On Tuesday’s Mark Levin show, Republicans in Congress should fight and get the best budget we can, but in the end it will take a Convention of States. Even Ronald Reagan, the most popular president in American history, could not significantly cut the Federal budget because that is how the Washington machine is built – how can we expect Kevin McCarthy to be able to do what Reagan couldn’t? Mitch McConnell is escaping all criticism for this budget disaster while the House breaks their backs trying to fix the mess he allowed to happen. Nothing will stop Democrats from spending us into oblivion unless they are fundamentally stopped by the Constitution; even then they may not adhere to it, but at that point it’s all over anyway. Also, Mark speaks with Fox News host and author Gregg Jarrett about his new book, The Trial of the Century.
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Photo by Stefan Zaklin
The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.
Rough transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
Hello America, Mark Levin here our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. I purposely didn’t post stuff over the holiday weekend. Regarding this budget and the and the dead and the debt ceiling and so forth, because I haven’t read it yet. But even more than that, Twitter and so forth, it’s just not the right place to have a discussion about this. I’m not. Despite the fact that I post, I’m not one of these social media warriors. I watch people who are in their thirties, in their twenties. They have these damn iPhones on 100% of the time. And what I was doing this weekend. Was finishing my the edits on my project. Which I think is more important than constant Twittering, because ten days from now, you’re not even going to know what anybody said. So I took a lot of time today going over this. And what you’re hearing is a lot of superficiality. In many respects, I read the Heritage Foundation objections. I think the president of Heritage Foundation is a terrific guy. I’ve never met him. I’ve never spoken to. But it wasn’t particularly persuasive. I heard what I read, what The New York Post wrote. In favor of the deal. I didn’t think they was particularly persuasive. I read what our friends at the Washington Examiner wrote. I didn’t find that particularly persuasive in favor of it. I watched this guy, Dan Bishop, on the steps of the Capitol. He certainly wasn’t very persuasive. He didn’t say anything other than grouse. Stephen Moore, somebody I respect a lot. He supports it. Newt Gingrich. I guess he’s a sellout and a liberal, too. He supports it. But none of that matters to me. None of it. I don’t care who supports it and who opposes it. Just like you. We have to make up our own minds. It’s not good enough anymore to say so-and-so opposes it, so I oppose it. So-and-so supports it. So I support it. I want to read something to you from 2015. An entire book on the debt, plunder and deceit. My book. On the debt. Chapter two George Mason University Economics Professor, Dr. Walter Williams. Riley describes the underlying pathology driving the nation to economic and financial ruin as immoral problem. He said we’d be become an immoral people, demanding that Congress forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another. Deficits and runaway national debt are merely symptoms of that real problem. Williams stated that nearly 75% of today’s federal spending can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American to give to another through thousands of handout programs such as farm subsidies, business bailouts and welfare. Dr. Thomas Sole. Senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. He said there was a time when the purpose of taxes was to pay the inevitable cost of government. To the political left. However, taxes have long been seen as a way to redistribute income and to finance other social experiments based on liberal ideology. And I added the consequences of the rising generation, meaning the one behind us. The consequences for them and future generations of this immoral, politically expedient and economically ruinous behavior and policies are unambiguous. As evidenced by statistic after statistic which are mainly ignored, discounted or excused by most of the media, academia and, of course, governing statists. Now I want to read something to you that came out earlier this month. I haven’t seen a single so-called conservative columnist even talk about it, let alone write about it. And this will be in my new book because I went through it quite extensively. But it’s not what the whole thing is about. The Government Accountability Office is probably the best office in the government. It has the role of looking at the finances of the country. And you may not know this. But about three weeks ago, I released the nation’s fiscal health roadmap needed to address projected unsustainable debt levels. Not a single one of those conservatives in the House who oppose this have even mentioned this. Not a single one of those conservatives prior to this deal even talked about it, even wrote about it. And yet I got to keep hearing them go on and on and on. That’s the problem with Washington. Here’s the facts from then. Ready. And bureaucrats don’t normally talk like this. The federal government faces an unsustainable fiscal future. That’s the first sentence. If policies don’t change, debt will continue to grow faster than the economy. Our review of the nation’s fiscal health found one large annual budget deficits drive debt growth as the government borrows to finance spending that exceeds revenue to interest costs, rise and make up a larger share of total spending as overall debt and interest rates increase over the long term. Three risks include delays in raising or suspending the debt limit and events such as natural disasters. The federal government faces an unsustainable long term fiscal future. The end of fiscal year 2022. Now, that would be September 30th of last year. Debt held by the public was about 97% of gross domestic product. Projections from the Office of Management and Budget and the CBO and GAO all show that current fiscal policy is unsustainable over the long term. Debt held by the public is projected to grow at a faster pace than the size of the economy. And they talk about by 2051, by 2051, the size of the economy will be twice excuse me, the size of the government will be twice the size of the economy. Now think about that. Increasingly large deficits, they say, drive unsustainable debt levels. Unsustainable debt levels. Now, this is dire. That’s the government. The government watchdog. So what does this deal do? What does this deal do? Putting aside names and people lobbying me and writing me or going on TV, beating their chests. First, let’s start with some political reality. There are some people who would never support anything. One guy who voted against even the proposal that the Republicans put on the table. Says, I could never support this. He never supports anything. So it’s difficult when you have, what, a five member majority or so a give or take in the House of Representatives to accommodate somebody like that. Number two, McCarthy is working with a very, very thin majority, as I said. And I would guess about a half a dozen of them. We’re prepared to vote down anything. And it’s very unlikely that Biden. That Biden. He would simply sign off on what the Republicans passed because that would endanger his presidency and drive his party further, further nuts than it is. Number three? It’s strange how silent Mitch McConnell is about all this. And the Senate Republicans generally, other than the conservatives. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, a handful of others. But where is the Republican leadership in the Senate? Why are they sitting back and waiting for other people to carry to carry the load? In fact, they don’t tell us what it is that they would or wouldn’t accept. Not that it would matter to me or you, but why? Don’t think. So it’s left to the house. The Senate Republicans. Are able 100%. Now when you hear or read. What they say they’ve accomplished. It sounds pretty good. The problem is it’s not good enough. I’m not going to sit here and go through my notes with you and some of the traps and some of the loopholes that are in this. Kevin McCarthy is not. Somebody who wants to go along with Biden or. Want us to support what’s taking place in this country. I don’t know why anybody wants to be speaker these days. And what’s interesting is the 20 or so original opponents. A McCarthy. They couldn’t cobble again together 21 people to vote for anybody. So they all pat themselves on the back for moving McCarthy to the right. Apparently, by their own definition, they didn’t move far enough. But they had no Kennedy. None. I happen to think he’s an earnest man. So the people who trashed me for trashing him again. Yet. Last week they thought he was doing a great job. I asked a couple of these people who were of the 20 before last week, what did they tell you on the show? They think he’s doing a great job. But this proposal doesn’t go far enough. It simply doesn’t. If a two year. Debt cap that is raised by $4 trillion. $4 trillion. And part of the problem for McCarthy and for Biden is that some of the Biden people are going around telling everybody how they intend to get around caps. In other provisions. They will have been agreed to. And so Biden and the Democrats. Are not negotiating. In a way that’s reliable. They’re already telling us what they’re going to do. Now we can hold out. By my calculation, I took a sharp pencil at all of this. And the amount of money that comes into the federal government, certain things that are to be paid that have nothing to do with general operating expenses, and yet they really do because they destroyed the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare. So basically that comes out of general revenue, even though it’s not supposed to, but they play this game that it’s not. So let’s put that aside. By statute, those programs are to continue to pay. So what you really have here in the big lie you’ve been hearing is that we don’t is a several month period where the governor. Continue to function. And as time goes on, they have to reprioritize what they’re going to spend their money on. And the president can do that. He doesn’t want to do that. And in the Democrats, you’re dealing with kamikazes. You’re dealing with people who would be perfectly happy to see this country collapse. So my own view is more time should have been taken. And can still be taken. They get even a better deal. It may not be the deal. That some who claim to be conservative would want. But I suspect it could be better. And therefore I’m not voting. But I think they ought to take another look at this. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
See the reason you need to think about this independent of everybody else. What this proposal does, despite what some of the kamikazes have to say and I’ll deal with them in a minute. It cuts some spending, just not enough. I don’t know of any budget in my lifetime that cut one nickel from spending. They’ll bring a boner. Maynor. Rayner was a disaster. But in the last ten years I looked at this. There really hasn’t been any. And there are efforts to cap. Spending when they don’t have an agreement to 99%, which is effectively a 1% cut. So there are there are earnest efforts here that ought not be attacked to try and do something about this budget, given the fact that you got a five vote majority or whatever it is in the House, no support in the Senate, and a nut job in the in the Oval Office just doesn’t go far enough.
Segment 3
You know, as I watch this unfold, people are going on television and you’re out there probably confused as hell because everybody sounds like they know what they’re talking about except this guy, that bishop, he sounded like an idiot. But nonetheless. When you hear Chip Roy makes a hell of a lot of sense. Chip’s a dear friend of mine. When you hear some of these other people, they make a lot of sense, too. But the numbers are the numbers. And here’s something you and I have always known. Washington will never and ultimately can never fix Washington. Even conservatives who live and work in Washington, D.C. or. Maybe they used to, and now they’ve moved somewhere else. They believe Washington can fix Washington. I believe that’s going to be very tough. It’s very tough to do. You can have an impact. There’s no question about it. But the reason why I support convention of states because I’m convinced that the only way. To fundamentally alter the trajectory of this country. He is not watching TV and listening to the politicians or reading columns by all those who claim to be expert. So all the rest of it. It’s by taking the power out of Washington. And we’re already organized. To fight this. And we have been for several years now. Through convention of states. And what we’re going to do here is keep a list of every single member. Who votes against. This proposal. And I’m going to ask Mark Meckler. The big muckety market convention is states. To tell us how many of those members have been actively involved in convention of states. I don’t mean issued a statement saying they’re supporting it. How many of them have been actively involved in. Because that’s the real pushback. It’s not Kevin McCarthy. Or any other speaker. This government in Washington cannot fix itself. Again, a chunk could be taken out of it here or there. How many people that you listened to or listened to today? On radio and TV. How many politicians who you view as your North Star? How many of them? On TV or elsewhere today mentioned convention of state. None of them. Maybe there is unserious is everybody else. It’s not like they don’t know about it. Andy Biggs of Arizona wrote a book against it and obstructed it while he was the Senate president in Arizona. And when he left, as soon as he left. It flew right through the Senate and the House and was signed by the governor. Excuse me. Signed by the governor. It went through the Senate. In the House. Right here. Right here. One of the things that I’ve been pushing for through this convention of states. And it’s not like this is new. We’ve been talking about this for a long, long time. This book, the Liberty Amendments, is is ten years old. Spending. Section one Congress shall adopt a preliminary fiscal budget no later than the first Monday in May for the following fiscal year and submit said budget to the president for consideration. They’re always late. So it needs to be in the Constitution. Section two. Shall Congress fail to adopt a final fiscal year budget prior to the start of each fiscal year, which shall commence on October 1st of each year. And so the president failed to sign said budget into law and automatic across the board 5% reduction in expenditures from the prior year budget shall be imposed for the fiscal year in which the budget has not been adopted. Certainly then Congress would adopt this. Of course not. Section three total outlays of the United States government for any fiscal year shall not exceed its receipts for that fiscal year. Section four. And by the way, that’s how most states have to operate. Total outlays of the United States government for each fiscal year shall not exceed 17.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product for the previous calendar year. Section five. Total receipts shall include all receipts to the United States Government, but shall not include those derived from borrowing. Total outlays should include all outlays of the United States government, except those for the repayment of the debt principle. In other words, we want to get paid down. Section six. Congress may provide for a one year suspension of one or more of the preceding sections in this article by a 3/5 vote in both houses of Congress, provided the vote is conducted by Roll Call and sets forth the specific excess of outlays over receipts or outlays over 17.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product. Now, why do I provide that provision? Because if we go to war, if we’re attacked. We’ll need to spend more money than we normally do. But you need 3/5 of both houses. For a one year suspension. Section seven the limit on the debt of the United States held by the public shall not be increased unless 3/5 of both houses of Congress shall provide for such an increase by roll call vote. Section eight This amendment shall take effect in the fourth fiscal year after its ratification so they can ramp up for. But you see, the rules haven’t changed, ladies and gentlemen, and a small majority in the House can have a big impact, but it cannot have a big enough impact. So the senators and congressmen. We do this. We need to do that. We need to do this. Okay, Greg. Let’s see if you’re really prepared to help us do what really needs to be done. I have to go back and check. I think 17 state legislatures have already signed on the convention of states with virtually no public support. With virtually no public campaign. Could be 18, maybe 19. We need 34. And I guarantee if we got to 20, we get the public’s attention. Excuse me. We get the Congress’s attention. But it also included in this amendment taxing authority. Congress shall not collect more than 15% of a person’s annual income from whatever source derived person shall include natural and legal persons. By the way, again, Congress would never do this. Look at it this way. We’d be doing it to Congress. Section two, The deadline for filing federal income tax returns shall be the day before the date set for elections to federal office. Why? Why? Because you pay your taxes and you vote the next day. That’s why might change your attitude, not yours. You know what I mean? Section three Congress shall not collect taxes on the displayed decedent’s estate. No more of this double taxation stuff. Section four. Congress shall not institute a value added tax or national sales tax or any other tax in kind of form. The point here is if you don’t do that, then they’ll say, okay, fine, we won’t raise the income tax, but we’ll create new taxes. So no, we won’t. Section five. This amendment shall take effect in the fourth fiscal year after its ratification. So this is what is proposed. We have 17, 18 or 19 state legislatures who want a convention of states. The second wave amending the Constitution. We need 3438 to ratify. And I want to know that’s pretty tough language here. I want to know how many of these 27 so far? 27. We’re going to vote. Because they’re fiscal conservatives. You know, I’m going to want to know how many of them. Not just endorse this. This constitutional effort under Article five. This is exactly what George Mason had in mind. But I want to know if anybody has lifted a finger to help it. And that’s why I want to get Maclaurin here perhaps tomorrow and ask him, because that’s what you should be asking all of them. And I happen to know some of them. Where among the toughest talkers opposed. Opposing. So I. I think there’s a lot of people. Who could be held to account. Most of all, Biden and the Democrat. Most of all, Republicans that have gone along with this spending all these decades. The McConnell lights. No question about that. I do not bear any. Animosity toward people who are trying to do the right thing and take the ball as far as they can, because the circumstances of which this government operates now and the way it’s set up is almost mind numbing. And I do support those who speak out and want to continue to speak out. Against a nation that is spiraling toward. Financial disaster. You know, it’s like Clarence Thomas we’ve talked about and Antonin Scalia. Not perfect analogy, but good enough they would comment the Constitution pretty much from the same perspective. Not 100%. But pretty much. And sometimes they would have a different outcome. One would vote one way and one would vote another. That doesn’t mean you hate Scalia or hate Clarence Thomas. You disagree with one or the other? Maybe you disagree with both. Maybe you agree with both. I don’t know. And so I think that’s the situation that exists today. And every one of those 20. No damn well. That we should fight, that we should get the best we can. That we should do the best we can. But in the end. It’s going to take a convention of states. I’m not the only one who’s come to that conclusion, ladies and gentlemen. Many, many others have. You know who came to that conclusion early on? Milton Friedman. I didn’t even realize it until I went back and I read Free to Choose. I got all the way to the back and he says, There’s one way that we can control this, that in the end, he said, Article five. Oracle five. I’ll be right back.
Segment 4
You know, I sit here and I write a little scribble notes to myself, just thinking back to the Reagan days. Reagan how to build up the United States military after Carter. He needed to beat the Soviet Union. He needed to breathe life back into the economy with the greatest tax cuts in American history. And for his time in office. Can you really compare it to the numbers today, which are astronomical? Reagan was unable to cut the debt. In fact, he added to the debt. He’s still, in my view, the number three greatest president in American history for everything he did. But why do I mention this now? For two reasons. If Reagan couldn’t get it done. What makes you think? McCarthy can. I think they can do better. Which is my point. But doing better isn’t even good enough. And people are frustrated. You’re frustrated. A lot of people are frustrated. So I want you to try and join us for a convention of states. And number two. The reason I endorse conventional states after stoning it and reading it all this time is I realized if Reagan couldn’t significantly cut the debt, it’s going to be difficult for anybody to do it because he was enormously popular. He won 59% of the vote in 1984. No Republicans are going to do that again. And he won more Electoral College votes than any president in American history. And he still couldn’t cut the debt because the system in Washington is corrupt. It is institutionally and fundamentally built. To do the opposite of what you should be done. And how come? Mitch McConnell. Escaped criticism amazes me. He got these guys in the house breaking their backs. And the Senate. They just sit there. I mean, Mike Lee got 43 of his colleagues in the Senate to agree to what was proposed by the House. And yet Mike Lee isn’t the leader of the Republicans over there. Where is the leader of the Republicans? Where’s the number two? The number three. The number four. The number five. This, too, is a huge problem. They don’t go into there to see Biden. As united leaders has united leaders and indeed the Democrats see that to. All right. I’ll be right back.