Welcome back to this week's version of the Republican Study Committee's Right to the Point podcast. Y'all are familiar with my guest. He's been on here before. He's my neighbor. My kids think of him as Uncle Jody, and they're very sad, along with our entire conference, that he is retiring. Not as Uncle Jody, though. I'm not retiring as Uncle Jody. You'll still be Uncle Jody, and we're still going to have some fun. Jody represents the 19th Congressional District of Texas, which includes Lubbock and Abilene and the big country. He's my neighbor for several hundred miles to the north. Jody, thanks for being here. Welcome back to the show. What does it mean to be a conservative? I'm going to give a couple of things from my standpoint, but just two or three things. What does it mean to be a true conservative? It's to believe that this experiment, not an accident, but this experiment that has created the most powerful, most powerful, most generous nation in human history and the most prosperous happened because we put a premium on freedom. And it's because we believe as conservatives that to conserve the constitutional framework that empowers people and unleashes them to maximize their God-given talent is why we have the largest middle class. It's why we have the best standard of living and quality of life. It's why we are the laboratory of innovation. Freedom drives that. and to conserve and protect and preserve our freedom. And I think that is fundamental and central to being a conservative. And by the way, you have to have a limited view as a conservative of government's role in intervening into life because we know while it's necessary to have the common defense and other things, less is more because there's always bad side effects to government intervention. You do what you have to do, but only what you have to do. And then it's most limited form. That's incredible. And I think that really is kind of what we're going to talk about today is what can we do in 2026? What does the Republican study committee think we can do? What can we champion through true conservatism to truly unleash the potential of every American. And not to hold them back, but also not to intervene in that sugar high that Democrats want to do things that are overburdensome and overreaching. And they sound good maybe for just a second. And then you peel the onion back just a little bit. I would say for conservatism, I'll give a couple of things. Conservatives are not corrupt. We reject corruption. conservatives believe in exactly what you just said, which is a light touch. Let's preserve what the Constitution said, but let's have a light touch, a light regulatory touch, a light government touch, a light tax touch, and let people thrive. Yes. Yeah, and to your point, we believe that the money that we spend in Washington is not Washington's money. We believe it is the money, the treasure, the sacred treasure of our fellow citizens that must be stewarded well. And when you have GAO and other watchdog groups saying there is as high as potentially $500 billion in fraud annually, and we have attacked that issue in the first reconciliation bill with no help from democrats to save a trillion over the 10-year budget window there's more anti-fraud measures and program integrity reforms across the entitlement spectrum health care welfare wherever the dollars of my mom and dad are going and the dollars of the families that you support in midland and odessa and san Angelo. Wherever they go, we need to follow them because what has happened in Minnesota is unacceptable. And it's happening, obviously, all across this nation of ours, mostly in blue states, because I don't think they put a premium on that stewardship like we do. We have a chance to codify these reforms so that they can't just change depending on who's in the White House. I love that. You framed that so well. We are stewards as elected officials to make sure that the money is spent responsibly, that there's a return on the investment for every American, not just for certain groups of people through corruption or special deals receive the benefits of that, but that every American can receive that. You were one of the chief architects of the big, beautiful bill, the largest tax cut in the history of our country, delivered for middle-class, working-class families all across our country as we approach tax season. And we're going to see many of those benefits. And as we enter into 2026, I think it would be political malpractice for us not to, as Republicans, not to pursue policies that we know are good policies. And by the way, in pursuing those policies, and the RSC has released a framework that is all about affordability, whether it's housing or energy or health care, it would be political malpractice for us not to proceed with that. And Democrats are going to have a very tough time not voting for many of these provisions. Tell us your thoughts on another reconciliation. There's a scripture verse that is well known that in the Old Testament, my people perish for lack of vision. Thankfully, we have West Texas leadership in the largest, most conservative caucus in the United States Congress. And you, August, and I say that with all sincerity. You are a fighter pilot, and you don't wait passively by for an invitation to draw up solutions to the problems that our country and our fellow citizens face. You have a great framework. I stood shoulder to shoulder with you as a member of RSC, and this is truly an historic opportunity. We are at an inflection point, and by the grace of God and the good people of this country, we got Republican leadership across the board. It gives us a special tool, reconciliation. It's just a fancy way of saying we can enact policies without and dispense with the filibuster, which requires 60 votes in the Senate. It's not a simple majority unless you use reconciliation. So we don't have to consult with Democrats who, unfortunately, at this point, want to use health care and, quote, affordability, ironically, since they dropped the unaffordability bomb on this country with four years of unbridled spending and failed economic policies. But they're putting this on us and they're challenging us, especially in health care, on the issue of affordability. You have a great framework with real policy reforms. we saw the results of what we did even in a year time generate investment business investment went from one percent on an annual average during joe biden term to now seven percent in just one year which has driven 4 or 4 growth rate the last quarter 3.8 before that uh the the the in the last quarter the gdp for biden was 1.9 growth is allowing wages to go up so people are keeping more of their money prices are coming down. Gas prices were at five plus dollars, the all-time high in this country. Now they're about 275 national average in Texas. Some places are below $2. You can go across the board. Mortgage payments, car payments, credit card payments, people are keeping more of their money. Tax filers on average, $1,000 are getting more money back in rebates. And then their withholdings are lower going forward in this next tax year. All that to say, August, our affordability, our attacking the cost of living crisis that was thrust on this country by bad policies from the previous administration has worked. But I will be the first to say, we still have a lot of work to do on health care, and we're not short of ideas. We know that markets, competition, freedom, basically, choice, transparency. That's what this system needs. And I worry that if we don't take advantage of this window and this tool reconciliation, A, I think it imperils our midterm chances of keeping the majority. And B, I think this is the last opportunity to right the ship on healthcare before it becomes a single payer system like Europe and every other place. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. And not a single Republican has ever voted for any aspect of Obamacare. It's more expensive. It's less accessible. The quality of care is worse. Every single group out there, including our constituents, complain about how expensive health care is. And we know that insurance companies were hand in hand with Obama, writing Obamacare. And the president has rightfully articulated that there are hundreds of billions of dollars that are going directly into the insurance companies' pockets that should be going back into our constituents, into every American in our community's pockets. So one of the tenets of this bill is transparency and its competitiveness. And we've got several pieces of legislation that would bypass those insurance companies and would allow every American to start a health savings account in a tax-advantaged way. Start an account where you have the choice to pay who you want to pay. And you know, through transparency measures, that the price of a drug is not the price that is hidden through insurance companies, but it's the price that the manufacturer says, this is what we're going to charge for it. And you have a choice. You can get the brand name. you can get the generic drug, and you have a direct-to-consumer model. And lastly, when it comes to these Ponzi schemes that have been created, and they are, they have truly hidden the cost of everything so that when you walk in, you don't know what doctor is charging what or what plan is getting reimbursed what. We want to make all of that transparent to give our community, every American a choice, as you mentioned. That's right. I think the opaqueness is by design, sadly. It's to hide the real cost that taxpayers are paying. We talk about premiums and deductibles. They doubled since 2014 in the ACA or Obamacare market. Meanwhile, half of the cost of premiums and deductibles were embedded in the private sector. So we know that competition works. It will always produce the best value proposition, that is quality and cost, with choices for what you and your family want and need. Subsidies, taxes, regulations, health mandates, these are the things that central planners do to try to divine a market and to design it, and it has failed as long as communism and socialism has been on this earth. All well-intentioned, but the road leads to serfdom, and it certainly leads to higher cost. People forget the taxpayer in this. A third of our $7 trillion budget, if you control for the interest payments, is health care cost. Half the dollars in our country, half the dollars of this one-fifth of the economy are controlled, health care dollars are controlled by Washington. This thing is so upside down. It is a case study for why we need less government, not more, more freedom, more choice. And like I said, reconciliation is Republicans' opportunity to meet the Democrats in their challenge. And the only swing they have is a program, Obamacare and a COVID additional subsidy that has only made Obamacare less, more expensive, given less choice, and is riddled like a sieve with waste and fraud. I mean, billions of dollars. So I would be embarrassed as a leader and as a conservative if our conference and Republicans in Washington won't rally in this 10 or 11 months we have before November, where we still have this window of opportunity to strike. When Democrats go home and start campaigning after we pass this bill, which will also include aspects of getting rid of the fraud, just in Minnesota, the daycares that didn't exist, the billions of dollars that were funneled into NGOs through grants, in some cases potentially even to politicians like the governor of Minnesota. So when they go home and defend that action, because we have legislation that would get rid of that, not just in the healthcare space, but all through government, that's what it means to be a conservative. That's the championing of not being corrupt, of saying we are committed to providing the transparency and getting rid of the opaqueness that has plagued our system of governance for so long that whether it's Obama or Biden, that's what they want. They want this to be so hard to understand, and they funnel money into one program or another, and we're saying, stop. We want that money to have a return on investment for every American. Yes. We didn't have the financial controls. We didn't have the anti-fraud measures in place. We would put them in when Republicans were in power. Democrats would take them away just like they would take away reasonable work requirements for able-bodied adults. And so illegals were taking advantage of our social services programs, people not eligible. We put income and asset tests. We prevent illegals from siphoning money away from vulnerable Americans who need these programs. And we put skin in the game for states like Minnesota so that they will be accountable for not stewarding tax dollars as it flows down to the state and local level That was what we did in the big beautiful bill If those things would have been in place during COVID we wouldn have all that we seeing with Minnesota Is there more to do Yes Let lock it down and let lock it down across the board, not just Medicaid, not just SNAP, TANF and other income means tested welfare programs because taxpayers deserve it. And because we're 38 trillion in debt and our children deserve it. And because what's driving cost of living crisis and affordability was spending. So let's continue to rein in the spending that we know is serving nobody, nobody well, except the crooks and the people behind the Ponzi schemes that you're talking about. So to kind of dive into another area that we believe there is a tremendous amount of fraud. I have a heart for those who are hungry, for those kids that don't have enough food to eat for whatever reason. And I'm proud of our government for saying, you know what, we're going to make sure that no kid goes hungry. And we should do that. Unfortunately, of the 50 states, only 28 states right now report back as to who is on those programs. So you have 32 states that are not reporting, 22 states that are not reporting who's on those roles. And in multiple cases, we know through the USDA and through their data and through outside sources that multiple people are enrolled in multiple counties. They're enrolled in multiple states and they're receiving benefits fraudulently. so talk to us about how important it is for us to be able to go back to our constituents and say we have done something to level set and how hard will it be for democrats to vote against something like that i don't know how democrats could ever oppose that they actually shut the government down with a counter offer to repeal literally every program integrity measure that we built into the system that saved a trillion dollars, which is crazy. And then they pivoted to a COVID-era fraud-ridden Obamacare subsidy as their next counterproposal. I mean, it is why Republicans wouldn't run to the middle of the ring to say, let's have this debate about affordability. Let's talk about the 21% increase in prices, the $3,000 in wage losses under Joe Biden, the $1,000 a month in mortgage payments because of what the bond markets did and the long-term interest rates did because of the unbridled reckless spending. Let's talk about the failed centrally planned Obamacare programs and other government programs. Look, I don't question the motive of most of my Democrat colleagues. They mean well, but the road to bad places are paved with those good intentions. But shame on us Republicans who have the power and the tools, if we have the will, to continue to lock this down. And to your point, we learned that Alaska has an over 50% improper payment rate in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Program, food stamps. Over 50% of their payments are in error. Probably 85% are overpayments. 85% are overpayments. There may be some underpayments in there. That is so unconscionable. Hundreds of millions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars throughout our country. And your question about what's a conservative, I think the words responsibility and accountability come to mind. So while we're expecting personal responsibility for able-bodied people who work, personal responsibility for people to only use these programs if they are legally eligible and need them, but there ought to be state accountability. And when we put that in there, you're going to see behavior change. but unless and until we do that across the board august there's no incentive for these folks like tim waltz and others not to use those programs as just a printing machine to pay off uh you know political allies uh which you know i i know that there's still investigations and i don't want to jump to conclusions but i i think it's the writings on the wall these things have been used not to help people, but to help politicians stay in power. And that's sick. It's sick. It's a rejection of that kind of behavior that I think is embodied by the Republican Study Committee, where true conservative values reject that. And in fact, they say, let's bring these things to light. Let's have a discussion. And it used to be that you had kind of the blue dog democrat that was also aligned but i think nancy pelosi ran every single blue dog off because they were a threat to the the ponzi scheme style of governance they were a threat to that because they didn't believe in that they may not have been aligned on everything that we believe in but they were aligned on the fiscal responsibility where let's have a discussion if there's corruption let's have a discussion we don't want that um timeline What do we need to do? Give us a timeline for how quickly this needs to happen. Well, unfortunately, the closer we get to November, the less appetite people are going to have to make changes. Changes also take time to manifest in good outcomes, like the mortgage rates coming down, people keeping more money from rebates and less taxes. All of that's just working really well. But to build on that, we probably have a three-month window. We have a budget resolution that has a 10-year path to balance. It will have a top line for next year's discretionary spending. Let me be clear. 20% roughly of the entire $7 trillion budget is discretionary. And we, for four years under government, Republican control, have actually reduced the spending indiscretionary by trillions over the budget window relative to inflation and relative to the baseline. And then we took a big chunk out of the height of mandatory spending, waste, fraud, and abuse. so we have to put those instructions basically reconciliation instructions that say here are the target number of savings in these different committees of jurisdiction then they come up with the reforms whether it be housing or health care or energy and look we just we just repeat what we did with only a one vote margin in the big beautiful bill it doesn't have to be as big and comprehensive. It needs to be targeted on the things that were either left undone, things that fell out that we should put back in, by the way, like not allowing tax dollars to go to transgender procedures and not allowing the fungible federal dollars to support states that use their state Medicaid dollars to fund the illegals. There are some things that we can make another run at and then build out those reforms to address the unaffordability that has come about because of bad Democrat policies This needs to happen pretty quick I mean we got to get this a two drill Let get this thing going And it shouldn take the time and it shouldn require the machinations that it took to lift the big beautiful bill across the line So we have a path. We've dug that path, and we should do it for the things that we can all agree on. We already know with the recent passage of the Lower Premions for All Americans Act, 218 Republicans voted for an Obamacare reform, which essentially is called cost-sharing reduction. It disallows insurance companies from directing beneficiaries to higher-cost silver plans. Okay, so we take out this perverse incentive that's costing more money. CBO has scored it as a $30 billion savings to taxpayers and would reduce premiums by over 10%. August, that's one provision. That's one provision. That's one. Of many that we have. Of many in other areas besides health care. So I'm like, you know, we're just a bunch of West Texas guys. Let's go. Get on the horse and ride. We're just in the third quarter. I don't know why we go into prevent defense. That's never worked out well for Texas Tech. So let's go Mike Leach on them and spread it and run and shoot it. Well, I mean, the facts are straight. We have good policy, but sometimes we're not good at communicating what that policy does. And that's a criticism that I get at town halls. I know we get it in our district and throughout the country. But in this case, we're going to be able to steal the ball. We're going to get an interception here. and we're going to be able to take the ball away and say, you know what, if you like your Obamacare, keep it. Keep it. That's right. Great. I haven't ever heard anybody say that they truly like it, but if you want a different plan, if you want a transparent aspect to your health care, if you want to pay less, if you want better quality, here it is. That's right. And we're not going to write it for insurance companies. We're going to write it for America. That's right. We're going to write it for Americans who want that choice. This is exciting. this is why we released our framework on affordability. Let's give the president the tools to go talk to the American public, to tie a bow on the past two years for really contrasting with Joe Biden, who spends billions, trillions, doesn't tell you where it's going. Famously, Nancy Pelosi said, I don't know. We'll have to read the bill to see where they're spending the money. No, conservatives believe we're going to write a bill that is transparent. and we know where every dollar is going and it's going to benefit every single American. That's right. This is the Right to the Point podcast. So let's get right to the point about Texas Tech athletics. Which sports team is the best sports team at Texas Tech? Because you got, I mean, y'all have had a heck of a year. So you can't, I don't want to hear, well, you know, they're all good. And, you know, I like all of them. Which team right now and which program is the premier program at Texas Tech? It's hard not to immediately have your mind go to the basketball team, the running, gunning Red Raiders who are just as hot as any team in college basketball, top 10 team beat the number one team in the nation the in madison square garden there in new york right at the beginning of the season which was duke it was a great game a tremendous comeback and an upset obviously we beat houston the other day mccaslin's got that team running uh there if they are a well-oiled machine uh so i'm gonna i'm gonna go with basketball my dad played basketball at Texas Tech back in the late 50s. And it was the Border Conference, and then it was Southwest Conference. Now we're in the Big 12. So I'm going to stick with Dad's sport and with the sport that's got everybody's attention right now and say the running Red Raiders. Let's hope they make it all the way to the finals and win out. I predict they will. They've got everybody's attention. I'm going to pick maybe a lesser-known team at Texas Tech. Oh, I know where you're going, you dog. The football team was incredible. They were. They had a great season. I think they're going to be back. It's hard not to like Rodriguez, the linebacker. He's married to a helicopter pilot who is in the Army. He's got that mustache and that smile. People just like him. He does. But I think the women's softball team. I'm telling you. You know, this guy, he's always one step ahead of me, you know. They might be the preeminent team. Now, they made it to the finals last year. That's right. And, you know, it was the Red Raiders versus the Longhorns. They split, and then they lost a heartbreaker. Yeah, it was a heartbreaker. But I think they're back, and I think they're going to be as good as ever. You know what? It's a good call. That's why you're the RSC chairman. I mean, this is why it's probably a good time for me to exit stage right. Basketball is front and center right now. Well, it is. I've been watching it. But who would have thought that Tech would be in the finals in the collegiate national championship softball, women's softball? We got that pitcher from Stanford. She's amazing. And then I think landed another All-American. And so the program, I think, is poised to upset UT or whomever it is that will meet us in the finals. You know what I like about Texas Tech? And I'll say this about some of the sports that are going on. You watch this guy from Indiana, Fernando. Yeah. Special kid. You know, he, after every game, it's not about him. No. The team, my coaches, he gives the glory to God. Yes. And I'm watching this quarterback for the Patriots, and I'm watching the Texas Tech athletics, and there's a humility that is really hard not to like when you watch these teams when they're giving away all the credit, these players that could say, you know, it's all about me. But I love that right now that I think, in particular, God's working through some really special people in a time where we're divided, and he's using them for a purpose that is much bigger than just sports. And I love that. And the RSC, by the way, we don't just champion fiscal responsibility, but we're also looking after the values of this country. So tune back in next week for the Republican Study Committee's Right to the Point podcast. What an honor it is to have my neighbor to the north from Lubbock, Texas. Jody Arrington joined me. Thank you for being such a good member and a leader in our Congress. I'm looking for big things from you, August. Been an honor to serve. God bless our great country and may God give us the courage to strike again and make America not just more prosperous, but more affordable again. Amen to that. See y'all next time. you
