Advisory Opinions - Coronavirus Response

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

David and Sarah discuss the government's coronavirus response with Representative Chip Roy of Texas, and the Netflix documentary, "Tiger King," lighting the internet on fire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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a show all about markets and investing with ETFs. New episodes every Thursday morning. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger. We've got a really good podcast for you today. The vast bulk of it is an interview with Congressman Chip Roy. It's a really good discussion. He and I have a very polite disagreement during part of it. We have some violent agreement. Can you violently agree?

Yes. Okay. We had some strong agreement and we had some polite disagreement. It was a really good interview and just proof of the adage that Sarah knows everybody. Sarah, you've known Congressman Roy since you were, what, 19 years old? Yes, 19, the 2002 Cornyn campaign. He was still a law student at that point, and I was but a baby undergrad. That's amazing.

So Sarah tells a little bit of that story at the start of the interview, and I'm going to warn you, a little bit of the sound quality. It's not the normal sound quality that we like to have. We had to do the interview via Skype. So while Sarah and I sound good, Congressman Roy is going to sound a little bit different. I haven't listened to it yet. We just know it'll be a little bit different. So just warning you, but it's a great conversation. I think you'll really enjoy it. And then we're going to wrap up with a discussion of Tiger King on Netflix. Oh, wait. And Sarah has thoughts.

I want to make one more plug on the Roy interview, because at one point we talk about El Arroyo, which is this awesome, famous Tex-Mex place in Austin. But he mentions Pat Green. And if you're just looking for some good, real country music, not pop country music to listen to, check out some of Pat Green's like old albums. And that's some like Austin country back when I used to go to, to dance halls that,

you know, would only fit a hundred people. And, and it was, you know, some two-stepping and Ella Royal gets mentioned in one of Pat Green's songs. So it's all,

it's all full circle here. Now don't, don't mention Austin country around a Nashvilleian. Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing. Because we'll get snobby fast. I'm sorry. No, actually, I'm exactly the last person you ever want to talk about music with. I'm still holding a torch for like hair bands from the 1980s. Ironic, given your hair situation. So anyway, this is the last podcast of the month. And I thought before the Congressman Roy interview, I thought I would share some numbers that put how much our lives have changed in perspective.

And it really is stunning when you look at some of these numbers. Well, one of them is the obvious that we had the most jobless claims ever in the history of any week, which is in the history of the entire United States. But I was looking at some of the coronavirus numbers. Okay. And now some of these are skewed because we hadn't started testing yet. So one month ago, March 1, we had 75 coronavirus cases in the United States, Sarah. 75. As of this very moment, as we record this,

of this very moment, as we record this, the number is now 155,969. I feel like this is a good lesson in exponential growth curves for those who are homeschooling. Oh, yeah. I mean, think about this. March 15th, 3,600. March 15th. All right. Now, coronavirus deaths. On March 1, there was one person who had died due to the coronavirus in the United States. As of this very moment, it's 2,854. That's one month. So that's all bad news. But in one sense, we should count our blessings. And so I went back and I did some of the same, I did some of the same examination and looked at some of the same numbers for Italy. And this should tell you as much as we feel and as much as we are struggling, my goodness, it could be so much worse. So this is Italy. Going back to March 1, Italy had 1,701 cases. Now they're up to, we have more than them, but with a much larger population.

They're around 100,000 cases right now. But here's the number that really is sobering. On March 1, Italy had 41 deaths to coronavirus, 41. As of this moment, they have 11,591. And to put that in perspective, Italy has a little bit less than one-fifth of our population. has a little bit less than one fifth of our population. So in the U.S., that would be about like having 60,000 deaths in one month to a new pandemic. That's crazy. We could have, though, a whole side conversation where I'm getting annoyed with the willy nilly nature in which we per capita some numbers and don't per capita other numbers. When it comes to testing, for instance, I don't know why per capita is relevant to testing. To your point that

you're making, obviously, about deaths, per capita makes a big difference because we're talking about the economy and GDP when you're talking about wiping out an actual percentage of your population. But yeah, I mean, this is like a whole side thing, but it's annoying me the randomness in which we per capita some of this. Yeah, yeah. The per capita numbers really, really matter. I mean, number one, let's just, I think we just have to put aside the China numbers like, no, we don't know numbers. Yeah, they're not numbers. Let's just put that to the side to give you a sense of per capita. So we are, quote, that we have more cases putting again, putting aside China because we don't believe in putting aside China. We have the number one total of number of cases in the world.

We don't believe in it. Putting aside China, we have the number one total of number of cases in the world. However, our total cases per one million population right now is 471 per million. Italy is 1,683 per million. Spain is 1,822 per million. That's a quantum difference. And the deaths per million, Italy has a death rate of now 192 per million. Spain, not death rate, but the raw numbers, they tell you one thing. When you look at per capita, that tells you another thing entirely. And it tells you that Italy and Spain are in a level of crisis that we are not even within a shouting distance of yet.

Shall we head into the interview? Yes, let's go on to the interview. So what follows is a great conversation with Chip Roy with a delightful introduction with a great memory from Sarah's the beginning of Sarah's political career. Joining us today is a special friend of the pod because it is Congressman Chip Roy of Texas. And important intro here, and sorry, this is going to be a longer intro than usual, but I met Chip when I was 19 and decided that there was this guy running for Senate in Texas. I flew down from college, borrowed a cousin's Explorer, put a twin mattress in the back of it, drove to Austin, showed up at this like really like not particularly impressive office, waited outside because the door was locked for like an hour in the morning because I thought like showing up at 7 a.m. was a good idea. And I ended up sitting, I guess,

three seats away from this law student named Chip Roy, who was handling all the policy for John Cornyn's 2002 Senate race. And there's like some very important things that came out of that race. But most of all, I mean, just the best lifelong friends ever, of which I consider Chip one. But now he's a congressman. So I have to call you Congressman Roy from now on forever. Chip works just fine. That's the way it works. And we've known each other a long time. That was a great team. And we had a good time back in the Vaughn building. And you remember, I also did the technology stuff back there. I was a nerd back then doing all the database work, all the data and technology stuff. To be clear though, when we talk about technology stuff, this was back when you would like the technology for mailers was that we had

those little stamps that would get the water to run through them to like lick the envelopes for us. Hey, easy there. Actually, we developed a database that allowed people to access it from outside via the web. This was 2001 and we figured out a way to do that.

And we were, we were cutting edge. But now I can't even get my iPad to work. So you know, whatever. Well, this was I mean, that was my first campaign. It lit a lifelong passion for campaigning and politics. And, you know, I owe at least a large chunk of that to the joy that was sitting three seats away from Chip Roy. In the Reagan lounge, we called it, the policy room extraordinaire. I still have a lot of friends from that campaign. And look, Senator Cornyn's a good friend, as you know.

And for listeners out there, I went on to work for him. I worked for him for five years on Capitol Hill as a lawyer for him on Senate Judiciary Committee before coming back to Texas to be a prosecutor and then went back as Senator Cruz's chief of staff and worked closely with Senator Cornyn's office there too. So everything kind of comes full circle. He's had a lot of good folks. Jim Ho's on the bench, worked for him. And Reed O'Connor, who's a federal judge in Northern District of Texas, recently struck down Obamacare somewhat famously. Myself, he's had a few lawyers working for him that's gone on to do some interesting things over the years. So it's a good team. So is it strange when you spent so much of that part of your career

on the Senate side to literally have just the opposite view? Well, when I first got elected, the first thing I got was a text from Mike Lee, Senator Mike Lee, who texted me condolences the night that I was elected, which was pretty telling and appropriate, but he was joking. Of course, now the first day I was there and both Senators Cruz and Lee came to a little thing the day I was sworn in that night, and I immediately started heckling the House of Lords and that I was in the people's house,

right? Because when we were in the Senate, we used to refer to the lower chamber, the lower body. So a lot of good give and take back and forth between the two. But no, it is a little interesting, but it put me a lot of interesting perspective this year with impeachment, with things going on where the Senate's been at the focus of a lot of activity. And this week, I know the Senate rules better than most and have used them and exploited them over the years in different ways to accomplish what we want to accomplish. So it's been helpful understanding the Senate since I've been in the House as well. Well, that's a good place to start because you were against this latest bill. I think 40 Republicans said they were against it, although Thomas Massey, sort of the one leading the charge

up the hill? Well, so to be clear, right, we're in, we just passed phase three. I voted for the first one, the 8.3 billion. I voted against the second. I was one of 40 House members, give or take one or two, who voted against the second phase. And I did so because it had language in there that was going to put mandates on small businesses that I had heard from many small businesses, both in the district I represented nationwide and throughout Texas, that it was going to be hugely problematic for them. And that's borne out. A lot of businesses have laid people off as a direct result of those particular mandates. Well-intended they may have been with respect to family leave,

but you can't take leave from a job you don't have. And businesses that are going under, you can't provide leave. So I opposed that provision, so I voted no. The Austin American-Statesman wrote a very friendly editorial about me and how wonderful I am and how caring I am for the people of Texas 21, as you can imagine. But then on this third phase, look, it's $2 trillion. None of us love the size of that package, nor love every piece of it. The one thing that was absolute and the reason that I would have voted for it had there been a roll call vote is that we need capital immediately because of the

federal government shutting down people's livelihoods. You can argue for good reason for public health, but it's analogous to a regulatory taking, right? It may not legally be a regulatory taking. That's for a debate we can nerd out on here if we want to, but it is analogous to one. The government is depriving people their livelihoods. So I think government has a special role to step in here and try to help both workers who are struggling as well as businesses bridge the gap. I did not like the $2 trillion price tag. I think I would have broken it into smaller segments. But I also, secondly, Thomas Massey was right to demand a quorum. And we can talk about that if you want, but he was unfairly pilloried because he had the audacity to go to D.C. and say, hey,

we're about to spend $2 trillion. Maybe we should at least follow the Constitution's requirement that we have a quorum that is a majority of the body here to do work. And so I thought it was unfair that he was attacked. So I supported that part of what he was trying to do, but I would have ultimately voted for it reluctantly because it had a lot of provisions I did not like in the bill. Well, Congressman, I think you hit on something that is really important when you were talking about the $2 trillion bill, which again, to pillory a congressman for asking for a quorum to spend $2 trillion strikes me as we do need to still follow the constitutional norms when spending $2 trillion of the people's money. But let's go back to, I think, a bigger issue. And I think that I hate the term and I objected throughout this process, I've objected to use the term bailout in connection with the money that's being spent. And I feel like your formulation is better in that I've always thought of a bailout as a business fails because it's made

mistakes, but DC determines, you know, we've heard the term too big to fail or whatever, that this business needs to be saved. That strikes me as a classic bailout. This is something different. This is state, local governments encouraged by the federal government are intervening directly to tell people not to work. Thriving businesses that were thriving three weeks ago, two weeks ago, are being told to close their doors. And in that circumstance, you know, Sarah and I have talked about this concept of a regulatory taking. You probably wouldn't get to a point where a federal court would deem this a regulatory taking. Not quite yet. But there is a fairness justice aspect here that I think you hit on.

And, you know, it might be it might be helpful to kind of more explain better, sort of more explain that this is not just bailing out people that can't make it in our economy. Well, I'm glad you articulated that way. I don't think I disagree with anything you just said. And I think it's really important as we think about this. Number one, you said that it bothers you when people refer to it as a stimulus. And I agree with that. In fact, I try to correct people regularly. This is not a stimulus in the sense of trying to spark the economy or try to step in where a private sector enterprise hit a wall because of some failing in the market or because of some other factor that influenced it. This is very different. And I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of smarter lawyers than I am about whether or not it's a regulatory taking.

I have to go dust off the cobwebs about Penn Central. The Penn Central case, I think if I remember right, was sort of the seminal case about weighing the balance there and about whether or not you get your, if I remember right, investment-backed expectations or something in that zip code. Yes. A-plus in law school, Chip. Yeah, well, yeah, go back and tell some of my professors that. I spent a little bit too much time down at the Corning campaign and maybe on the golf course and listened to some live music in Austin, Texas.

But I did learn a few things along the way. And so, look, I think whether or not that would hold up in court, I don't know. We'll probably see. Some of this may well be tested. And that's okay. That's good. probably see some of this may well be tested. And that's okay. That's good. We should look at it from that perspective, because in this case, you know, government is stepping in and prohibiting you from essentially being able to get your investment back to expectation. Maybe there

are some reasons why that, you know, is good for public health. But at the end of the day, we should be viewing what we're doing with the dollars, at least the bulk of the dollars. Whether the bill is effective at it, different question. insurance, XYZ, and then the very large $500 billion that is fairly up to the discretion of Treasury and the Fed, which raises some concerns about oversight. However, that's being deployed. It's being deployed, at least in theory, at least the way we talked about it, to get businesses a bridge to stay afloat, the goal being to provide the incentive to maintain employment and keep people on payroll, keep your businesses at least in a status quo environment rather than collapsing so that we can buy two weeks or four weeks or six weeks, whatever we

need to do to get through the peak of the pandemic. So one thing that I wrote about today and that I found to be a really interesting debate for myself was where bankruptcy law should come into this. On the one hand, you have this argument that targeting specific industries like the airline industry and saying that we're going to provide a direct payroll grant to basically bridge this time for you, a direct payroll grant to basically bridge this time for you, but not all other industries, is a little unfair versus forcing everyone to go through Chapter 11 where they would, I mean, in theory, have no problem finding a debtor in possession to provide some new credit. The federal government could even step in as that debtor in possession like they did with GM and Chrysler. On the other hand, to the very point that you and David are making, this was not the GM or Chrysler problem where there are some fundamental issues with the business model that the economy, even if it crashes, then due to other problems,

again, speak to some economic issue. again, speak to some economic issue. This is the federal government forcing companies to hit pause on our entire economy, and we all should bear the cost of that. But how do you weigh how we're going to do that moving forward? The airline industry, obviously, at this point, looks like it'll be okay for some short-term period, but Lord knows that's not going to be the only area hit.

Well, we could go a number of different paths on this. I think that, let me take a step back, because I think it's important for some listeners out there who don't know that my perspective, I've leaned fairly heavily into the belief that we need to try to restart our economy as soon as possible. Now, of course, no one disagrees with that as a general statement, but I think we need to restart it on the aggressive side. Now, does that mean that we need to do it today? No, we still have a lot that we're trying to do. I was just on a conference call this morning with the head of ASPR and HHS and a bunch of people trying to listen to where we stand on masks and ventilators and tests and all the production. And we still have more work to do there. But was the president of the United States correct when he was laying out, for example,

a few weeks ago, maybe I've lost track of time, 10 days ago, the idea of Easter, you know, of mid-April as a sort of how can we get back? I think it was. It was aspirational. And we already saw yesterday they pushed it to sort of May 1st is kind of where they seem to be at the earliest now. And it may be that that goes to May 15th or June 1st. But we need to have a date or a timeline, in my view, and I wrote about this in the National Review last Friday, in which we're targeting getting back to normal. It's important because it gives us something to get behind as a country psychologically. And it's important because, frankly, we've got to get back. We've got to get to where our economy is functioning. Our government can't fund our economy indefinitely.

Now, that's a different question than what you asked, except that that philosophy informs the way I think about these things. No, I think that's important. Yeah. You talk about bankruptcy as a model. You know, another different point. A lot of businessmen have been coming up, businessmen and women have been coming up to me in the district and saying, hey, you know, there's this business interruption insurance model, an angle that we should be looking at. And, you know, a bunch of insurance companies, some are saying, well's this business interruption insurance model, an angle that we should be looking at. And, you know, a bunch of insurance companies, some are saying, well, this isn't business, you know, interruption for purposes of what they think they ought to cover in terms of claims for some restaurants and so forth. Some might be honoring those claims, but it's a model that might work.

Right. Instead of thinking about it in terms of massive amounts of loans from the Small Business Administration, which we just passed in the bill last week. Are there other approaches that we can think about in terms of how we navigate through this bankruptcy law, the business interruption insurance model? We took steps with the loans last week on how we navigate through it. I don't know all the answers, but I think we need our best and brightest minds in the nation continuing to work through these. My instruction to my staff is talk to every businessman, businesswoman, owner in the district about what they need and what's working, what's not working for every hotel, restaurant, music venue, barbershop that's currently closed. How can they borrow money to open at a magic date in four months? I mean, who's going to do that? Like, who's going to borrow against an unknown?

We've got to find a way to bridge these people so that we keep businesses going until we can hit the restart. And when we hit the restart, hit it as soon as we can. I realize it's a little far afield from what you asked. No, no, I think that's exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's helpful. Yeah, yeah, that's helpful. Well, you know, one of the things, Congressman, I think that's been happening is people have been getting a federalism lesson in the last three to four weeks. I'm of the opinion it's kind of misguided to look to the federal government to give us a date because the federal government, A, doesn't have the authority to order governors to restart aspects of their economy. And B, an idea of a

national date when we have dramatically different circumstances in different parts of the country strikes me as misguided as well. I mean, New York, I'm just looking at the latest numbers. New York just reported 5,818 new cases and 155 deaths. California right now reported 154 new cases with 6,000 total. There is a dramatic difference in different parts of the country. And so, you know, one of the objections I have when I keep seeing these dates, and I understand they're aspirational and we got to give somebody, there is a balance between giving people something to shoot for and creating false hope. And Sarah and I have gone back and forth on this. But it strikes me that one thing we need to do is we don't need to be giving people a national goal necessarily as to say,

what's happening in my state and what can we do in my state? And, you know, I just I just wonder about the wisdom of here's our national date when New York, New Jersey and California and Florida and Louisiana and Tennessee are in fundamentally different places. Well, let me both agree and strongly disagree with you in the same breath, which is, look, and strongly disagree with you in the same breath, which is, look, Sarah knows this. You likely do. I have been a fairly staunch advocate of all things federalism for the bulk of my engaged career, whether it was as a staffer or at the Texas Public Policy Foundation or now as a member of Congress, and have written a lot about it, worked with Governor Perry

on it. And I think it's the magic of our system, and it works well. And it allows governors and localities and our system and it works well. And it allows governors and localities and mayors and others to have the flexibility to do what they need to do in the best interest of their population. Governor Abbott's model is not the same as DeSantis's, is not the same as Cuomo's and so forth. That's fine. That's good. It adapts to our regional differences. Do we need a magic start date for every, you know, man, woman, child in the nation and every business? No, but we do.

We are a nation that is, you know, inextricably intertwined in terms of our national commerce. I mean, you know, our businesses depend on interstate travel of shipment of goods and services of airplanes and interconnectivity. and services of airplanes and interconnectivity. And our nation does look to our leadership to set the tone and the direction and the objectives that we need to go. Now, look, I have disagreed with the president fairly publicly and violently at times, and I've agreed with him at the same time. Last week, I took a bunch of grief from Trump supporters because I told him in pretty blunt terms to back off of Thomas Massey. Trump supporters, because I told them in pretty blunt terms to back off of Thomas Massey. And that was, you know, some people said, wait, you just told him to back off.

Well, look, Article 1, man, it's different. Article 2, separation of powers matters. But with all due respect, when we disagree, we should say so. That's the beauty of our system. And Congress ought to step up and do that. And governors ought to step up and do that. People ought to just get a little thicker skin and realize that we can agree, we can disagree. But then at the end of the day, in this instant, the president is right. We always set aside our sort of preconceptions of the president.

Some like him a lot. Some don't like him a lot. Some are kind of in the middle and kind of move around. But at the end of the day, he's the president, and the president is going to be at the microphone and he's going to set the tone. And I do think it's important for us to have a national focus towards achieving what we can on the health care front to keep people safe, but also that we have a goal of getting our economy kickstart and restarted so that the American people can thrive. Because, man, I'm going to tell you, the people down here that I'm talking to, they're hurting. And that's in Texas where we're not hit as hard as New York. But people are hurting from these shutdowns.

The restaurants that are, you know, a guy that I talked to the night before last, well, whatever time, a few days ago, you know, that lost three and a half million dollars in a month and laid off 1,100 people. You know, another restaurant that just laid off 500 people, another business that shut down a restaurant. I mean, a hotel owner who called me and said, I'm bleeding 150 grand a month. I got maybe three months of cash reserves and I'm toast. I could go down dozens of examples and there's thousands across the country. We cannot sustain this in perpetuity. We can't. No, of course we can't. But, you know, I think the I think the question I have is a so the Easter date just seemed to be something he said, not not data based, not based on anything that that we were seeing in the actual numbers, which it seems to be bolstered by the immediate backtrack from that. But yeah, I just, I, if, if I have no objection in theory to national dates, but I just want them to be

based on data and I want them to be, to be, and that to be explained to us in a manner that we can understand. And a lot of the sort of the vague, well, we got to get going. Yeah, absolutely we do. I just really worry that people are making a false choice, which is it's either stop the virus or get going. It's either, let's put it this way. It is we're going to save lives and crush the economy or we're going to open the economy and not save lives. And I think the real the real issue is if we open too soon, we will not only not save lives, we will also in a more devastating way for a longer period, crush the economy. And I feel like that part of it is not is not being put out into the public enough. Well, except, well, let me look, the counter argument is, is if we wait too long, we're going to crush every bit as many lives as we will as if we don't

get going. Look, I agree with you that this sort of, you know, open it or close it that most no one's there for the most part, a handful of noisy people are. But yeah, bottom line is most of us are trying to figure out what's the right best. The conversation I had on the quasi we had this morning with HHS was, guys, walk me through the numbers of where we are with masks, where we are with respirators and ventilators, where we are with tests, where we are with PPE, and walk me through models of worst case and best case and how we're going to get there so that we can know how to factor that into our thinking for those of us that are trying to look 15, 30, 45 days out and figure out how to restart our economy, because that's what we have to do. And I don't see what the president has said or done differently than that, to be honest with you.

And again, I'm not defending any particular statement or action. What I'm saying is kind of saying, look, maybe by mid-April, Easter, we can do something. Now we've got this. Look, Birx was with him and Fauci was with him. they're now talking about 30 days and let's at least wait until May 1st. Over the next week, we'll get more data. The longer we go, the longer the ramp up will be to restart. I remember I talked to businesses. They go, man, it's going to take me at least a week to restart. The longer it goes, they're like, well, it might take me two weeks because I've got to figure out my suppliers and my supply chain.

So we have to be constantly adjusting and moving to do that. And we do need a national target. And it's somewhat analogous to D-Day, although different. You know, at some point, Ike had to make the determination whether it was worth risking going through the storm to go through Normandy. And ultimately decided it was because they built up to that moment. Maybe we lost more guys on the beaches because we went during the storms. I don't know. History judges those sorts of things. But we know that our leaders have to make difficult calls and figure out how to factor all that in to make the right call for the nation. Chip, two points. One, El Arroyo, I mean, there's been one really good

part about this, which is the delivery margaritas from El Arroyo in Austin. So big shout out if you're not following El Arroyo on Twitter for their signage. It's great every day, but it's certainly a bright spot in my coronavirus quarantine days. I know you're in Dripping Springs, so you're probably outside the delivery zone, and that has to be a bit of a tragedy. Second, second, I want to maybe look a little bigger picture. You mentioned working for Governor Perry. And if you're wondering, listeners, whether Chip Roy has worked for everyone you've ever heard of from Texas, the answer is yes, he has. So you were on the very front part of the Tea Party movement, Writing about the Tenth Amendment, and, I mean, you were like,

you know, there waving the banner from day one, back in 2009, 2010. I want to get your perspective on how the world looks ten years later for the conservative movement. Yeah, somewhat in terms of

$2 trillion that we just passed, but I do think that there's, like, you've talked about this. This is different when the government shuts down the economy intentionally for a public health crisis. But overall, the fiscal conservative movement that existed in 2009-10, started really there, looks pretty different in 2020 under a Trump presidency uh well let's talk about the better stuff first which is the Margarita's and El Royo I uh yeah I've been known to frequent El Royo a little bit that that's why that A-plus call

in law school wasn't wasn't accurate uh good old stuff you know el arroyo makes a pat green song right you know you're you know you're a good establishment but uh a little side note on that as with all things government it's not as good as it sounds right it's they're able to distribute and sell their mix and then a you know bottle of tequila in a package to give it to you when they first announced it i was envisioning rolling up there and getting myself a big frozen margarita and taking it on the road. Oh, I'm so sad. As with all things government, it's never quite as good as advertised from the government

on that. But we're actually trying to push to see if they might free that up a little bit. Because joking aside, in fact, that's a great thing by a whole other segment. You do another podcast. The extent to which all of these regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship, innovation, you know, what we do great, best as Americans. We're seeing a lot of that stuff getting dropped quickly. I love seeing what a lot of the governors are doing, whether it's Governor Abbott in Texas. The president's done a little bit at the national level, but mostly governors.

And we're seeing a lot of these things. It begs the question, why did they exist in the first place? Certificate of needs regulations that are prohibiting the ability to have plenty of hospital beds, et cetera, et cetera. So another conversation. But to your point about federalism, but more importantly, you're talking about the sort of fiscal conservatism of the Tea Party and so forth. So, yeah, I mean, it's been very disappointing for me over the last decade to watch the extent to which we have just utterly failed to embrace any kind of fiscal responsibility. And so now today we have a rainy day, right? You know, but we don't, but we have no rainy day fund because we've been completely and totally irresponsible fiscally. Both parties from far left to far right. I'll

give a little bit of credit to some in the Freedom Caucus land and so forth who pretty continually beat this drum of fiscal responsibility. But for the most part, it has been ignored. And I go back and look at various budget committee statements of mine over the last 15 months, floor statements and Twitter and social media and messaging about why it's so important that we get our hands around our fiscal irresponsibility. I have to look at the numbers now with the $2 trillion. Three weeks ago, I would have told you that we were racking up $110 million of debt an hour. That's, again, $110 million with an M an hour before we just threw

out this $2 trillion bill. So we'll have to update our numbers because now it's not about that. Right now it's about beating this virus and getting our lives back together and getting our economy going again. But we can't continue to punt these things down the road. And let me say another thing that's important about that. It's not just the debt. It's not just the 23 point what now, $5 trillion of debt. It's that we never have to sit down and do what you all do at home or your businesses, what any business does around America, and sit around the table and make tough decisions. Making tough decisions makes

you stronger as a nation. Making tough decisions makes you value things more that you're choosing. We never have to sit down and have a fight. Okay, you guys demand that we have half a billion dollars of funding that goes to Planned Parenthood every year. Okay, are you taking that out of Medicare? Or are you going to change the Medicare rules about when you're eligible? Are you going to fund the NEA or NPR or PBS and so forth? Okay. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to borrow it or are you going to take it out of Medicaid or Medicare and so forth? You're going to limit defense spending. Okay. But we never sit down and do that. Everybody

just retreats to their corners and then they just say, well, we need more defense spending. So what the hell? Blow the caps. Or, hey, we need more non-defense discretionary spending, or we need to continue to fund expansion of mandatory spending, not just Medicare and Social Security, by the way, but SNAP and TANF and every other program that continues to grow. It has exploded out of control in significant part because of the response to wanting to rebuild our military over the last three years. And essentially, the war caucus, if you will, if I might use that pejorative, won the day. That's it. And they carried the day in terms of spending, and we weren't able to stay focused on the lane of fiscal responsibility. And the president went along with that way of thinking that we needed to do that at the cost of more debt.

So, Congressman, we're back in total agreement. And I just – there is an emerging consensus that where the American people are right now, if you're going to just sort of look and see, not where everybody, but if the consensus of the American people is broadly around a kind of economic populism and progressivism with a cultural, not necessarily conservatism, but a cultural moderation to conservatism. So that what America has become is center left on economics and sort of center right on culture. And so therefore, there isn't really a critical mass in the U.S. for fiscal responsibility any longer. And do you see any hope to revive a popular, A, do you agree with that assessment? And B, do you see any hope for a revival of popular concern for fiscal responsibility short of some sort of real economic adversity caused by our irresponsibility? Well, I think you may have just answered the question a little bit there at the end, which is I think that what we're dealing with now, there's going to be a lot of changes that come out of this, I think. Now, how long may sustain?

I don't know. Post 9-11, we were all unified. It didn't take very long before we weren't. And so that'll be true here, too. People will retreat to their political corners. But I am of the belief that the view about sort of free trade vis-a-vis China and what that means for national security in terms of our supply chain, there's going to be some real conversations about that stuff. There's going to be real conversations about how much we need to have our health care supply and stuff independent and strong. But then there's going to be some conversations about, I think, the need for the ability to deal in a rainy day. When this is all said and done,

we're going to blow past $30 trillion in total debt, and we're going to be back to square one, still racking up annual debt because we're underwater because of where we are with mandatory spending and our overall tax structure and everything else. So I am of the belief that this will refocus attention on it. But at the end of the day, we've got to connect it to people in a way that matters. Part of the problem we have right now is because of this whole modern monetary theory worldview and because there's this belief that you can spend endlessly without consequence, it's hard for people to care. The American family cares about their health care costs or their kids' education or their ability to retire or having a job. And that's all

understandable. But let me say this, though. When I campaign in central texas i've got very left-leaning austin and pretty you know republican and conservative hill country and san antonio parts but um at the you know the the the thing that i talk about a lot on the campaign trail i talk about a number of different issues but one of which is spending and it is the one that gets by far the most consistent head nods across the district. It's one of those things that is never going to be your pitchfork issue for people when they're out on the population generally. But it is something that when you mention it as a leader, they all go, yeah, that's the way it should be done. We should operate our federal government like we do a business or a state government or a personal family budget. So I think we need to get back focused on that as best we can.

All right. Thank you so much for your time. I do have a final question for you on, you know, a lot of people don't think about what your week to week life as a congressman looks like. It's a lot of flying back and forth, especially you have a family back in Texas and kids and a wonderful wife, Kara. And because of this, you're at home like the rest of us. So my question is, what is the thing that you now have time for that was going to Southwest miles that you have most enjoyed? Well, it's a good question. And it actually is one of those things that I hope we learn as a society out of this, right? Let's get some good out of this. Like we're turning and spending a whole lot of time with our families,

learn a lot about that and, you know, and our, you know, turn to your faith and, and the things that you can do and focus on when you're home. And I hope we do take a lot out of that and and carrying us forward i've been spending a lot of time as is my want with uh home projects uh you know um bill i put in the irrigation system in my front yard you know doug trenches out put the irrigation system in got to hook that up hopefully this afternoon or tomorrow it's raining today but uh i just do a lot of conference calls but i walk around outside doing it because at least i'm outdoors i'm we're blessed to have 10 and a half acres in dripping springs texas so i i can walk outside and you know be out in the

fresh air and and be out there working and and uh we do a lot of that people keep talking about all the tv shows they're watching we're not watching tv shows we're we're outside we're working shooting guns in the back. We're kind of treehouse. I promised my daughter a while back, you know, those kinds of projects. So just try to keep things normal. We do that anyway. That's what we do on weekends when I'm not in D.C. when I'm in the district and when I'm at home. And that's what I my counsel for most people is just try to maintain normalcy. And where you can't then modify it and adjust it and do it in ways that you kind of learn more about yourselves and read the book. You didn't get a chance to read, you know, do those kinds of things. And we've been enjoyed it.

My daughter got to see the sound of music for the first time. Her birthday was last week and she didn't get to have a birthday party. And so we, you know, made popcorn and hates my screen watch sound of music. And she was like, I don't know about that. And she loved it. It was, you know, now she goes around singing, you know, Doe Deer, you know, it's great. So, Congressman, your dad shaming me

because we have watched too much additional TV and we've only gotten to the range one time. We have this fantastic outdoor range about 20 miles from our house where you can social distance and practice your target shooting. And I've only done that one time and have played a lot of video games and watched Netflix. So you've totally dad shamed me. I've got to do a better job. Well, we're blessed with

10 acres. So I can walk out here on my back porch and go shoot my 243 into a big berm I've got in my back. You can't do that probably. So it's really easier for me. Thank you so much for joining us. I can't tell you how much we appreciate your time today. Hey, thank y'all. Just keep at it. We're one nation. We'll all come together and get through this.

Thank y'all very much. That is, by the way, when hearing you tell that story, one day when we should have a podcast conversation about Sarah telling you how to get into politics. Show up with a twin mattress. No, that's awesome. Like people always ask me because I never have been. I did a lot of things in the Mitt Romney era trying to get evangelicals to buy into Mitt.

But I've never been involved in politics the way you have. And it would be I think it'd be just great to have you just riff on that. There's also a weird when I talk to young people who want to get involved, like they're like, I want to be you when I grow up or some version of that. And so they think they should stay in D.C. the whole time. It's incredibly hard to convince them that they have to leave D.C. Oh, right. Have to do field work. And then there ends up with this large gender divide where guys are much more willing to sleep on a twin mattress on the ground or in their car and survive

on like scraps or pizza. And the women are like, but what about my apartment and safety? And like, there's, there's real reasons for some of that gender difference. But, um,

you know, I, I rolled up with the mattress in the back of my car that day. And I slept on the floor of a sorority house that was shut down for the summer at UT. And I really don't remember like how I got food and stuff at night or like... It's amazing. Yeah. There's like some gaps where I'm like, yeah, that was a weird choice. Well, you know, it seems to me and we can talk about this more later, but show up, be competent and work really hard is going to put you ahead of the game.

And it's awkward. Like, it's OK that it's awkward. It's like showing up to the first day of school at a new school where you don't know anyone. And I, um, it's miserable. Like, I don't know how else to put it. Like it's for me, it was, it's socially very, very unpleasant to do stuff like that. But if you just push through, um, I talked to people from that campaign, if not every day close to it. That's amazing. That's awesome. All right. Tiger King. Yeah. Okay. So I started watching this out of just nothing but sheer peer pressure because

literally every one of my friends here locally in Tennessee was watching it. Like that, I, my college friends that I keep in touch with on a daily basis. And they're like, David, we have to talk about this. So I started watching it and you were reluctant. You've watched a couple episodes. You already hate it. I just want to hear your thoughts. So reluctance really nice because you and I were having this like text conversation where I was like almost mad at you for saying that you were watching it

and that you were part of the problem in exploiting big cats and exotic wildlife. I might have phrased it more nicely, but I might actually have phrased it more meanly, to be honest. I think more meanly. I think more meanly. Yeah. Okay. So first of all, here's something important about me, which won't surprise you. I love reading long form articles. So I had already read an article about this guy, like this whole saga from, I don't know, maybe three years ago or so. The Joe Exotic saga. Yeah.

So I was aware of the, you know, gist of the story. And I think that's great. you know, gist of the story. And I think that's great. Like you want to go read some long form and you know, long form.org. Um, that's like reaching a very specific audience, but when you're putting it on Netflix, I do think there is some element of, um, you know, aggrandizing this behavior. And I have some proof for you, David, that I'm not making this up. Okay. Which is I am on TikTok. As we all are. Me and all the 14 year olds. Yes. And when I'm just like scrolling through TikTok, I would say one out of 20 videos that are being selected for me are from the very people that are shown in this documentary. Really?

Cuddling with freaking tiger kittens and lion cubs. And it makes me so outraged and angry. So I've made it through two episodes. Honestly, I barely made it through the first three minutes because they show a snow leopard basically dying in the back of a van because they just have the van off, no windows down, in dead summer in Oklahoma with a frickin' snow leopard. And, like, it made me nauseous. Yeah. I watched through the two episodes. I get your point that no one comes out looking good.

They're all bad guys. They briefly, briefly touch on the fact that these tiger kittens, for instance, are only useful for 12 weeks or less. Yeah. And if they have tiger kittens in every single part of the year for you to go take pictures with, and there's like four kittens that they're playing with per group, that's a lot of tigers. And lo and behold, we don't have a lot of those adult tigers. So what's happening to them? I think you can guess.

It's disgusting. It's just so, so disgusting. And to have a whole bunch of people in America watching it, I hope that the message everyone's getting is this is gross. And anytime you see a tiger kitten, you should want to punch that person in the face. And you shouldn't be dating someone who has a tiger kitten picture on their Tinder and all of that stuff. I am concerned that is not the message being reached. that is not the message being reached. Well, so I look at this and after episode one, I thought, well, I kind of have a feeling that there are some people in this very bizarre subculture that are more like good guys and some people in this very bizarre subculture

that are more like bad guys. And then as it goes on, I just start to feel like it's a whole bunch of bad guys. And there might be variations in degree, but it's just a whole bunch of bad guys. And the whole subculture as the thing goes on, looks less and less appealing, more and more weird. It collects this constellation of crooks and grifters. And so I had two thoughts at once. I was like, wait a minute.

On the one hand, this seems to be discrediting this entire industry. This documentary discredits this entire industry. But then on the other hand, I was thinking, no, what might actually be happening is that it's further exposing this industry to that subculture of bad people who thrive on this stuff. to have such an inherent charisma and draw for a certain number of people that, you know, some of these people who were very, very bizarre were able to get young men and young women from all over the country to come to stay at these private zoos and to work for, I don't even know how they work at these places consistent with employment laws, for virtually no money. Sort of the least of the legal problems here. Yeah, yeah. Some people for no money at all. And what is the draw here? It's almost as if there's some part of human nature that exists in some part of

the population that it's like the sight of a tiger cub or the idea of having a tiger trigger something in them. And no matter how weird or gross or discredited the whole thing seems to the larger culture, they're just going to be drawn to it. And it, can I also just say that if anyone's listening and thinking about emailing me to say they may be bad people, but they really seem to love their animals, like just don't send that email to me. I've, I've seen this comment now on multiple, you know, uh, you know, Twitter, et cetera. And, um, it, I, I throw something across the room at my house every time I see one of those. They do not love the animals. They love being the type of people who have those animals. It's, um, it's related to power. It's related to

a whole bunch of other things. Those animals do not belong there. Um, and they're, I am willing to have, by the way, a whole conversation about hunting culture and conservation. Um, and there, I am willing to have, by the way, a whole conversation about hunting culture and conservation. Um, I think that's a nuanced topic that we don't spend enough time on as a society where you pay $350,000 to shoot a black rhino. Um, I think that's really bizarre, but I also know that $350,000, first of all, you're shooting a black rhino that, um, is a male that can no longer breed successfully uh that's picked out specifically which also makes this weird why you want to shoot something where like they track it for you um and then but two that then you know quarter million

plus dollars goes to the 24-hour guards that have to monitor the other rhinos that are of breeding age um something that by the way, I aspire to do in my retirement is be someone who just holds a machine gun next to a rhino and works a 12-hour shift just following the rhino around as it grazes. That is an awesome thing to go do. That does sound interesting. But I agree with you 100% on, oh, they love the cats. I think they love that they can make it appear that the cats love them. So it's fame. It's it's this glorification thing that's creepy. Yeah, it's like, look, the most powerful animal in the natural kingdom, when I like nuzzle him will nuzzle me back. nuzzle me back. And it's, yeah, I mean, it, it really does come across as a performative display of power. Um, and I think it's sort of, you know, the fascination of it is sort of that it's

rubbernecking, like what this exists. Yeah. Yeah. Which is true for all of these subculture documentaries. And I do love documentaries, but unfortunately, this one hits. And I don't know if I've talked about this on the pod, but my mother was a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Texas for my childhood. So I grew up with deer, coyote, raptors. I think we've talked about the raptors, the razzicles, songbirds, tons and tons of baby rabbits. But you always were releasing them back into the wild. They weren't pets. You know, if they imprinted on you, you had failed in your mission. Right. So I do, every time he talks about those animal rights people, like he's talking about me and my upbringing,

except that he has no idea what he's talking about me and my upbringing, except that he has no idea what he's talking about. And I think one of the things that stunned me was they kept talking about and I don't I don't know if this is true, but there are more of these animals, some of the more endangered animals that are in captivity scattered around the United States, often held as pets, than exist in the wild. For sure. That was stunning to me. Yeah, and there's a, you know, this all ties back into COVID-19, by the way. These wet markets in China are a similar version of this. Obviously different because the animals are dead. But, you know, they believe that these pangolin scales, for instance, will help with virility or whatever the hell else they think. And so you've got just tons of dead pangolins and all of this exotic wildlife showing up at these wet markets,

and that's how these viruses spread. So there's a lot out there in animal husbandry world that we could dive into. concern though with tiger king is that exactly like you said it almost is going to radicalize more people to be like oh uh great i'm gonna go join this tiger cub cult yeah uh and um and you know what looks criminal and creepy to you will actually look pretty glamorous to people who maybe don't have a community yet and are feeling particularly lonely right now, home alone in quarantine. Well, it's the kind of thing like imagine if you had 100 people watch it and 98 of them are repelled and two of them are not. But then you multiply that over the millions of people who have watched this. But then you multiply that over the millions of people who have watched this. And yeah, that is one thing that as I was watching it, I was sort of on the one hand, it's got that element of I cannot believe this happens. I cannot believe these personalities. I cannot believe this subculture. And then there's this little voice in the back of your head going, oh, man, this is this is going to be actually compelling to some people in a non-rubbernecking way. And that's disturbing. And this is like, this was the conversation you and I had over text where

I was maybe mean to you, where, you know, you were comparing it to a true crime documentary. And my point was, yeah, but people don't want to making a murderer and think I want to go murder people because that looks fun and cuddly. Right. Well, yeah, I do think it's different. Yeah. No, as I watched it, I saw your point, but you were being mean to me before I'd had a chance to see it and to understand your point. But yeah, yeah, I do get you. So I'm so this should not be construed as an endorsement of Tiger King to watch. It should be construed as a meditation on a disturb, the existence of a disturbing subculture that we don't want to see grow. How's that? I like it.

I can subscribe to that. Okay. All right. Well, anything else? We've gone a little bit long today, but the Congressman Roy conversation, I thought, is absolutely worth it. Good with me. All righty. Well, we will be back in April. And I think we're fervently hoping that April's a better month than March. Low bar.

Yeah, very low bar. But we will see soon enough. But anyway, thank you for hanging with us during this difficult month. And please continue to those of you who have not yet rated us on Apple podcasts, please do so please subscribe. And we will see you again later this week.