Tim Barton [00:00:07] Welcome to the WallBuilders Show, the intersection of faith and the culture, where we look at things from a biblical, historic, and a constitutional perspective. My name is Tim Barton. I am the president of Wall Builders, joined by my father, David Barton, the founder of Wall Builders. And if you listened yesterday, you might already know. If not, our our third co-host is Rick Green. That's not the point. What you might know is that today is kind of a special day for him and his family. His youngest son is getting married. He's in Hawaii. And so we said, Rick, we will allow you to take this day off. And maybe a bonus day after that. Once they're kind of they're not totally empty nesters, but all their kids are married and he's got his wife in Hawaii. The wedding's over. So now have the day celebrate. So probably he might be back with us on Thursday, maybe Friday this week, but at least today he's not with us because his son's getting married. So we will be praying, Rick, for you, for Rhett, for everything going on. But today, Dad, we there's a lot we can talk about because there was a vote last night in the Senate, finally, to reopen the government as we were kind of looking to see what might happen, how it was happening as it was unfolding around us last night. There are several different people we know, sites we kind of follow, some friends up in DC. And Mark Wayne Mullen actually had a really good breakdown of some of what was happening leading into last night. That kind of give an explanation for some of what going on. 

David Barton [00:01:42] And for those who don't know, Mark Wayne Mullen is the U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. He made some news back when the withdrawal happened out of Afghanistan, when he just himself went over there to help get some special people out. The government was not moving. So he kind of came to national notoriety at that point, but he's now US Senator from Oklahoma. And he's a plain talking guy and that's that's what's fun is he will always get to the bottom line of what's going on. 

Tim Barton [00:02:05] I remember too, when he was in a committee, and there was some union head who was in there and was talking smack down to him. And Mark Wayne Mullen said, Hey, do we need to step outside and solve this problem? That there's a few guys that certainly you look at and you might think, I don't want to go outside with that guy. Mark Wayne Mullins is one of them. And this union guy was like, I'll do it right now. When you just thought Mark Wayne Mullins is gonna destroy this guy. Now, it didn't get to that, although we felt like for a minute, you know, let's go back, old school, there's some moments in American history where there were some skirmishes and scuffles in the Senate, in the House. And my money was gonna be on Mark Wayne Mullen. Not to digress, he had a really great explanation of some of what was happening. Now, he posted this on social media. So you actually, if you watch it on social media, you can see the video as as he's up in DC in the Capitol explaining this. But we wanted you guys to hear a little bit of the explanation. We'll come back and talk through some of what he said and maybe what that means now that they voted to reopen the government. So we'll play that for you right now. 

Sen. Mark Wayne Mullen [00:03:10] Okay, guys, it's Sunday evening and we're about ready to have our first vote to move to finally reopen the government. It's been ridiculous. The Democrats have been absolutely absurd. So let me give you the rundown on how this works. Right now we got to have a motion to proceed. That means to get on the bill. Once we pass that, which we've already had 10 Democrats that have agreed to vote with us, so we had the votes. Once it's passed, technically it invokes 20 hours or 30 hours of debate. Now, now the Democrats can yield all that back if they want to. After that, we have another vote, and that's to amend the clean CR, the House sent over. Now, what that means is the House sent over a clean CR on all 12 appropriation bills. We have three appropriation bills that we're amending. So we have the Ledge, we have MILCON, which is military, and AG. Now, AG is where the SNAP program is. So we're gonna have to amend three of the of the 12 appropriation bills, and then CR the rest of the nine, and then send that back to the House after we vote on it. But once we vote to amend it, it invokes another 30 hours of debate and before we can actually vote on the bill. So if the Democrats want to drag this out, they can drag it out for 60 hours. Now it's ridiculous because the vote's already there, but there's some presidential hopefuls that want to, Democrat presidential hopefuls that want to drag this out and like plant their flag and say, this is awful, we're not gonna do this. That means we won't be able to get to that vote until Wednesday. That means the House has to come back in and vote after we do, which would mean probably the government wouldn't open reopen till Thursday. Now, if the Democrats want to yield back the time. We could get all three votes done tonight. The house could come back in. Vote. And the government could be reopened tomorrow night. We'll see what they do. More than likely, they're going to try to continue to hold you guys as leverage points. 

Tim Barton [00:05:11] Okay, so that's the explanation you gave Sunday night. They then did vote to actually the the motion to end closure, the move to end cloture, which they had eight Democrat senators join them on. He said they probably had 10. There were eight that joined them, and and really that's all they needed. So I do wonder if those other two Dems were kind of like, well, if you don't have to have me, I'm gonna sit this one out, right? That would be interesting. But Senator Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada, Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, Senator Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire, Senator Tim Kane from Virginia, Senator Jackie Rosen from Nevada, Senator Gene Shaheen from New Hampshire, and Senator Angus King, is an independent from Maine. And, Dad, I don't know if you saw Tim Kane when he was interviewed asking about this and why it took so long. If you were just gonna, you know, kind of acquiesce and give in to them, then why did you hold out for so long? And he said, Well, honestly, I was pretty distracted with all the races in Virginia and Virginia politics. So I didn't even know what the hold up was. I didn't know what was going on, or I would have come out against this sooner, which I feel like is one of the most ri..... Actually it's not one of the most ridiculous things he said. He said some really, really ridiculous things, but it's a ridiculous take and the idea that leftist media outlets are letting him get away with that, like he had no idea what was happening in the Senate, because there's elections in Virginia that weren't even really that close, etcetera, etcetera. Utter nonsense, but it is great that eight Democrats finally did come over and join to end what's been the longest shutdown in American history. 

David Barton [00:07:00] Yeah, it's interesting that out of that eight, there's only one that really surprises me. Durban i is the one but the the the other seven you could put in for Democrats, you can put them in the moderate camp. Even though a moderate Democrat is still really liberal. It's not like the the others that are there. And so you look at the states as well. You you had for example, Fetterman, we've seen him cross the line several times, but you had both senators from Nevada. And Nevada's was was a state that went for Trump. And so both of those senators in Nevada, you had both of the senators in New Hampshire that jumped over. Angus King in and Maine has crossed several times. So none of these are real surprises except Durban. That's the one that really surprised me. And and you know, to to say, for Cain to say I didn't know what was going on, man, you're not doing a very good job of representing your state and the Senate if you don't even know what the Senate's doing. They sent you there for that purpose. I I mean that that's a really poor excuse for him to use. 

Tim Barton [00:07:57] Well, yeah, and and Dad, I mean, kind of to this point, Tim Kane is, Senator Kane is one that definitely surprises me because he's been a very hard leftist. He's the one that talking about slavery in America said that America didn't inherit slavery. We created it, which of course is just one of the dumbest takes when you come to the history of slavery in general, right? The idea that that there wasn't slavery happening in the rest of the world, that even the indigenous people, even to the time before Columbus landed, that there was no slavery here in America, or when the Spanish are developing and establishing colonies in the 16th century, all through the 1500s from Florida all the way up to South Carolina. And not only do they have slavery in all those colonies, they're importing African slaves because they're part of the North Atlantic African slave trade, etc. Like it's just Tim Kane's take that we we invented and created slavery is one of the worst takes ever. But he's he's shown himself very consistently to be on the woke left. And so that is why to me, he he was a big surprise. And frankly, the only two that did not surprise me, and I get what you're saying with Nevada, that because Trump won Nevada, it makes sense they might feel a little pressure. At some point, you might want to come around. Fetterman at this point it is a little bit of an anomaly. He's very, very strong left in areas, but then there's some areas that he's far more common sense oriented than we certainly gave him credit for coming in. But also, as you mentioned, Angus King. Those are the two that didn't surprise me. The other six were very big surprises. And as you mentioned, Dick Durbin, probably the greatest surprise of those six because of how consistently anti-Trump, anti-Republican he has been. And as some people maybe would point out, is some for some of these guys, the the only reason they came around is that Republicans said they they could revisit and and have an independent vote on the Affordable Care Act. And so that's that's what the Democrats needed to hear, at least for these eight, to say, well, as long as we can vote on that, and you're not removing that, then we'll vote to reopen the government. But that was something Senator Thune offered them literally back in October before the shutdown even began. So it does seem disingenuous and dishonest now to come out and say, Oh, well, because they offered us this, that was always on the table. Literally, it's one of the things laid out by Republicans. The Democrats never came for genuinely right now. The Democrats never came forward with their proposals. Chuck Schumer was called out for this when he said, Hey, we've negotiated with you guys. And if you'll just give us what we ask for, and Republicans said, Well, what are you asking for? Put it in writing so we see. Democrats never put it in writing. And again, it's one of the reasons as the left media is covering for them as they're coming back saying, Well, if you just said this from the beginning, right, we we we would not have shut down the government or we would not have made you shut down the government, is how they're trying to frame this right now. But again, it's very dishonest and disingenuous for people that are paying the slightest bit of attention and are not being misled by leftist news outlets. 

David Barton [00:11:05] You know, and s and and by the way, you mentioned the the Affordable Care Act. I want to come back then a little bit 'cause there's some really interesting stats related to why they want that debate separate, why they want that carved out. But what you were saying even about, you know, Thune covered this weeks ago. And by the way, this if you want to call it shutdown lasted forty one days, and that is the longest in American history. That's the longest period of time in which the the government has gone unfunded or or without funding. And so the the kind of 

Tim Barton [00:11:39] Hey, Dad, let me let me interrupt real quick just for a second because our producer has pointed out.  That the government has been closed for nine percent of the year. And if the government's closed for nine percent of the year, they haven't been doing the work that we're we're being taxed for them to do their job. So if they've been closed nine percent of the year, we should have at least a nine percent decrease of our federal taxes since they weren't open. So I kudos to our producer on this program, Justin. That's a great thought. So, Dad, as you're saying all this, just you know, we might pitch these ideas out to people up in DC. Hey guys, we should get a tax credit, a tax break, some kind of refund, because you know, we were paying you to be there. We were still, and then this is also the irony. We were still paying taxes, even though you weren't open. So it's either we need to stop paying taxes when they're closed down, or we need to get a discount for the times that you're closed. Something should happen. So, not to digress, Dad, but just wanted to throw that in there. 

David Barton [00:12:37] Hey, listen, I know you well enough. I I know how I raised you, and I taught you that the sun comes up in the east and goes down to the west, and there are certain natural laws that will never be broken. And and and trying to get Congress to refund some of our money is one of those natural laws that well, I don't know. I can't say never. Maybe at some point it will. But at this point, we got a really long history of of not being common sense on that. And the Affordable Care Act is gonna be one of those things that when we get into some of the stats in this in a little bit on why they carved that out, it's really interesting. Going back even to what you said about Thune, Thune offered this, you know, literally weeks ago. Schumer saying, Well, we didn't have, I have yet to see a mainstream news report that has pointed out either what's actually happened and and gone on or why this is occurring. Yeah, I've seen no mainstream news report that has put this on the Democrats, the Republicans have offered to them this stuff. And so  I think in that sense that this is still gonna be a surprise for a lot of people when they see all the stuff that comes out. 

Tim Barton [00:13:39] Well, Dad, and you're saying No mainstream that you mean outside of like Fox News, outside of like right a Glenn Beck, a Ben Shapiro, like go down that list because there's a lot of mainstream. They're just on the left. We haven't heard this really much from CNN or MSNBC, etc. Now, you might have some conservative commentators that are being interviewed on one of those programs, but certainly this is not the story they're running with. Now, that there's a lot we want to get to to unfold some of this, unpack this bag, so to speak, but we got to take a break. So hang on, we'll be right back on the WallBuilders show. 

Tim Barton [00:15:21] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. This is Tim Barton, joined by my dad, David Barton. And we are discussing what the end of the shutdown means, what happens, what's the process? We know it's got to go to the House. And so, how how does this unfold? And really, what does it mean for the American people? As we pointed out before going to the break, our producer Justin pointed out the government, the federal government's been shut down for 9% of the year. We should get a 9% discount on federal taxes. Like, let me keep some more of my money. Maybe, probably not. We we know it's not how the federal government operates, but what does this mean for us now that the government is back up and running? What is still coming? What's the expectation? So, Dad, you were about to dive into that and we stopped to take a break. 

David Barton [00:16:03] So if you heard the the start of the program, Senator John Mark Wayne Mullen out of Oklahoma, laid out what's happened. They have 12 continuing resolutions. And so three of them they've come to agreement on. The other nine are gonna have to go back over and be voted on by the House. And there's no guarantee the House is gonna rubber stamp what the Senate has done here. The House made it really clear, here's what we believe, and they're gonna have to keep all the House together to get done what Mark Wayne Mullins is mentioning here, and the Democrats want to do, and there's no guarantee the House is gonna do that. We'll see later in the week what happens with that. But the the three that both sides agreed on continuing the funding, because theoretically the funding runs out and and the fiscal year for the federal government is very, very different from from what our fiscal year is. Their fiscal year begins on October the first. And so they end funding on September the 30th. So they're talking about funding from October the first of of 2025 all the way through September the 30th of 2026, which means we're already, you know, a month gone out of that over the the shutdown. So the three areas that will be funded for the next 11 months without interruption, you're not gonna see what we've seen in the last few weeks where that certain federal workers, air traffic control, et cetera, not not being paid. And those three areas are the Department of Agriculture, and you can imagine why, because that's SNAP, that's all the the welfare kind of programs, all the food stuff. They don't want neither party wants to have to deal with with shutting that down and and holding food back from the poor. The next is military area, the veterans' affairs particularly. That looks really bad for either party to not be paying the veterans who have given so much to the nation and and and not pay them. And the third one, and this is gonna be really hard for people to understand, but it's amazing. I don't know why they chose this, but they decided to fund the legislative branch. So for the next 11 months, the legislative branch, Congress is going to get paid. I don't know how that worked out. I can't imagine that these guys would pay themselves, one other. All right, I'm being facetious. Clearly that's sarcastic. But that those are the three that that both sides agree we're gonna keep this going. So now what happens is in December, they're going to have what what Leader Thune agreed to in the Senate is to let the Democrats have a breakout vote on what we call Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. So that was the insurance, the big national insurance thing that was done back when Obama was in office. And here's here's why it's such a big deal to the Democrats to have a special carve out on this, because what the Republicans did is they limited it where it was and they they put a freeze on it. And so here here's the difficulty. And if you remember, this is going to be providing free health care for every American. They would finally get quality health care, free health care, et cetera. And over the last really about six months, there's a number of studies that have come out that have raised a lot of questions about that. So what what have what happens is the Democrats would not do a short-term funding bill, and they they want they want all this drawn out. So let me let me give some of the stats on on what's happening here with this. If you look at what is happening with the premiums on Obamacare, and this was going to be the government would subsidize that, what has happened is the premiums have increased about 114% a year since this thing went in office. Not many people can afford to do that. So what they're debating about is the Democrats want the government to pay more subsidies on the insurance. They want the government to be paying more of the premiums because most people can't afford the premium for the Affordable Care Act. And by the way, the level at which they say you need to pay for your own stuff is four times above the poverty level. And the poverty level right now is set at fifteen thousand six hundred and fifty dollars a year. So if you're making sixty-two thousand six hundred dollars a year, which is four times above poverty level, you pay all of your own premiums. You don't get the subsidy. So w a and and that's what they want to change. Democrats recognize that that is not a winning issue for them to have such high increases on on health care. And the other thing that came out with the studies is what the Affordable Health Care Act has done is it's helped mental health in the sense that people aren't worried about insurance. But it has created real problems with the health care and the quality of health care has actually declined. So you feel better you got insurance, it just doesn't work as well and it costs a whole lot more. So that's essentially what the debate's gonna be over in December. 

Tim Barton [00:20:37] Well, and a couple of thoughts too with that. As we look at the government helping bring subsidies, two very, very important things about this. The first one is that as the government is doing subsidies, those subsidies aren't going to individuals to help pay for their insurance, it's going directly to the insurance companies, who are making millions and millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars from these government subsidies. So the insurance companies are getting more and more money, and surprising and shocking enough, their rates are going up every single year drastically, almost as if they've discovered the trick. That they just say, hey guys, we're gonna have to charge more this year. So we're gonna government, we need you to pay some more subsidies because it's gonna be more expensive this next year, and all they're doing is pocketing more and more and more money. President Trump came out about how corrupt these these health companies were, about how much money they are pocketing. And so the first thing to note is of these two really important things  I would suggest we need to pay attention to. The first one is that these subsidies are going to insurance companies, not to individuals. So that's already a major problem. If we're gonna say the government needs to help people, it should not be going in cronyism to these companies and organizations that are pocketing it, and these individuals are basically in these sweetheart deals with these different senators and congressmen or whoever these lobbyists, et cetera, are. That this is how you get people like a Nancy Pelosi, who's made 130 million dollars in her time in Congress, and you're going, how does she do that? How is she better at investing than anybody in the history of the world at investing? And it's because that in the midst of this, she knows who the people are getting money, she knows who the people are opening companies and where the stocks are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That this is part of the corruption happening in Washington, DC that that needs to be exposed and stopped. That's number one. Number two, if you look at the things that are in our daily lives that are the most expensive, and I I wish Rick was on here with us, Dad, because I'd I would do trivia for both of you. And I would say, okay, what are the daily things in our life that have had the most inflation that have become the most expensive? And I would have us name some of them. What is super interesting is the things in our life that have dealt with the most inflation and become the most expensive. Every single one of them are things the government is helping subsidize. All of them absolutely whether it be education. Or medicine, or let's go down that list. Whereas if we look at technology, right, whether it be our TVs, which I I was literally in Walmart and they have this 85 inch TV for less than 300, and I don't need an 85 inch TV. All I would do is cry when the Cowboys keep blowing their games in leads, and like I don't need I don't need to see that in a big screen. However, I could watch the Lord of the Rings large, like that would be amazing not to digress. I remember when HD TVs came out, me and my two siblings, we worked so hard to raise some money to buy a flat screen large HD TV for my parents. And we paid way more money than we should have. I mean, it's just dumb, especially compared to where it is now. Why has it gotten cheaper? Because in the free market, in capitalism, competition helps drive the price down because people go, you know what? I can do it better for cheaper. And that's what happens. But every time the government gets involved, things get less efficient and more expensive. And that's exactly what's happened with this Obamacare healthcare debacle. So it doesn't bother me. There's gonna be an independent vote on this. Let's vote on it. And hopefully, Republicans find the backbone to say we don't care about these health insurance companies making hundreds of millions of dollars more. We care about what's best for the American people and getting the government out of the way more times than not, is best for the American people. 

David Barton [00:24:34] And so even within what we see with that Affordable Care Act, as Trump recently announced at the White House, he got two of the drug companies to agree to a ninety percent reduction in in what the government pays them. Now, if they're agreeing to ninety percent reduction, it's not because they're losing money. They're still making money. So why didn't you charge us ninety percent less to start with at the beginning? And so that's some of the stuff that needs to be negotiated. And the Democrats want to compensate for that not by negotiating, but by giving a greater subsidy to people so they can pay more of this insurance and Tim, as you point out, it it's going to the to the companies. It's not going to the people or the health care, et cetera. It's going to the companies and they're making tons on it. But the other thing is really significant with the agreement is the the Republicans agree to the Democrats to have a separate vote to restore all the people that Trump has let go from the federal government. So Democrats don't want any reduction of the size of the federal government at all. And the people that have been laid off since the since the shutdown, which the Democrats got rid of. And by the way, if you got laid off, a lot of what Trump laid off was stuff that nobody even knew was was going on. It was some agencies that were much lower down the totem pole, and Democrats want all of that restored. And so the significance of that is if you saw what Elon Musk did here a couple of weeks ago at his 2025 Tesla report. He talked about the hundreds of thousands of jobs and on the federal government, they estimate five hundred thousand jobs will be cut because of AI that are not needed anymore. And yet the Democrats want to keep every single person there and keep the money flowing and and so the efficiency won't be there. But that's all part of why the Democrats want to have separate votes. Those are two of the big issues for them is the Affordable Health Care Act and what's happening with laying off any government employees. They do not want to downsize government at all. 

[00:26:23] Well, Mike Johnson said the House is going to move quickly on this. He was hoping by Wednesday to be able to get a vote on this to keep this moving. So good news coming out of this. We'll keep tracking this for you and let you know what we find out. For more information, go to wallbuilders.com or go to wallbuilders.show to catch up on previous programs. And otherwise, we'll see you back here tomorrow on the WallBuilders Show.