Congressman Bruce Westerman on the NEPA Bill and Richard Rubin's Tax Policy Insights
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, we just jump right into it. We're getting rolling. Our first guest up today is Congressman Bruce Westerman. He represents Arkansas' 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House, where he serves on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. And as chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, Congressman Westerman, welcome to the program.

Well, great to be with you, and thanks for having me on. Thank you. So, Congressman, there is a policy, an act called the National Environmental Policy Act, or as... Protection Act. Protection Act, and as the bureaucrats call it, NEPA. Why does this need modernizing, and what are you trying to accomplish with the modernization of it? Well, it's an old law that was well-meaning, but like a lot of laws that Congress passes over time, the...

lawyers and bureaucrats figure out how to weaponize those laws. And it's maybe the thing the fewest people have heard about that's doing more to harm development and energy security and all kinds of things that affects every American. But most people don't know about the National Environmental Protection

policy act or the ramifications that it has, but we, we see a NEPA review process taking on average four and a half years, but sometimes it looks, it takes decades to,

to get through the process for the federal government to say okay you can develop this mine you can produce energy on this federal land or you can build a bridge across this river or you can build this port or build the highway or you can manage the forest it

It affects every single thing that the federal government has a nexus to. And unfortunately, in our world today, that's just about everything. So, for example, we passed this infrastructure bill. It's a lot of other things that weren't infrastructure. But how does this act prevent us moving quickly on doing infrastructure, highways, bridges? I mean, give our audience an example of what it does.

So there's an example in my state. There's Interstate 49 that's got the last section to be built is in my district. Interstate 49 runs from New Orleans all the way up to Kansas City. It's a major, important interstate. But just to do the environmental permitting to say we're going to –

put this highway in would take years to go through all of the process to have public hearings to, um,

address every concern anybody could possibly come up with, whether it's a real concern or not. And what it does, it gives really radical environmental groups that oftentimes are in cohorts with this administration an opportunity to come in and say, well, have you thought about this? We don't like this.

and we're gonna file suit in the court. And we got another law called the Equal Access to Justice Act, or you'll hear it called EJA, which actually pays people to sue the federal government. So a lot of times you got lawyers who are making money by suing the federal government while the federal government pays them their legal expenses. - Congressman, I'm glad you brought that up 'cause that's where my next question was gonna go.

Is it possible that if, for instance, we have Donald Trump in the White House, we have Republicans take the House and Senate, there could be movement on reforming NIA? Because that one, you know, you watch it. It's understandable if somebody sues the federal government and they win, they should get their legal fees. But you have all these firms that literally exist just to sue the government over and over to delay every project. And they lose like 96 percent of these suits. Right.

It is just totally deleterious to our economy and our future. Right. And it's not about winning. It's about collecting those Washington, D.C. lawyer fees, even if you're working out of a basement in Washington state. But we have here in Arizona, for instance, we have the Center for Biological Diversity. All they do is file these suits. Right.

Right. And here's the other part of that. They they file a suit. And oftentimes this goes through an administrative law judge, which is part of an agency, and they will settle the suit.

And the federal government will pay on the settlement fee, and all of that is sealed. So we never know how much money these radical groups are getting from the government in what is classically called sue and settle. And they're also using those agreements to actually change the law behind the scenes, right?

Exactly. So you've got the great example, the defenders of wildlife were invited by the Democrats to testify at one of our committee meetings. And we did some research and saw the millions of dollars of grants that the Biden administration has given the defenders of wildlife. And you also look and the defenders of wildlife have sued the Biden administration over a dozen times.

And it's kind of like, we're in this agency, and we're going to defend the government's position that we don't really like, but we would hate it if you sued us, wink, wink, here's a grant. And they sue, and then the agency settles with them, which actually changes the rules

and accomplishes what the agency was wanting to accomplish in the first place, but it looks like it was because of some suit filed against them. And then those records are sealed. So the public has no idea how much money an agency paid an outside group to come in and sue them and settle.

Going back to the administrative law judges, is it something that Republicans should be pushing for to get rid of that system entirely, to move that back into courts of public courts?

You know, you've got the Article 3 courts, and these are actually Article 2 courts because they're buried within agencies. And this all started back with the Administrative Powers Act with FDR. And you can see that after that law was passed, the size of the federal bureaucracy just grew exponentially. And the thought was that

Article III courts, the judicial system, they didn't have enough expertise to handle these specific technical issues that were coming up before the agencies. So what these agencies were able to do was to create their own administrative courts as part of the agency. And if you think about it, they've got bureaucrats that are writing rules. So it's like they're legislating within the agency. Every one of these agencies...

almost has some kind of enforcement, some kind of law enforcement, oftentimes armed. So they've basically got the three powers of government contained within an agency of legislating, enforcing, and interpreting the law.

And I believe the recent Supreme Court decision that pushed back on Chevron is also an opportunity to push back on this system that has really grown out of control. And that's why when people talk about the fourth branch of government,

these agencies are what they're talking about. And it's its own little fiefdom here in D.C. It's oftentimes it's people that are totally out of touch with reality in the rest of the country. And they're sitting in some cubicle, unelected, making the laws, enforcing the laws, and interpreting the laws. Government by shadow bubble. Right.

Congressman, I want to touch real quick on two other things that you're working on, and then we want to move on to the budget fight, the annual budget disaster that's going on. But you're working on some reform for the Endangered Species Act and the Fix Our Forest Act.

Tell us real quick what is on the table with those. So the Endangered Species Act is another very well-meaning law, and it's popular among people. We all want to make sure we keep species here and protect them, but it's been weaponized as bad as NEPA, and it can be used to shut down basically anything. And you've got an overzealous administration that's, you know, one of the things they really

push for something called critical habitat designation. And they're saying that there may be an endangered species over here, and we've never seen one over here, but, you know, there's some habitat over here that this species could possibly live in. So we're going to block off this area as well for any kind of development in the name of protecting the endangered species. And I call it Hotel California because it has –

utterly failed in its stated goal of recovering species. Only 3% of species that have ever been put on the Endangered Species Act have been recovered. And once a species gets on the list, they can never leave. So it's like we're in California. Darwin has proved more resilient than the Endangered Species Act.

And it's a shame because it has been used for good. You can look at the eagle, the grizzly bear. And right now, even the Obama administration said the gray wolf has been recovered. But because of lawsuits and pushback, you can't even take the gray wolf off the endangered species list. So it's being used as a weapon to stop any kind of project.

somebody wants to stop. But the leverage that we're starting to get right now, all the Green New Deal stuff that the Democrats have approved so much money for, they're finding out they can't build their windmills and solar farms and transmission lines.

either because these same groups will oppose everything. And they use the same laws that they've been using against oil and gas and pipelines and roads and bridges and Navajo waterways and forestry management. They're using that against the stuff the far left wants now. When your income is dependent on one particular activity, it's likely you'll keep doing it.

Congressman, we have just two minutes left here with you. Tell us real quick about what's going on with the budget fight. I got to be honest, we're big budget cutters here, but this does not seem like the time to have a government shutdown that would likely cost us the House, potentially the Senate and the presidency.

And I don't think we're going to have one. Unfortunately, I thought Speaker Johnson had a great idea. I believe maybe it was Chip Roy's idea. Whoever's idea it was to put the SAVE Act with the CR down.

I thought that was great. We should have done it early in September. And even though Chuck Schumer says there's no way he's going to pass it, let him spend a month telling the American people why he didn't want to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and why that was worth shutting the government down over. We've

We've kind of missed the opportunity for that because September 30th is a deadline, and it's unfortunate that some of my good friends and colleagues on my side of the aisle didn't see it that way. So I think that's going to force us into some kind of short-term clean CR to keep the government open through the election. It's the same thing every cycle, every cycle. It's just getting nauseous.

It is. I could do a one-hour show on what we need to do on the budget, but I know we haven't got time for that. Can we bring you back and have you do that? You bet. I'd love to do that. All right, then we're going to schedule and get you back. Yeah, we'll do the whole hour. Let's do it. Let's plan it. Kyle, let's get that scheduled. You're right in our wheelhouse there, Congressman. Thank you so much for joining us today. Congressman Westerman represents Arkansas' 4th Congressional District. Congressman, how do people follow you and support your work?

They can go to Westerman.house.gov and, you know, those search engines work great. Bruce Westerman and you'll find probably more stuff about me than you ever wanted to know. And part of it, part of it may even be true. Have a fantastic weekend, Congressman. Thank you for joining us. And we'll talk to you real soon for the hour discussion on the budget.

Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Our next guest up today is going to be Richard Rubin, U.S. tax policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he focuses on the intersection of taxes, legislation, politics and economics. Before we get going with that, folks.

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So, Richard, you wrote a great article this week about how the federal debt is soaring. And, you know, I remember past presidential elections. This is more of the Clinton and Bush years and Obama years where this was actually a debate issue, a talking point. And no one talks about it anymore because we've just seems like both parties have thrown up their hands and don't pretend that they can fix it or something. How bad is our national debt crisis?

The big problem is we don't know how bad it is. We're at a point now, let me just give you some numbers and talk about how bad it is. We're at a point where the budget deficit, the annual gap between revenue and spending is $1.9 trillion or so, which is 6% of GDP. That's pretty big, historically. The debt itself, the publicly held debt, is about 100% of GDP, basically like World War II levels.

And so if you would ask a bunch of experts 10, 15, 20 years ago, what would happen if we were running 6% deficit and that was 100% of GDP? People would be like, this is really bad. It would be like all the interest rate spikes and flow growth and whatever. But that hasn't really happened. And so I think one of the challenges is knowing – is for people to try and think about when is it actually –

causing problems for Americans? And when are people kind of feeling and end up better off because they're getting government every day on a discount? Well, and right now you have both campaigns acting like they have monopoly money. I'm not going to tax tips. We're not going to do anything. I mean, both sides. We're not doing anything on Social Security. Much as Kamala likes to say Trump's going to do something on Social Security, he's not. He has no desire to do anything. I mean, it's just it's monopoly money. They act like it's not real.

Right. I mean, to be clear, as we point out in the story, whether you agree with her tax increases or not, she's laid out roughly enough tax increases to cover the cost of a lot of the stuff she wants to do. Especially after the past week or two where he's talked about

repealing or restoring the full deduction for state and local taxes and not taking overtime pay, he's got way more promises than he can pay for. So they are different. But like directionally, yes, there's like a lot of promises happening right now. And certainly the idea of reducing the deficit is not where they're heading at all. We're talking with Richard Rubin, U.S. tax policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Richard,

Are people in D.C., what are they saying about some of these Trump proposals? Because we were just talking about that off air before we began the program today. We've both been in politics for a long time. Neither of us feel like Trump is moving the needle at all with these consecutive giveaways that he keeps piling on top of one another. It just seems like it is a path to nowhere, that he is making promises that will make a problem worse that aren't earning him any votes. Yeah.

I mean, you know, the first sort of big one on – which I think is one of the smaller ones, no tax on tips, I think we really probably –

had some benefit in Nevada. You saw that indicated by anything like the fact that Harris jumped right on board with that. That's a particular proposal that targeted a particular... That's a good point. ...that's in play, a battleground. Right. So I think that's a little different. The other ones, I mean, we polled the Social Security benefits tax thing. We repay income taxes on a portion of your Social Security, and it polled...

and we can see I had a story on this that ran last weekend, it polls incredibly well. I don't know whether that moves the needle in terms of people voting for him or not. And then now he's gone further. And I think what you've seen is, you know, Republicans on the Hill are like, okay, if

If he wins, we want to extend all the tax cuts that expire. And now he's got a bunch of other stuff that he also wants us to do. Like, how does that all fit together? And they don't have an answer on that yet. Like which, you know, which things are priorities for him, for them? And how do they all match? That's not at all clear what happens if they get the House, Senate and White House.

Well, we're now at the point where we're paying more on interest than national defense. Do people in D.C. understand that's not good? And that's also money that could be spent on other things if you're living within your budget? Yeah, I think there's like a general sense. You know, most members of Congress think it's a problem that the debt is where it is. They would rather have the debt be lower, have annual deficits be lower. I just think they have very different opinions.

uh, senses of what should be done about it. I mean, the, the democratic approach is very much, you know, saying that rich people aren't paying enough in taxes and taxes should go up. And that's kind of, you know, this is a revenue problem and that's where we should go. And you hear Republicans talking about, you know, trying to trim spending and, uh, focusing on, on spending being the problem. And, uh,

And then, as you noted, on Social Security and Medicare, those are so popular that neither side really wants to, you know, other than some stuff around the edges, really, you know, change the trajectory of those programs because people like them. So, you know, it's interesting. You talk about what people in D.C. think. In some ways, people in D.C. are, you know, the job title is representative, and that's interesting.

They are reflecting at some level what voters want, which is they want benefits and they don't like high taxes. Right. And this is where you end up. What is what is the best plan you've heard to stabilize Social Security? To me, it would seem like you've got to increase the payroll taxes. My recommendation would be increase them for all your income, but don't have the employer match after the 120, 130,000. That way it doesn't hurt businesses, but you keep paying towards it. But what are some what is a proposal you've heard that makes sense to you?

I mean, I'm going to avoid saying what I think makes sense, but I think the model, really, the last time that Social Security was touched was 1983, and it was the Ronald Reagan-Tip O'Neill deal. I was not around for that one. But the basic premise was that it was a long-term concept that was making smallish changes now or then that would play out over time. So those of us under a

particular age or, you know, the retirement age of 67 instead of 65 for full benefits. You know, there can be changes on payroll taxes and benefit structures. And it was a combination of revenue and spending. And so you kind of turn all those levers. There's a lot of dials in that program in terms of how benefits phase in and out and what the tax rates are and the tax limits. So it's, but I think the other, my other lesson from 1983 is,

is that they cut that deal a couple of months before automatic benefit cuts were about to happen. So, you know, even then, in this sort of idealized bipartisan deal, it was a last-minute scramble, and the trust funds will not have money to pay full benefits sometime in the early 2030s. So I think there's a lot of conversation and thought about it now, but I think it's realistically...

just politically realistically in early 2030s conversation for when they start turning those aisles. We have a minute left here in this segment. Who do you see on both sides of the aisle are sort of leaders on this issue or people who are speaking up about it and take it serious? And I know that number is probably few, but who are some names on the Democrat Republican side?

Yeah. I mean, you know, the people who are kind of in charge of the budget committees are the ones who are, who do take it seriously are the ones to watch. So in, you know, in the house that, you know, Jody Arrington from West Texas, who has been willing, you know, willing in our story to talk about some higher revenue paired with some significant spending cuts. And then his counterpart is Brendan Boyle from Philly. On the Senate side, there's a bunch of members with

you know, who are interested in this. Richard, let's carry this over to the next segment. We're going to go to the next segment real quick. This is Breaking Battlegrounds with Richard Rubin of The Wall Street Journal. We're talking budget deficits. We'll be right back.

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We are continuing on now with Richard Rubin, U.S. tax policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal. When we went to break, we're talking a little bit about some of the members who are taking the issues around the debt and deficit most seriously. Chuck, you were kind of just moving on to who in the Senate fits that. Yeah. So tell us in the Senate who you think – and like you said, in the House, it's pretty much committee chairs of those committees that are over this –

But also tell us, how much did the 2008 banking crisis and the COVID add to this national debt? I don't think people understand that we've had these two crises within two decades that just added trillions and trillions onto the debt.

Yeah, I think that's a good place to start. Look, if you look at the chart that we have on my story, if you're a Washington Journal subscriber, you can see it shows sort of big jumps up in debt and deficit around those periods. And so it's a decent-sized amount. And you have to think about what the alternative was. If you kind of think that

those two big government interventions of stimulus checks and whatever really kept the economy going, then maybe it was worth it to borrow and borrow pretty cheaply. I think the issue that we're facing now is somewhat different, where we're not in a crisis, we're not at war, we're not in a recession. It's just this structural imbalance between the spending commitments that the government has made and the revenue that it's bringing in.

Well, you write about this subject. I mean, you do tax policy and so forth. Does this subject cause you sometimes to lose a little sleep because you dive into it and you realize this can be a real problem if we don't start somehow chipping away at it? I lose sleep over lots of things. But is this part of that process? No.

So, no, I mean, I think this is, you know, this is just one of those. What I struggle with in looking at this story is we just don't know where the red line is and where, and it may not be a red line. This is, you know, you saw in the UK a couple of years ago, the bond market kind of, you know, revolt against the distrust of bonds.

proposals as prime minister that have the u.s we have some real advantages we right are the world's reserve currency we're the safest place to to borrow and so that's given us just a lot more running room than than other countries we are we are not greece we're almost too big to fail in some degree right if you're doing a radio show but but does something like bricks cause our currency to not become the major player anymore or do you think that's just smoke and mirrors

I think there's a, you know, that's the concern. If, you know, the entire global financial system shifts away from using U.S. Treasuries and the dollar as the coin of the realm, the common currency, then that is a potential real problem. Far be it for me to figure out what triggers that or when and how that happens. What do you see in terms of, you know, Trump, for instance, has floated this

easing of the cap on state and local tax deductions. As someone who lives in Arizona in a relatively low tax state, I was very happy to see that cap come into place. But the pressure for that has to be coming from the donor class more than his voter base, right?

Is that something that you think he could get other Republicans to move on? Because I would guess that's one of his proposals that's going to run into the most difficulty in Congress. It depends. So, you know, it's not just donor class. It is those sort of majority making Republican House members in New York, New Jersey and California. Yeah.

If they have 222 seats next year and need 218 to pass something and seven or eight to ten of them are from, you know, suburban, you know, from Long Island, Westchester County, New Jersey, those people are going to matter and they can hold out to get something that they want. So I think it's...

That's where it's true on the Democratic side, too, and the configuration is a little different. But that's where the pressure really is. It's like for those members, that is the thing that they're going to their districts right now as they run for reelection in tough seats and saying, I'm going to deliver on that. And so getting Trump to say that is a huge boost for them, for sure. And it can be a lot of money for constituents in their district. Richard Rubin.

Oh, yeah. I mean, we really appreciate having you on the program. How do people follow you and stay in touch with your work? And obviously, we want to get them to go to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal because you guys are doing fantastic reporting.

We are. We're doing a ton of great election work on top of all of the, you know, our normal coverage of business and finance and the world of money. So, you know, we're at WSJ.com. We're easy to find. And there's just tons of great information on that website. And so I encourage everyone to read and follow along and use us as our use us as your guide to the world of money. One last question. So yes or no. Was Otani's record this year in the top 10 of Major League Baseball history?

Yes. That was amazing yesterday. Incredible. It was incredible. It was incredible. We all have a day like that in our lives. Everybody. Everybody deserves a day like that. Almost no one ever gets it. Alec Baldwin of Dirty Rock calls it a Reagan-ing day. The day's just perfect. It's perfect. Have a great weekend, Richard. We hope to have you join us soon. All right. Thanks, guys. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back for our next segment.

Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're going to be continuing on with our next interview in just a moment. We have Kate Monroe, a United States Marine Corps veteran, CEO of Vetcom and author of The Race to Save America, also founder of Border Vets.

She is a busy lady. But before we get into that, folks, go to the website, invest the letter Y, then refy.com. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return on a secure collateralized portfolio. And when you invest with Y Refi, you're doing well for yourself and your family by doing good for others and helping students pay off their high college loans early. Check them out. Invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888-Y-REFI-24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.

Well, Kate, thanks for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. So tell us how bad is the homelessness crisis with vets? Well, it's way worse than people think it is. You know, under the last administration, under Trump, it was going down 12%. Now we've seen a 19% rise in homelessness.

Let me ask you this real quick. Why was it going down 12 percent under Trump and now it's increased under Kamala? Is that just the inflationary pressures or what? What was the reasoning for that? No, there's a there's a misconception that it's always that homelessness always has to do with money, especially it does a little bit in the veteran community, but it's rarely money. It usually is if you're on too many types of drugs, your family won't respond.

retain you living in their home. That's actually how you end up outside. But with veterans, it was going down because Trump is making a really big push to help veterans with their mental health, with community care. He was pushing the Skill Bridge program, which I'm a big fan of, and he was ensuring that all of the VA HUD-VASH program funds were being used to house homeless veterans. And

when you take the VA HUD-VASH funds that are supposed to house veterans and you start housing illegal migrants, then because math, you're going to see a rise in that homelessness. And that 43,000 actually homeless number, that's not the real number. The real number is staggering. So how much money did they take and apply to the migrants versus the veterans? What's the number? I don't know the exact fund, but...

Multiple millions of dollars. How many, if the government said tomorrow we're going to put all of our veterans, we're going to get them off the street, how many housing units would they need tomorrow to do that? Well, some of it is a housing unit problem, but there's 43,000...

homeless, literally sleeping on the street veterans, but there's 1.3 million of them at the brink of homelessness. And in the brink of homelessness are people that are in shelters. So they're not even considered homeless. They're sleeping in their cars. Oh, they're not counting people who are like transitory homeless where they're sleeping in their cars or when they're, you know, couch surfing. No, they are not. And they're not counting people who are in shelters. Correct.

Correct. They are not counted in the homeless number at all. If you are sleeping in what they would consider to be inside, you are not homeless. And that is, to be clear, because I worked at the city of Phoenix, homelessness was one of my central issues there. That is actually different from how they count the rest of the homeless population because we count those people as homeless. Right.

Not in San Diego, we don't. Not here. Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting when you look at the 1.3 million veterans at the brink of homelessness. If we don't start doing a better job exiting people from the military, that number will continue to grow. It will just grow and grow and grow. So we're with Kate Monroe, and we're talking about homelessness in the veteran community.

So what do they need to do to prepare these veterans or when they get ready to leave their military time of service to better? So they're not in this position when they get out. I mean, you're not there's no sure all and I don't want to say that. But what are better things they can do?

Well, there's two things that need to happen when people are exiting the service. If they're exiting the service and they are in a position of having anxiety, depression, MST, PTSD, and they have not treated it, they need to treat their mental health better. And there needs to be more companies like mine that sign up to be SkillBridge providers, meaning that these service members could work for a corporation. The corporation wouldn't even have to pay for it for six months.

And upon exiting service, they now have a job. They have no – the runway to success is zero because they already have surety that when I leave the service, I already have steady employment. That gap in employment oftentimes – the runway is so short to take off that if they run out of funds because they weren't taught to budget.

Somebody was paying the bill. Somebody was paying for their food, and then all of a sudden they realize in the real world it just doesn't work that way. And maybe they were a tank mechanic in the service. There's not tank mechanic jobs. So we need to do a better job as a society valuing the veteran community, the active duty military personnel community, and then pulling them into our businesses.

Should the military consider adding some sort of provision specifically for that to the contract for term of service? So in other words, if you sign up for, let's say, a six-year – you're six years in, you come out, you have a three- or six-month period automatically where this program is available to you. Now, if you don't need it, if you already have a job, if you have skills, if you're investing income, whatever that might be, you can opt out of it. But otherwise, it's automatic. Right.

I mean, I do think that they should push the active duty military personnel to utilize SkillBridge. But a lot of times right now we find ourselves in a recruiting crisis. So if you're talking about every, you know, a quarter million vets that exit every year, if all of them had six months less of serving, then the recruiting crisis number would actually be higher.

I was actually more looking on tacking it on the end, like this is something that we're going to add to the term of service almost. Oh, extra, like we will be paying. Yes, they could add that to the end of the term of service, but they could also offer people, depending on how long you serve, which would make them serve longer, some kind of exit bonus so that they do have a little bit of runway to take off to get traction in the real world. That would be very helpful, and that would definitely help with recruiting as well.

Well, if you didn't tax military retirement, that would really help recruiting because people that get out at 14, 16, 18 years, they would go, well, if I'm not going to have my retirement tax, I'll probably just stay the 20. Something I didn't know, Kate, maybe you can answer this question. I didn't know about there is a policy or law that, for instance, like police, firefighters, local government employees who have earned a pension, they don't get their Social Security.

Correct. Neither do teachers. Anybody who they're like state or federal type of employees, they don't get their Social Security. It's like a swap. They get a pension instead. And the pension is much better, by the way, most of the time. The pension is much better. Does that program apply in the military also? It does?

Does that apply to the military? No. Oh, it does not. Okay. No, absolutely not. You can collect your military retirement, your Social Security, and your VA disability. So let's say you're a sergeant. You serve 20 years. What's the average pension for a sergeant that leaves the military?

They're going to get somewhere in the ballpark of $1,800 to $2,000 a month, but they shouldn't be a sergeant by the time they leave. You should really be an E-7 or higher or an O-5 or higher when you leave after retirement, so they can get more money than that depending on their rank and their years. But if you couple that with their Social Security and their potential VA disability compensation, they could be making almost $10,000 a month.

Wow. And so we think if we did not tax those pensions from the military, that this may help with keeping people in the extra five years to get to retirement.

Well, I asked and polled about 250 retirees and people who were thinking of staying in and retiring, and every one of them said, oh, I would absolutely do my last four-year term if I knew I wasn't going to get taxed. I would absolutely do it because it's a lot of lifetime income that they get to retain. And so, yeah, of course, part of the recruiting crisis also, as you saw during COVID, they forced a lot of service members out. Then you have a lot of wokeism, so a lot of the older employees

veterans who didn't come into the service for that are exiting. A lot of them would wade through that to get non-taxable retirement. Two questions on that. One, how many people were dismissed from the military because they refused to take the vaccine? Do you know that number? I don't know the exact number, but thousands and thousands of them, and I know this because I've been helping them get rated for VA disability compensation, and a lot of it is

for their mental health. They were basically in a reduction in force. We just didn't call it that as a nation. It was like what Clinton did, you know, back in his term. He did a reduction in force, and we kind of did one during COVID. We are complicit in the reason we have an accruing crisis. We let a lot of very fine young men and women out of the service because they would not have a vaccine forced on them, which is crazy. So CNN says it was 8,000.

8,000 soldiers dismissed. That's a lot. That's a lot. I want to move on a little bit and talk about this Kirby report on Afghanistan, the pullout there. Because obviously also when you see events like that, the military recruitment is based on morale, and that's not exactly building up morale. What are your takeaways from that report? Well, first,

I'm not going to sit and say that I read that report because I didn't, but in dealing with veterans, I will say that the veteran sentiment toward what happened in that debacle was a lot more people were committing suicide. The depression, the suicide guilt, all of those things went way on the rise during that period because you had a whole group of veterans who served there and, you know,

You know, you get told as an active duty service member, you're serving for X, Y, and Z for your country to retain its power and might and sovereignty. And then you see an exit like that. You go, let me get this straight. So we all go over there. I nearly get killed. I get my leg blown off. My buddies are dead. And then you're just going to give all of our equipment and everything back to them, and they're bigger and better than they ever were. And it just –

really tanked their morale, and it was not received well by the veteran community. And in 2023, Afghanistan was the number three seller of arms worldwide. Was it really? Yeah. Who was number one and two? That does not surprise me. Our arms. Well, we're always number one. We want to be number one. But who was number two? China? China?

Russia or China? Russia, two. China, four. Afghan was number three. Yeah. There seems like there should be a Netflix series on that. Oh, seriously. That is disgusting. I mean, what's a Nicolas Cage movie? What was a Nicolas Cage movie where he was the arms seller? Oh, the King or whatever. Whatever, yeah. It seems like that would be a type of movie, but it seems like Netflix. Well, he played the arms dealer that we let out in exchange for the basketball player. Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about Kamala Harris and the border. I have so much to say. I actually have so many feelings. So I don't know if you know this, but I ran for Congress here in California's 49th District. And I actually went down to the border with razor wire.

and secured parts of the San Diego border. And who would have known that it was gonna go viral? I mean, I was even on Dr. Phil. He asked me, he's like, "Hey, what does the razor wire say to get back?" I said, "Oh, about 300 bucks." It was well worth it. But I actually made a TikTok video that got almost 2 million views where I called her down to the border. I said, "I'm gonna show you how to be a border czar. And in fact, in the meantime, I'll go ahead and step in and do the job."

When I actually think that on the side of the left, they're probably praising her because if your intention is to get in as many people as you can for Democrat supremacy, then she did a great job because she left the border wide open, not only leaving it open, making it even easier than it ever was for people to cross, stopping Border Patrol from doing their job. I mean, I have been at the border and witnessed no less than 10,000 people cross while I've been there.

Well, I have actively been at the border, so I don't have a lot of thoughts on Kamala Harris other than she did not do right by the American people. And the blood is on your hands. All these young men and women that have been raped and killed by these illegal migrants. Well, and I want to touch on a couple of points there, but they're also pushing. We have only two minutes left. They're pushing people into these red states. And eventually that is intended to swing the vote in those states. Yeah.

Yeah, Democrat supremacy by redistricting. That's exactly what they want to do at all costs. But for another, the harm that they're putting on the migrants themselves who are being, you're not coming across here on your own. You're being trafficked here by an international criminal cartel. Tell us a little bit about that. So I've been down at the border and interviewed thousands and thousands of people on camera, and they tell you what it's like to get from

from their home country here. They will tell you that they will spend $5,000 to $15,000 per head. They will walk once they get dropped off. Some of them will walk for days with no food and water. A lot of the women run out of money on the way here. They end up getting raped, assaulted. Almost all of them get robbed. They're forced to come across our border and traffic drugs into our country. One day I was there, and about 50 people crossed with the exact same roller bag. Wow.

Well, what's in the roller bag? I just watched the cartel drop you off at the border. They're waving to us as you walk across. And then I drove down to watch the border patrol agents not even be able to check the bags. So there's thousands and thousands of pounds of drugs making their way into our country today.

On the backs of these illegal migrants that are coming in. It's absolutely unbelievable. Kate Monroe, thank you so much, folks. You can get her book, The Race to Save America at Amazon and elsewhere. Kate, how do people follow you and stay in touch with your work?

If they're trying to follow me on socials, I made it easy. All the handle is the same. Kate Monroe, CEO. You can follow me and watch all my funny content. Fantastic. I have a lot of opinions that you can listen to. Kate Monroe, thank you so much. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air next week.

Hi, folks. This is Chuck Warren of Breaking Battlegrounds. Do you want to prepare for a secure retirement? Grab a pen and paper right now and write down 877-80-INVEST. As our loyal listeners know, Breaking Battlegrounds is brought to you by YREFI.

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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds. Chuck?

It's been a dirty week. Dirty boys everywhere. Dirty, dirty. Dirty, dirty boys everywhere. Nasty. I have heard things this week that I never in my life wanted to hear. That make Hugh Hefner blush. If they didn't, Hugh Hefner's got more problems than I thought he had. I mean, literally, the security guard for Diddy put out an audio tape of Diddy doing the Diddy to Meek Mill's.

Kylie, tell us about it. What do we got going on this week? Honestly, too much going on this week, but I guess we'll just kick it off with what's going on with P Diddy. I'm sure people have heard about his arrests and everything that's been going on. He's, he was arrested this week for running essentially a sex slave ring that is being compared to Jeffrey Epstein. So they're saying it's as bad as what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. Um,

P Diddy called his own parties freak offs and every article I'm reading, they're all called freak offs. And it's basically, he's being accused of arranging, directing, masturbating during, and often electronically recording these freak offs. They also capitalize freak offs, by the way. He also, from what I understand was drugging guests without their knowledge at them, spiking all the drinks. Yes, correct. And then he would transport,

these people across state lines and internationally. And basically when people would try to come forward about it,

he basically maintained control of his victims through physical violence like kidnapping and arson. He would promise them career opportunities, granting or threatening to withhold financial support, including tracking their whereabouts, dictating victims' appearances, monitoring their medical records, and controlling their housing and supplying them with controlled substances. So basically the medical records also came out because he has been giving a lot of people STDs. Oh my gosh.

After his arrest, well, also in his arrest, they seized a thousand, a thousand, over a thousand bottles of baby oil. Well, we talked about that. That may have been investment back in 2020. It was $10 a bottle. Now it's $12.25. So, you know, it'd be 22% increase.

Yeah, he's just getting ahead of the curve there. It's his gold bars. Baby Oil is his gold bars. Stuff I do not want to know or think about. Anyway, continue, Kylie. Go ahead. So since his arrest, there's a wild video actually that has resurfaced, and it's from Jonathan Odie. And he is an ex-porn star who was arrested in 2018 for shooting up Donald Trump's –

golf course in Miami. Okay. And he was during the interrogation. He was telling them that he used to be Sean Diddy's sex slave. He said, I had sex with Cassie and Sean at the time.

And Cassie was P. Diddy's girlfriend. She has come out saying she was also a sex slave to him. And there's videos of him beating her up and whatnot. But he said he would masturbate and tell me what to do to Cassie. I was their sex slave for them. That's just what I was. He said he caught STDs from them and they were giving him liquid cocaine.

In 2018, his allegations were just dismissed, brushed off, and he's been in jail ever since. But now they're reopening his case. And I'm going to assume he's still in jail for obviously shooting up Donald Trump's golf course. But I think they'll probably...

Use some sort of. Well, he may get he may get a deal here to come forward because my guess on this, I think Sam, you and I talked about this. They have it's been alarming and criminal how they have kept the names on the Jeffrey Epstein list. Basically, you know, other than Ghislaine Maxwell. Yeah. Out of out of everyone who's been kept out of my guess is they're not going to do this for the P. Diddy folks.

Well, and I don't think the P. Diddy folks seem like lesser clientele. Do what? Do what? The P. Diddy people involved seem like lesser clientele of the Jeffrey Epstein list. I will say, though, that P. Diddy, there's a lot of photos of him with

a lot of very high. Right. I mean, you're seeing on Twitter now, they're showing pictures of him with Kamala pictures, him with Trump pictures with Ivana. I mean, it's all over. So, well, I think it, I think he used more sex slaves. Yeah.

Yeah, well, this will go on. I do think there's going to be celebrities and people involved that will stay quiet, but I think there's going to be more fall people within his group that they can blame it on then. Yeah, I just think P. Diddy's going to jail probably for the rest of his life is my guess on this. He's on suicide watch. Well, understandable. Jeffrey. My only interest in his suicide watch would be keeping him long enough that you get all the information out of him after that. Who cares? Yeah, no.

All right. Story number two. Crisis number two. I have three today. We got, you know, it must be the Jeffrey name. So we got Brian Jeffrey Raymond. He was a 48 year old CIA agent. Not was he still is no longer an agent, though. He was just sentenced to 30 years in prison for luring women to his government apartment to drug and sexually abuse them. So during his employment by the government, he lived and worked in numerous countries, including U.S., Peru and Mexico.

and Brian Raymond would meet women through dating apps and then drug them by serving them wine and crackers. Most of the women in the photos and videos could actually not remember any of their time with him. And some actually had no idea what had happened to them until FBI agents showed them these photos.

In his investigation, they found over 500,000 images and recordings on his devices that were taken from 2006 to 2020, showing him touching and manipulating victims' bodies for hours. In some of the videos, he was straddling and groping unconscious victims.

He would open their eyelids at times and stick his fingers in their mouths. Oh, he sounds like a gem. Basically, he was caught because there was a naked woman screaming for help from his New Mexico or not New Mexico, Mexico City residents in May of 2020. It's just not residents. She was screaming from a CIA paid for residence. Yeah, the safe house.

A safe house. I mean, it was not even an apartment or some regular apartment or a hotel. He was using a CIA safe house apartment.

Yes, and that's where he would lure women to. So my understanding is once those charges came, he came back to the U.S. because of COVID. That was the excuse. And then they did an investigation a year later. And he tried to delete everything. He tried to get rid of the information. But obviously, he did not. He could not do that anymore. So he was sentenced to 30 years in prison and a lifetime supervised release thereafter that. And he was paid $260,000. I don't think he'll see the light of day. No. 30 years. How old is he now?

He is 50, no, 48. Oh, he's not going to make it. Yeah. And good. I mean, yeah, good for them. That's just awful and evil. Look, I'm with you, Chuck. This is one of those cases where I'm kind of in your corner. I think, why is he still alive? Why have you not strapped that guy to a chair and gotten rid of him? I agree. I agree. We'll be better. We'll be a better place.

Let's give them a little snip, snip. Let's start doing that. And then I'll learn some answers. Yeah. All right. Now, number three, depravity. What's going on there? Should we give, should we give them an Israeli pager? Exactly. This one made me mad. Um,

This one made you mad. The other two did. Right, right. No, the other two are cool. That's all right. The other two fired me up as well. This one's just the straight hypocrisy in our world right now. Kylie and I were texting on this this morning. Go ahead, Kylie. So in July of 2021, I want to point this out. I could not go into a hospital in New York and watch my husband's surgery or like be there with him because of COVID restrictions. Meanwhile, Dr. Jay Varma

He was New York City Hall senior public advisor under Mayor de Blasio during the COVID years. He was attending and hosting himself sex parties and naked dance parties in New York City. This is their COVID czar. Yeah. No, the guy that was going to the press conferences with the mayor. Yeah. And he would go up there and say, six feet apart, do this. We're shutting down our schools.

Kyrie Irving can't play basketball because of these restrictions. Meanwhile, him and his wife are hosting, would rent a hotel room and host eight to 10 friends. She described as just being naked with his friends, just being naked with a lot of drugs. He was talking about how great it was to be able to buy on the drugs. The thing is, he's still consulting. Yeah, he's still a public health consultant.

Yeah. So he was doing all of this. He even admitted so he was caught on tape without his knowledge. He was saying that they sliced and diced these videos to make it seem worse than it is. But regardless, in these videos, he's admitting to doing these drugs, having these sex parties. He said he attended a 200 plus person dance party underneath a bank in Wall Street Journal or not Wall Street Journal. Sorry, just Wall Street. Yeah. Don't mean to throw them under the bus there.

No, no. People need to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, not arrest them. Yeah, don't get them mad. We appreciate having the reporters on here. I mean, actually – and I'm not being facetious.

The Wall Street Journal has been really good about allowing their reporters to come on this program when many major papers have not. AP being one. Continue, Kylie. No, this sex party was just under Wall Street. Has nothing to do with the journal. It's the street. But I do respect. So Robert Holden, he's a Democrat for the he's a city council member.

And he's calling for Eric, Mayor Adams, to investigate Dr. Varma's actions and said that they need to drop all the appeals for the workers who are suing the state for being fired for not complying with COVID restrictions. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah.

So he said this was a public health expert for the city while it was shut down. He was busy having sex parties. It's alarming, especially with so many first responders, city workers and everyday New Yorkers losing their jobs. You know, what's amazing about this, too, is he's preaching this, which he knows, which he now knows. He knew what he was mandating didn't make a whole difference. Right.

And I was reading yesterday about the Mpox, Mpox, monkeypox, we'll call it, but it's now called Mpox, which is fine, about a mining town. And I think I sent it to you, right? Yeah, you did. And I don't care what they call it. No, but I don't care. But what was interesting about it is the doctors, fairness to the – I just criticized AP, but the fairness to the follow-up question from AP, who they're telling people once they have it and the symptoms go down that –

you should avoid sexual contact for three months. And they asked the doctor, well, why do you do that? He goes, I don't know. It's just some arbitrary number we came up with. There was no scientific basis on it. I was like, I don't know. I mean, literally, I don't know. It's just an arbitrary number we came up with. The last four years, I have become convinced of one thing. Anyone who has MPH after their name is a mostly pathetic human. Well, I just feel like all the Bs I got in college and high school in science, I should get As on because apparently my...

You know, my hypothetical is just the same as their actual science. Clearly it was. It's...

So what's going to the ramifications from this guy? Is he going to they're going to do more investigations? And what are they going to do? Or is he just going to be embarrassed in The New York Times and get another six, seven digit job somewhere? That's it. I feel like he's just going to be embarrassed because he said he's standing by all the COVID restrictions and that he just takes responsibility for not using his best judgment. All right. Well, Kylie, thank you for that depravity today. I'm sure our audience loved it. And

If they didn't know about these issues, now they do. Now they do. Be careful what you're drinking, ladies. If you needed to throw up this morning, tune in to Breaking Battlegrounds. Jenna, your job is to pep us up for the weekend. What do you got?

So I have a couple stories. You have a couple? Two stories for us? Two stories for you guys. All right. One of them is just something really fun that's been brightening up my day. So Dancing with the Stars is like, the season's going right now. A lot of fun. Are you a fan of Dancing with the Stars? I am a fan. I should be more of a fan because I just love dance and I kind of want to be on it one day. Okay.

But they have some really cool contestants this year. I don't know if you guys were watching the Olympics and stuff or watching TikTok about the Olympics. But one guy went super viral, Steven John Niederosik, and he's Pommel Horse Guy.

There were a bunch of memes about this guy, 'cause he would look like he was napping. He's on the gymnastics team. - Yes, yeah, wore the glasses, looked like Clark Kent. - Yeah, looked like Clark Kent, yeah. So all the memes where he would take off his glasses and then go up and do his thing, and yeah, fall asleep, and he was asleep, and then he'd go and save the day. So he is on the Dancing with the Stars this year, and he just had a really fun dance, and they got all sevens.

This is what's important to me in the news right now. Is sevens the top score? Because I do not watch this. I think it's ten, isn't it? I think it's ten. I think it's ten. But they were very excited about getting sevens. Well, you should be. I would get a three, but continue. Yeah, I would too. But yeah, so they did really well, and so we're watching them. They're one of the top contenders. And he's also been taking photos with –

kids who have like vision issues. Um, and so he's trying to inspire people. So I'm just going to be watching him. I'm, it's really exciting to see what he's doing with like, you know, the fame that he's gotten. Um, and then another contestant is Iona Mayer who, um, she was a woman's rugby player. Um, and she's been really, uh,

She's been in the limelight recently. She got famous on TikTok after the Olympics. And she was just she's talking about how as a bigger rugby women's player, you know, she's very healthy and she's trying to speak for body positivity. But it's hard to she wants to feel feminine in that she always feels feminine. And so she's trying to, you know, make women.

be an example to young women that they can be feminine and they can be strong. Well, and, but that's the correct body positivity. She is an athlete. She works out. She's just, that's the way her body structure is. That's body positivity. Absolutely. 200 pounds overweight because you're eating Cheetos all day is not body positive. You know what? Actually I was seeing today and I'll just throw this in there. Um,

Apparently Lizzo has been really like getting hit in the gym, getting down. She's lost a ton of weight. Good for her. She's looking great. Good for her. I got to say, I was really happy to see that. Yeah. For her, because she's a great talent. Yeah. And, you know, this is, I've been trying to do some of this in my own life. Like this idea that fat is wonderful is just wrong.

Well, you don't sleep well. You don't, you know, you lose breath. I mean, look, there's a lot of things. There's a lot of reasons to stay healthy. And this is one of the great misses of COVID.

that they just didn't say, folks, you need to go lose 20 pounds. You need to hit the gym. They should have kept those gyms open. The best way you're going to protect yourself is by being healthy and a healthy weight. Well, and you know what? I mean, government, as I saw up close because I was at the city, government shut down and sent a lot of people home that should have been out leading outdoor activities for the community during that time when they were being paid. Just walking. Just walking. Yeah. We should have had –

physical activity built into what the government was pushing at that time. I agree. So it's great that we need to encourage and inspire people to be fit. Yeah. Well, it's important for them long term. Yeah, exactly. So she's great. And so I'm excited to see what both of them do. And yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. I'm excited to see Anna.

Yes. Who? Yes. Anna. She's causing a little controversy in there. Wait, who's this? Anna. We're in an ankle monitor. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. So you have a Dancing with the Stars villain? What's she have the ankle monitor for?

So she was a con artist, right, Kylie? Dancing with the felons. Boy, they're really stressing here. So what, you know, if your sunshine moment gets bigger, you may get called on now that we know they're bringing ankle monitor people in. Yeah, there we go. You only need to be a C or D level celebrity to be on apparently. So

So she's from the show Inventing Anna on Netflix. Oh, that show. Yeah. And so she was really the real woman in life. She was a con woman in New York. Look it up. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. She got her own series on it because she was quite the con. She was. She was kind of smart. No, no. She was a very smart con. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. She deserves that spot. She does. Ankle monitor and all. Look at my way there.

All right, folks. Well, we hope you enjoyed this week's show. We talked a lot of things about environmental regulations, budget deficit, homelessness in the veteran community, which is just...

It's especially despicable when you look at the numbers she told us, which is about 40-some thousand, right? And we've put more migrants, more immigrants in housing than that this year. And what's also startling is if you sleep in your car, you're not homeless. That's now part of the government equation? Well, it's certainly not here in Arizona. California— But that just may be federal. But that's how the federal does it. No, no, that's going to be the state.

I know where the federal law is on it. So that's the state point in time. So California, if you have a car, you're not homeless? They're pretending to reduce their numbers. That's what that is. And then we had Kylie telling us about the craziness of New York again. No one moved there. And we learned a little bit about Dancing with the Stars. So folks, thank you for joining us. You can follow us on BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you get your podcasts or turn into our stations. Just go to BreakingBattlegrounds.vote and you'll see where we're airing on the radio.

On behalf of Jenna, Kylie, Sam, Jeremy, and myself, have a great weekend.