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. – official guest host and Grassroots Engagement Director of Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee Grant Henry gives his rant on the consequences of the proposed infrastructure package and a grassroots populist revolution.
(Kamala Harris clip plays)
HENRY: Will it do all those things? Will it VP Harris. I’m asking, will it because Senator Sinema seems to disagree with you being that she rejected a major vote last night. Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin are both saying $3.5 trillion, $4 trillion, $5 trillion, whatever the actual figure is, I’m not going for it.
It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to convince me. I got to get reelected. So whatever pipe dream pie in the sky thing you’re throwing out there is just not going to happen.
And guaranteed if you’re spending $3, $4, or $5 trillion of my money, guaranteed somewhere in there at a federal level, in particular, this stuff is going to be chock filled with corporate welfare.
We just left off this topic a second ago, and I think these two things blend together very nicely. Those two things being this first special session in Tennessee and the $3.5 trillion boondoggle that’s about to happen at the federal level.
One more time, corporate welfare. I keep saying that term. I keep saying that term. A very unfortunate thing has happened over the last couple of years here where portions of the left primarily the progressives, AOC, and her ilk have commandeered this term and turned it into something that conservatives are turned off by.
Conservatives tend to pitch these things as jobs bills. Hey, let’s spend $500 million of your money. It’s going to bring us a bunch of jobs in the state. I mean, will it? Listen to some of the research that I found here as I was just looking through this last night.
There are studies to indicate that state and local governments are also handing out these corporate welfares with unprecedented levels in the last couple of years. And they do this with no strings attached at all.
No strings meaning no callback provisions, no guarantee for how many of those jobs are going to Tennesseeans, et cetera. In 2013, for example, the state of Washington approved a record $8.7 billion handouts to Boeing in order to “maintain and grow its workforce within the state.”
Now, what did Boeing do? Let me set up a scenario one more time. The state of Washington in 2013 approved a record $8.7 billion handouts to the company Boeing in order to “maintain and grow its workforce within the state.”
Now, what did Boeing do subsequently, in the following years? It actually laid off more than 12,000 workers in the state. What was the benefit to people living in the state of Washington? There are also studies to indicate that state and local tax breaks for corporations are estimated to cost local schools about as much as $2 billion a year in lost tax revenue.
And frequently it’s argued that these bills, these legislations, these handouts, whether they’re pilot’s or tiffs or whatever the term for it might be, it’s using your money to give to a company that another company doesn’t get. Frequently, it’s argued that these bills will create jobs.
Yet nationwide, you can almost see that typically very few jobs are actually created out of them. And what I mean by that is very few new jobs go to Tennessee at most these jobs merely move from one state to another.
You’re basically just shifting jobs that were operating in one state to move it over to another state. That may be good for Tennessee, but is it good for Tennesseeans? It was a slightly convoluted statement, I’ll unpack it. It might be good for Tennessee, but is it good for Tennesseeans? Here’s what I mean.
If some company that may not have the exact same political affiliation as you or I that listen to this program were to come into Nashville and set up camp, and if there’s no political provision by which they have to say maybe these jobs should just go to Tennesseeans.
If you start bringing in a bunch of people to town here, that may not think the same way that I do, inevitably, it will change the voting demographic as well. This is not an absurd notion. Everyone should track this fairly well.
In this upcoming special session in the state of Tennessee when we’re talking about giving for $500 million, I would just urge all of you to listen. If anybody is listening out there. And I would also be urging any legislators that may so happen to stumble upon this program, I would just urge you to keep aware of these things.
Pay close attention to how you were spending your constituents’ money. Senator Sinema is. Senator Manchin is. Here’s the headline right now from Yahoo. (Laughs) Did you hear us say that Scooter, Yahoo?
I put the wrong and emphasis on the wrong syllable there. Yahoo! My wife’s going to laugh at that one. Yahoo. (Sighs) Senator Sinema rejects the vote on the big Biden package before infrastructure. U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a key moderate, told fellow Democrats in the House Representatives this week that she will not vote for a multi-trillion-dollar package that is a top priority for President Joe Biden before Congress approves a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
I hate this as much as y’all, but I’m just reading from Yahoo. This is, according to a source briefed on the meeting. I hate the anonymous sourcing as much as you all, but it is what it is. Let’s go forward again.
This is an obvious problem for Pelosi because progressive Democrats are holding that bill hostage. What do I mean? Sinema says I’m not going for your multi-trillion dollar, whether it’s 3 trillion or 4 trillion or 6 trillion or whatever the number is, big boondoggle budget resolution unless and until you guys pass the bipartisan “infrastructure bill.”
Conversely, in the House, they’re saying the exact opposite. AOC and the squad and the progressives are saying we’re not voting for your “bipartisan infrastructure bill” unless and until you pass my $3 or $4, $5 trillion boondoggle bailout. You understand the obvious problems being set up here. It’s all on Pelosi’s back, and she’s got to figure out a way to navigate these waters.
Now, in a previously unreported online meeting on Wednesday, Sinema and fellow moderate Democrat Joe Manchin said that they would not abide by any deadlines adopted by leadership either to force these vote packages. That is exceedingly important to understand. I’ll tell you more about why in a second.
Just to quickly cover one of the reasons why Progressives in the House are so adamant about passing this bill. First, the big one, the big $3.5 trillion one is because it has everything in there that they couldn’t get through actual legislation. It’s going to reverse components of President Trump’s tax cuts and job acts, which helped people keep more of what they earn and contribute more jobs and higher wages.
This $3.5 trillion, they’re calling it a spending package. It is not. It is a guise by which a Trojan horse-style introduction of the most progressive things that have happened in this country in my lifetime. It’s going to increase taxes that would worsen our already devastated economy. Do you think stagflation now is bad?
Wait until this thing passes. It would hurt workers’ wages. It would crush small businesses and ultimately wouldn’t come close to paying for this new spending. None of these tax increases would even come close to it. It would implement elements of the Pro Act.
If you don’t know what that is, that’s forced unionization across the United States. I have no problem with the union at all. Honestly, I think unionization in substance can actually do beneficial things. But to require being a part of a union as a prerequisite to join a company, you don’t have any work of freedom there.
That’s why we’re a right-to-work state in Tennessee. This $3.5 trillion boondoggle spending bill would force the Pro Act across the United States. It would basically ban right-to-work laws to protect workers from being fired, restrict workers’ ability to earn a living as independent contractors, implement costly and unnecessary financial penalties that would bankrupt small businesses.
Have you guys heard of the Green New Deal? That’s in there. It would give the government more control over health care. And I don’t just mean like a few spending things here and there. It expands Medicare, further straining the financially challenged program.
It bribes states to expand Medicare, taking resources away from those who need the help the most. It includes permanent subsidy giveaways to big insurance companies. It’s welfare for the wealthy by making them eligible for subsidized insurance and hands out $400 billion to labor unions and special interest groups.
We’re talking about spending trillions of dollars on unrelated, unnecessary, and ineffective programs. Now, you heard me say a second ago that there’s something else here that could really tip the scales. There’s something else that’s coming up over the horizon that may seem on the forefront unrelated to the spending package.
But let me just read this headline here real quick from Victor Davis Hanson. If you don’t know who that guy is, he’s an American conservative commentator, a classicist military historian. He’s been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The National Review. You’ve probably heard of him. He was interviewed on Tucker Carlson recently. And here’s the headline. Victor Davis Hanson predicts full reckoning in Midterms: Biden will face a grassroots Revolution. I say yes, possibly. You may be correct.
You probably are correct. But to what extent is the real question? If we’re looking on a gradient scale, if you will, of what this full reckoning actually means, is this a slight shift in the House and Democrats maintain majority?
Are we talking a full-blown red wave and take the House back and clearly take the Senate back as well? And I’ll tell you one thing in my humble opinion here that I think could tip the scales over entirely. Here’s the predictive political punditry.
The Virginia governor’s race. Quick tease. Then I’ll get back to that in a second. Victor Davis Hanson says this. “President Biden’s controversial vaccine mandates and far-left policies are corroding our institutions.” Correct? Correct.
He goes on to say it won’t bode well for him in the midterm elections. “They’re going to be a reckoning. I think whether it’s Mexican American communities on the border or where I live or soccer moms mad about what’s being taught in school, it’s not a top-down woke revolution,” Victor Davis Hanson says.
It’s a grassroots populist revolution. We’re going to see it in the next midterms. I think a lot of these institutions are going to rue the positions that they’ve taken and the damage they’ve done.
Listen to the first hour here:
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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.
