Santa Claus Wins, Bloated Budget Passes

CLAY: The budget is underway. It’s $3.5 trillion, and the infrastructure bill snowed under. We would have spent a lot of time talking about this as well, passed in the Senate 69-30. So 19 different Republican senators ended up supporting the Joe Biden-driven infrastructure bill.

BUCK: There’s not enough political will to fight against Santa Claus. When the goody bag of federal spending is opened up, even Republicans decide, “You know what? I might as well get some if everyone’s getting some,” and very few are willing to say the long-term projections about what it will mean for our economy. Not even that long term, by the way. I mean, inflation is already kicking in now.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: And the thing about inflation you look at historically, when it starts to happen, the government always says, “Oh, it’s not gonna be that bad,” and then it tends to get a lot worse and then it reaches the point where they say, “Wow. We’re not actually particularly good at trying to control or handle this. Let’s just hope for the best.”

I’m very concerned about that. But right now there’s not the political will nor are there the votes. The truest thing that Obama ever said or is credited with saying is, “Elections have consequences,” and, Clay, I hate to be that guy but we needed to win one of those two Georgia Senate seats.

CLAY: Yeah, that’s what’s so frustrating about this is it’s not even the presidential election, right? Which is frustrating in its own right, but then you got double Senate races in Georgia. All you have to do is win one out of those two and… Just think about trillions of dollars less are going to be spent. People talking about how much Senate campaigns cost and how much electoral races end up costing. That race, those two races in Georgia — in terms of money being spent, tax increases being passed, all of that — had trillions of dollars at stake, and Republicans lost both.

BUCK: This is also an end run in a sense on the system we actually have because a lot of what is getting included. So we have to remember there’s the infrastructure piece and the budget bill, right? Two separate things. The infrastructure piece that the Republicans have voted for is mostly what you’d consider to be infrastructure in some capacity.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There’s some things wrong about it.

CLAY: It’s broadly defined.

BUCK: It’s broadly defined but there is roads and bridges money. How will it be spent? Will it be efficient? No, it will not be efficient. Will there be tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse? Yes, there will. Okay. We know all that. But the part of it that should be more concerning is in this budget bill, which they’re gonna push through with reconciliation by really these lawyerly tricks of pretending that anything that touches on the budget can be part of a budget reconciliation maneuver, even if it’s a tenuous connection. Things like amnesty. “Oh, yeah, well, that means there will be more people on the welfare rolls. So that’s a budget issue now.” That’s their actual justification. I’m not making it up. That’s their actual claim.

CLAY: No, that’s the argument.

BUCK: That’s the argument they’re making. They’re trying to legislate without the actual majorities, without the actual will of the people behind them to do it. The Democrats are trying to sneak through their agenda with a razor-thin margin in the House, a 50-50 Senate, and they think now is the time…?

After we spent, what, $5 trillion deeper into the hole last year, now is the time to pass not only an enormous spending package but tremendous tax increases, all kinds of regulation? Clay, this bill is thousands of pages. We’re gonna have to go through this thing and look into it in detail to see what’s really in there but what it just becomes is a Trojan horse for the leftist agenda of the Democrats that’s hidden in the actual pages of a bill that nobody’s gonna read that they call “spending.”

CLAY: And, by the way, it’s also set up to be retroactive, which I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about. That means that whatever tax you’re paying in 2021, you don’t even know what it is yet. For everybody out there who runs businesses and is trying to figure out, “Hey, what is budget our gonna be? What’s our cost structure gonna be? Who can we hire? What can we afford?”

You don’t even know what your tax rates are gonna be on a corporate tax level. If you have capital gains — let’s say you’re selling a home like a lot of people are out there — you don’t know what your capital gains cost basis are gonna be, what sort of dollars you are gonna owe. It’s madness.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

JORDAN: You’re exactly right. That’s the position we should take. Unfortunately, some of the senators — Republican senators — chose to go along with this so-called infrastructure bill. I mean, Maria when have you ever seen an infrastructure bill that had the word “equity” in it over 60 times? That’s part of this $1.2 trillion or whatever it is, is not really infrastructure.

And now we got the $3.5 trillion or whatever that’s gonna be coming after. Again, this is all part of the Democrats’ ridiculous economic plan. Here’s their economic plan: Lock down your economy; spend like crazy; pay people not to work — and, oh, by the way, for all you Americans who have been working hard? We’re gonna raise your taxes. Those are four stupid ideas. That’s the crazy economic plan, and the idea that you had Republican senators go along with some of this makes no sense to me.

BUCK: Jim Jordan with a double-leg takedown and a half nelson of the Democrats spending.

CLAY: Well done.

BUCK: Thank you. Thank you. I did a little wrestling back in the day.

CLAY: Did you really?

BUCK: Oh, I did, yeah. Yeah. I was pretty good, for whatever it’s worth. Welcome to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. Waiting for you to upset our wrestling fans soccer fans, Travis.

CLAY: No. You did soccer, I knew. I didn’t know you did wrestling, too.

BUCK: Did a little boxing, did a little wrestling. Gotta be able to deal with the commies when they get a little out of line.

CLAY: Boxing in school?

BUCK: No, I was at a program called Saturday Morning Boys in New York City at the New York Athletic Club.

CLAY: Yeah, we’ve got… Actually, my wife has a pro-boxing fight to her credit.

BUCK: That’s amazing, by the way. Does that ever creep up in the back of your mind when she’s saying, “Hey, we’re going to go to this restaurant,” you think, “My wife can really throw a punch so I’m just gonna go with it”?

CLAY: He’s 1-0 she won her fight, she’s five two, 105 pounds, probably, a rough registration.

BUCK: The true athlete of the Sexton family is my mother, Mrs. Sexton, who was a professional ballet dance at one of the top companies in the country.

CLAY: That’s a pretty big deal.

BUCK: Pound for pound, gymnasts and ballet dancers among the strongest people you’ll ever find.

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: They actually studied this. Yeah.

CLAY: No doubt. That is… Well, props to Mrs. Sexton. I didn’t know that. Yes. So we actually have a boxing trainer that we work out with twice a week. Early this morning, I did seven rounds.

BUCK: Is it Tae Bo or do you guys actually hit the bags?

CLAY: No, it’s boxing. This is a professional boxing trainer. So, I’m not getting hit back; so it’s not like I’m sparring, which is… Yeah.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: I’m throwing punches.

BUCK: That’s the one thing about boxing that I learned the hard way is you can enjoy other sports when you lose. Like I’ve lost basketball games.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I’ve played in tennis matches and you’re having fun.

CLAY: It was a good experience.

BUCK: It was a good experience, spar hard. You lose in boxing, you’re like, I don’t know if I want to do this again. That wasn’t cool. That wasn’t fun.

CLAY: It’s also there’s something definitely crystallizing about somebody being able to hit you.

BUCK: And when you’re tired, by the way. You’re already tired, and then you’re getting hit. Same thing’s true in wrestling, though, if you get slammed to the canvas, which is like also happening. I guess it’s not really canvas. You know what I mean. (laughing) That’s the WWE. To the mat. To the mat. There we go.

But, Clay, I want to bring us in with the Jim Jordan comment because it’s amazing. Democrats 50-50 in the Senate. It’s a tiny majority in the House. Joe Biden, it just feels like this guy is barely even there. And they know how to work the system. They know every trick in the book and that’s what they’re doing right now about this massive spending bill. They’re getting through their agenda just using the power of the purse instead of actual legislation.