The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. And we have a lot to cover. In a few moments, we will speak with our friend Melanie Kirkpatrick, who wrote a book on Thanksgiving. And we’ll get in the mood for Thanksgiving in a few moments. And John Lott has another book out. Actually, I take it back, it’s an essay, a lengthy essay, academic work on guns and the importance of it. We’ve got some news on that out of Missouri, which I think I’ll cover tomorrow. We’ll see about that. And of course, there is a lot happening in the swamp.
Earlier tonight, the President of the United States addressed the National Republican Congressional Committee in Tampa. They’re having a fundraiser. He was the keynote speaker round table in a speech right before the event. It was not broadcast live. I don’t know why, we haven’t got an answer, but his remarks will be out. It might be The most important thing to happen is whether President Trump can articulate and get support for, whether he will get support for his agenda as he helps elect what will be looks like a Republican House. So we’ll get an update on that later on.
All right. First, though, let me talk about the dynamics of the swamp. And this is the key thing we talked about this late last week. There was a vote, Nancy Pelosi did finally push through the House a “bipartisan infrastructure bill.” Now, it’s about a trillion dollars. So we’re talking about a lot, a lot of money, and it looks like about a half – maybe 40% – will actually go to bridges and to roads and to airports. And the rest will be boondoggle central. It will go to this project and that project, it will go to… More money will be thrown at renewables, meaning renewable energy, meaning windmills and solar panels. There will be charging stations for your Tesla. Oh you don’t have a Tesla? Neither do I. But there’ll be going across the country.
So we have about a trillion dollar bill that was passed with 13 Republicans voting yes on it. Now it also had, I think, something like 19 Republican senators voting when it went through the Senate. What’s going on here? What’s going on here? Well, as I told you before, follow the money. If you use money as your filter, especially with the swamp, you can figure out what’s going on.
So Adam Kinzinger, he’s not running for reelection, but he wants to have a future in politics, probably in Illinois, other places, maybe. There’s money in this bill, I’m sure, that he’s going to claim that he was a part of. Each of these members, the 13 members, Republicans, many of them that are running for reelection. A guy named Van Drew. I think it’s his last name. Up in New Jersey. He went home and said there’s going to be the money for this bridge and that bridge and the other thing. The promise, and about $100 billion will be discretionary money doled out by the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. So you got to stay in good with the administration if you want the goodies.
Now, here’s where it gets really fun and interesting. I mean, it’s terrible for the country, this spending. Let me pause. This is a redo of the Obama bailout. Remember, the Obama did a stimulus back in the bailout era right away? And it was, I think, $800 billion? Somewhere around that. And the money ended up, people were like, what did you spend the money on? Because it didn’t go to “shovel ready jobs.” Remember that line? It was supposed to go to “shovel ready jobs,” just like this bill is supposed to go to infrastructure. Neither one is what they said.
We don’t even know a lot of what’s in these bills, this bill now. But here’s what we do know. We do know at this point that they had to get it through. And the so-called Progressives in the House, AOC and the gang, they couldn’t look like they were voting for something. They couldn’t vote for something and look like they were rolled by their own party. So what did they do? They hung back and waited until it was clear that Pelosi had 13 Republicans. And then six of the Liberal Democrats voted against the bill. In other words, they made sure they got the money flowing and they could look like they were grand standing against it.
Now, this happened a few months ago when there was a 2 billion, with a B, $2 billion added I think it was to one of the COVID relief bills, that was $2 billion going to the Capitol Police for them to set up. Remember the satellite campuses, they’re going to have a satellite in Florida and a satellite in L.A.? They’re going to have a $2 billion in their police force at the Capitol. And AOC, who has been a defund the police person couldn’t vote for the bill, but if she voted against it, it would have sunk. So what did she do? She and a couple of others voted present. And when you vote present, it basically means you don’t count towards the total. So it doesn’t count as a no vote. That’s what they did.
My point here is up in the swamp, nothing is as it seems. They do one set of things for public consumption, and the rest is going on behind closed doors. And in this case, at this moment in our history, the power of the federal government is so massive that they play the game with the public, and they play it so well (meaning artfully), because there’s so much money at stake. There’s literally hundreds of billions of dollars of picking winners and losers.
In Missouri, which I’m most familiar with back in 2010, after the 2009 stimulus passed, there was $109 million that were going to windmills, windmill farms that the Carnahan family had a piece of the action in. And here’s how this jive works. Remember this whole racket, the Eric Hoffer quote, I quote to you all the time is “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” This great racket that we’re seeing happen in this country is the use of government and our tax dollars to pick winners and losers. To pick winners and losers.
And so in this case, watch what happens on all the spending on renewables and all. Back in 2009 – 2010, they spent tens of billions of dollars, hundred billion dollars in Missouri on windmills. And then what happened is then the same leftist went in and they demanded that the local power companies buy a certain amount of renewable fuel so they could look like they’re being green. And so you get the money coming and going, you get federal dollars to set up a Windmill farm, then you force the Ameren UE in this case, the electric company, to buy from you your electricity that you create. And then eventually you just sell the company. So that’s what everybody’s doing. That’s the racket that’s going on, winners and losers.
And here’s the thing. I’m glad when I say this, I’ll tell you, I’m glad about it. But conservatives, when they get power, they don’t think, how do we pass an infrastructure bill that’s basically handing out goodies to our people? Because if Donald Trump had won for President in 2017 and turned to Speaker Paul Ryan and turned to head of the Senate Mitch McConnell, Senate President Mitch McConnell, and said, “Guys, let’s do an infrastructure bill. Let’s do a couple hundred billion dollars for the airports and the roads and bridges. And then let’s do another seven or eight hundred billion dollars and let’s just give some money to every gun range and every crisis pregnancy center and every conservative group we can think of. The Boy Scouts, or pick a topic. We could spread our money around, give lots of jobs to everybody. Give money to Hillsdale. They don’t take federal money. But you get my point. And we don’t do that.
Conservatives don’t like to do that. We don’t think that’s the thing to do, which I respect. But we get our lunch handed to us when the other side does it. And man alive, they’re doing it. And they’re doing it with the aid of 13 Republicans who went along with it. And that’s among many things, that’s one of the shames that’s happening in this case was that the 13 Republicans went along with it.
And I have to say, I mentioned at the beginning of this that the NRCC had an event tonight earlier tonight, and it’s Donald Trump as a speaker. NRCC is the National Republican Congressional Committee, that’s the group that runs candidates, helps candidates run for office. They have a lot of sway because they got a lot of money. And that group, there ought to be a real soul searching if you can’t hold your caucus together in the minority to stop the boondoggle, to stop the Biden behemoth, what are you going to do when you got power?
I know the answer is when people are in the minority, there’s nothing they can get. They have no way to succeed. They have no way to impact what’s going on. They got to take what little they can. But I gotta say, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise ( that’s the minority leader and the whip), I think they got to answer some questions on this, don’t they? It doesn’t feel like it worked out very well, does it? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
All right. That’s what we got there. We’ll take a break. When we come back, we will talk with our friend Melanie Kirkpatrick about Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day, and the history goes all the way back to George Washington. And we’ll also get an update on the Second Amendment. And I will get an update for you more specifically on the Second Amendment Protection Act. SEPA. Which there’s a 60 Minutes hit piece just two nights ago. We will cover that. I’ve got some good friends in Missouri that worked on that.
So we’ll take a break everybody. Be right back. Don’t forget, Visit proamericareport.com, proamericareport.com. Sign up for the daily email there and also sign up and go check on all these interviews we’re doing, these segments there. Be right back – Ed Martin in the Pro America Report. Back in a moment.
