DOGEing a budget bullet (12-19-2024--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Talking about the failure of the cramnibus or the continuing resolution omnibus cram job. So it's all just a cramnibus or cramnibusted. We're just going to keep adding prefixes and suffixes or suffices onto the word. And sooner or later, it'll become as long as anti-disestablishmentarianism.

[00:00:51] Hellion says, Speaker Mike Johnson also said that this is not a continuing resolution. Johnson is a worm. Why can't we find another Gingrich? I would love Chip Roy. I've seen, I got a message or a tweet here from the Carnivore Curmudgeon. It's a Pete tweet. He says, Pete, let's just cut out the middleman. I suggest they choose Elon Musk for Speaker of the House.

[00:01:18] I don't know. I think. Yeah, I think Elon is well positioned to do what he is doing. Right. By being outside of the government, he doesn't have to give up his holdings. He doesn't have to stop doing the business and stuff that he does.

[00:01:37] Like he can still do all of that stuff that he needs to be doing. That's why they did not make the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE.

[00:01:46] That's why they did not make it an actual government agency. Because if you do that, then he's got to go through confirmation.

[00:01:54] He's got to have all of the disclosures. He's got to divest himself of all sorts of his investments.

[00:01:59] And so it's just. This is now just like purely advisory, but he's got a pretty big stick, you know, with being a multi billionaire and all and able to fund campaigns against people.

[00:02:13] And by the way, I do note the irony that people on the left are now super concerned about billionaires.

[00:02:21] I saw Bernie Sanders, of course, the millionaire Bernie Sanders from one of his million dollar mansions, probably tweeting out stuff about an oligarchy and how Elon Musk is now running the government and all of that.

[00:02:35] Meanwhile, you had Alex Soros, son of George Soros, posting pictures of all of the the trophies from his, you know, multimillion dollar penthouse where he had all of these Democrats come in, kiss the ring, take pictures.

[00:02:54] And then he would post them like trophies on a wall of all like Governor Tim Walz.

[00:03:01] He had Chuck Schumer. He had I mean, everybody.

[00:03:03] I think Harris went to like all these people went to go visit him.

[00:03:08] And then he would post pictures of their meetings.

[00:03:12] And I'm supposed to believe that he has no influence over Democrats spending priorities.

[00:03:17] And the kicker on this is, is that what is it that Elon Musk is actually advocating?

[00:03:24] What is he trying to actually do?

[00:03:28] Well, glad you asked.

[00:03:30] I have two clips.

[00:03:32] He made himself very clear in appearances way before the crammed and busted came down the line.

[00:03:39] There's certainly a lot of work for a department of government efficiency.

[00:03:43] And there will be immense opposition, obviously, to making government more efficient from entrenched interests that currently benefit from, you know, sucking away vast amounts of taxpayer money.

[00:03:56] They will not like the fact that they're not getting it anymore.

[00:04:00] They will fight tooth and nail.

[00:04:01] So but it's got to be done.

[00:04:04] And like I said, we're going to aim to reduce government spending, get government out of people's lives as much as possible and restore freedom and liberty.

[00:04:14] My God, he's a tyrant.

[00:04:16] Holy cow.

[00:04:19] Wait, wait, hang on a second.

[00:04:20] Did he just say he's going to get a get government out of our lives and let us keep all of our money or more of our money?

[00:04:26] That.

[00:04:26] Well, wait a minute.

[00:04:27] That that doesn't sound very tyrannical at all.

[00:04:29] At another appearance, he made the point that a lot of people refuse to accept as true.

[00:04:37] We have to reduce federal spending or there's no way to make up for it other than reducing the federal spending.

[00:04:44] And as I mentioned earlier, like a very important point that I think is important for people to understand is that all federal spending is taxation.

[00:04:53] Because what is not what they don't receive, what federal government doesn't receive in direct revenue, they make up for in inflation.

[00:05:00] They just print money.

[00:05:02] So all federal spending is taxation.

[00:05:04] Very important principle.

[00:05:06] Almost nobody.

[00:05:06] Very few people seem to even like, you know, somebody's like spend their life in economics.

[00:05:12] I'll mention to them, hey, all spending, all federal spending is taxation.

[00:05:15] They're like, first they'll argue with me and they're like, then they will agree.

[00:05:18] It is.

[00:05:20] Because it is either direct tax revenue or it is inflation.

[00:05:23] All federal spending is taxation.

[00:05:26] So we must reduce federal spending or we will go bankrupt as a country.

[00:05:30] That's it.

[00:05:31] Very clear.

[00:05:33] Welcome, Elon Musk, to the fight that I have been waging for 20 years.

[00:05:41] Albeit with far less money and influence.

[00:05:44] But, yeah, this is the number one issue.

[00:05:49] But nobody knows or wants to deal with it.

[00:05:53] No one knows how to deal with it.

[00:05:55] And he's like, it's very simple.

[00:05:57] We have to reduce the federal spending.

[00:05:59] Or we go bankrupt as a country.

[00:06:02] That's the path we're on.

[00:06:04] You increase revenue or decrease spending.

[00:06:09] And we can't increase revenue, quote unquote, without taxation.

[00:06:16] Like that, that's it.

[00:06:19] I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept for people to understand.

[00:06:23] Let me get over to John.

[00:06:25] Hello, John.

[00:06:26] Welcome to the program.

[00:06:27] Hi, Pete.

[00:06:27] How are you doing today?

[00:06:28] Hey, I'm good.

[00:06:29] What's up?

[00:06:30] Well, I had two provisions of that bill that I've actually looked at.

[00:06:34] Kind of strange.

[00:06:35] We have actually a department that's called the Secretary of Commerce for Travel and Tourism.

[00:06:43] And they have money in this bill, but I couldn't find out how much.

[00:06:47] But their specific goal is to identify locations and events in the U.S.

[00:06:52] It's important to music tourism and to facilitate and promote domestic travel and tourism in these locations and events.

[00:07:02] I didn't even know we had such a deal.

[00:07:04] Do you remember that movie Dave with Kevin Kline, right, where he's the lookalike for the president and the real president has a stroke, is incapacitated, so they swap him out?

[00:07:16] Right.

[00:07:16] So do you remember where he's sitting around with his cabinet members and they're going over the programs to look for funding?

[00:07:23] And there was the one thing, it was like a promotional ad campaign for, I think it was car manufacturers.

[00:07:30] And he's like, so let me get this straight.

[00:07:31] Like, we're spending money on a marketing campaign to make people feel good about the cars they've already bought.

[00:07:41] Yeah.

[00:07:43] Well, that's kind of along the lines of this.

[00:07:45] And one other provision I saw in there was that they're putting in more money for farmers to promote ethanol production.

[00:07:54] Right.

[00:07:54] That sounds like a little...

[00:07:56] Well, look, no, that's a...

[00:07:58] Come on, man.

[00:07:59] That's rule number one in government lobbying.

[00:08:01] The ethanol lobbyists always get paid.

[00:08:05] They always make their money.

[00:08:08] Ethanol is always in the mix.

[00:08:10] Okay.

[00:08:11] Yeah.

[00:08:11] Well, again, I've scanned over most of the documents.

[00:08:15] Those are a couple things I've picked up on.

[00:08:17] And I hope that you keep exposing all the stuff that's going on in there that's crazy.

[00:08:23] Yeah.

[00:08:24] It's...

[00:08:24] Well, and here's the thing, too.

[00:08:25] I don't know if it's now worth the effort to keep going through the bill because it is apparently now dead.

[00:08:34] I don't know what form it's going to take if they try to run something through before tomorrow.

[00:08:40] Hopefully, it's just a clean CR, a continuing resolution that just says what we're spending now, we're going to keep spending through March.

[00:08:48] And then come back and do the budget appropriations correctly.

[00:08:51] I don't know.

[00:08:52] We'll see.

[00:08:53] But...

[00:08:53] We'll see.

[00:08:54] Yeah.

[00:08:54] Okay.

[00:08:54] Well, thanks for your time, Pete.

[00:08:56] You had a great day.

[00:08:56] You too, John.

[00:08:57] Appreciate the call.

[00:08:58] Yeah, John is exactly right on those two different provisions.

[00:09:01] One was for the music tourism.

[00:09:05] Okay, we're going to spend money to tell people that there's American music and you should go visit places and listen to music or something?

[00:09:16] Like, to go visit the Country Music Hall of Fame?

[00:09:20] Why is that on the federal taxpayers to promote your industry?

[00:09:25] That should be something that the industry is promoting, right?

[00:09:30] You're going to go and open the Country Music Hall of Fame or a Bluegrass Hall of Fame or an R&B Hall of Fame.

[00:09:38] I mean, I could really do this all day with all the different musical genres.

[00:09:41] But you're going to go...

[00:09:42] You want to set up one of these halls of fame, then that's on you to market that.

[00:09:46] And maybe you get some states to help you out because, of course, states will do that to increase tourism.

[00:09:52] They've got tourism funds.

[00:09:53] That's a different question.

[00:09:55] The federal government should not be doing this.

[00:09:57] Why?

[00:09:58] Because that means the federal government is picking winners and losers, not just states where these halls of fame may be located, but also types of music.

[00:10:08] Do we want the federal...

[00:10:09] Do you really want Congress people deciding or bureaucrats deciding which musical taste should be marketed?

[00:10:20] I don't.

[00:10:22] I have no idea.

[00:10:24] I don't want to see ads for smooth jazz during the Super Bowl.

[00:10:29] Come on.

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[00:11:31] One of the writers over at redstate.com, a fellow by the name of Banchi, says,

[00:11:38] The thing with passing a clean CR is that it's likely to pass the Senate as well.

[00:11:46] Manchin and Sinema and maybe even Fetterman would likely vote for it.

[00:11:51] This is a wide-open three-pointer staring the GOP in the face.

[00:11:56] Take the shot.

[00:11:57] Right.

[00:11:58] Just pass a clean continuing resolution, which doesn't have to even be that long.

[00:12:07] Like a page, a paragraph.

[00:12:09] I got a message here from Russ who says,

[00:12:11] It feels silly, but in my naivete, I don't understand why a CR can't be a single sentence saying, like,

[00:12:18] We will continue current funding levels until whatever date.

[00:12:22] Right.

[00:12:23] Like, that's how simple this can be.

[00:12:27] And if you want to do a disaster relief bill, then run that as a separate bill also.

[00:12:32] Or even just tack that on.

[00:12:36] And then make Democrats vote against it.

[00:12:42] So, first hour I walk through how we got here, where it started.

[00:12:46] On Tuesday, late afternoon.

[00:12:49] 1500-page bill gets dropped.

[00:12:53] And they're like, All right, everybody, don't read it.

[00:12:54] And we're going to vote.

[00:12:57] And then, of course, Republicans start reading through it.

[00:13:00] They're like, What the heck is all of this stuff in here?

[00:13:02] And media starts reporting on the provisions.

[00:13:05] There's a whole bunch of stupid stuff in there.

[00:13:08] And the backlash begins.

[00:13:12] And all day yesterday on Twitter, you can see the anger building and building.

[00:13:24] At about 115 yesterday, Elon Musk tweets out, Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years.

[00:13:39] About an hour and a half later, he says, in response to a tweet from Thomas Massey, agreeing with him that all government spending is taxation.

[00:13:53] The government either taxes you directly or, by increasing the money supply, taxes you through inflation.

[00:14:00] That means the spending bill is the taxation bill.

[00:14:04] Very important concept to understand.

[00:14:07] All government spending is taxation.

[00:14:12] And then, less than an hour after that tweet, he says, Unless Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency,

[00:14:23] Unless Doge ends the careers of deceitful pork barrel politicians, the waste and corruption will never stop.

[00:14:33] Therefore, there is no choice but to do so.

[00:14:37] I wish there was another way, but there is not.

[00:14:40] So what is that?

[00:14:42] That is a direct threat against members of Congress that sign on to this.

[00:14:49] That Elon Musk, with his hundreds of billions of dollars, will go after lawmakers who do not rein in federal spending by voting for this.

[00:15:05] That's the line in the sand.

[00:15:07] That was drawn at 3.30.

[00:15:09] He waited until I got off air so I couldn't read it yesterday on the show.

[00:15:14] I'm not taking it personally.

[00:15:16] I'm sure he doesn't even know I exist.

[00:15:18] But if he did, I would feel pretty hurt that he waited until 3.30.

[00:15:23] And then, about 90 minutes later, a statement from Trump and Vance.

[00:15:31] And that put the nail in the coffin.

[00:15:34] All right, hey, real quick.

[00:15:35] If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day,

[00:15:41] send me an email at Pete at ThePeteCalendarShow.com and ask me about advertising.

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[00:15:55] Send me a message.

[00:15:56] Pete at ThePeteCalendarShow.com.

[00:15:58] And I can show you how it works, run the numbers with you.

[00:16:00] Again, that's Pete at ThePeteCalendarShow.com.

[00:16:04] Programming note, I won't be here next week or the week after.

[00:16:07] I'll be back on that first Monday of 2025.

[00:16:10] So we'll talk to you next year.

[00:16:16] That joke never gets old, right?

[00:16:18] Anyway, Jeremy Kaufman posting up on Twitter about the potential for the government shutdown.

[00:16:26] Jeremy Kaufman is a self-described temporary dictator of Aristilus.net.

[00:16:38] Aristilus.net.

[00:16:39] Anyway, he points out that, you know, people calling for the government to be shut down should think about what they are saying.

[00:16:47] Right?

[00:16:48] Think about it.

[00:16:49] I mean, do you really want local schools without oversight from Washington?

[00:16:53] Are you actually comfortable owning guns without the ATF around?

[00:16:57] And who will audit your taxes when you, you know, to make sure that you've paid enough?

[00:17:03] I mean, people need to think about this, you know?

[00:17:07] I think that's a fair point.

[00:17:09] Donald Trump and J.D. Vance yesterday at about 5.13 p.m. posted a statement onto the Twitter machine, formerly known as X.

[00:17:20] And this killed the Kramnibus.

[00:17:27] Here's what they said.

[00:17:30] The most foolish and inept thing ever done by congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025.

[00:17:39] It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.

[00:17:42] So now this is a separate issue.

[00:17:45] This is the debt ceiling.

[00:17:46] We'll come back to that.

[00:17:47] Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney.

[00:17:55] The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6th committee, which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day.

[00:18:05] This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.

[00:18:10] Increasing the debt ceiling is not great, but we'd rather do it on Biden's watch.

[00:18:16] If Democrats won't cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think that they would do it in June during our administration?

[00:18:23] Let's have this debate now and we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn't give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.

[00:18:32] Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief and set our country up for success in 2025.

[00:18:39] The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill without Democrat giveaways combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.

[00:18:48] Anything else is a betrayal of our country.

[00:18:51] OK, I disagree with that.

[00:18:52] I don't think you need to raise the debt ceiling.

[00:18:55] I don't think you should do it right now.

[00:18:57] I think you just do a clean CR.

[00:18:59] But he's now the both the incoming president and VP are like, let's increase the debt ceiling now.

[00:19:06] He says Republicans must get smart and tough.

[00:19:09] If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then call their bluff.

[00:19:14] It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief.

[00:19:19] This chaos would not be happening if we had a real president.

[00:19:22] We will in 32 days.

[00:19:28] So about a half hour after that, Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina here went on to the Twitter machine and said,

[00:19:36] If congressional leaders intend to leave D.C. before the holidays without passing disaster recovery, they should be prepared to spend Christmas in the Capitol.

[00:19:47] I'll use every tool available to block a CR that fails Western North Carolina communities in need of long term certainty.

[00:19:57] OK, so Tillis is demanding that the relief package be tacked onto a CR.

[00:20:06] He doesn't rule out a clean CR there, but wants there to be disaster relief funds.

[00:20:13] Congressman Greg Murphy from North Carolina said disaster aid and farm aid is not pork.

[00:20:21] It's called governing.

[00:20:22] That's what we were elected to do.

[00:20:26] Now, Greg Murphy also said something.

[00:20:29] I got a message here from Cormos, George Cormos.

[00:20:35] You should take a look at Murphy's arrogance in doubling down and yelling at his constituents that he has to support the CR.

[00:20:41] Because that's what he was elected to do.

[00:20:45] So, yes.

[00:20:45] So there was that.

[00:20:46] And then hang on a second here.

[00:20:49] Yeah.

[00:20:49] He said leadership is tough, especially in a divided Congress.

[00:20:54] What is tougher is those who complain from the sideline when they.

[00:20:59] They don't have to get the votes themselves.

[00:21:04] This is not a good look, Congressman.

[00:21:07] Not a good look.

[00:21:09] All right.

[00:21:10] Leadership is tough, especially in a divided Congress.

[00:21:14] Totally agree with both of those statements.

[00:21:15] What is tougher is those who complain.

[00:21:18] Now, that's not that's actually part of the first thing that you said, that leadership is tough.

[00:21:23] There are going to be people who complain about decisions and about your position on a policy.

[00:21:30] Right.

[00:21:31] People are going to complain.

[00:21:33] Leadership means addressing the complaints and either addressing them and, you know, working them into the final arrangement.

[00:21:43] Or it means moving through them, setting them aside, recognizing those are not deal breakers.

[00:21:51] This is not important.

[00:21:52] That's not our priority.

[00:21:54] But this is this is one of those things like, well, if you're not, you know, you're not helping to craft this thing, then screw you.

[00:22:01] It's like, well, OK, first off, members of Congress weren't even allowed in on these negotiations, let alone we the people.

[00:22:08] And the backlash and the anger that got whipped up on Twitter yesterday that led to the phone calls that basically shut down their switchboards that prompted these Republicans to grow the spine that we've demanded that they show.

[00:22:24] That's what I would I dare call a dare call it democracy.

[00:22:29] Right.

[00:22:29] That is elected representatives listening to their constituents.

[00:22:33] That's the way it's always occurred.

[00:22:36] It's just now you have a lot of people on social media that are aware of what's going on.

[00:22:45] And then there's Representative Don Bayer.

[00:22:49] He said the richest man in the world says he wants to shut down the government, forcing millions of American workers, including our troops, to go without pay through the holidays.

[00:22:57] Republicans are following his orders.

[00:22:59] This is insane.

[00:23:01] Again, a clean CR would fund all of the paychecks.

[00:23:07] Vote on that.

[00:23:08] Don.

[00:23:10] Are you opposed to that?

[00:23:12] So you're so you're holding all of those paychecks hostage so you can protect the J6 Select Committee from subpoena.

[00:23:20] Want to be clear about that?

[00:23:21] That's what you're trying to protect.

[00:23:23] You want to make sure that that none of your Democrats get subpoenaed to talk about how corrupt their investigation was into J6.

[00:23:32] Mark Warner, Senator, Democrat.

[00:23:35] Hard to imagine anything more heartless than shutting down the government and leaving disaster victims out in the cold.

[00:23:41] OK, do a clean CR and do a disaster bill.

[00:23:44] How about that?

[00:23:46] Absolutely outrageous.

[00:23:47] This is even a possibility.

[00:23:50] And an organization called the Virginia Project said, OK, so basically Democrats screwed over disaster victims on purpose so that they could now hold relief hostage to far left agenda items that got stuffed into the CR.

[00:24:02] And they're not even slightly ashamed of doing it.

[00:24:05] See, this only works.

[00:24:07] This kind of messaging only works when you know the media is not going to challenge you on it.

[00:24:12] And that's why we're seeing it.

[00:24:14] Email is Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:24:18] Brett says, I kind of like Elon Musk.

[00:24:20] However, didn't he get like something like 400 million dollars from Obama to help start Tesla?

[00:24:25] Or am I mistaken?

[00:24:26] It's a little bit more than that, actually.

[00:24:28] And California gave him a bunch of money.

[00:24:30] I think I thought he bought like a he may have bought Tesla or maybe it was a struggling plant or something.

[00:24:35] But yeah, he got a whole bunch of government subsidies.

[00:24:38] So so that's OK, right, when it's him getting the money, but not the other schlubs.

[00:24:44] It's not OK either way.

[00:24:46] So I've not read up on his explanations as to why he took these government subsidies and why those were OK versus what he's looking to do with Doge.

[00:24:56] But that's a fair question.

[00:24:59] Let me jump over here and get Dave on.

[00:25:01] Hello, Dave.

[00:25:01] Welcome to the show.

[00:25:03] Hey, thanks, Pete.

[00:25:04] Yeah, I just wanted to share a quote with you from Charlotte's favorite son, Dr. Billy Graham.

[00:25:10] He said, when a courageous man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

[00:25:18] And I am so thankful that we've got a courageous man now, finally, back in the White House.

[00:25:25] Long overdue.

[00:25:27] I am also extremely thankful that our dear friend, former congressman now, Dan Bishop, is going to be in the Office of Management and Budget and partner.

[00:25:39] I think we're fixing to get some stuff turned around.

[00:25:41] It's been long overdue.

[00:25:43] And I appreciate you, Pete.

[00:25:45] I enjoy your show.

[00:25:45] Thanks, Dave.

[00:25:46] I'm taking the call.

[00:25:47] Yes, sir.

[00:25:47] Merry Christmas.

[00:25:48] I appreciate the call.

[00:25:49] Well, yeah, I don't I mean, I think and Dan Bishop made a comment about this on Twitter, I think yesterday or yeah, I think it was yesterday, maybe day before.

[00:25:59] He said for the five years he was up in Congress, he was waiting for the, you know, some sort of dynamic to change because and that's remember, we talked with him after he announced he was going to run for attorney general and not go back to D.C.

[00:26:14] And he said, like, you're one of four hundred thirty five people up there and just the the way the system operates, you can't get anything done.

[00:26:22] And that's so I don't attribute that to Donald Trump, this deal getting nixed.

[00:26:29] I think this is all Elon Musk.

[00:26:31] I really do.

[00:26:33] I think this was Musk and to a lesser extent, Ramaswamy, but Musk is so wealthy and so influential on Twitter.

[00:26:44] That he just swamped the swamp.

[00:26:49] And I think that's a good thing.

[00:26:54] And he's doing it out in the open.

[00:26:55] He's not hiding.

[00:26:57] Right.

[00:26:57] He's not he's been very clear throughout the campaign when he was like, this stuff needs to change.

[00:27:04] I played for you the sound bites.

[00:27:05] He's been very explicit.

[00:27:07] We have to rein in the spending.

[00:27:08] This is going to destroy the country.

[00:27:10] We have got to do it now.

[00:27:13] And kudos to Trump for giving him the position to do this.

[00:27:20] And if this like this is their first scalp, this crammed of us.

[00:27:25] This is the doge committees or whatever, because it's not a department.

[00:27:29] It's not a it's not a government.

[00:27:31] It's not officially anything.

[00:27:32] They're not even getting paid for it.

[00:27:33] Right.

[00:27:34] So this is their first scalp.

[00:27:36] And it's a pretty big one.

[00:27:38] And if it leads to a simple CR, a clean CR continuing resolution.

[00:27:45] That gets us through the holiday.

[00:27:47] I am not like Trump and Vance put out this statement saying, oh, we should do it.

[00:27:51] An increase on the debt ceiling.

[00:27:54] No.

[00:27:55] No.

[00:27:56] And you're not going to get that done as part of a clean CR and a hurricane disaster relief unless you're going to say that you've got to lift the debt ceiling for the disaster relief.

[00:28:05] So we're going to take on debt in order to do the disaster relief.

[00:28:11] Like, we should not be raising the debt limit.

[00:28:15] And especially I don't you do it.

[00:28:18] What between now and midnight tomorrow?

[00:28:20] You think that's going to happen because that's where we're at.

[00:28:23] We're on a deadline now.

[00:28:24] And so now you're into the shutdown politics and the optics of a shutdown and all of that.

[00:28:33] Stan wants to know if you're not an essential government employee, why do you have the job in the first place?

[00:28:38] Unless, of course, it's some form of entitlement jobs programs.

[00:28:41] That's look.

[00:28:42] Milton Friedman talked about this 40 years ago.

[00:28:46] Where the vast majority of, you know, government programs, almost all of them, he said the only one he could identify.

[00:28:52] And this was 40 years ago.

[00:28:53] I'm sure it's gotten worse.

[00:28:54] But the only program he could identify back then that actually benefited the poor.

[00:29:00] Of all the programs that were supposedly designed to help the poor, the only one that actually benefits the poor.

[00:29:07] More so than any other class.

[00:29:10] Food stamps.

[00:29:13] Direct payment to the person to go buy food.

[00:29:18] Everything else is essentially a jobs program for the middle class.

[00:29:25] Think about it.

[00:29:26] They have to administer the programs.

[00:29:28] So you get hired to go to work for the government where you get a middle class salary to administer a program for the poor.

[00:29:36] Right?

[00:29:38] See the problem there?

[00:29:40] The person who's administering the program is getting more money to administer the program than a poor person gets through the program.

[00:29:49] I'm sure it's not gotten any better.

[00:29:50] Let me get Spencer on before the break.

[00:29:52] Hey, Spencer, I got about 30 seconds for you.

[00:29:54] What's up?

[00:29:55] What happened to the 27th Amendment?

[00:29:58] I mean, what it says is Congress can't give themselves a raise that goes into effect before the next election.

[00:30:06] That's 2026.

[00:30:09] No law varying the compensation for services of the senators shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

[00:30:19] Yes.

[00:30:19] And the senators, that's a staggered bunch because their elections are staggered.

[00:30:25] But the Congress, I mean, the next election is 2026.

[00:30:28] So that...

[00:30:29] Well, by that, but if you're thinking, but if that's the case, then Spencer, they would never be able to do it.

[00:30:33] An election just happened.

[00:30:34] This is the lame duck class.

[00:30:37] So you can't vote yourself, you can't vote yourself the pay raise before the election.

[00:30:43] So they just had the election.

[00:30:45] Now they're leaving.

[00:30:46] So anybody who got voted out wouldn't get that pay raise that would start the next year.

[00:30:50] So I think like the election intervened.

[00:30:55] So they would vote themselves a pay raise before the next class comes in.

[00:31:00] I think that's the point.

[00:31:01] Good question, though.

[00:31:02] All right.

[00:31:03] That'll do it for this episode.

[00:31:04] Thank you so much for listening.

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