← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
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- [00:00]
Clay Travis
This is an iHeart podcast. Team 47 with Clay and Buck starts now.
- [00:11]
Buck Sexton
All right.
- [00:11]
Clay Travis
We've been trying to track him down for a bit, but he's really busy. He's finally with us. We're very pleased. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy. Mr. Secretary, welcome on the program.
- [00:24]
Buck Sexton
Hey, man. I think this is my inaugural visit to the program. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
- [00:30]
Clay Travis
Absolutely. We're honored to have you. Clay sends his regards. He is on the golf course today. I'm hearing rumors that he hit it. 340 Rs from the back tees. I don't know if that's true or not, but this is what people are saying. But tell me this. Let's. Let's.
- [00:45]
Buck Sexton
Let's just leave the play on the golf course the day I show up.
- [00:49]
Clay Travis
Yeah, let's. Let's do this, though. Tell me what's going on. Particularly. I'm a New Yorker. At least I grew up in New York, so I spent plenty of time in Newark Airport. It has been a total mess. The air traffic control situation seems like it's. It's a disaster that you inherited here. And is it getting better? What is the problem? Why are we constantly having all these flight delays that aren't weather related? How does it get fixed? You got a lot of frustrated flyers out there who are hoping you're going to help clear all this nonsense up. What's going on?
- [01:23]
Buck Sexton
Yes. So first we have to recognize this has been a problem that's been burning for a long time, but it was coming to a head over the last four years, over the last administration. Government watchdog groups told Biden and Buttigieg, listen, you're going to have real problems. You need to fix the air traffic control system. And they didn't do anything, so they've left it to us. And what you saw in Newark is kind of a culmination of several of the problems that we have in the airspace, and they happened at the same time. So in Newark, you had three things. One, they shut down a Runway to repave it. Right. They open it up 13 days before schedule grade on the Port Authority. But the two issues remaining are issues that we see throughout the whole system were 3,000 air traffic controllers short nationwide. And so you're seeing a lack of controllers in the Philly tracon that controls the Newark airspace. And then we're having telecom issues. Our infrastructure for air traffic control still uses copper wires. Nobody uses copper wires anymore. Everyone's on fiber. So we were having telecom issues in the Philly tracon and we resolved that issue on the, on the, on the copper wire. But Verizon moved incredibly fast, our partner there and laid brand new fiber between Philly and New York. And so it's not, by the way, we're still testing that fiber. You want to be ultra safe before you switch it over. That'll be tested through probably the end of June, early July. And then there's 22 controllers in the Philly Tracheis. Six of them are out right now, five for the trauma that they had because of the outages from late April, early May. One is on sicklead. We brought in 22 new controllers to train in Philly right now. Now, when I say a new controller, what I mean is this could be an air traffic controller who is certified in a different airspace, say Denver. If they come to the Philly TRACON to control a different airspace, they have to get recertified on that specific airspace. And so most of these are experienced controllers, but it's going to take them time to get certified. So the problems of telecom and the problems of the Runway and the problems of the controllers, you're going to have a slow roll of continual improvement. But you were seeing and giving you a lot of information here, Buck, but what you saw was this. We reduced the capacity at Newark. So all these flights were scheduled, but they weren't fine because we reduced the capacity and you saw delays and cancellations and it was a disaster for a couple weeks. What we've done is we've got all the airlines to agree that we're going to reduce our capacity. So if you book in Newark now, you actually fly. And that's what's key. No one wants to go to the airport and wait four hours and be canceled. So because of the agreement that we have at Newark, everyone says, okay, we're not going to have as many flights coming out of here, but the ones we do have will actually go. So we're on the path to resolving it. But all these solutions take time because you can't snap your fingers and create more controllers and you can't, you know, quickly run fiber and then, you know, quickly test it. But we're doing it and it's going to get better in Newark. But give me some grace.
- [04:54]
Clay Travis
Now nationwide, Mr. Secretary, there's also, it feels like, and you see a lot of people complaining about it on X, I'm sure just flight delays have. It feels like the problem is constantly getting worse, not better. So you've talked to us about Newark, but just in general, across the country, how do we get it so that especially a lot of these routes where people are flying, you know, and there's a 60 or 70% delay rate. Some of these delay rates just seems unconscionable. Is that a function of airlines got to scale back the flights? Is it air traffic control? How do we get it so that people can really believe credibly if there's clear skies? Okay. I'm not talking about if there's tornadoes or crazy weather, but if the weather is fine, their plane's probably going to take off when it's supposed to, and they're probably going to get off it when they're supposed to.
- [05:45]
Buck Sexton
Yeah. So we are using equipment that is, you know, 25, 35 years old in whether it's the towers that are at the airports, the tray con, you know, is the next ring out from the tower. It's really old equipment and it's really old telecom. And so I'm going to need a lot of money from Congress. It should have been done, you know, a decade ago. It wasn't. And we have to basically gut and build brand new our air traffic control system with the best technology in the world. We can do it really quickly. It's going to take, you know, three years. If the Congress clears the committing process. For me, if I don't have to go through nepa, that just, you know, stacks, you know, you know, month upon month or year upon year, they clear that for me, we're going to be able to do it fast. And what you'll see is you can handle greater capacity with the new system that we're going to build. And as new technology becomes available, you can deploy it off this new system to get even more efficiencies. Instead of having buck, instead of having the flip phone that you can send as many updates as you want to your razor flip phone, if that's in your genre. It wasn't mine. You can. It's not going to update it is what it is. It's old, it's antiquated. That's what we have right now. But if I build you an iPhone 15, you can deploy a ton of technology off of it. We're going to build you the iPhone 15 that you can build technology off of. And you have to think that we're going to have more air travel, but it's going to get more complicated because we're going to deploy in the next years. You're going to see drone technology expand and services expand throughout the country, where you're going to get Amazon deliveries. You're going to get your, your Uber Eats. You're going to get a hot cup of coffee from Starbucks. If you shop, if you get your coffee at Starbucks all by a drone. And we're going to have evitals. These are like the Ubers in the air. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're big drones that you can hold, you know, three, four people and you're going to see those deploy in the airspace.
- [07:47]
Clay Travis
How far are we from that, Mr. Secretary? Because that sounds pretty cool.
- [07:52]
Buck Sexton
It's very cool. So they're testing these, these evitals right now. They're, they're, I think you see the technology advance. Archer, which is one of the technologies, is actually has a contract with the Olympics in 2028. And it's not just to showcase their technology. It's, they actually have to use that technology to move people around all the different sites at the LA Olympics. So it's moving very fast. The FAA has to certify it, make sure it's safe. Eventually, you'll see, you won't have. These will not be piloted. They can be autonomous or. Right now, in certain parts of the country, like in Texas, the drone deliveries are happening in certain parts of the country right now. Successful. People love them. And what they've done with drones is obviously the noise becomes a concern. They've done really well innovating on props to reduce the noise. You barely know what's in the sky when it's hovering over your house. Drop in product or set product down.
- [08:54]
Clay Travis
That's very cool. Well, that's looking forward to having that going on. But obviously if it's tough to have air traffic control for planes, if we put thousands, tens of thousands, however many drones and, and air taxis in the sky, that's going to, I assume that's going to result in some interesting air traffic issues as well. So hopefully that'll all get squared away. Tell us about the, the report you just released. California's high speed rail. $16 billion, 17 years, no track laid. How is that possible?
- [09:28]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, it's a great question. So first, I'm a conservative. I would love to have high speed rail in America. I think it would be great if we could do it. This was the first big project and like liberals, seem to always deliver the same results, which are not very good. This was supposed to be done years ago and it was supposed to cost a little over $20 billion. They haven't laid any track. They've spent billions. They've now told us that they can complete a truncated portion of the project by 2033. We looked at their data. They've given us 80,000 pages of documents. They just can't do it. And so they have about $4 billion of grants that have been given by the DOT. And it's our philosophy that if we give them that 4, if we let that $4 billion go, that's 4 billion you don't have for other good projects around the country. And I think the taxpayer expects us to spend their money well and not to invest in boondoggles.
- [10:31]
Clay Travis
And so where did the money, I got to ask Mr. Secretary, where. $16 billion. It's a lot of money for a state level project. What was it spent on?
- [10:42]
Buck Sexton
So they were, they were buying land. Right. And by the way, there's, there is an eyebrow raised from me in that how was the land, who was buying land along the route of this, of this proposed high speed rail and how much money did they make and are they connected to politicians? All those questions need to be asked and looked at is, you know, was there any criminal activity? I don't know, but I think it should be looked at. The project now it's, it's out over 10 years. And if they did the full project, it was supposed to be tens of billions, it would be $130 billion to actually build it. And they still don't know that they can do it in any specific timeframe. So you have to recognize that it's a nice concept, but liberals don't spend money well and they haven't done it well on this project. And so at what point does the government cut bait and say, you know what, we're not going to do this one, but maybe there's other good projects across the country that we could invest in that would, that would serve the population well.
- [11:51]
Clay Travis
And tell us about what's in the. Assuming it gets passed more or less as, as is what is in the big beautiful bill that will go to transportation that will make a difference to the American people.
- [12:06]
Buck Sexton
So for us, we, there's $12 billion for this brand new air traffic control system. That's not going to be enough yet. You got to think about this. This is the biggest, it's nationwide infrastructure. It is the most important infrastructure that, that we're going to build on in the last several decades for sure, because it's such a big part of our economy. People fly, whether it's business or pleasure. We move a lot of products through the air. And so we have 12 billion. We'll need more than that. At a later point, they're going to have to give it to us. One of the problems, Buck, in the past is the Congress would give tranches of money to the FAA and then the priority would change or the administration changes and they never got the money. So we need to get the money up front. So 12 billion is a nice start. We can begin the project. But this year I need to get the rest of the money and then in that secondary bill we can hopefully get the, the clearing the deck of the permits. I also think it's important making sure we don't get a massive tax increase. That's big for us in the big beautiful bill. Also, there's a provision that if you buy a brand new car that was made in America, you can write off up to $10,000 of your interest payments on the vehicle. So again, incentivizing people to buy new cars. The President's doing all kinds of things to deliver on the promises that he made during the campaign, which by the way is nice when we have presidents that, that actually do what they say or try to accomplish what they promised.
- [13:42]
Clay Travis
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Sir, thank you so much for being with us. And please fix all the things.
- [13:48]
Buck Sexton
We appreciate it and the potholes too, but right on your house. I got you.
- [13:53]
Clay Travis
Yeah, you got me. Thank you, sir. Good to talk to you about the other. You're listening to Team 47 with Clay and Buck. We're talking to Ron Vitello, U.S. customs and Border Protection senior advisor. Ron, thanks for making the time for just start with this. How is it that Trump is able to secure the southern border almost at a hundred percent level? I mean it's in the 90 something percent drop so quickly. How'd he do it?
- [14:20]
Sean Duffy
Leadership matters. He's got a good team in place with the likes of Secretary Noem and there are now consequences unlike anything I've ever seen on the southwest border. So that rhetoric that says we're going to do this, the American people gave him that mandate. Action by the front line, you know, directed by the leadership and actual consequences to the event of crossing the border illegally are now in place in a way, like I've said, like, you know, I've been in and out of this business for 40 years and I've never seen anything like it. It was so rapid, the change at the southwest border, it even surprised me.
- [14:58]
Clay Travis
But so I think this would be really interesting, Ron, if I, if I could just ask you, because I had seen unfortunately in the bad old days of the wide open border what happens? People would walk up to border patrol. I mean, they would walk across where there wasn't a wall or there wasn't barrier, which there's a lot of places where that's still the case. They'd walk up and they would wave border patrol down. They would say, here I am. And sometimes through a translator or sometimes they would say it in English, some version of I have a credible fear of violence in my country. And they will be processed and, and led into America sometimes with a, like a ticket to appear and show up somewhere in the system later on. I mean, the whole thing was just a joke. What happens now if you show up and you just want to come into America illegally?
- [15:44]
Sean Duffy
Well, it's a high likelihood that when you're arrested, if even if you gave up or if you were trying to evade, there's a lot of that still going on. You're taken into custody like before, you're put into the system like before, and then you're referred for prosecution. The acceptance rate from the U.S. attorney's office all across the southwest border and the northern border in some places as well is over 90%. And so I'll just give you an example of what that means. When I was a second line supervisor in Nogales, Arizona, we could not present a smuggling case, a criminal felony smuggling case, to the U.S. attorney's office unless there were 15 smuggled aliens in the vehicle that we were trying to prosecute the smuggler for driving. Right now they're taking first time entrants who enter the border illegally as a case. It's dramatically different than it's ever been. And so the high likelihood is that after you're processed and put into the system, you're going to be referred and then accepted for prosecution and you'll have to see a judge for the crime committed crossing the border illegally. When that process is over and those individuals are sentenced regardless of what country they're from, they're sent back very rapidly. The average time in custody for folks that are in ICE detention is very, very low, lower than it's been in a long time. And so people are being removed from the US all over the world in very short order.
- [17:12]
Clay Travis
And also I'm seeing a lot of confusion, Ron, from some parts of the media, maybe confusion, surprise, astonishment that there's such a drop in fentanyl at the border that's crossing. What's going on there? Because I think our audience, I think everybody right now, they listen, they go, oh, I think I know what's going on.
- [17:35]
Sean Duffy
Yeah, of Course, they know that this has been a problem for many, many years. The president engaged worldwide, specifically in Canada and Mexico, the threat of terrorists, tariffs, just to make sure that they weren't allowing precursors to come into the country from China and that they had to do more on the border, on the physical border, to protect that border. And so both of those countries engaged, again, in ways I've never seen. Right. 10,000 troops from the Mexican National Guard deployed on their northern border, our southern border. Canada has done more to protect their physical border than I've ever seen. Helicopters, night vision equipment, dedicated patrols from state, local, provincial, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And so everybody is doing their part to help protect those borders and the sovereignty of each of their countries, thereby giving us a better chance at the physical border to find this stuff. And then the cartels know that it's just not a walk in the park as it was for the four years of the Biden administration.
- [18:45]
Clay Travis
That's remarkable. Just to make sure that everyone is clear on this one, what you're telling me is that on tariffs alone, there has been a big victory for the border. So the tool of tariff negotiations to get US Border security, that's already a win, is what I'm gathering from what you're saying, especially with, or rather with Mexico and Canada, 100%.
- [19:09]
Sean Duffy
There is no question that Canada and Mexico are doing more than they have ever done in the history of the relationships of these three countries than they are doing right now today. And recognize, you know, Canada put together legislation to spend millions of dollars on their border to help us to help identify the threats that are there. They now have a fentanyl czar, which they didn't have before. January 20, 2025, 10,000 troops on the Mexican border. And you'll remember the rhetoric when Trump got elected. Claudia Sheinbaum, the president in Mexico, all due respect, she was saying terrible things about how she wasn't going to work, she wasn't going to do the bidding of the United States or this president. She deployed 10,000 troops. No one has ever done that before her or since. And so that has led to a huge reduction in illegal activity across the Southwest border, including fentanyl precursors into their country and then fentanyl across our border.
- [20:06]
Clay Travis
We're talking to Ron Vitello, U.S. customs and Border Protection senior adviser for this administration. Ron, let's talk about big, beautiful wall. Major promise from Trump in the first term. He has returned to this issue. Now in his second term. I know that one of the ways that Stephen Miller and others are really trying to get people focused in on the need to pass this big, beautiful bill is saying that there's ample funding for Border Patrol, including for wall barrier, actually securing it. What can you tell us about that and the status of the wall right now? How long would it take if we had the funding to get a lot more of it in place? Let's do a little wall deep dive.
- [20:47]
Sean Duffy
Well, to get the requirement that's identified by the Border Patrol, supported by the president. Right. He, he built a lot of wall in the first term. Trump won and we expect to build a lot more in Trump 2. And so what we're doing now, with the help of the Department of defense, we have 10,000 of our own troops on the southwest border, helping the Border Patrol side by side. Part of what they're doing is giving agents better access to the border, fortifying the wall and increasing the infrastructure that prevents people from entering at the border. About 100 new miles of barrier placed either by DOD or by the Border Patrol itself with the existing contracting and the funding Left over from Trump1. So Biden comes in, he puts a moratorium on all border construction. And so it froze the activity for a while. And now we're in the. We have the ability for the next year or so to spend the little money that's left from Trump 1 on wall, and that's equated so far to about 100 miles. And then there'll be new wall constructed using the funds from Trump 1. And then we're hopeful that when the reconciliation passes, there will be a huge investment in infrastructure, including wall and tech that supports the wall and the agents on the ground access to the border to give us about another hundred, about another 700 miles. Some of that will be dual barrier. We'll have some stuff in the river and on land in places like Texas where the, where the river is actually the border. And in other places, we'll fortify what exists and increase wall to about 700 new miles under Trump too.
- [22:30]
Clay Travis
Is there a sense, and I know from just law enforcement sources down along the border, Border Patrol sources and the various collection platforms that we have, is there a sense from the, the narco terrorist cartels on the other side of the border that, oh, there's definitely a new Sheriff in town, 100%.
- [22:51]
Sean Duffy
You know, there's pressure from the Mexican government, which is as effective as it can be given the circumstances. The military to military relationship is producing results, including us helping target known cartel members both sides of the border. And it's just really Hard now to cross the border versus the way it was before January 20, 2025. And so they are not being as successful. We're watching the reaction from the cartels. We had a really good intercept in Laredo yesterday of unmanned aerial systems, small drones, if you will. Caught one of those yesterday.
- [23:31]
Clay Travis
Wait, so they're using drones to try to drop off product drugs?
- [23:37]
Sean Duffy
We believe this one was counter surveillance, but it remains to be seen. We're going to try to exploit that. The media that's in there to figure out exactly what it was. But.
- [23:46]
Clay Travis
But. So they're using drones to watch you guys or your guys at border Patrol.
- [23:50]
Sean Duffy
Correct? Correct. That's. That's. They're using them mostly for that, but they're. It's not unheard of for them to bring small packages. I mean, fentanyl, you know, the profit margin on fentanyl is huge in Mexico, and so they use it for those things as well. But again, giving agents time and ability, this was something that wouldn't have happened seven months ago because they were too distracted with the massive humanity that was coming into the border every 24 hours. Now we have the ability when those sensors go off and when we can deploy against those active threats. They did, in fact, seize a drone in Laredo yesterday, and that's what the cartel is capable of. And so we'll see more of that. There was a seizure in San Diego of about 7,000 pounds of methamphetamine in California, which we haven't seen a seizure in that size in probably over a year. And it was because the agents on the ground, the front line, has the time and ability to do the work using the shoe leather, using their brains, using the intelligence holdings that exist in the United States to track that £7,000. We probably would not have gotten that pre Trump because we're just too busy with the illegal activity that was coming across the border. So, yeah, the cartels have reacted. We're seeing increases on the coast near San Diego. We expect that to be the case near Brownsville as well. The subterranean threat has now been magnified in the sense that the land border is much harder to cross. And so all the alternative routes of entry are going to start to be used and exploited. And so we need to be vigilant. That's why we need to backstop what the front line can do with policy and rhetoric and consequences, with more resources, as in wall, as in infrastructure, as in boots on the ground. That all has to be fortified and sustained if we want to keep the promise of making America safe again.
- [25:51]
Clay Travis
Wondering if you could just speak to the morale of the men and women of Border Patrol now and what it feels like to have the mission and resources squared away like they have been so far in this administration?
- [26:07]
Sean Duffy
Yeah, no, the morale is very high. Lots of smiles on the faces of the men and women who now have the tools and the support that they require to be successful. You know, agents are recruited because they are interested in a career that is mostly outdoors, that mostly protects the country, that mostly is involved in activity designed to protect us all. And they weren't able to do that for the last, for the, for the last administration, for the entirety of the Biden administration. They are back in business. The nonsense is over. They have support all the way to the Oval Office. You have the Secretary Noem out there visiting face to face with the frontline, asking them what they need, ensuring they have those tools and watching them be successful. And it's not just the incumbent agents, but it's also recruitment is off the charts, doubled since, you know, before Trump. And so, yeah, it's all going in that right direction as it relates to them being successful, which is why most of them are there. That's why they take the oath, because they want to protect us all. And now they have an opportunity to succeed as well.
- [27:14]
Clay Travis
Ron Vittello, Advisor to cbp. Thanks for the good work, sir. Appreciate you being here.
- [27:19]
Sean Duffy
Thanks for inviting me.
- [27:20]
Clay Travis
This is team 47 with Clay and Buck. We're joined by Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. I'm sorry, Senator Mullen. Well, also correct. Good to have you on.
- [27:34]
Ron Vitello
Senator Buck thanks for having me on. And anything works, but you don't have to call the title Mark Wayne Mullen. Idiot, Fool. All those work, I'll answer to them all.
- [27:46]
Clay Travis
I believe you are an MMA fighter, so I'm going to pass on the idiot. But I will, I will definitely keep in mind that you are not one who stands on ceremony and formality. So thank you for that. Yes, but, but tell me this. I mean, look, we, you know, I don't know, I'm sure you know what this is like. You're United States Senator. Some of us get a little caught in the crossfire on some things. On the one hand, we're talking, we have people from the Trump White House on and they're talking about the big beautiful bill, the great things it will do, the boom in the economy. They believe it will bring about take home, pay for homes, all that stuff. The other side, we get people. We have had your colleague, Senator Rand Paul on. We've had your colleague Senator Ron Johnson on. And they're saying, look, there's some great stuff but spends too much money. Where does the big beautiful bill stand now on the Senate side? Walk us through what's going on, what you like, what maybe needs to change and what we should expect.
- [28:37]
Ron Vitello
Well, first of all, I mean this bill's been getting negotiated since November. So this is anything new. Everybody's had had time to put their input and they're going to have more time to put their input. So I got all the respect in the world for Ron Johnson and Rand Paul. But the truth is their ideas are great, but it's their idea and they're going to have to get 51 people to agree with them. And so what we've got issues here is that we have Obama slash Biden era policies. And I mean that sincerely because you know, Biden is just, you know, an extension of the Obama era policies, except worse. So you have, that's what we're currently operating underneath. And now you have the Trump policy era that's trying to come in place. And we do that through reconciliation. We all want to cut more spending. I mean physically being fiscal responsible is honestly what we all want to do. But the House bill cuts $1.6 trillion from deficit spending and that's true deficit spending. Now I've been up here for way too long. I served in the house for 10 years and now two years in the Senate. And I can tell you, every time we've always had deficit cuts. It's always been a 10 year cut. Right. It's going to save 500 billion over 10 years. And we never actually achieve the 10 year cut. This is $1.6 trillion cutting immediately. So it doesn't balance the budget, but it does move forward. And as we move forward with this bill, hopefully we can even do better. Hopefully we can get to $2 trillion in cuts. Except at the same time we're trying to implement, you know, campaign promises too. And, and the American people want of Trump policies that he campaign on. And one of them is no tax on tips, no tax on, on, on overtime and no tax on Social Security. Well, that, that adds cost too. And so you got to take it in and out. And reconciliation, we can only deal with taxes and mandatory spending, not discretionary spending. So we got a narrow window to what we can actually work with. That's, that's, that's why it's called reconciliation and requires 51 votes where budget which will start on, you know, the, the, the, the budget just, I mean our, our discretionary spending moving forward right after this and that's a 60 vote threshold. So my point that I'm trying to get to buck is that we have a very narrow window that we can work with. We're going to get all the cuts we can possibly get at the end of the day when this bill goes to the floor, this one big beautiful bill that we've been working on since November and everybody's had their fingerprints on, everybody's had an opportunity to put their input on. We're going to put whatever is on the floor that can get 51 votes so we can get away from the Biden era policies and move forward to the Trump era policies, which is we're seeing the economy respond to already and we haven't even passed the bill yet.
- [31:33]
Clay Travis
I wanted to have you react, Senator Mullen, to what Senator Paul says here about four Republicans who he believes will not go along with the bill as it stands. This is cut three, team play it.
- [31:45]
Mark Wayne Mullen
I think there are four of us at this point and I would be very surprised if the bill at least is not modified in a good direction. Look, I want to vote for it. I'm for the tax cuts. I voted for the tax cuts before. I want the tax cuts to be permanent, but at the same time, I don't want to raise the debt ceiling 5 trillion. So I've told you, if you take the debt ceiling off the bill, in all likelihood I can vote for what the agreement is on the rest of the bill. And it doesn't have to be perfect to my lightning liking. But I can't be. If I vote for the $5 trillion debt, who's left in Washington that cares about the debt? We will have lost. The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this.
- [32:22]
Clay Travis
What do you make of that, Senator?
- [32:24]
Ron Vitello
Well, we're going to have to raise the debt. You know, it's kind of like taking over a failing business, right? When you take over a failing business, you don't just start making money day one, you have to invest in it. And that's why you bring in investors and investors are expecting you to get a return. And that's what the American people did. They invested in the Republican Party and expecting a return. But you can't just simply turn it around. The Biden administration spent like drunken sailors. You know, we had almost every, almost, almost every single agency in the last four years has increased from 50 to 100% in, in what they're receiving for their budget. In four years. So we're cutting everybody's budget and we're bringing down the debt. But you can't just simply say that we're going to have enough money to balance the immediately we're going to have to borrow more money. And I think in two, two and a half, maybe three years we can balance it and we won't have to borrow any money if we continue down this, the Trump policies that he's put forth. But you can't do it now. And so I don't know what Rand Paul wants us to do because we are in debt and the debt limit is going to hit us regardless of what we do if we pass this bill. We don't. It's going to hit us. And so we have two choices as Republicans. We can put the debt limit increase on reconciliation and only have to have 51 votes, meaning that we can do this without the Democrat support. Or we'd wait and we do it on, on a budget bill or we do it as a standalone and we got to have 60. So now we're going to have to negotiate with Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to get them to give us seven or maybe even more votes. And probably more than likely by the time we negotiate with them, there's going to be a lot of Republicans that aren't going to want to vote for it. And so said instead of just having seven, we're going to end up having to have 15 or 20 Democrats. Now, can you imagine what type of deal we'll have to strike with them? Because we're going to raise a debt limit regardless. We're going to raise the debt limit. We're going to raise it. If we raise it 4.5 trillion, I will be willing to tell you, Buck, right now we'll have to raise it again another two and a half trillion. And so I feel like we should just go ahead and raise a debt limit enough that we know if the numbers continue to grow the way they are with the GDP growing, with the debt decrease in deficit spending, because we're doing 1.6 off of discretionary or off of mandatory. And then when we start doing the budget bills, we can even do more off discretionary spending by those two graphs, they're going to meet in about two and a half or three years. And it'll be the first time that a president has balanced a budget since Clinton. But we're going to have to borrow the money to get to that point. So we, like I said, we can do it now and negotiate with Republicans Only or we're going to do it later because there is no fee. There's either A or B, because C means with a fault. And we're not going to default on the money we spent. We spent it regardless. We like it or not, we spent it, so we got to pay it back.
- [35:27]
Clay Travis
Speaking of Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen and Senator Mullen, you're talking about balancing the budget in the future. Not on this Big beautiful. What is the, is the official, what is the official name of the bill? Sorry for the diversion, but I'm curious, is it going to be called the Big Beautiful Bill or is there some boring DC Name?
- [35:45]
Ron Vitello
Well, I'm sure we're going to come up with some ridiculous, you know, acronym because we love acronyms up here. But right now we're going to call it what the president calls it, One Big Beautiful. And by the way, he just recently had glamorous, One Big Beautiful, Glamorous Bill. But we all. I don't know what the acronym is.
- [36:01]
Clay Travis
I got you. Okay. I mean, I think, I think we just go with Big Beautiful Bill personally. Everybody knows what we're talking about with that one.
- [36:07]
Ron Vitello
I think, I mean, we've been.
- [36:08]
Clay Travis
Yeah, it'll drive the, it'll drive the Democrats completely insane, which makes it even more fun and more worthwhile.
- [36:14]
Buck Sexton
Right.
- [36:15]
Clay Travis
In and of itself. But for those who, because, look, I get people who call in or who write in and they're, they're upset and they start to say things like, we're just never actually going to deal with the debt. And all this talk about dealing with the debt is hot air. What do you say to them? I mean, at what point do we start to take the debt? Is it realistic that within the Trump administration, at some point we can actually start to take the $36 trillion debt in the other direction? Or is that just, is the best we can hope for slowing the increase over time, maybe balancing it here and there?
- [36:52]
Ron Vitello
No, I think we can reverse it, but it takes, it takes three things to happen for that to happen. One, we got to have sound policy that the economy will respond to. I mean, we got to have sound policy we're going to respond to. Two, we've got to have accurate policies that, that will drive innovation. And then number three, the, the politicians, us, we have to be responsible with the taxpayer dollars. And if you do those, then the economy and the spending levels will eventually touch each other and will surpass them. If the GDP can grow right around 3% and we can hold spending at its current level after we do the reconciliation just by doing that and not doing additional cuts, which we will do. Additional cuts. But if we just do those, most economists will tell you that the lines will touch in two and a half or three years, depending on the investment and how much we have. We see that inflation is down to 2.1% already. That's huge. Right? When we see the taxes become permanent, and then we see R and D, which will hopefully become permanent, research and development will come permanent where they can actually write that off, you're going to see that, that technology field increase here, and you're going to see the growth begin, which is exactly what you do with a business, right? You take out debt for, for potential earnings because you have a business plan. You borrow on it. The bank borrows, unless you borrow the money. Because they see your business plan and they know that your growth is going to eventually surpass enough to be able to pay you off a debt. That's what their gamble is. Well, we feel like we're trying to operate like a business because we have a business guy in office, not just myself, but President Trump himself, and we're taking a business approach to it. We know we can't just simply cut it off right now, which we are. We'd love to, but we just can't find enough to cut all the programs in this short period of time. The more we dig into them, the more Doge continues to dive in, the more we continue to dive in and see what all the waste and fraud that has been taking place in the government, the more we'll continue to cut. And, and, and I feel, I, It's. I mean it sincerely. This is the first time that I've ever been up here that I feel very, very confident that we will balance the budget. And the president has made it his plan that that's what he wants. When he's down and talked to us, especially those that have a relationship with him. This is, this is part of his Make America Great again. He understands how to make money, but he also understands debt and how it works.
- [39:39]
Clay Travis
Senator, before we let you go and take a hard turn here into just curiosity, Bill, you were an MMA fighter for how many years?
- [39:47]
Ron Vitello
Well, I fought for three years, but before that we were, you know, we weren't considered professionals. Right. So there was additional fights, too, but, you know, I wasn't as good as a lot of these other guys out there that everybody knows.
- [40:02]
Clay Travis
Who do you think's the best of all time? You know, because, because you've been in that arena, literally inside that Cage, right? Who do you think is the best all time? I'm just curious.
- [40:11]
Ron Vitello
Boy, you got to go way back. You got to talk about Jon Jones. Jon Jones is just. Even though he's had personal issues, the guy has just been a beast. And people call him the Goat just because he's had, you know, some issues. I still think the guy was just the most dangerous man that stepped in the ring. I mean, the guy is just a student, but when you start looking at some of these old school guys, Randy Couture, for instance. Instance, I mean, here this guy comes in, he wins, you know, he wins two different divisions. As a world titles for the ufc, I think he ended up winning five total altogether. I'm trying to pull that off top of my head. Randy's actually a friend of mine. He's gonna be upset that I can't remember his record, but the guy was just absolutely unbelievable. He came in and made some fights and fought up on up, up weights that most people didn't expect him to be able to do. He embarrassed Ken Shangrock, I mean, earlier, spanked his butt. And. And Ken is a guy that I trained with. So I. And you just. There's just a whole host. It just depends on the year that you want to get to. Right. You can. There's a whole bunch of guys that's come in there. Daniel Cormier, dc, Which people talk about. Everybody underestimated him. And he did. He did just phenomenal work in there. And he didn't look like he ever belonged in the division. But you got. At one time you had a big rig. What was his name? Johnny Hendricks, who was walking through everybody, right? And at that. At that time. But now, could he compete with today's fighters? That's what the day's fighters are so much better talented than we ever were. Back then, we were just a bunch of bankers. Now these guys, they've been. They grew up in the field.
- [42:00]
Clay Travis
One more lightning round. Quick. Just quick. For kind of related. Best martial arts movie of all time. In your mind.
- [42:07]
Ron Vitello
Bloodsport.
- [42:09]
Clay Travis
That is the correct answer. All right, he got it. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, everybody. Senator, appreciate you making the time. Come back soon.
- [42:16]
Ron Vitello
All right, see you. Bye.
- [42:17]
Clay Travis
Thanks for listening to Team 47 with Clay and Buck. This is an iHeart podcast.