Back From the Swamp, Congressman Tim Burchett Talks Kevin McCarthy, Reckless Spending, and a Call to Action

 

Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) to the newsmaker line to comment on Kevin McCarthy, unions, and getting things done in Washington.

Leahy: We are joined now on our newsmaker line by our good friend Congressman Tim Burchett from the 2nd district of Tennessee. Congressman Burchett, good morning.

Burchett: Good morning, brother. Thank you for having me on.

Leahy: Are you in the Swamp or are you back in God’s country?

Burchett: I’m in God’s country.

Leahy: Very good! The day is starting well.

Burchett: Yes, sir. The only thing they’re doing up there, as I told some of my Democrat friends in the locker room the other day, I said, boys, we got to get to work. And they said, doing what? And I said these post offices and bridges aren’t going to name themselves.

(Leahy laughs) That’s about all we do. I’ll be dadgummed if we didn’t name a post office after a very Woke former member of Congress whose parting shot was one of her employees had drugged a young person and raped them violently.

And then she wrote a letter to the dadgum judge asking for leniency. And that’s who we named a post office after.

Leahy: If she had not endorsed those activities of that criminal, I don’t know, she might have had a courthouse named for her, right?

Burchett: Probably. They might have named the wing of the Capitol after her. It is just beyond belief what’s going on in Washington.

Nobody’s paying attention. The media is totally in cahoots because they basically elected this shell of a man that we have in the White House right now.

Leahy: Shell of a man. Speaking of a shell of man, they carted him up to Cleveland yesterday, where he mumbled through a few things.

He’s going to be mumbling at the State of the Union address on March 1st. Will you be in attendance, and what sort of theatrical aspects will that event have?

Burchett: Probably not. They said that if Kevin McCarthy is mad at you, he would choose you to go be at the State of the Union. And currently, right now, he’s not as mad as me as he is at others. But it’s totally ridiculous.

I think they said they’re going to allow like 25 Republicans or something like that and 25 Democrats and limited press. And of course, you have to show your COVID certificate or whatever they give you.

And I refuse. I’ve lost seven pounds when I was in D.C. because you have to show that stupid thing to get up to eat, and I refuse to do it. So I eat peanut butter and crackers every night.

Leahy: You are on the show-me-your-COVID-vaccine-card diet. Good! Crom Carmichael has a question for you, Congressman.

Carmichael: Congressman, I have two questions. One is humorous and the other is more serious. What does a Republican need to do to get on Kevin McCarthy’s blacklist?

Burchett: Probably vote as Tim Burchett does. I told Jim Jordan the other day that they get me for free in the Freedom Caucus, and he said, what do you mean?

I said, I vote more conservative than most of your members and you all don’t have to have a chicken dinner for me or give me a decoder ring. (Leahy chuckles)

Actually, Kevin, we’ve been voting very conservative as of late, and I think he’s preaching the conservative gospel. I asked him what’s my job going to be and I’m going to say my job is going to be making Kevin McCarthy the best Speaker of the House that we’ve ever had because, we’re in a very historical situation.

If he doesn’t succeed, we could literally lose our country as we know it, because it would fall into Marxism. And I think he realizes the historical significance. And I pray for him every day. I really do, because it’s make-or-break.

Carmichael: Congressman, let me ask you a question. This is a very serious question. In 1961, JFK signed an executive order that allowed government employees to unionize, and then a few years later, Congress passed a statute that supported that executive order.

And so by law, government employees have the right to unionize under that law that was passed in the ’60s. I believe that the government employee unions as a body, is the same thing as a cancer in a human body.

And you can’t treat cancer, you have to eliminate cancer to defeat cancer. You have to eliminate it. You can’t put on a bunch of makeup, you can’t do a bunch of things, and then just fake like the cancer is not really there.

It’ll kill you if you leave it. The government employee unions collect $8 billion a year in dues – forced dues. And then they spend it supporting bigger government, and now Marxism.

Is there any appetite on the Republican side to repeal the law that was passed in the ’60s and eliminate the right of government employees to eliminate government unions as a body?

Because in those unions there are only five or six people among all those unions that make the decision as to how that money is spent.

And before they decide how they’re going to spend it, they go to the White House and sit down with the Democrats and ask them “how are we going to spend it to try to advance bigger government?” So my question is, is there any appetite to repeal that law?

Burchett: I think there is. I think you’re seeing right now with the collapse of the post office, the postal union has played a role in that. And on the post office, you got terrible management and you got a terrible union.

And in between the two, I think they just sit and laugh about it and the workers get the wood laid to them. So, yes, I think there is if the case is made. But will they do it? I think when you see those Capitol Hill offices unionized, I think you’re going to see some people wake up to what is really going on.

I think the unions are a lot like we used to be in the state legislature when I was in Nashville. All they’re trying to do is get through that next election cycle hoping the economy will turn around or hoping this will straighten up, and they’re not looking at the big picture, and that’s all those union bosses do.

They look at their own pension, and it’s not sustainable what they’re doing right now. And the post office is constitutionally mandated. I said the other day, I told the head of the post office, I said I would fire them. I wasn’t going to vote for them.

We just voted for a huge bailout for the post office. Republicans did that, and they pushed for this thing, this reform. And the reform is, all it is is throwing more money at it not fixing the problem. And that’s where your problem is. It’s just too much dadgum money we keep pumping into it.

And, you know, I told him, I said, if you’re not going to do your job, let FedEx do it, because I guarantee you they could do it without all the government subsidies that they get.

Leahy: I got another question for you, Congressman. On Wednesday, 46 Senate Republicans demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland respect the independence of special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the FBI’s Russia probe of the Trump campaign in 2016.

They wrote this in a letter. I know this will shock you. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy didn’t sign that letter. Is a similar letter brewing in the House? And if it is, will you sign it?

Burchett: I don’t know. I haven’t seen the letter. If there has been, I’m sure – you’re talking about the Durham investigation.

Leahy: Yes. The Durham investigation.

Burchett: Yes. I have to be really careful. I was on a national news program the other day and I said, I have to be really careful what I say about Hillary Clinton. I don’t want to wake up with 12 bullet holes in the back of my head and hear that I’d committed suicide.

(Leahy laughs) I mean, from the Clinton Foundation to everything and the original, when they first got an office – Travelgate, where they just destroyed the travel office at the White House and put their own cronies in, instead of just firing them, they just destroyed them.

I guess that’s the Arkansas way. That bunch, nothing surprises me with them. And she’s Teflon. Nobody is going to do anything to her. Everybody’s gutless. They all talk about it, but somebody will take the fall or somebody will die.

Leahy: Well, let me tell you something. I’ll tell you, I know one guy in Washington, D.C., who’s not gutless. That would be you, Congressman Tim Burchett. Thanks for joining us, Congressman. Come back again. Thank you.

Burchett: I tell you what, we got to get past writing those letters. We got to get some action.

Leahy: I’m all for that. Thanks, Congressman.

Burchett: Thank you, brother.

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Kevin McCarthy” by Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0.