weird thing, though, Glenn We've voted on this a couple times last week.
The bill didn't yet exist at the time.
The bill didn't exist until last night.
I finally received it as I was sitting on the Senate floor with a bunch of my colleagues who were getting ready to give speeches in favor of it.
And all of a sudden, I got it electronically.
It's 2,702 pages long.
Yeah, well, that's an easy read.
Kind of strange that they voted to proceed to it without knowing what it was first.
Well, let me ask you this.
Isn't this kind of just like weren't really last week just saying, hey, how much do you want to spend?
we'll fill it in later. How much do you want to spend? Isn't that what it was?
Yeah, that's kind of what they were doing.
Yeah.
Deciding overall threshold amounts and deciding, you know, in general terms, what the agreement would consist of.
But normally that's not how we vote on actual pieces of legislation.
But in any event, we've got it now. It's 2,702 pages long.
How much is spending? How much is spending on this one?
It spends $1.2 trillion.
Oh, love that.
And of that $1.2 trillion, $550 of it is new federal spending,
above and beyond what we were expected to spend this year,
which strikes me as curious, given that it's a terrible time to be spending more money
at a time when due to deliberate, reckless overspending by the federal government,
poor middle-class Americans are finding that everything they purchase is more expensive.
from from from chicken breast to gasoline to cars to housing everything is more expensive because
we're spending too much money in Washington oh my gosh stew how can we listen to this old-timey guy
blah blah blah inflation don't you know that inflation is not a problem it's not going to be a
problem you can because they're digitizing they're not they're not actually printing they're
digitizing mike and that is totally different
It's transitory.
And that, of course, makes those dollars spend very differently and inflation proof, doesn't it?
Yeah, it sure does.
You know, you brought up, when you were on the floor of the Senate, I watched some of the highlights,
and you made a great point about inflation.
You were like, even just the act of spending all of this money, when you're talking about
infrastructure, will drive the cost of the things that are already expensive up, because now
the private sector has to compete with the government? That's exactly right. So everything that goes
into these projects, from cement to the aggregate materials you use to make concrete, to steel,
to labor, and everything else, all those things are more expensive right now. And so, look,
I'm not a fan of stimulus-style spending, but even to those who might be, they might be able to
make a slightly less bad case for this in a time when demand for these products is low and
industries are shutting down. I still wouldn't like to see government doing that, but whatever.
You can make a case for it in that circumstance, not one that I agree with, but you can't make
a good case for doing it right now where everything is inflated, where every federal dollar we
put into this is going to go less far because it's a federal dollar that comes with lots of strings
attached, and it will go even less far because of the fact that all of these things,
are in short supply and can be procured only at a premium. We will get less from this as a result of
the fact that it's federal and as a result of the fact that we're doing it right now.
So why are they saying this is a good deal? Why are the Republicans even thinking we have to do
any of this stuff? Well, look, I'm always reluctant to speak for those who are not present.
I'm not a good spokesman for them because I disagree fundamentally with what they're doing.
I suspect if one of them were on the phone with us, they'd say, okay, well, first of all, we need infrastructure.
Secondly, if we do this, then what the Democrats do on their bill, the bill that they intend to pass with a simple majority,
either later this week or later this month, they will spend less than they would otherwise spend if we didn't do this.
Now, if we were in court and someone testified to that effect, I'd stand up and say, objection assumes facts not inevitable.
I don't know how they can possibly know that they will spend less if we pass this bill.
And in any event, that doesn't mean we don't have to put our names on something that we think is bad and harmful to the American people if we don't agree with it.
Look, Glenn, there are sort of three different groups of people in America, one of which will benefit from this bill, one of which might not notice much of a difference, and the others will be hurt by it.
The first group, consisting of those who might benefit from it,
tend to be wealthy, well-connected individuals and business interests in this country
who might actually get rich off of it.
The next group consists of well-off Americans who have enough money that they won't notice
a big hit to their lifestyle.
But almost everyone else, the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans,
fits into the third category of people who have limited paychecks
in many cases living paycheck to paycheck, every dollar will buy less as a result of spending like
this one. Those people will be hurt. So in some ways, we're exchanging one thing for another.
In some ways, we're taking money away from poor middle class Americans and giving it to the
wealthy and well-connected. I can't justify that. This is the opposite of Robin Hood.
This is the opposite of Robin Hood. Exactly.
Senator Lee, there's some argument that the passing something,
bipartisan gives
Senator Manson, Senator
Minchin, Senator
cinema some
some talking point to go back to
Democrats and say we shouldn't
drop the filibuster. Do you think
there's anything to that at all?
Yeah, look, I don't want them to drop
the filibuster. They shouldn't drop the
filibuster. We have no
guarantee that
if we didn't do this,
they would drop the filibuster, or
that by doing this, they won't.
No guarantee whatsoever.
What we have to vote on is the legislation before us.
Now, the legislation before us, 2,702 pages long, which we received late last night,
has been hammered out over a period of four months by 10 very smart, very hardworking senators.
Senators with whom I happen to disagree on this issue, but they worked hard on it.
They've had four months to come up with 2,702 pages.
It is beyond folly to suggest that the entire Senate should now get up to speed on that and be expected to process it, amend it, vote on it, and pass it within a period of a few days.
We need arguably at least as much time as they did.
At a minimum, we need at least a few weeks to work on this.
We have no business spending this amount of money and passing this size of a bill that we saw for the first time last night within a few days.
I remember it was Barack Obama who said he was going to have the transparency that had never happened before.
And he would post every bill for at least a couple of weeks before it was ever voted on.
They never did that.
Nobody ever has an intention of doing this.
And all of these things are banged out.
And really, a lot in the house is just put together by the heads of the party.
and then everybody else is just told vote for it.
No, that's exactly right.
And it reflects one of the sad biases that you see in this place.
You know, senators get praise when they pass big spending bills.
They get criticized when they vote against them.
They assume that passing legislation is a good thing in the abstract.
I'm reminded of something that Calvin Coolidge once said.
He said, as a lawmaker, it's important to both pass good bills
and stop bad ones. They're both important, but as between the two, it's the second that's more important.
It's more important to stop the bad bills, because a good bill that doesn't pass today can always be
passed later. A bad bill, once it passes, it's nearly impossible to unwind. You can't ever get
rid of it. And that's why we've got to focus on this. Look, a handful of senators will get praised
if this thing passes. But that praise and that adulation, that political notoriety for a few days,
will have long-term consequences for Americans,
America's poor and middle class,
and that concerns me greatly.
Can you tell us what infrastructure even means now, Mike?
Well, look, it means a lot of things.
In this bill, they're talking about all sorts of things
from highways and bridges to roads.
Hang on just a second.
We have every time there's a big bill.
It's an infrastructure bill.
when and how much was it going to take to actually fix the roads and the bridges, the federal roads and bridges?
Because I'm tired of hearing about infrastructure fixing the roads and bridges because nobody ever shows us any progress on that and says, okay, we're a lot closer.
Just an endless infrastructure bill, fix the roads and bridges.
Right. And look, you can always identify things that have been fixed.
And that's why things like this can be very tempting because people,
can point to good things that will happen to good people and good communities that are well
deserving of improvements. The question I raise is, does it have to be this much? Does it have to be
right now? And does it have to be through this government? I'm still going through this bill,
because it takes a while to do it. It doesn't read like a fast-paced novel. But,
Glenn, I will be shocked if there isn't a whole lot of infrastructure in here that isn't
federal in nature that is not or should not be federal. Now, if it's, if it's part of an interstate
highway, then right. Yeah, perhaps it should be federal or some other project with an appropriate
federal nexus that's close, maybe so. I'm willing to bet that a large portion of this is going to
go to surface streets that start and stop in the same state and things that are otherwise not
necessarily appropriate for the federal government. And that's not just an esoteric problem.
It creates real financial problems. The minute you add a dollar of federal spending to an
infrastructure project, in many states like mine, it can add 30%, sometimes more, to the cost of the
project because you have to comply with this Byzantine labyrinth of federal regulations and
mandates. And so you're buying less with more money when you make it federal. We shouldn't do that.
there is also a $3.5 trillion
human infrastructure bill coming our way
yes yes that is a bill that the
Senate Democrats are working on that they believe that they can pass
with a mere 51 votes
and I'm calling it the inflation bomb because that would
truly be it they've learned over time that bills can be
more palatable if you call them
something most Americans understand and resonate with.
Patriot Act.
Yeah, if you call it about the troops or about national security generally,
or if you talk about infrastructure, perhaps they'll accept it more easily.
But this is this inflation bomb that they want to pass with a simple majority is a whole lot of
stuff that has nothing to do with infrastructure.
It's just big government spending.
And to put that in perspective, $3.5 trillion, many of us expect it,
be more like four or five trillion dollars by the way. That's roughly on par with what we spend
in a particular year out of the entire federal government in a non-COVID year. So if they expect
that we can roughly double that amount and have no consequences, they're crazy. They're just not
looking at the facts. Oh, it's 37% of all U.S. dollars that have ever come into existence
have been printed in the last 18 months.
You don't do that without making a whole lot of poor middle class Americans poorer.
Hey, one last thing I'd like to ask you, because I know that they're working on airports here,
but the Green New Deal would like to get rid of all airplanes by 2030.
Why would we be building new airports if we have to dramatically cut our air travel?
I'd just like you to ask somebody there and see if you can find an answer.
Mike Lee, thank you so much for being on.
on us on with us and thank you for standing and fighting the good fight i i certainly appreciated
it's senator mike lee from utah on the latest infrastructure bill that they put together in the
senate
