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Tony Ayo
This is Tony Ayo from the Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murder. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent, streaming, even extra Sosa at your favorite burrito spot. But with Boost Mobile, you don't have to play the Willis Go up soon game. Boost Mobile offers an unlimited talk, text and data plan at a price that'll never go up. It's the same price you'll pay for life. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up. Only at boost mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan.
Amy Ehrrett
Hello beautiful. I'm Amy Ehrrett, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. Our Prestige Salon quality hair color delivers gorgeous multi dimensional color and 100% gray coverage color at home. Or visit one of our 95 plus hair color bars nationwide and let our licensed pros do it for you. It's our birthday. Celebrate with 20% off your first order or service. Visit madison-reid.com and use code BIRTHDAY20. Confident, bold, unstoppable. That's the power of Madison Reed.
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There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep going further. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella. Edu to learn more.
Lisa Booth
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth where we get to the issues that matter to you. Today we're talking about a lot of the issues that matter to you. We're going to talk about fraud and this whole of a government approach that the Trump administration has in trying to fight fraud. Also what Congress is doing to fight it as well. We're also going to get into the rise of communism and socialism on the left from a guy who wrote the book the Case Against Socialism. And lastly, we'll talk about the Save act, is it possible to get it done in Congress? We're going to discuss all of this and more with Senator Rand Paul. And one thing I always appreciate about having him on is he answers these questions truthfully, honestly, and really gets to the heart of it. So stay tuned. Well, Senator Randall, it's great to have you on the show. Always appreciate you making the time. Thanks for coming on.
Senator Rand Paul
No problem. Glad to be with you.
Lisa Booth
You know, Senator, we're, we're seeing sort of a whole government approach from the White House on trying to crack down on fraud. I know you've sponsored the End Welfare for Non Citizens Act. I want to get out that in just a moment. But how would you characterize just the size and scope of fraud in the federal government?
Senator Rand Paul
You know, shocking, I guess would be the first word I would think of. This isn't just an isolated problem to the Somali population in Minnesota. This is a government wide problem. And part of the reason is this. We have a lot of these welfare programs where you sign up at the state level, but the federal government pays for it. So you have different people administering the rules of eligibility from the people who have to pay for it. You know, if you were paying for this and somebody's ripping you off, you'd change your sign up. You know, you'd start, you know, trying to scrutinize who's signing up. You'd go check on them to see how they're spending the money. But nobody does it because from the state level it looks like a gift. This happened, some of this started, you know, with Obamacare. The federal government, the Democrats wanted to expand Medicaid. So they said to the states, we'll pay for it at a hundred percent. So you can add all these new tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people nationwide can get free health care, but you won't have to pay for it. So, you know, there's no incentive to scrutinize it. There's no incentive. It's not their money. And they, they just figure, well, the federal government's got a printing press. Well, you know, they can just print up more money. And then right now the problem is there's such resistance to both President Trump and Republicans that the states that are abusing this are blue states. So they control the administration. The, they control the eligibility. California, New York, Minnesota, and they don't care if there's fraud because the federal government's paying for it. So it's a rotten system, you know. We're going to hear more from Nick Shirley on Wednesday and also from James o', Keefe, who've been investigating this. But it is literally shocking what we've seen so far.
Lisa Booth
You know, how much you know, because if you remember Doge, you know, they had the $2 trillion savings goal. But also a lot of the conversations centered around streamlining the government. We've got a lot of programs that are duplicative. How much of that would solve some of these fraud issues. The fact that the government's just gotten so big and so bloated, it helps.
Senator Rand Paul
I think you have to fix the problem with eligibility being separated, you know, from the payment. But Doge had a lot of great ideas. Some of them were technical ideas. Some of them involved this. Some involve duplication. I've also got legislation on duplication. I tell people, instead of just a CBO score, on how much it costs, someone should ask if we're already doing this. You know, one time we looked up on housing and we found that there were 82 different housing projects all doing the same thing. And this is the problem of government. You elect somebody and they certainly are a do gooder and they will do good with somebody else's money. They come to Washington and they just want to help people. That's their primary focus, to help people using other people's money. But they want their name on the legislation. They don't bother to have somebody to do the research to find out we're already doing it. My other pet peeve is sometimes we're already doing something and they want to double the program. All right, we have a free housing program. And my question is, well, how's it working? You want to make it twice as big? How did the first hundred million go? Should we not check and see if the 100 million got anybody a house or whether it was a million dollars a house? You know, we don't review the existing program. We don't review whether or not we're already doing it before we create a new program. And then we separate out the payers, the federal government, from the states administering it, and it's a recipe for an utter disaster. This is the. It's hard to even calculate how big this problem is, but we have to have people with the backbone to change it. I mean, frankly, if you wanted to reform Medicaid, it's not just catching the cheaters. Instead of it being 90% paid for by the federal government, we should at the very least go back to like 50, 50. If the states had to pay 50, 50, they might scratch their head and say, well, maybe all these Able bodied people who have no medical illness should not be on Medicaid. They should be out working. But we don't get that because there doesn't, you know, there just doesn't seem to be the willpower to say, well, my goodness, you know, people who are not disabled shouldn't be on disability and people who are able bodied shouldn't be getting food stamps. But there's not, there's a lack of courage in Washington.
Lisa Booth
You know, you're for the End Welfare for Noncitizens act, you know, obviously self explanatory, but how does it accomplish that goal? And then also, how much worse has that problem gotten after four years of open borders under the Biden administration?
Senator Rand Paul
Well, it's interesting because it's trickery in a shell game. So years ago we did pass a law, a good law, saying that if you come to this country as a legal and lawful immigrant, you're still not eligible for cash welfare for five years. And that was a good argument. The argument was that the American dream is a job. The American dream is not come up here and become part of our welfare state. That still is the law. And I think to the most part actually works. But then we did something different. Not me, I opposed it. Congress did this. Congress decided to open up a new avenue to come here legally. And these are called special visas or our temporary protective status. So we got all these Haitians, we got all these Somalis, we got people from all over the world. Every crisis in the world, we admit you and we call you a refugee. But if you're called a refugee, you're no longer just a legal immigrant. You, you're a refugee. And guess what, you're exempt from all the restrictions on welfare. You can get welfare immediately. So when people have looked at the Somali population, they find out the Somalis, some of them like 85% of them have been on welfare since they got here, many of them over 10 years, and are never getting off welfare. Their entire families are on welfare. And we imported them, you know, not to learn about the American dream. They've learned about the American welfare state. But this is the problem. I think the rule's still working on. Most of the lawful immigrants are not on welfare. It's these special visas and refugees. But there's hundreds of thousands of people. At last count, just from Afghanistan, we've admitted 250,000 people. And you say, well, who's for this? Is it just Democrats? No, there's a whole host of Republicans who just say, oh my goodness, these people helped us in the 30 year long war. Well, we've already admitted 250,000 and they want another 100,000 to come in. It's too many. They're not assimilating. And for goodness sakes, we can't pay for our own poor. We shouldn't be importing more people for our welfare system.
Lisa Booth
You know, so you break down, I know previously you said, you know, the states, blue states kind of ignore some of the fraud because of the federal government's paying for it. But then why do Democrats in Congress ignore it? Because there were changes under the big beautiful bill to some degree of some of the welfare stuff. And you know, even like Doge, Democrats actively fought that as well. So why is the left so opposed to putting any sort of guardrails in place to try to stop some of this fraud?
Senator Rand Paul
Their constituency, their voters are in the receiving pool. And so there's a block of voters who receive something for nothing from government and they vote primarily Democrat. And so why would they want to offend those, you know, who are voting for them? In addition, they, they believe in this, you know, what people call the modern monetary theory. They believe that money grows on trees and you just keep printing it up and there'll be no repercussions. And to me it's a terrible bait and switch because there are people in our country suffering and you want to know who they are? They're primarily the people who are working, not the people receiving benefits. They sort of muddle by. It's not great to be on benefits, but let's say you make $50,000 a year and you have two kids. The last five years inflation has been 25% cumulative. If you didn't get a 25% raise in the last five years, whatever your income is, if you're on the lower part of the socioeconomic ladder, you've got less. And there are people in our country hurting. But they're primarily the working class and the working poor because inflation is going up faster than their wages. And I would gather, you know, I would probably conclude, and it'd be interesting to look at statistics on this, how many people are in the category that haven't had a 25% raise? That where most of their money goes to the feeding their family and the rent and their cars, gasoline, etc. I would think probably 50 to 75,000. With a family of four, most of your money is spent each month. And I think most of those people are being squeezed by inflation. But inflation is big government. It's something for nothing to somebody else. So the non workers, people who refuse to work, they keep getting more money. People who are doing the right thing and working are the ones being squeezed. And then the rich do fine under any system.
Lisa Booth
Got to take a quick commercial break. We've got more with Senator Rand Paul. But first I want to talk to you about something important. Just how easy it's become for scammers to take your hard earned money today. Fraud doesn't just happen to careless people. It could be a convincing phone call, a realistic looking email, or just one wrong click can be enough. And once the money is gone, getting it back is often a long, tedious fight if it comes back at all. Cover on was built to help with exactly that. It monitors your personal information and alerts you when something looks suspicious. But now here's the real difference. If a scammer does get through, Cover on doesn't just send you an alert and wish you good luck. It provides financial protection for eligible online fraud, identity theft and other digital threads, along with access to experts who can help guide you through the recovery process. Because when your identity or your money is on the line, knowing what happened is only half the battle. Knowing what to do next matters just as much. You worked way too hard to hand over your savings to a criminal. Cover on helps make sure one mistake doesn't become a financial disaster. Find out more by visiting their website@www.coveron.com truth or you can tap the link in this episode's description. Start protecting what you worked so hard for right now by heading over to cover on.com Truth to learn more about how Cover on has your back.
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The headlines they move on, but the heartache and the terror they do not. Iran and its terrorist proxies are continuing to target Israel. Hezbollah continues its attacks in the north, forcing families to live under constant threat. But Israel is not only defending her people, she is standing on the front lines against terror that threatens us all. Even when the news crews leave the international fellowship of Christians and Jews, they remain. Every day they are on the ground providing life saving aid. Now, near Israel's border with Lebanon, a Hezbollah drone recently struck the home of Yelena. Widowed earlier this year and living alone, she was trapped inside by the blast. Thankfully, she was not injured, but she remained displaced. It's hard these days, she says. But I don't want to leave. Well, as Christians we are called to stand with God's people and pray for those defending Israel and protecting the freedoms we hold dear. I want you to join the international fellowship of Christians and Jews in praying for the peace of Jerusalem and for the soldiers, families and civilians carrying the burden of this fight right now. Visit prayifcj.org that's prayifcj.org Bite into a
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Amy Ehrrett
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Lisa Booth
You know, I wanted to get you on. Well, I mean, I'd love to get you on a lot, but you know, I've got limitations for time. But I wanted to get you on the SAVE act before we go. Can the c about get done without blowing up the filibuster or, you know, is there a viable path forward? I don't think it can get done through reconciliation. Is my understanding because of the bird rule? Like, is there any way to get the SAVE act through Congress?
Senator Rand Paul
Not short of Democrats voting for it. But I think it should be an electoral strategy in the sense that we go to Democrats. 80% of Democrats think you probably should show your ID and be a citizen. The other thing we should do is this. And this is something that is being completely ignored by the whole push. And then it makes everybody frustrated that we can't pass it in Congress because we don't have the numbers. We should do this state by state. But this also illustrates where the real problem is. Arizona and Nevada are battleground states. In Arizona, you actually to register to vote already have to show proof of citizenship. So in all likelihood. And Republicans have controlled the legislature for many of the years in Arizona. In all likelihood. If we looked at those voting in Arizona, there probably are almost all citizens. So that's not really the problem. The problem in Arizona is you get unsolicited ballots sent to you in the mail and they allow ballot harvesting. So what I would say as a party, the Republican Party, instead of just giving up or instead of, you know, continuing to tilt at the windmill of this thing, we should put a bunch of money, look, the Republican Party has a bunch of money. We should go into Arizona, run a initiative in referendum or a constitutional amendment. And I don't think we can get rid of mail in balloting because the westerners like it. But let's get rid of unsolicited ballots. You have to ask for your ballot and let's get rid of harvesting. That alone in close elections might make a difference. Same with Nevada battleground state. Let's do. Let's. Why wouldn't we as a party target Arizona and Nevada, two battleground states, that if we won, we change the complexion of things for the country? Why don't we target them to eliminate the abuses of mail in balloting and the, the abuses of harvesting?
Lisa Booth
And real quick, before we go, why do you think we're seeing this insurgence of, you know, socialism Communism on the left. And how big of a threat do you think it is?
Senator Rand Paul
You know, I think there's a danger for Democrats in going too far. But, you know, I wrote a book about this a couple years ago called the Case Against Socialism. And part of the reason I wrote the book was I was seeing these polls that were alarming. Gallup polls, Pew polls of young people where nearly half or more than half of young people were leaning towards socialism. I blame it on this. Some I blame on our educational system, but I blame it on this cultural push for fairness. So what we teach our children is that justice is fairness and that everything should be fair and that outcomes should be equal. Instead of teaching our kids what. What we were taught for the first couple hundred years was go out, bust your butt, work hard, either physically or work hard academically, and that's how you will achieve success. We sort of got into this cultural, you know, malaise of everybody deserves a trophy. And I don't care if Johnny can't spell. He really needs to get. Everybody needs to get a spelling. We shouldn't have spelling bees because we shouldn't have reward for people who are spelling better than others. This was sort of this cultural thing that's been going on 20 or 30 years. And it is good to be fair to people and. And it's good for a justice system to treat people fairly. But if you confuse that with fairness of outcome, they don't realize what ultimately socialism always relies on. What you have to have to have fair outcomes is someone has to hold a gun and someone has to take from those who have more to give to those who have less. And this is the part of socialism that our kids aren't being taught. And some kids grow out of it when they start working for themselves. And. But I think a combination of schools, bad schools, bad ideas, lazy thinking, and culture has led to where we are now.
Lisa Booth
Senator Rand Paul, always appreciate you having on the show. One thing I really appreciate about having you on is I always feel like I get real answers versus kind of sometimes the canned answers we get from politicians. So really appreciate your thoughtful responses in making the time for us.
Senator Rand Paul
Thank you.
Lisa Booth
That was Senator Rand Paul. Always appreciate him and making the time to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday. You can listen throughout the week. I also want to thank John Casio for putting the show together. Until next time.
Amy Ehrrett
Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Ehrrett, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter our Prestige Salon Quality hair color delivers gorgeous multi dimensional color and 100% great coverage color at home. Or visit one of our 95 plus hair color bars nationwide and let our licensed pros do it for you. It's our birthday. Celebrate with 20% off your first order or service. Visit Madison Reid.com and use code BIRTHDAY20. Confident, bold, unstoppable. That's the power of Madison Reed.
HeroBread/iHeart Podcast Announcer
There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep going further. Capelli University what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.
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Tony Ayo
this is Tony Ayo from the Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murder. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent, streaming, even extra social at your favorite burrito spot. But with Boost Mobile, you don't have to play the Willis Go up soon game. Boost Mobile offers an unlimited talk, text, and data plan at a price that'll never go up. It's the same price you'll pay for Life. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up, or only at boost mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan.
In this hard-hitting episode, Lisa Boothe sits down with Senator Rand Paul to dissect pervasive government waste, rampant Medicaid fraud, welfare abuse, and the cultural rise of socialism in America. Drawing from his legislative experience and his book, "The Case Against Socialism," Senator Paul offers candid critiques of current policies and provides insights on what reforms are needed. The conversation covers the structure of welfare programs, loopholes fueling abuse, political incentives that sustain systemic problems, and the challenges in advancing election security legislation like the SAVE Act.
[02:43 - 04:52]
“You have different people administering the rules… from the people who have to pay for it. …From the state level it looks like a gift.” — Senator Rand Paul [03:10]
[04:52 - 07:29]
[07:29 - 09:49]
[09:49 - 12:08]
[17:25 - 19:33]
[19:33 - 21:29]
On accountability in government welfare programs:
“It’s hard to even calculate how big this problem is, but we have to have people with the backbone to change it.” — Senator Rand Paul [06:32]
On special status immigrants/refugees:
“We imported them, you know, not to learn about the American dream. They've learned about the American welfare state.” — Senator Rand Paul [08:55]
On inflation and who suffers most:
“There are people in our country hurting. But they're primarily the working class and the working poor because inflation is going up faster than their wages.” — Senator Rand Paul [11:41]
On the culture of fairness vs. justice:
“If you confuse that with fairness of outcome, they don’t realize what ultimately socialism always relies on.” — Senator Rand Paul [20:23]
Lisa Boothe guides the conversation with concise, issue-focused questions, maintaining a tone of urgency and sincerity. Senator Rand Paul responds with forthrightness, offering fact-based critiques, anecdotes, and legislative suggestions framed in his signature direct style.
This episode provides a wide-ranging, energetic exploration of institutional failures around fraud, wasteful spending, and welfare abuse, as well as a critique of growing socialist attitudes among young Americans. Senator Rand Paul delivers detailed diagnosis and practical policy prescriptions, making this conversation valuable for listeners seeking insight into government reform, immigration, election integrity, and American political culture.