Well, welcome to the Right to the Point podcast, hosted by the Republican Study Committee. I am Congressman Beth Van Dyne, and I am your host for the podcast today. And joining me is a fellow member of the House Ways and Means Committee and my friend from the great state of Florida, Aaron Bean. Aaron, you're new to the show. Beth Van Dyne, what an honor and pleasure it is. you are a mover and a shaker. So anytime I get to hang out with you, more so than the already much time we spend together on Ways and Means, but it's an honor to be here today. We're also neighbors, by the way. I don't know if you guys know this, but we're also, we live in the same apartment complex. How about that? And hardly ever see each other because we're on the go. We're doing things. You don't come out and hang out with us. You should come hang out with us more. I do need, although there is a sign on your door, at least there was, keep it down, Beth Van Don. Lots going on. That was not my fault. We all know that it was a fellow, Floridian who caused that to happen. Anyway, tell us a little bit about yourself. I mean, something most people maybe not know. I want to hear about why you ran for election. Right. It's going to be a big topic why I ran and that's our we're underwater in debt. And so northeast Florida, which is where I represent Jacksonville being the biggest city. I come from a little teeny tiny town north of Jacksonville, Fernandina Beach on the border between Georgia and Florida. So baby of nine kids. I didn't know that. That is something I just learned about you. Was the mayor of my town and gradually just continued to serve, like you, an addiction to public service, just always want to make things better. And lo and behold, it led us both to being in Congress and then being on this podcast right to the point. So one of nine, that means you had to kind of fight for attention. is this why you fight for food how about that personality if you didn't eat when the food was put on the table you might not get it so you gotta yeah you gotta get it but uh what a wouldn't trade anything and uh you know what's crazy is uh I didn't know we were poor until I went to college I just didn't know that's how great our parent my parents were that gave us love gave us everything we needed and we just didn't know we didn't have it. So four of us in one bedroom, two sets of bunk beds. Well, I would argue that it's not the material goods that make you rich. If you've got that kind of home life, you've experienced it. It indeed was good. Let us hear now. So what about you? What's a fun fact about Beth Van Dyne we need to know? Well, I would say I got to Texas as soon as I could. I was a New Yorker by birth, but I texted by choice. And it's nothing I really like to brag about. But I love my state. I can't imagine myself living anywhere else. But if I had to live in a different state, I would choose Florida. I think we have so many things in common. One of the first things I remember when you got elected was we had a dinner between our Texas members and our Florida members. And I think we really work well together. We gel 100%. And I too, Texas, would be a logical go-to choice for any Floridian. It is getting crowded. There's a lot of people coming to Florida now, especially during the COVID. I think leadership matters. And if you look at, I will acknowledge that California probably has some of the best weather. It's the Texas and Florida weather, the temperature without the humidity. But what a disaster those states are. Those will be the last. It absolutely does. That kind of takes us to the subject of this podcast, which is to talk about the RSC budget and our budget in our economy. And, you know, I look at you were on the RSC budget committee. I chaired the RSC budget committee. And, you know, for decades, this budget from coming out of the Republican Study Committee has been a cornerstone, really, of the whole committee, of the whole RSC. It's a conservative tradition that serves as a reality check on Washington's addiction to spending. You are a tremendous member of that committee. You want to talk a little bit about some of the bills that you pushed? I do. I also want to talk about your leadership. Sometimes you get lucky in life. Sometimes you just get lucky. I got lucky when Chairman Pfluger, also from Texas, being you're going to be on the budget committee. Don't worry. Beth Van Dyne is leading it, but I need you there. We had some early morning meetings. We did. But you rocked it from start. It's what our constituents think everybody should be doing. We should have a pathway to get us out of debt, to get us into greater prosperity. And that's what RSC is doing. That's what you did with this budget committee. It gives us a pathway to get out of debt. We didn't get into debt overnight. We're not going to get out of it. But this budget, I think the focal point really is getting us out of debt, turning the corner. Jody Arrington, who also is from Texas, who is our budget committee chairman, always says, let's reverse the curse. And that's what your budget, our budget, RIC budget does under Beth Van Dyne's leadership, reverses that curse. Well, I think, I mean, as you pointed out, we had a committee. I got to lead it alongside Chairman Pflueger. But tell me what were some of the key points, because you were very vocal in a lot of these meetings. you really drove the agenda. So tell me what some of the points were that were important for you to make sure that we had in this budget. It's just simple. Beth Van Dyne is spending less. You wouldn't think that would be so controversial, but it is. And I wish I could say even our colleagues, I wish we could point the finger and just say it's the people on the other side of the aisle that are doing it. But some members of our party continue that addiction of spending. So for you to be disciplined and say, these are the guardrails we're going forward, we need guardrails. We need guardrails and Congresses and just people, I think, can't help themselves. But we've got to be disciplined. This adds discipline and, again, the pathway to get out. So that's number one is just spending less. What was your favorite part? Probably getting back to the pre-pandemic levels of spending on the discretionary side. You know I was very close with the White House working on this as well and you mentioned Jody Arrington chairman of our budget committee and seeing what we could do and what we couldn do And we were able to put together a budget that again cuts discretionary spending to pre levels but doesn touch Social Security It doesn't do a whole lot on the Medicare benefits. We want to make sure that we reserve those, preserve those. but we really concentrated a lot on pro-growth and on regulatory side, because I don't think people really think about how much that costs. Under the Biden administration, we had $1.8 trillion of additional regulatory costs. You and I are both in the Small Business Academy as well, and you want to talk a little bit about the hearing that we had yesterday? Well, I want to revisit what we're going to get to that, but I want to go right to the point, and you see what I did there, Beth Van Don? I want to get right to the point. Let's remind, let's remind for anybody that's listening right now, let's remind everybody pre-COVID, pre-COVID Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump one who had launched our nation into prosperity. COVID happens. We increase Congress increases spending by 25 percent. Our base numbers go up 25 percent. COVID now is over. COVID is over, yet that elevated spending levels continue. That's a big part of the problem. Problem two is, and we spent many times in the Small Business Committee hearing the report cards of all that extra money that we spent is now being stolen, pilfered. 23% of all PPP and EIDL, which are the recovery disaster recovery loans, estimated to be 25% to 23% are fraudulent, were claimed by fraudsters that just stole our money. And we both said, and I launched one of the acts I launched is, we want our money back act, which we want our money back act. And the Biden administration, I don't remember that day. Remember, her name was Administrator Guzman, who said, there's just so much fraud. Maybe we just let it go. Heck no. We want our money back. And so let's go after them. And you were part of that coalition to say, we want our money back. And the numbers continue to come in. And now the Minnesota, which is the tip of the iceberg fraud, it really makes me go through roll aids left and right. All of the just. I just saw, as I was walking in here, a quote from Secretary Besant today. He was saying that there's, what, $400 to $600 billion worth of potential fraud every year. It's over 10% of the government spending that we've got to get control over. Think about the nickels and dimes that we fight for to be able to cut. Can you imagine just 10% of it just being waste, fraud, and abuse every year? It's sad. It is truly sad. And there are people that truly need help, but there are just, when it's stolen, anything that we put out there. Listen, I don't know if it's just you and I talking, but what would you think about this as a bill? I was sitting with my team today, and I was listening to RSC this morning. Brad Finstead from Minnesota has come out with several good options on bills to start reining things in. Once an update from the state, he presented a report that fraudsters now are on multiple snap accounts, multiple venues have just taken our money. But what if we had a ban, a lifetime ban? If you're convicted of fraud, you should be banned from all government assistance going forward. is we've learned that some operations that were convicted of fraud just reorganized in a different form. Opened up under a different name and applied and got those benefits. What do you think? Is it something you would vote for? Is that a bill? Is there a bill there? Obviously, devil's in detail, but I like the concept. I don't think people who have been convicted of taking advantage of our system should be able to be allowed to get the benefits of our system. I think it's a good idea. But I did want to make sure that we're going back and talking a little bit about the budget because I want to talk. We only have a few more minutes. But the highlights, I think, of the budget, you know, one, we talked about the pre-pandemic spending levels. But two, and this was a big point of contention, was the getting a balanced budget. I know there were some members that wanted to do it. I think one of the members was like, can we do it in two years? And the fact is that we had such out-of-control spending over the four years of the Biden administration that we were looking at potentially where can we cut to get that and it wasn't going to happen. after lots of conversations between the members of our committee and the White House and the Budget Committee, we ended up on 10 years. But coming to a 10-year, when we actually can get to a balanced budget. But we had key provisions of the working families tax cut bill that we put in there. We reformed Medicaid. We looked at the F-maps, and we protected the program for vulnerability because I think we can't just ignore it and I think it's going to continue. Explain what FMAP is to our listeners. Basically what happened was states came in and decided who was, they expanded the population of who was going to be eligible. And to the tune where the government, the federal government had been spending about 50% to the making sure that the states had their skin in the game about 50-50. In some cases, the federal government now is paying over 90%. That is correct. And has absolutely no choice in who gets these benefits or whether or not it's waste, fraud, or abuse. But we're paying for it. And these are no longer poor people that are getting, you know, Medicaid was designed. Federal government was going to be in partnership with the states. We were, that number truly was about 50-50. There are some nuances that can increase it to, you know, 54, 55. There are some that will bring it down. But for the most part, the federal government says, partner, states have skin in the game. But under the Obama and Biden administrations, they supersized it where healthy individuals, working people could join. And the federal government is now paying 90 percent. That's a disaster for your bottom line if you're trying to get out of debt. You helped fix that under your board's budget, under our budget. But we didn't reduce Social Security or Medicare benefits. We did not raise the Social Security retirement age, which had been done before in previous RSC budgets. and it didn reduce or eliminate agricultural subsidies because we had a number of members on the committee that were very sensitive to that So I think we were able to do some really good stuff I would have preferred you know if it was just my vote at the end of the day to have been a lot more aggressive But this is a democratic process. And even though we have a number of really conservative members on RSC, they also make sure that they represent their district. They do. But part of what got us into this problem, right, was this out-of-control spending from Democrats. So tell me what, you were talking about the spending problem, and you're right. It's not just on their side of the aisle. But, you know, my first term in Congress was under Speaker Pelosi. And we were forced to vote on these massive omnibus spending bills. And, again, the massive fraud that we've uncovered, you know, things that are being stolen across our country. And for taxpayers who are working those long hours, who are spending time away from their family, to see their dollars going, I think it's just frustrating. It's angering. So moving into it, do you have any kind of insight? You mentioned what we're seeing in Minnesota, but do you have any kind of insight on what's happening with the waste, fraud, and abuse? And how can we, other than that one bill that you were talking about, address it? Well, and you and I are both part of the DOGE movement. I'm a co-chair of the DOGE caucus for the House. DOGE is not dead, and we're looking at so many different topics to bring. DOGE is not dead. I love that. Here's the thing about DOGE and the whole effort of waste, fraud, and abuse. I liken it to a garden. If you're going to have government programs that are out there, you've got to have a weeding system. You've got to have a place to continue to engage and make sure that weeds don't overrun your garden. So that's why we need Doge now and forever going forward. It just should go hand in hand with how we go forward. We've got work to do. We've got to put greater guardrails on almost every program because they are out there, the fraudsters, the scam artists, the whatnot. And we're just seeing how disgusting the Minnesota is. My question is, why are we giving money directly to these leering centers? I know it's the daycare centers. That money should go, if we're even going to do it at all, directly to the parents. Let them choose where to send their kids, and that way we get greater competition. It's the same concept with health care. We shouldn't give money directly to insurance companies. If we want a healthy market, if we want robust competition, let's let everybody have their own individual health savings account and let them spend the money for what's best for them. That's the other thing our budget does. It really gets aggressive on health care. Health care is what's called mandatory spending where it just sets its own course and it gives Congress very little say in it because we've set that pathway. way. But our budget does begin to reel in some of the inconsistencies with health care. The only ingredients, I believe, that are going to lower the cost of health care are going to be choice and competition. You talk about Nancy Pelosi and those massive spending bills. Remind everybody, I'll remind everybody, that's the ingredient, the number one ingredient for inflation and now things are 20 percent higher now post-COVID than pre-COVID. It's because Democrats, Pelosi, Obama and Biden spent that one point eight trillion dollars on all kinds of subsidies and green new deal stuff. And that's that's where we are right now. That's the mess. That hurt our economy and hurt our country and it benefited, you know, countries like China. And when you stick that much money out there and there's the sector that you're growing the most is the public sector. They were hiring government employees, you know, left and right. And at the detriment of our private sector, it hurt. But, you know, you talk about waste, fraud and abuse, and why are we giving it to those programs? This was under Reagan, you know, the whole block grant idea that we don't want a strong federal government system, that we want the rights, we want the role in the state level. And so, you know, to give the states as much discretion in how they spend those federal dollars as possible. But when you've got states who right now aren't even following their own laws, much less following the laws, you know, constitutionally in doing their role, that's where it starts getting tough. And I am a strict constitutionalist, very conservative in that manner. But when you start seeing some of these states, whether or not it's Minnesota or California or New York that are completely abusing the system. And it's just all about bringing in more money that they are basically paying for votes, is what we're seeing. And holding the idea of power more than the idea of a servant's heart in these roles, that's where I start getting really angry. And I think most people, when they start seeing their dollars go. So we're seeing what's happening in Minnesota. But to your doge efforts, part of that has to be controlling it. But I don't think that Congress up until now has taken enough of an active role in what's happening in the agencies. So you were very supportive of my bill. I think you were a co-sponsor of my small business bill that identifies what those regulatory costs are and basically attempts to codify the doge efforts, that we're going to have an ability to say you can't have these regulations that are out of control, that it has to be budget negative or budget neutral. Another bill that I've looked at that I'd love to have your support on is third-party audits of our agencies. GSA ain't doing it. They don't have enough recommendations on where we can cut and where we can streamline and where we've got duplicative efforts. So a lot of this, I think, has to do with getting legislative ideas that actually solve the problem. We can identify what the problem is, but legislatively, how do you solve it? And so what you were saying is people have, one of the ideas that came from Finstead was if you've got people who have been on the system and they've abused it, they don't get to get back on the system. What are some of the other bills that you are looking at? Well first of all Beth Van Dyne I think you just got another co to a couple of those things because I am a big fan of cuts I a big fan of limited government and any legislation that does those two things Boy, you can get being fired up about it, which is fantastic. You know, we've got the Doge and Spending Act that we launched last year, which says this. You would think that before the federal government pays any bills, it would make sure that, A, it's a valid bill, it's a valid invoice, you would think, Beth Van Don, you would think that we would also make sure that no other agency has paid that bill. So, Beth Van Don, if you thought those things, you would think wrong because Scott Besson said that we'd made hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments where we pay our bills quickly, but many of those bills were not in order. Many of the bills have already been paid by another agency if you build multiple agencies. So this bill, the Doge and Spending Act says, hey, one centralized system, you're going to verify what the bill is. You're going to verify, was it necessary? Was it ordered? Was it part of the legitimate invoice? And then has anybody paid it yet? Is there any other agency that's paid it before the Treasury pays it? So that's something that I'm pushing, and hopefully it's one of those common sense things. And not to say that people are against it. It's just fighting for attention. There's tens of thousands of bills, and we only have so much time to consider anything. So that's what we're fighting for attention, and I'll put that under your radar. No, I love that. I'll definitely look at that. We are also on Ways and Means together in addition to being a small business. And a lot of what we have uncovered is some of this massive fraud and some of this massive abuse. You were talking about health care earlier. And now you're talking about government systems that are failing. Just look at what happened with the investigation into the Social Security fraud, right, and health care fraud. What we're looking at were the premiums. That for, was it 100% of those that were false cases still got approved? 100% false cases. As one Social Security number got used 125 times. How is there not a check when they say, oh, I'm getting, wait, we've already used this social security number, the same one for 124 different accounts. They were still getting paid. So for our listeners, just to recap, anybody, we did a undercover, our agencies did an undercover investigation on who can claim these subsidies. It turns out, and there were strict guidelines, but they were ignored. And anybody that applied for the subsidies, whether you're a living entity or not, whether you're a fake Social Security or not, everybody, 100 percent were approved. But also, Beth Van Dyne, we looked at the people that, you know, we gave the money directly for these Obamacare subsidies. We gave the money directly to the insurance companies. And we said, when you sign somebody up, you can collect the money and you can collect the commission. And lo and behold, millions of people were signed up without their knowledge and never. Almost what, 40 percent? I think it's higher, but there was never they they never made any claims. That would be the first clue that they were signed up without their knowledge. Yet we paid hefty commissions and premiums to these insurance companies. No wonder they've hired every lobbyist in town to say we need to continue these subsidies, which we both know are a disaster. Yeah, and I think that's why you're seeing so much pushback right now from not only this, the RSC, but from the GOP conference in totalities. Because we recognize the fact that putting good money after bad for horrible policy, that the result has been worse coverage. Just because you've got insurance does not mean that you're getting health care. Higher costs, and we are pushing these doctor's offices to have to sell out to major health care companies. And you're losing your neighborhood doctor. You're losing your world, doctor. And it has been horrible for health care. So I think that, if anything, it has uncovered what an absolute complete disaster that the Unaffordable Care Act has been. It is. And COVID subsidies need to go away, just like COVID spending, just like COVID itself. It's time to get back. We've got work to do, Beth Van Dyne. We've got work to do. We definitely have work to do. Okay, that brings us to our next segment. What is your right opinion? So I'm trying to think. We talked about boots earlier. Yeah. I still am not a fan of putting ice in your coffee, drinking coffee cold. That's something you wouldn't do, Beth Van Don. I don't drink coffee. I'm a tea drinker. You do not drink coffee. You have the Beth Yeti. I know you're rocking the Beth Yeti. I'm an Earl Grey drinker, and I drink probably about four of those Yetis a day. What's your favorite drink? I'm a coffee guy. Are you? What kind? Are you like deep roast, mid roast, hazelnut kind of guy? Hot coffee is the ingredient. Cream, sugar? Just cream. Cream, let's rock it. And it's fun. I get excited about getting out of bed because I know I'm going to have coffee. How about that? I love it. I love it. All right. We are, I think, probably at the end of our segment. But it has been great to have you on. Aaron Bean. Aaron Bean from Florida. one of our favorite members. I can't call you a new member anymore because you're like old hat at this now. Thank you, Beth. You've been a great chair, chair of this RSC budget committee. You've got a great product. And I think we're just getting started of where we can take the prosperity of this country. Well, I appreciate your energy, your willingness to serve, your dedication. And I'm telling you, even though we had those eight o'clock meetings, you always came in as a ball of energy, lightened, brightened everything up. And I love the fact that, you know, the two committees that I serve on, both of them, both of them are having you on there. So this was an awesome episode. I was thrilled to be able to join the RSC on this podcast this week. And I want to thank Aaron again for joining me. Tune in next week for another can't miss episode of the podcast. So we are signing off here. We want to thank you for listening and have a great week. Play it.
