|
|
Rep Mike Waltz - Call Sign FL-6, Representing in Congress - Mike Waltz returns sitting with Pete A Turner for the Break It Down Show, this time as a United States Representative to Congress for Florida's 6th District. Mike's been a lot of things, namely, a Green Beret and a senior advisor to both the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President during a long career of distinguished service.
Get Mike's book Warrior Diplomat here In a time of divided politics, we look to Mike to understand the day to day life of a representative. We learn what issues matter, where he invests his time, and how does one tackle the enormous learning curve for becoming an elected representative. |
Haiku
1 Million People
representing them the job
Congressman Mike Waltz
Similar episodes:
Michael G. Waltz
Ed Hiner
Kelly Hillyer
#trump #presient #congress #USHouse #florida #6thdistrict #specialforces #senioradvisor #georgewbush #dickcheney #warrior #veteran #combat #afghanistan #pelosi #impreach #USMCA #immigration #entitlements #government #elected
Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
Writer: Bojan Spasovski
1 Million People
representing them the job
Congressman Mike Waltz
Similar episodes:
Michael G. Waltz
Ed Hiner
Kelly Hillyer
#trump #presient #congress #USHouse #florida #6thdistrict #specialforces #senioradvisor #georgewbush #dickcheney #warrior #veteran #combat #afghanistan #pelosi #impreach #USMCA #immigration #entitlements #government #elected
Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
Writer: Bojan Spasovski
Transcript
Pete Turner 0:01
Hey everybody its Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Today's episode is pretty cool. We have a returning guests, someone who's been a Green Berets. So he's an operator but also advised at the highest levels in the White House, working as a senior advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney and the President George W. Bush. He also has worked at a senior level advising the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. So very knowledgeable guy, and he wrote a book called warrior diplomat. Well, now he is he's netted six Congress representative for the Florida sixth district. And that means that he's in Congress.
Hey everybody its Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Today's episode is pretty cool. We have a returning guests, someone who's been a Green Berets. So he's an operator but also advised at the highest levels in the White House, working as a senior advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney and the President George W. Bush. He also has worked at a senior level advising the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. So very knowledgeable guy, and he wrote a book called warrior diplomat. Well, now he is he's netted six Congress representative for the Florida sixth district. And that means that he's in Congress.
Pete Turner 0:01
Hey everybody its Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Today's episode is pretty cool. We have a returning guests, someone who's been a Green Berets. So he's an operator but also advised at the highest levels in the White House, working as a senior advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney and the President George W. Bush. He also has worked at a senior level advising the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. So very knowledgeable guy, and he wrote a book called warrior diplomat. Well, now he is he's netted six Congress representative for the Florida sixth district. And that means that he's in Congress. He's a legislator, and I thought it'd be interesting to talk to him to get an idea of what he does and how he does it on a day to day week to week basis. You know, in this time or all this divide, I thought it would be helpful just to hear like how he does his business, and I thought it would be helpful to get a better understanding of what people in Congress do. So we'll be grabbing more of these kinds of shows, but to get an understanding of who legislators are, what they do, what their challenges are, it's easy to sit back and criticize them. But there's a body of 500 plus people, and they're trying to all get something done. And it's very hard to do. And I think that's sort of the point here is, how do we get some reality as to what happens in a day to day life of someone who's in Congress? So, yes, we'll touch a little bit about the presidential impeachment and that kind of thing. But more importantly, what does he do day in day out? How does he make his decisions, and I think it's a fascinating conversation. I'm absolutely chasing people on both sides of the aisle. So get ready, they'll be more of these shows coming up. Either way, support the show, if you like what we're doing, share the show by the shirts, and tell people about it. I see people out there doing thank you so much for doing that. And if it is your first time listening, understand that we do a lot around here we do five shows a week. You might hear musicians, you might hear scholars, you might hear warriors you might hear people you've never heard of before. We have great tales of all stripes if you ever want to have a recommendation on episode Let me know I'll tell you right now listen to Kelly highlighters episode. Saddam Hussein's last best friend, listen to that and you'll get an idea of what we do. Hey, the break it down show is all about us. We all do this together so contribute. I'd love to hear from you, especially you folks who are international. There are so many different countries, Spain, I see you Denmark, I see you, Sweden. Hello, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina. All these different places have people actively listening and I thank you for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, everybody, save the brave go to save the brave.org put a small amount of money into donate each month will come in through PayPal, take that money out and put it to work saving veterans lives. If you're into that, that's great. If not do something charitable. Let me know what it is. I love support your charity to I can do that through charity on top. So just let me know where you're at who you're doing, and how you're helping. Here comes microvolts
Joel Manzer 2:52
lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:57
This is Jay Mohr and this is Jordan Harbinger. XOR from the naked me Sebastian youngsters, Rick maronna
Unknown Speaker 3:03
Stewart Copeland is Andy
Unknown Speaker 3:04
somebody there's a skunk Baxter Gabby Reese is Rob bell. This is Jonathan gray
Pete Turner 3:08
and this is Pete a Turner.
Mike Waltz 3:13
Hey, this is Representative Mike waltz and you are listening to the break it down Show.
Pete Turner 3:20
Hey, so you've been on the show before. So thanks for coming back. I love having you on. So for those that don't know, Michael has been a lot of things. He's currently a US Congressman but he's also been a longtime Special Forces guy and also work for State Department as in wrote a book about his time being a diplomat and as well as a special forces operator. First off, how cool is it that you get to be Florida six. You know, that's an army guy.
Mike Waltz 3:48
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Good. callsign isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I of course, I had like many people, I had the Punisher callsign. So had that in my on my last tour. Punisher sticks, but but I'll take I'll take Florida six to
Pete Turner 4:03
Hell yeah. Hey, first off, thanks for doing the job that you do serving in Congress. You know, anytime it's a big deal, and it takes a lot of guts, and I know it's a hard job as, as someone who's an operator from the background, you could always outwork problems. But does that hold true and Congress? Can you just outwork your your? I don't want to say your, your adversaries?
Mike Waltz 4:29
Well, yes and no, I mean, on the one hand, thank you for recognizing it isn't easy. And it is, I say all the time. You know, what is easy is to yell at the TV to post on Facebook to argue with your relatives at Thanksgiving, right, the via kind of a couch commando, but to actually roll up your sleeves and try to be part of the solution and really put yourself out there because as soon as you declare, you know you have you have Good, depending on your district 30 to 50% against, right, just but how demographics play out. In that sense, it isn't easy. But on the other hand, it's an honor, I've spent my, you know, my entire adult life defending our republic and now to be a part of it, is without overusing The term is true in honor. And I've told my team and I've told myself that there's any day that we pull up to the Capitol, and you don't have a little bit of a wild moment and a little bit of an appreciation when you walk up those steps, then it's probably time to move on. So and in that sense, it really is. It really is incredible to be part of this and just amazing experiment that is constantly evolving. Winston Churchill, you know, famously said, American democracy is the worst system of government in the world except all the others. Right? Right. And, and, and I'm just, it's just really great to be a part of it. Good, good, bad and ugly. And there's plenty of All of that, but I am an optimist on America and, and do believe that we always self correct and we will move forward.
Pete Turner 6:07
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I mean, you and I both have seen what happens. And you've talked about it openly what happens in other countries when you have a time that says as combative as we have right now in the US, you know, they solve it with. I'll give you an example. I was in Iraq in Baghdad district, and they blew a shake up. And we were sort of right, you know, lightly concerned about that. And the general the Iraqi General said, smokes a cigarette. It is politics.
Mike Waltz 6:36
And it's like, that's right. Okay. No, I'll just say I mean, it just reminded me that one of the more special moments I've had thus far was standing with my 15 year old daughter on the floor of the house representatives as we took the oath. Yeah, getting sworn in. That was special in and of itself, and although it pained me deeply as a republican to see Paul Ryan handing the gavel to Nancy Pelosi, at the same time reminding her that hey, and all kinds of other places around the world, that doesn't just happen right so easily. And it certainly doesn't happen peacefully. That usually comes with bullets and bloodshed. So, you know, fast forward now a year later with everything that's going on with impeachment. On the one hand is, is this a terrible time in our country? Absolutely. And do I have all kinds of issues with how it's being done? Yes, I do. But that also in many countries around the world would come with a lot of bullets and a lot of bloodshed. And the fact that we are muddling our way through this system, even though a lot of people I think are trying to take advantage of it for the wrong reasons. Yeah. It still is. It still is, I think, a testament to the strength of our republic.
Pete Turner 7:56
Yeah, I agree. I always say, even though I don't often With with Representative Omar Ilhan Omar says I am absolutely stoked that we are in a country where a person who is a refugee from an Islamic country can become representative. I just incredible, you know?
Mike Waltz 8:15
Yeah, no, that's right. And and I tell you know, my daughter and classes and other places I speak to all the time, look at for debating, even at four screaming at each other, and a lot of other places they would be shooting at each other. So we just have to keep that in perspective. And that's what I think one of the things that being a veteran provides us is that we've been in those other places we've seen how bad things really can get. And when we when you know back home when we see people just pulling their hair out that the wheels are coming off the bus of our country like you know, just take a deep breath. You know, as we say in the army taken the face out, drink water Calm down, because in a lot of other places, it would be A lot worse.
Pete Turner 9:01
Yeah, I was fortunate enough to, like you have the experience of having mortars and shells and rockets and missiles launched me. And when Iran launched their missiles I was able to put on Facebook Like everybody calm down. You know, we don't know. And this is before I knew anything, you know, this is likely nothing. This is how these things go. I know it seems scary to you all. But understand, things get thrown at us all the time. And we just steal ourselves and they're the front line. And that's sort of how it is instead of saying Roma three is going to start.
Mike Waltz 9:30
Right? That's right. Yeah. Let's just not buy into the, let's just not buy into the hype and bring and bring that perspective. And that's one of the reasons we I think we talked about four. I think we need more veterans. Yeah. back into our political leadership, one of many reasons. One is the basics of leadership followership teamwork. But the other is that we bring perspective of having served and fought and seen how the rest of the world lives compared to how good we have it here. are even when even when we're in a more divisive time than normal. It's nothing compared to the rest of the world.
Pete Turner 10:07
I'm fascinated about your day to day work. I mean, the you know, as someone who's commanded troops and been in commands, you know how much time the commander spends on things like Do we have boots? Do we have food? Do we have awards or all these things? How much of your time is spent on I mean, like representative hills from down my area down here kind of Orange County la you know, she got caught because in part because her finance stuff was was not straight and that and that happens right? There's so many things to mind the shop how much of your time is spent minding the shop?
Mike Waltz 10:38
Well, I kind of divided into end of four different buckets at least in in my mind. bucket. One is that often gets overlooked, but I think it's the most important is what you actually do in the district and for the district directly. So in my case and in Northeast Florida, I have three offices down there. I have cases Workers outreach representatives I have I'm really fortunate to have a retired one star general that kind of manages all of it. And those are what I call base hit. Those are people that are coming in, they're having issues with the VA, they're having issues with social security or with immigration, or you name it, they're trying to, they have no idea how to navigate the labyrinth that is our federal bureaucracy and and my staff down there, you know, helps them and sometimes they'll elevate it to me and I need to, you know, fire a fire a missile over to Assistant Secretary of Transportation or you name it, yeah, and, and shake the tree and get things done. And those are very tangible, and you're immediately helping people and I love the district work. So that's one. The other is the legislative work. So think of that is like rugby. Yeah, in that there's 435 of us all running around with their own agenda, ideas, things they want to get done. So the more you pile behind your side of the scrum than the other you You kind of nudge things forward. And that can be as grand as trying to reform immigration or that could be, you know, what I call more base hits like getting more stem dollars for the local universities. in your district. There's that committee work that dominates a lot of time. I'm going to bucket three. I'm on armed services and then on the science space and technology committee at the the main thing there is what Who do you interact with Who do you have oversight of in the executive branch? So armed services, obviously, is the Defense Department, science, space and technology is NASA NOAA, the National Weather Service, the National Science Foundation, you know, obviously, if you are on the judiciary's and you have oversight of the Department of Justice, FBI, those agencies, so that interaction takes up a lot and then finally is the political piece which is what I think you are getting to with Representative Hill You know what, look we we are up for reelection every two years. So you are either running you just finished running for office or you're getting ready to run. Yeah, just never. It never stops. You're constantly rebuilding the war chest, there's the fundraising piece, there's the, and there's, you know, it's just it's politics and you will have an opponent or you won't or you know that that dynamic will always shift. And just to, you know, not to beat the dead horse, but to overlay that little bit every 10 years because we are population base. Meaning if you have a district and you know, the inner city, it's going to be very small. If you have a rural district, it's going to be very large. Each representative represents roughly 800,000 to a million people. And that's shifting all over so Florida will probably gain two or three representatives because of the population coming into Florida. State like, say Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts is losing in every 10 years. When the census we have redistricting. And there's a lot of it's really kind of in the weeds on how the sausage is made, but how you draw these districts can get very contentious and very political and have huge impacts on what the house representatives looks like.
Pete Turner 14:18
Yeah, boy, I can only imagine we've actually done some shows on on Yeah, the districting process, and how do you do it fairly so people can agree, and it just seems to be such a mess.
Mike Waltz 14:28
Well, and that's impacted also by, you know, the state legislatures near all those maps. So the makeup of which party controls those state legislatures, as you roll into a couple of years after a census has a huge impact as well. Then invariably, you have lawsuits. So how the state Supreme Courts look in terms of liberal versus conservative makes a big difference. Yeah, it gets complicated
Pete Turner 14:57
when you're in that Scrum inside Congress doing the legislators stuff. And to be honest, I'm pretty rough on the legislative branch because you guys have the hardest fight to fight because there are approximately 500 of you. And a lot of our problems, immigration, that's legislation problem. How do we right? How much time do you spend away from like looking at bipartisan things like how cognizant of you are, are you about like, you know, these things can't all be Republican or Democrat, they have to be solutions for people.
Mike Waltz 15:28
Well, so I spend a good amount of time particularly with now because we have republicans in control of the Senate. Obviously, the democrats control the house and President Trump. So coming to a consensus on something like entitlement reform, health care reform is going to be incredibly difficult. So I focus on things that are more bipartisan. So right now, for example, this isn't anything exciting, but it's important how federal funds are allocate K to each state. That formula hasn't been updated since the mid 80s. Wow, it's largely population based Florida's population has doubled in, you know, in that amount of time. So we're third from the top in terms of needs third from the bottom in terms of money that we get. That will be much more of a which state standard gain and which state stand to lose. If that formula is updated, rather than in California, I think it's going to be about breakeven. So that is isn't a partisan issue. That's more of a parochial issue, you know, as a kind of geographic issue. Those are things that I'm focused on. And then things like you know, in the defense, though, I focused a lot on Gold Star families, I think we do a good job, a much better job of taking care of our wounded warriors. But we're not doing a great job of taking care of the families of the fallen because typically that funeral happened and you know, people people move on but yet the families that have suffered the most aren't being taken care of like they should. So we, in this last defense bill got the the what was called the widow's tax eliminated, I was able to get there was a provision in there that Defense Department only paid for the remains, you know, once we lose a soldier or sailor marine to only go to one location so if a family wanted to have a memorial service in their hometown and then have the burial site at Arlington National Cemetery, the family had to pay for it, believe it or not, and I had that happen to me or one of my green berets. I got that eliminated. I mean, God can cover that extra plane ticket. You shouldn't be going to the family and the worst moment of their life and saying well if you want them to be at Arlington, you have to, you know, fork over the over the cost, those kind of things we got done and can get done even
Pete Turner 17:53
as I think about all the combat time you have I have there are so many people that we're not providing for properly like to see about like, for a long time, I was basically a DEA civilian. And I went on combat patrols every day. So, you know, there's no, there's no specific recognition for that. And right, I don't want ribbons. But, you know, I've stood in formations with the commander as he gave out all of these cabs. And then, Mike, Okay, great, but I was in the same formation, how's it the same movement, you know, and then also the damage that happens, you know, to you get some person who's out there. They're an expert in their field. And they they break their hip or something like that. It's like, Hey, sorry. We don't, you know, we don't do a good job with that, you know? That's right.
Mike Waltz 18:41
Yeah, those types of revisions. And then also for our folks that are alive, they're on some type of US government contract. And, you know, in the most race recent case where the Iranian backed militias in Iraq, launched rockets into one of our bases and killed an American. The media kept referring to that individuals as an American contractor as though that was some type of lesser American and and on both Fox and CNN I asked writers to please stop doing that they're just an American period. And that is it a much it from sulemani, who has killed so many in the past was so much blood on his hands. Yeah, we shouldn't stand for one more. And that was one more too many. And fortunately, we have a president in my opinion that said enough and, and and took him out. Yeah, well, that should have been done a long time ago. But yeah, I agree with you this kind of, you know, classification of different people as though one person's life means more than the other. Yeah,
Pete Turner 19:44
that derogatory nature because I've worked on contracts before too, and I'm positive I was doing my damnedest to do a great job, helping guys like you seals, you know, out there, do what I knew how to do. I'm an I'm a top notch collector. I'm one of those guys. This is for for the audience tonight. You, when you're you are a collector like I am and you get good in the military, you get promoted away from the field. So you don't ever fully realize your skills. And if you are good, they have you plan and do something else. I was able to stay at the ground and work at the highest level, like there's no one that cannot collect me. So a contractor is basically the only person that can do that because they like that work and they're willing to go out and put themselves in harm's way. It's not a negative thing to be a contract. You're not a mercenary. You're you're someone who's filling an ampacity role.
Mike Waltz 20:29
Yeah, no, no, not at all. Well, no, I agree. I think that the popular image has become, you know, kind of these tattooed you know, Blackwater tie, you know, that the media has has cast this picture. But the vast majority, as you know, are providing our cooks are providing a service or providing analysis or interpreters. And if you walk into any modern military command Back here in the United States or forward, you know, overseas, you're going to see uniforms. Obviously, you're going to see us government, civilians, and then you're going to see contractors. And frankly, you can barely, especially overseas barely tell the difference. And the contractors often provide the continuity of knowledge as the military and US government, civilians are rotating out constantly. The contractors are often the continuity and the experience because many of them are retired military. So it's a critical part of what we do. I am proud, you know, in a previous life, I helped build a small firm in the one that is, is doing very well. So it gave me as a CEO a phenomenal kind of view into that world but also an experience of building a business. And it's a critical part of our national security,
Pete Turner 21:54
that ability to my ability to stay and have you units rotate over the top of me. What's this? Slow down long enough to listen allowed me to get them to come about a lot faster because I had knowledge they would never have because they, they couldn't catch up. And it's such a powerful tool when used properly. The other thing, you mentioned a lot of people that are capacity driven. There's also folks that do payroll, ar AP, like there's so many jobs that have to be done in theater. So there's someone sitting there away from their family doing doing the administrative role that absolutely has to be done locally. And God bless those folks, too, you know?
Mike Waltz 22:31
Sure. Well, and just one little interesting point there that move that kind of dynamic actually started in the Clinton administration, over in Bosnia, with a move towards, hey, let's free up those roles, apply those, you know, have contractors do those more administrative support roles, so that we have a larger percentage of our military pulling triggers and focused on the combat roles. So that's That is actually been that shift has been occurring over many decades and actually, you know, started in earnest in the Clinton administration with the draw down post, Desert Storm.
Pete Turner 23:11
So I want to go back to your buckets. And and look at that. I mean, obviously, you're a highly capable and sure there's still going to be a learning curve, though. Which learning curve for you is is the steepest? Is it managing all of the smaller things that come up and not getting distracted? You know, if I come to you and say, you know, Hey, Mike, you know, out here in our district, we're just not getting a fair shot to community college, I need you to look into you know, how, where is the learning curve, the steepest for you in terms of how to manage your time and your resources?
Mike Waltz 23:41
Well, you have to, I mean, one, you have to do all of it. And I actually find that really intellectually stimulating. I mean, in any given day, I could be dealing with education issues, e cigarette, opioids, Russian, you know, the surgeon, Russian submarines and how we're going to deal with that the rise of China. You know, you name it. I mean, that's where I put one of the buckets was your committee time that is going to if you're on the armed services committee that's going to move you in one direction, then say being on the education and Labor Committee, right in terms of because most bills move through the committee's first before they go through to a vote on the on the House floor. So just by nature of what committees you're on, that is going to dictate where you specialize, so to speak, but you still have to deal with all of it for for your district, and then you'll have certain, you know, more district specific issues. Obviously, water issues are going to be very different in Montana than they are going to be at Florida. So So that gives you some flavor and you know, but the other thing you have to do is just figure out a few areas where you're really going to week after week, despite everything that comes up and everything that comes at you you're going to carve out For your priorities for me, this year where I'm going to consistently carve out time to move legislation on national service, I am convinced that if we can move our youth back to a sense of service, that we will move, get the country moving back in a greater direction or a better direction. And the other piece is on some water legislation for that, you know, will really impact Florida, that formula that I, that I mentioned, and then of course, every year we have our sensitive, and I'll have certain priorities within that defense bill, for the terms of a learning curve. For you know, it's somewhat unique to me and that I've never run for office before. This is my first time a lot of members here served in state legislatures are served as city councilman. So you know, I've had to really learn the legislative process. That said, for a lot of them, they're new to Washington. I served in the bush white house and served in the bush Pentagon. So You know, I mean, everybody brings their, you know, brings their experiences to the table. A lot of those folks who have served in legislature's before at the state level, have never stepped foot in Washington. And you know, they'll have that learning curve that I will. So it just it really varies. I don't know if that answered your question.
Pete Turner 26:16
You're obviously still getting better at being a representative. You've learned new things and always add new things to the bucket. I was just curious, like, you know, you get in there can be overwhelming. I mean, there's rules to how you speak and when you speak and all these things to to master. I certainly I would have learned those if I went right. Oh,
Mike Waltz 26:33
Oh, absolutely. And when I have a fantastic staff as well, that that will help walk you through that one of the, you know, this, this last election in 2018 was a democratic wave, meaning we lost the republicans lost over 40 seats. The silver lining in that is that that was 40 full sets of Republican staff that no longer had a member that were looking for jobs. So I was really able to cherry pick Some of the best of the best the most stars there and I have a fantastic team.
Pete Turner 27:04
So I want to ask you
Mike Waltz 27:06
that they keep me straight you know from the military right you know as any commander is going to rely on a staff and rely on his team and he's and you're an idiot you know if you think you are the smartest guy in the room,
Pete Turner 27:18
yeah, absolutely. You can never be the smartest guy in the room and and as soon as you think you are you got to say tell me what I'm missing. Cuz cuz you just get
Mike Waltz 27:25
no That's right. That's right.
Pete Turner 27:27
People oftentimes talk about term limits and And my response is always vote your guy out, like vote your incumbent out and and and then like, Well, yeah, guys good. Like, okay, great. But it seems like to me if every two years you're having to rerun You know, you're on a new committee there's you're constantly really a new a new person every two years. I mean, you're constantly having to update who you I can't imagine that Congress is the same as it was 10 years ago. It must be a totally different ballgame. Hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here. And if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear. The best plan is show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown show. com. Let me help. I want to hear about him. As it was 10 years ago, it must be a totally different ballgame.
Mike Waltz 28:22
Yeah. So you know, I have mixed feelings about term limits. Just to be candid. On the one hand, because we're up every two years, there is a lot more turnover than you would think. I think there is a a very small but very highly visible few that have been there a very long time that kind of gives people this notion that that members are just you know, there for 2030 years, there's a few but that really is probably less than a few does. Out of the 435. For example, the republican on the Republican side, there's about 200 republicans there now. And over half have our new just in the last eight to 10 years. In this last class 2018 there were 92 new representatives that came in so Justin two years 25% of the House of Representatives turnover. So there actually is just by dint of being up for election every two years a pretty healthy turn turnover. And I've seen in Florida, for example, there are term limits in place in the state legislature. And what that does, it's just an I think, an unintended side effect. I'm not, I'm not saying you know, we shouldn't have term limits, but it really does empower the bureaucratic staff. Because if you're trying to push through big reforms that take, you know, a long time to get all the stakeholders behind, and if they're unpopular, the staff can just out wait. I mean, your last couple of years, you're basically a lame duck because they know you're, you're out of there soon. So You know, it has its pros and cons.
Pete Turner 30:01
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about this as well. You know, we have the nation has gotten bigger. The house has gotten bigger. But the Supreme Court in I'm not saying stocky. I'm not saying any of those political kind of things. I'm just saying that their capacity to hear cases hasn't changed in over 140 years, like 1860s. was we said at night. Is it time to look at that change? I mean, there's no way they're hearing enough cases compared to how many people there are now.
Mike Waltz 30:28
Yeah, I'm not sure to be honest with you is really the effect that has on the court system. I can tell you and the House of Representatives, because we were population base we use until the 1920s. We increased the size of the House of Representatives, every time we had a new census, to keep the ratio of how many representatives or how many people we represent pretty low. When when the country was founded, there was one for about every $30,000 one for every 800,000 to a million On the other hand, it just politically to kind of say, Well, hey, we need more politicians, we health care, we need to increase the number isn't going to be very popular, you know, isn't going to be received so well. So that's just the kind of the dynamic. And there are those particularly on the left this cycle that are calling for an increase in the size of the Supreme Court, if that's what you were getting at, but then, you know, they're accused of basically stalking. Because they don't like the current.
Pete Turner 31:33
Yeah, I wouldn't want to stack it. I just want to give them more capacity to hear cases, you know, and be able to, just because there are more people that are going to be more cases, maybe the lower courts can handle it, the court below them has gotten bigger. But you know, they say no to most cases, and these things have to be dealt with and on, you know, it affects people's lives. And well, I can tell you
Mike Waltz 31:54
on the immigration side, it's a huge issue. There's such a backlog of cases and that's one of the You know, that's one of the real issues with with our border right now is people are in many it doesn't make them bad people, but they're gaming the system in the sense. They're not true asylum cases they know as long as they step foot in the United States. They can they can ask for asylum, they're essentially given a ticket. And because the backlog is so tremendous and asked to come back in five years, well, we know that the vast majority don't. And and that's a pathway for illegal immigration. Yeah. And I know that the immigration, the immigration courts, we funded, pretty substantial increase in the number of judges and staff to handle these cases. But again, we can't just buy our way out of that problem. That's a much more complicated problem that we could probably do a whole show.
Pete Turner 32:47
Yeah. I mean, just quickly, is there an elegant solution to immigration? I mean, I was doing a show with that. Maybe you know, Jason Piccolo, he's a former Border Patrol, former Army guy. We were talking about like when you surge in People, you have to contract out vetting, you have to contract out these things. And as a person is vetted people, right, six a day Max, if you want a quality vetting process of really going to understand, and that's one time, you know, right. And so it's just it becomes financially impossible to move this capacity out there. Is there an elegant solution to figuring out immigration?
Mike Waltz 33:22
It's a it's a for anyone who tells you there's kind of a bumper sticker solution. I would, I would say they're just giving you a bumper sticker answer. It's it really is multifaceted. It's a poverty issue. in Central America, it's a border security issue, in terms of building a physical barrier where we can't have surveillance and Border Patrol and at least that physical barrier than is able to channel people so that we can do that proper vetting. I think there's a you know, I do think there is a sequencing we have to handle the illegal side. Before we can reform the legal side, because otherwise you're just going to repeat all of the same problems. Imagine if the president today and I'm not saying I'm for this, but imagine if the president today granted granted amnesty, to all 10 to 11 million illegals that are estimated to be here, and quote, unquote, solved it. Well, that would just create such a vacuum. Yeah, we will be in the same place, you know, 234 years from now. So, and frankly, it would probably be worse. So we do so there is a sequencing to it. And and and the president administration have put together some merit based formulas for how they would like to reform the legal side if we could ever come to some kind of agreement on that.
Pete Turner 34:45
Yeah, and I can attest when I was in Rosarito, just, you know, 20 miles south of the border in San Diego, and there are Central Americans sleeping in the street. I mean, it's creating a homeless problem in Mexico that that now they have to Deal with I mean, and this is not our problem, that's not Mexico's problem. It's everybody's problem, because these folks are, you know, the poverty is causing them to go to where there's less poverty and opportunity. But in a how do you how do you handle it on it's, you know, it's I don't envy that problem for you guys
Mike Waltz 35:15
know and and unfortunately it's become so polarized and so politicized and an even, you know, deals that typically were viewed as bipartisan and reasonable in the past like I think the deal that was on the table two years ago which which would have provided 25 billion for border security which would have given a pathway for DACA would have gotten rid of this ridiculous lottery system that we have on the on the legal side. It was a very reasonable at least first step and start and we couldn't even get there and and and I'll just, I'll just throw it out there. I think it is people that just do not want to give this president anything. Yeah, they do not want to have him perceived as any with any kind of victory or anything, even if it's a reasonable compromise the 10 years ago everybody would have signed up for 10 years ago, everybody signed up for the National what was called the National fences act in 2005. That they won't provide it today. And that's it's really frustrating. And of course, yeah,
Pete Turner 36:22
it is frustrating. And and you know, I won't I won't make you say this, but the president creates a lot of his own problems, you know, through his actions and also when he shows up people just are driven crazy by him. So even if he's culpable in some way, there's plenty of people that just like you said, won't allow a single win and it makes it makes your guys's job into legislation hard
Mike Waltz 36:43
It does and and look, there's There are all kinds of people on both sides of the aisle. They they don't like what he says they don't like how he tweets. I don't like his demeanor, I for 1am, very much focused on what's actually being run. And if you look at the actions, if you Look at criminal justice reform that, that Democrats and Republicans have been trying to get done since the 90s. It's done, if you look at the right to try legislation, which is just common sense that if you've been, if you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness, you should be able to try pretty much whatever you want. You're told that you're dying. If you look at the tax reform that's going through I mean, I can I can go on and on. You look at what actually is being done. I think more Americans than not will look at their lives this year and say, my I'm better off and my family's better off than I was four years ago. And that's what determines,
Pete Turner 37:35
yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I didn't vote for President Trump. I likely won't vote for him again, because I kind of can't take his his behavior. But I do have to say something's got to run in the face of a powerful economy, historic lows and unemployment.
Mike Waltz 37:51
dow dow 30,000. You know, right. I mean, it's their kitchen table issue. Yeah. And I have cousins and relatives. I do not come from means that that have more work than they could handle. And three, four years ago, they their business was going out of business or they were on it. Yeah. And that is, you know, regardless, you know, regardless of the rhetoric, and we could talk about that, too, but I'm focused on what's you
Pete Turner 38:18
know, I hear you and I look at the actions of the secondary market, you know, when Apple and this is years ago now, when Apple reinvest 350 billion dollars that was offshore into America, that tells me that there's confidence in our capitalist system, and and there's one guy that gets credit for that, you know, and whether we like him or not, that's that is getting done. Yeah,
Mike Waltz 38:39
well, and I think just to not belabor that point, but with usmca. And with this first phase of the, of the China trade deal, I think you're going to see a economy that is doing very well just light on fire. I think we still have upside with those with those trade deals coming into place. So we'll see how
Pete Turner 38:59
it's going. Crazy that the usmca finally gets through. Right, right. Like when he's being impeached. It's just It's a crazy time. Yeah.
Mike Waltz 39:10
Tell me, I'm right in the middle of it. Yes. Sure.
Pete Turner 39:13
How is it day to day with your democrat peers? I mean, are you guys able to have conversations or is everybody kind of cloistered and not interacting?
Mike Waltz 39:24
You know, it really depends. I'll tell you that. For the most part, everything is very cordial. A lot of the spaces there are a little bit cramped to the buildings very old. So you're you're crammed in elevators together, or you're in a small committee room. And everyone's very cordial. It's usually when you get on Twitter or you go to the microphone, that people get really brave in the in the sparks start flying. For me, my day to day interaction tends to be with a lot of Democrats who are also veterans because I'm on Armed Services Committee. So we have that commonality of service again, why I'd say we do veterans to get elected. We have that perspective of what that is, which is getting shot out or blown up, you know, not getting called a name on Twitter. So, so for mine, it's been very good. And I co founded a bipartisan caucus called for country that is primarily made up or it is made up of exclusively of Republicans and Democrats who have served and we have focused on a lot of military and veterans issues that we can, you know, come together on and that we know needs to get done. And, you know, if you think about it in the foxhole, nobody cares. What I don't even I can't even tell you my national team, what political affiliation. They were, they don't care about black, white or brown. All you care about is mission country moving and moving the country forward, if you don't get results and combat and then business really bad things happen. So so the four country caucus is has been really focused Just on how do we come together even in the most divisive of times, and come together around common legislation, and let's move the ball. How many service members are there in Congress? There is about 15% in the in the I don't know the exact number, but by percentage, we're hovering between 15 and 18% in the House and in the Senate. And that is actually a record low in our nation's history. That peak was 78%. I'm sorry, 74% and 1978. That was the peak. And we have declined, and now we're at a record low. And I think that is a big reason for the record amount of dysfunction. I really do.
Pete Turner 41:38
Yeah, yeah, I can believe that. I don't want to go past this because and it goes back a minute in time, but also in terms of immigration. We have got to get better at supporting the people from another country that support us from interpreters. It's It's embarrassing to me as a guy that has used a lot of interpreters to think that, you know, these are potentially great Americans. We just allowed it, you know,
Mike Waltz 42:01
absolutely legislatively. We reauthorize. It's called the SI visa Special Immigrant Visas. We reauthorized those this year and the defense bill and then we also expanded it to the Kurds. Previously, it was for Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it's for the Syrian Kurds, as well. But bottom line, these are people that have stood and fought with us. They don't just put their lives on the line. They put their entire family's life on the line, because if they are found out by the terrorists or by the insurgents, they don't just go after them. They go after their entire family. In fact, one of mine was hauled out of his home was beheaded and several of his brothers and cousins were also killed with him and he was on the waiting list for this Special Immigrant Visa. I also successfully sponsored some over and And to your point, they are doing great, they started their own business, their kids are in school. I mean, they're the most entrepreneurial thankful yeah motivated new American citizens you will ever come across and when we go to the broader point of who deserves to be here merit based immigration, someone who was selected off a lottery, yeah, or someone who risked their lives to fight alongside our military. So I you're not going to find a bigger supporter than you do here. And I recently did an event with General Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker for an organization called no one left behind. It's a nonprofit that focuses on helping these new citizens these Siv immigrants integrate once they're here,
Pete Turner 43:37
I want you to put your half of your diplomat hat on and half of your representative had on our Kurdistan relationship. You know, there isn't technically a Kurdistan, how do we how do we go forward? is there is there a Kurdistan in our future Do you think and what is what is your sense for this, looking at both sides of it because it's it's
Mike Waltz 43:56
very complex and and unfortunately, only A simple answer accepted, accepted at each in each country where there are Kurds, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The answers are all very different in terms of I think, where they are going forward, I think for the United States, they are one of our best allies in the Middle East. There are moderate Muslims that share many of our values. If you look at the areas that are thriving in Iraq, and and those other countries, they tend to be Kurdish areas. So I think that relationship needs to stay strong. I think we need it from a geopolitical standpoint, but then also, from a value standpoint, not you know, I'm a big advocate for it.
Pete Turner 44:43
I know. So first off, everybody should know this is Michael Walters representative from the sixth district in Florida. And we're just trying to have this calm, rational conversation. I'm going to tee up a couple of hard questions and you can pick which one you want, and you don't have to answer either of them ultimately, but when I look at where we're at right now, if Pete was pressing Right on day one, I wouldn't do anything I'd look to you guys, and how do we build consensus? So I see consensus as being a major problem for our country. And then our national debt. You know, at some point, we have to do something about this because it's going to get leveraged against us in a negative way. So you can answer either one or both whatever. But what are your thoughts in those two things? So
Mike Waltz 45:19
so let me take the consensus. First one is, I think consensus often comes from shared experiences, right. And that's why I'm a big advocate of Nash getting us back to national service. What do I mean when I say that? That's not mandatory? Like the draft? Yeah, that's not necessarily just military. One. I think we can incentivize it through a lot of educational benefits and others and to not just military that can be inner city tutoring national parks, elderly care to America or Teach for America. But bottom line, how do we get young folks off the couch, off their phones, off the video games and out in their community, and our Serving again with a sense of service. What did we learn from the draft? You know, when you had kids at 18 years old that learn leadership followership, teamwork, all of the all of that goodness. And the other piece was they did it alongside other Americans that they normally wouldn't interact with, you know, inner city, inner city kid from Detroit, farm boy from Western Indiana, Jewish kid from Brooklyn, all forced together and if you couldn't overcome your differences, you had a drill sergeant boot in your rear end to help you get there. And then you went back into American society and lived your life. It really came home to me with a with a veteran, a mentor of mine that told me the first African American the first black man that he ever uttered a word to coming from the segregated South was his bunkmate in the Navy. He in his words, he said his parents were bigots, his family were bigoted. He was in the segregated South never spoken to a black person and he probably would have stayed that way. Had he Not had that forcing function. I'm convinced if we get back to that forcing function, you will then have a society like we have with the greatest generation. It was no coincidence that the civil rights movement came after that. Right after they came back from World War Two where, you know, everyone was forced together for a common cause. So that's one piece. I think legislatively, we need to focus at least first on the low hanging fruit that is bipartisan, say like transportation, infrastructure, getting our veterans what they need, I mean, things that can, you know, success typically begets success. And I wish we had focused their first in 2016. And then finally, on our national debt, look, you know, all of the things that we debate, the defense budget, food stamps, Homeland Security, those are a drop in the bucket compared to our entitlement spending. That is what's called the mandatory spending by law. We can't adjusted, and it is exploding. That's what's exploding our debt and what's undermining undergirding that is the cost of healthcare. And it is just exploding through the roof for all kinds of reasons. The difference of what I think you're going to see in 2020, is when I say we need to lower the cost of health care. I mean, selling across state lines, I mean, tort reform, pre market reform, right things that are actually drived getting after fraud in a serious way and things will actually drive down costs. When the democrats tickling the national side that are talking Medicare for all say we have to lower costs, they mean government takeover. And if you just look at the problems with the VA, that is government run health care, that's 1200 hospitals and clinics. The government is running. I don't think that's the answer. I think that'll actually explode costs. It'll just shift it from, you know, the insurance industry and people paying it to taxpayers. But the incentive to drive down costs will be gone. And yeah, I just don't think that's the answer at all.
Pete Turner 49:06
Well, I love that you said tort reform, that means I can take you seriously because you don't start there. You know, I mean, that's my bar. You know, if we can't talk about tort reform, then we can't, then we're not going to change it. And I always say, the line of people that are ready to give up what they've got and get something better. There's no one in that line who's like, I'm ready to, you know, like, everybody wants what they've got plus and it's like, it's just not going to work that way. That's right. Well, listen, I appreciate your time. I know you're super busy. And and I really seriously thank you for what you're doing. It really means a lot to me to have great Americans out there. I just I can't thank you enough for serving like this. It's fantastic. Thank
Mike Waltz 49:44
you, Pete. Look forward to look forward to next time.
Hey everybody its Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Today's episode is pretty cool. We have a returning guests, someone who's been a Green Berets. So he's an operator but also advised at the highest levels in the White House, working as a senior advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney and the President George W. Bush. He also has worked at a senior level advising the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. So very knowledgeable guy, and he wrote a book called warrior diplomat. Well, now he is he's netted six Congress representative for the Florida sixth district. And that means that he's in Congress. He's a legislator, and I thought it'd be interesting to talk to him to get an idea of what he does and how he does it on a day to day week to week basis. You know, in this time or all this divide, I thought it would be helpful just to hear like how he does his business, and I thought it would be helpful to get a better understanding of what people in Congress do. So we'll be grabbing more of these kinds of shows, but to get an understanding of who legislators are, what they do, what their challenges are, it's easy to sit back and criticize them. But there's a body of 500 plus people, and they're trying to all get something done. And it's very hard to do. And I think that's sort of the point here is, how do we get some reality as to what happens in a day to day life of someone who's in Congress? So, yes, we'll touch a little bit about the presidential impeachment and that kind of thing. But more importantly, what does he do day in day out? How does he make his decisions, and I think it's a fascinating conversation. I'm absolutely chasing people on both sides of the aisle. So get ready, they'll be more of these shows coming up. Either way, support the show, if you like what we're doing, share the show by the shirts, and tell people about it. I see people out there doing thank you so much for doing that. And if it is your first time listening, understand that we do a lot around here we do five shows a week. You might hear musicians, you might hear scholars, you might hear warriors you might hear people you've never heard of before. We have great tales of all stripes if you ever want to have a recommendation on episode Let me know I'll tell you right now listen to Kelly highlighters episode. Saddam Hussein's last best friend, listen to that and you'll get an idea of what we do. Hey, the break it down show is all about us. We all do this together so contribute. I'd love to hear from you, especially you folks who are international. There are so many different countries, Spain, I see you Denmark, I see you, Sweden. Hello, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina. All these different places have people actively listening and I thank you for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, everybody, save the brave go to save the brave.org put a small amount of money into donate each month will come in through PayPal, take that money out and put it to work saving veterans lives. If you're into that, that's great. If not do something charitable. Let me know what it is. I love support your charity to I can do that through charity on top. So just let me know where you're at who you're doing, and how you're helping. Here comes microvolts
Joel Manzer 2:52
lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:57
This is Jay Mohr and this is Jordan Harbinger. XOR from the naked me Sebastian youngsters, Rick maronna
Unknown Speaker 3:03
Stewart Copeland is Andy
Unknown Speaker 3:04
somebody there's a skunk Baxter Gabby Reese is Rob bell. This is Jonathan gray
Pete Turner 3:08
and this is Pete a Turner.
Mike Waltz 3:13
Hey, this is Representative Mike waltz and you are listening to the break it down Show.
Pete Turner 3:20
Hey, so you've been on the show before. So thanks for coming back. I love having you on. So for those that don't know, Michael has been a lot of things. He's currently a US Congressman but he's also been a longtime Special Forces guy and also work for State Department as in wrote a book about his time being a diplomat and as well as a special forces operator. First off, how cool is it that you get to be Florida six. You know, that's an army guy.
Mike Waltz 3:48
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Good. callsign isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I of course, I had like many people, I had the Punisher callsign. So had that in my on my last tour. Punisher sticks, but but I'll take I'll take Florida six to
Pete Turner 4:03
Hell yeah. Hey, first off, thanks for doing the job that you do serving in Congress. You know, anytime it's a big deal, and it takes a lot of guts, and I know it's a hard job as, as someone who's an operator from the background, you could always outwork problems. But does that hold true and Congress? Can you just outwork your your? I don't want to say your, your adversaries?
Mike Waltz 4:29
Well, yes and no, I mean, on the one hand, thank you for recognizing it isn't easy. And it is, I say all the time. You know, what is easy is to yell at the TV to post on Facebook to argue with your relatives at Thanksgiving, right, the via kind of a couch commando, but to actually roll up your sleeves and try to be part of the solution and really put yourself out there because as soon as you declare, you know you have you have Good, depending on your district 30 to 50% against, right, just but how demographics play out. In that sense, it isn't easy. But on the other hand, it's an honor, I've spent my, you know, my entire adult life defending our republic and now to be a part of it, is without overusing The term is true in honor. And I've told my team and I've told myself that there's any day that we pull up to the Capitol, and you don't have a little bit of a wild moment and a little bit of an appreciation when you walk up those steps, then it's probably time to move on. So and in that sense, it really is. It really is incredible to be part of this and just amazing experiment that is constantly evolving. Winston Churchill, you know, famously said, American democracy is the worst system of government in the world except all the others. Right? Right. And, and, and I'm just, it's just really great to be a part of it. Good, good, bad and ugly. And there's plenty of All of that, but I am an optimist on America and, and do believe that we always self correct and we will move forward.
Pete Turner 6:07
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I mean, you and I both have seen what happens. And you've talked about it openly what happens in other countries when you have a time that says as combative as we have right now in the US, you know, they solve it with. I'll give you an example. I was in Iraq in Baghdad district, and they blew a shake up. And we were sort of right, you know, lightly concerned about that. And the general the Iraqi General said, smokes a cigarette. It is politics.
Mike Waltz 6:36
And it's like, that's right. Okay. No, I'll just say I mean, it just reminded me that one of the more special moments I've had thus far was standing with my 15 year old daughter on the floor of the house representatives as we took the oath. Yeah, getting sworn in. That was special in and of itself, and although it pained me deeply as a republican to see Paul Ryan handing the gavel to Nancy Pelosi, at the same time reminding her that hey, and all kinds of other places around the world, that doesn't just happen right so easily. And it certainly doesn't happen peacefully. That usually comes with bullets and bloodshed. So, you know, fast forward now a year later with everything that's going on with impeachment. On the one hand is, is this a terrible time in our country? Absolutely. And do I have all kinds of issues with how it's being done? Yes, I do. But that also in many countries around the world would come with a lot of bullets and a lot of bloodshed. And the fact that we are muddling our way through this system, even though a lot of people I think are trying to take advantage of it for the wrong reasons. Yeah. It still is. It still is, I think, a testament to the strength of our republic.
Pete Turner 7:56
Yeah, I agree. I always say, even though I don't often With with Representative Omar Ilhan Omar says I am absolutely stoked that we are in a country where a person who is a refugee from an Islamic country can become representative. I just incredible, you know?
Mike Waltz 8:15
Yeah, no, that's right. And and I tell you know, my daughter and classes and other places I speak to all the time, look at for debating, even at four screaming at each other, and a lot of other places they would be shooting at each other. So we just have to keep that in perspective. And that's what I think one of the things that being a veteran provides us is that we've been in those other places we've seen how bad things really can get. And when we when you know back home when we see people just pulling their hair out that the wheels are coming off the bus of our country like you know, just take a deep breath. You know, as we say in the army taken the face out, drink water Calm down, because in a lot of other places, it would be A lot worse.
Pete Turner 9:01
Yeah, I was fortunate enough to, like you have the experience of having mortars and shells and rockets and missiles launched me. And when Iran launched their missiles I was able to put on Facebook Like everybody calm down. You know, we don't know. And this is before I knew anything, you know, this is likely nothing. This is how these things go. I know it seems scary to you all. But understand, things get thrown at us all the time. And we just steal ourselves and they're the front line. And that's sort of how it is instead of saying Roma three is going to start.
Mike Waltz 9:30
Right? That's right. Yeah. Let's just not buy into the, let's just not buy into the hype and bring and bring that perspective. And that's one of the reasons we I think we talked about four. I think we need more veterans. Yeah. back into our political leadership, one of many reasons. One is the basics of leadership followership teamwork. But the other is that we bring perspective of having served and fought and seen how the rest of the world lives compared to how good we have it here. are even when even when we're in a more divisive time than normal. It's nothing compared to the rest of the world.
Pete Turner 10:07
I'm fascinated about your day to day work. I mean, the you know, as someone who's commanded troops and been in commands, you know how much time the commander spends on things like Do we have boots? Do we have food? Do we have awards or all these things? How much of your time is spent on I mean, like representative hills from down my area down here kind of Orange County la you know, she got caught because in part because her finance stuff was was not straight and that and that happens right? There's so many things to mind the shop how much of your time is spent minding the shop?
Mike Waltz 10:38
Well, I kind of divided into end of four different buckets at least in in my mind. bucket. One is that often gets overlooked, but I think it's the most important is what you actually do in the district and for the district directly. So in my case and in Northeast Florida, I have three offices down there. I have cases Workers outreach representatives I have I'm really fortunate to have a retired one star general that kind of manages all of it. And those are what I call base hit. Those are people that are coming in, they're having issues with the VA, they're having issues with social security or with immigration, or you name it, they're trying to, they have no idea how to navigate the labyrinth that is our federal bureaucracy and and my staff down there, you know, helps them and sometimes they'll elevate it to me and I need to, you know, fire a fire a missile over to Assistant Secretary of Transportation or you name it, yeah, and, and shake the tree and get things done. And those are very tangible, and you're immediately helping people and I love the district work. So that's one. The other is the legislative work. So think of that is like rugby. Yeah, in that there's 435 of us all running around with their own agenda, ideas, things they want to get done. So the more you pile behind your side of the scrum than the other you You kind of nudge things forward. And that can be as grand as trying to reform immigration or that could be, you know, what I call more base hits like getting more stem dollars for the local universities. in your district. There's that committee work that dominates a lot of time. I'm going to bucket three. I'm on armed services and then on the science space and technology committee at the the main thing there is what Who do you interact with Who do you have oversight of in the executive branch? So armed services, obviously, is the Defense Department, science, space and technology is NASA NOAA, the National Weather Service, the National Science Foundation, you know, obviously, if you are on the judiciary's and you have oversight of the Department of Justice, FBI, those agencies, so that interaction takes up a lot and then finally is the political piece which is what I think you are getting to with Representative Hill You know what, look we we are up for reelection every two years. So you are either running you just finished running for office or you're getting ready to run. Yeah, just never. It never stops. You're constantly rebuilding the war chest, there's the fundraising piece, there's the, and there's, you know, it's just it's politics and you will have an opponent or you won't or you know that that dynamic will always shift. And just to, you know, not to beat the dead horse, but to overlay that little bit every 10 years because we are population base. Meaning if you have a district and you know, the inner city, it's going to be very small. If you have a rural district, it's going to be very large. Each representative represents roughly 800,000 to a million people. And that's shifting all over so Florida will probably gain two or three representatives because of the population coming into Florida. State like, say Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts is losing in every 10 years. When the census we have redistricting. And there's a lot of it's really kind of in the weeds on how the sausage is made, but how you draw these districts can get very contentious and very political and have huge impacts on what the house representatives looks like.
Pete Turner 14:18
Yeah, boy, I can only imagine we've actually done some shows on on Yeah, the districting process, and how do you do it fairly so people can agree, and it just seems to be such a mess.
Mike Waltz 14:28
Well, and that's impacted also by, you know, the state legislatures near all those maps. So the makeup of which party controls those state legislatures, as you roll into a couple of years after a census has a huge impact as well. Then invariably, you have lawsuits. So how the state Supreme Courts look in terms of liberal versus conservative makes a big difference. Yeah, it gets complicated
Pete Turner 14:57
when you're in that Scrum inside Congress doing the legislators stuff. And to be honest, I'm pretty rough on the legislative branch because you guys have the hardest fight to fight because there are approximately 500 of you. And a lot of our problems, immigration, that's legislation problem. How do we right? How much time do you spend away from like looking at bipartisan things like how cognizant of you are, are you about like, you know, these things can't all be Republican or Democrat, they have to be solutions for people.
Mike Waltz 15:28
Well, so I spend a good amount of time particularly with now because we have republicans in control of the Senate. Obviously, the democrats control the house and President Trump. So coming to a consensus on something like entitlement reform, health care reform is going to be incredibly difficult. So I focus on things that are more bipartisan. So right now, for example, this isn't anything exciting, but it's important how federal funds are allocate K to each state. That formula hasn't been updated since the mid 80s. Wow, it's largely population based Florida's population has doubled in, you know, in that amount of time. So we're third from the top in terms of needs third from the bottom in terms of money that we get. That will be much more of a which state standard gain and which state stand to lose. If that formula is updated, rather than in California, I think it's going to be about breakeven. So that is isn't a partisan issue. That's more of a parochial issue, you know, as a kind of geographic issue. Those are things that I'm focused on. And then things like you know, in the defense, though, I focused a lot on Gold Star families, I think we do a good job, a much better job of taking care of our wounded warriors. But we're not doing a great job of taking care of the families of the fallen because typically that funeral happened and you know, people people move on but yet the families that have suffered the most aren't being taken care of like they should. So we, in this last defense bill got the the what was called the widow's tax eliminated, I was able to get there was a provision in there that Defense Department only paid for the remains, you know, once we lose a soldier or sailor marine to only go to one location so if a family wanted to have a memorial service in their hometown and then have the burial site at Arlington National Cemetery, the family had to pay for it, believe it or not, and I had that happen to me or one of my green berets. I got that eliminated. I mean, God can cover that extra plane ticket. You shouldn't be going to the family and the worst moment of their life and saying well if you want them to be at Arlington, you have to, you know, fork over the over the cost, those kind of things we got done and can get done even
Pete Turner 17:53
as I think about all the combat time you have I have there are so many people that we're not providing for properly like to see about like, for a long time, I was basically a DEA civilian. And I went on combat patrols every day. So, you know, there's no, there's no specific recognition for that. And right, I don't want ribbons. But, you know, I've stood in formations with the commander as he gave out all of these cabs. And then, Mike, Okay, great, but I was in the same formation, how's it the same movement, you know, and then also the damage that happens, you know, to you get some person who's out there. They're an expert in their field. And they they break their hip or something like that. It's like, Hey, sorry. We don't, you know, we don't do a good job with that, you know? That's right.
Mike Waltz 18:41
Yeah, those types of revisions. And then also for our folks that are alive, they're on some type of US government contract. And, you know, in the most race recent case where the Iranian backed militias in Iraq, launched rockets into one of our bases and killed an American. The media kept referring to that individuals as an American contractor as though that was some type of lesser American and and on both Fox and CNN I asked writers to please stop doing that they're just an American period. And that is it a much it from sulemani, who has killed so many in the past was so much blood on his hands. Yeah, we shouldn't stand for one more. And that was one more too many. And fortunately, we have a president in my opinion that said enough and, and and took him out. Yeah, well, that should have been done a long time ago. But yeah, I agree with you this kind of, you know, classification of different people as though one person's life means more than the other. Yeah,
Pete Turner 19:44
that derogatory nature because I've worked on contracts before too, and I'm positive I was doing my damnedest to do a great job, helping guys like you seals, you know, out there, do what I knew how to do. I'm an I'm a top notch collector. I'm one of those guys. This is for for the audience tonight. You, when you're you are a collector like I am and you get good in the military, you get promoted away from the field. So you don't ever fully realize your skills. And if you are good, they have you plan and do something else. I was able to stay at the ground and work at the highest level, like there's no one that cannot collect me. So a contractor is basically the only person that can do that because they like that work and they're willing to go out and put themselves in harm's way. It's not a negative thing to be a contract. You're not a mercenary. You're you're someone who's filling an ampacity role.
Mike Waltz 20:29
Yeah, no, no, not at all. Well, no, I agree. I think that the popular image has become, you know, kind of these tattooed you know, Blackwater tie, you know, that the media has has cast this picture. But the vast majority, as you know, are providing our cooks are providing a service or providing analysis or interpreters. And if you walk into any modern military command Back here in the United States or forward, you know, overseas, you're going to see uniforms. Obviously, you're going to see us government, civilians, and then you're going to see contractors. And frankly, you can barely, especially overseas barely tell the difference. And the contractors often provide the continuity of knowledge as the military and US government, civilians are rotating out constantly. The contractors are often the continuity and the experience because many of them are retired military. So it's a critical part of what we do. I am proud, you know, in a previous life, I helped build a small firm in the one that is, is doing very well. So it gave me as a CEO a phenomenal kind of view into that world but also an experience of building a business. And it's a critical part of our national security,
Pete Turner 21:54
that ability to my ability to stay and have you units rotate over the top of me. What's this? Slow down long enough to listen allowed me to get them to come about a lot faster because I had knowledge they would never have because they, they couldn't catch up. And it's such a powerful tool when used properly. The other thing, you mentioned a lot of people that are capacity driven. There's also folks that do payroll, ar AP, like there's so many jobs that have to be done in theater. So there's someone sitting there away from their family doing doing the administrative role that absolutely has to be done locally. And God bless those folks, too, you know?
Mike Waltz 22:31
Sure. Well, and just one little interesting point there that move that kind of dynamic actually started in the Clinton administration, over in Bosnia, with a move towards, hey, let's free up those roles, apply those, you know, have contractors do those more administrative support roles, so that we have a larger percentage of our military pulling triggers and focused on the combat roles. So that's That is actually been that shift has been occurring over many decades and actually, you know, started in earnest in the Clinton administration with the draw down post, Desert Storm.
Pete Turner 23:11
So I want to go back to your buckets. And and look at that. I mean, obviously, you're a highly capable and sure there's still going to be a learning curve, though. Which learning curve for you is is the steepest? Is it managing all of the smaller things that come up and not getting distracted? You know, if I come to you and say, you know, Hey, Mike, you know, out here in our district, we're just not getting a fair shot to community college, I need you to look into you know, how, where is the learning curve, the steepest for you in terms of how to manage your time and your resources?
Mike Waltz 23:41
Well, you have to, I mean, one, you have to do all of it. And I actually find that really intellectually stimulating. I mean, in any given day, I could be dealing with education issues, e cigarette, opioids, Russian, you know, the surgeon, Russian submarines and how we're going to deal with that the rise of China. You know, you name it. I mean, that's where I put one of the buckets was your committee time that is going to if you're on the armed services committee that's going to move you in one direction, then say being on the education and Labor Committee, right in terms of because most bills move through the committee's first before they go through to a vote on the on the House floor. So just by nature of what committees you're on, that is going to dictate where you specialize, so to speak, but you still have to deal with all of it for for your district, and then you'll have certain, you know, more district specific issues. Obviously, water issues are going to be very different in Montana than they are going to be at Florida. So So that gives you some flavor and you know, but the other thing you have to do is just figure out a few areas where you're really going to week after week, despite everything that comes up and everything that comes at you you're going to carve out For your priorities for me, this year where I'm going to consistently carve out time to move legislation on national service, I am convinced that if we can move our youth back to a sense of service, that we will move, get the country moving back in a greater direction or a better direction. And the other piece is on some water legislation for that, you know, will really impact Florida, that formula that I, that I mentioned, and then of course, every year we have our sensitive, and I'll have certain priorities within that defense bill, for the terms of a learning curve. For you know, it's somewhat unique to me and that I've never run for office before. This is my first time a lot of members here served in state legislatures are served as city councilman. So you know, I've had to really learn the legislative process. That said, for a lot of them, they're new to Washington. I served in the bush white house and served in the bush Pentagon. So You know, I mean, everybody brings their, you know, brings their experiences to the table. A lot of those folks who have served in legislature's before at the state level, have never stepped foot in Washington. And you know, they'll have that learning curve that I will. So it just it really varies. I don't know if that answered your question.
Pete Turner 26:16
You're obviously still getting better at being a representative. You've learned new things and always add new things to the bucket. I was just curious, like, you know, you get in there can be overwhelming. I mean, there's rules to how you speak and when you speak and all these things to to master. I certainly I would have learned those if I went right. Oh,
Mike Waltz 26:33
Oh, absolutely. And when I have a fantastic staff as well, that that will help walk you through that one of the, you know, this, this last election in 2018 was a democratic wave, meaning we lost the republicans lost over 40 seats. The silver lining in that is that that was 40 full sets of Republican staff that no longer had a member that were looking for jobs. So I was really able to cherry pick Some of the best of the best the most stars there and I have a fantastic team.
Pete Turner 27:04
So I want to ask you
Mike Waltz 27:06
that they keep me straight you know from the military right you know as any commander is going to rely on a staff and rely on his team and he's and you're an idiot you know if you think you are the smartest guy in the room,
Pete Turner 27:18
yeah, absolutely. You can never be the smartest guy in the room and and as soon as you think you are you got to say tell me what I'm missing. Cuz cuz you just get
Mike Waltz 27:25
no That's right. That's right.
Pete Turner 27:27
People oftentimes talk about term limits and And my response is always vote your guy out, like vote your incumbent out and and and then like, Well, yeah, guys good. Like, okay, great. But it seems like to me if every two years you're having to rerun You know, you're on a new committee there's you're constantly really a new a new person every two years. I mean, you're constantly having to update who you I can't imagine that Congress is the same as it was 10 years ago. It must be a totally different ballgame. Hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here. And if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear. The best plan is show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown show. com. Let me help. I want to hear about him. As it was 10 years ago, it must be a totally different ballgame.
Mike Waltz 28:22
Yeah. So you know, I have mixed feelings about term limits. Just to be candid. On the one hand, because we're up every two years, there is a lot more turnover than you would think. I think there is a a very small but very highly visible few that have been there a very long time that kind of gives people this notion that that members are just you know, there for 2030 years, there's a few but that really is probably less than a few does. Out of the 435. For example, the republican on the Republican side, there's about 200 republicans there now. And over half have our new just in the last eight to 10 years. In this last class 2018 there were 92 new representatives that came in so Justin two years 25% of the House of Representatives turnover. So there actually is just by dint of being up for election every two years a pretty healthy turn turnover. And I've seen in Florida, for example, there are term limits in place in the state legislature. And what that does, it's just an I think, an unintended side effect. I'm not, I'm not saying you know, we shouldn't have term limits, but it really does empower the bureaucratic staff. Because if you're trying to push through big reforms that take, you know, a long time to get all the stakeholders behind, and if they're unpopular, the staff can just out wait. I mean, your last couple of years, you're basically a lame duck because they know you're, you're out of there soon. So You know, it has its pros and cons.
Pete Turner 30:01
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about this as well. You know, we have the nation has gotten bigger. The house has gotten bigger. But the Supreme Court in I'm not saying stocky. I'm not saying any of those political kind of things. I'm just saying that their capacity to hear cases hasn't changed in over 140 years, like 1860s. was we said at night. Is it time to look at that change? I mean, there's no way they're hearing enough cases compared to how many people there are now.
Mike Waltz 30:28
Yeah, I'm not sure to be honest with you is really the effect that has on the court system. I can tell you and the House of Representatives, because we were population base we use until the 1920s. We increased the size of the House of Representatives, every time we had a new census, to keep the ratio of how many representatives or how many people we represent pretty low. When when the country was founded, there was one for about every $30,000 one for every 800,000 to a million On the other hand, it just politically to kind of say, Well, hey, we need more politicians, we health care, we need to increase the number isn't going to be very popular, you know, isn't going to be received so well. So that's just the kind of the dynamic. And there are those particularly on the left this cycle that are calling for an increase in the size of the Supreme Court, if that's what you were getting at, but then, you know, they're accused of basically stalking. Because they don't like the current.
Pete Turner 31:33
Yeah, I wouldn't want to stack it. I just want to give them more capacity to hear cases, you know, and be able to, just because there are more people that are going to be more cases, maybe the lower courts can handle it, the court below them has gotten bigger. But you know, they say no to most cases, and these things have to be dealt with and on, you know, it affects people's lives. And well, I can tell you
Mike Waltz 31:54
on the immigration side, it's a huge issue. There's such a backlog of cases and that's one of the You know, that's one of the real issues with with our border right now is people are in many it doesn't make them bad people, but they're gaming the system in the sense. They're not true asylum cases they know as long as they step foot in the United States. They can they can ask for asylum, they're essentially given a ticket. And because the backlog is so tremendous and asked to come back in five years, well, we know that the vast majority don't. And and that's a pathway for illegal immigration. Yeah. And I know that the immigration, the immigration courts, we funded, pretty substantial increase in the number of judges and staff to handle these cases. But again, we can't just buy our way out of that problem. That's a much more complicated problem that we could probably do a whole show.
Pete Turner 32:47
Yeah. I mean, just quickly, is there an elegant solution to immigration? I mean, I was doing a show with that. Maybe you know, Jason Piccolo, he's a former Border Patrol, former Army guy. We were talking about like when you surge in People, you have to contract out vetting, you have to contract out these things. And as a person is vetted people, right, six a day Max, if you want a quality vetting process of really going to understand, and that's one time, you know, right. And so it's just it becomes financially impossible to move this capacity out there. Is there an elegant solution to figuring out immigration?
Mike Waltz 33:22
It's a it's a for anyone who tells you there's kind of a bumper sticker solution. I would, I would say they're just giving you a bumper sticker answer. It's it really is multifaceted. It's a poverty issue. in Central America, it's a border security issue, in terms of building a physical barrier where we can't have surveillance and Border Patrol and at least that physical barrier than is able to channel people so that we can do that proper vetting. I think there's a you know, I do think there is a sequencing we have to handle the illegal side. Before we can reform the legal side, because otherwise you're just going to repeat all of the same problems. Imagine if the president today and I'm not saying I'm for this, but imagine if the president today granted granted amnesty, to all 10 to 11 million illegals that are estimated to be here, and quote, unquote, solved it. Well, that would just create such a vacuum. Yeah, we will be in the same place, you know, 234 years from now. So, and frankly, it would probably be worse. So we do so there is a sequencing to it. And and and the president administration have put together some merit based formulas for how they would like to reform the legal side if we could ever come to some kind of agreement on that.
Pete Turner 34:45
Yeah, and I can attest when I was in Rosarito, just, you know, 20 miles south of the border in San Diego, and there are Central Americans sleeping in the street. I mean, it's creating a homeless problem in Mexico that that now they have to Deal with I mean, and this is not our problem, that's not Mexico's problem. It's everybody's problem, because these folks are, you know, the poverty is causing them to go to where there's less poverty and opportunity. But in a how do you how do you handle it on it's, you know, it's I don't envy that problem for you guys
Mike Waltz 35:15
know and and unfortunately it's become so polarized and so politicized and an even, you know, deals that typically were viewed as bipartisan and reasonable in the past like I think the deal that was on the table two years ago which which would have provided 25 billion for border security which would have given a pathway for DACA would have gotten rid of this ridiculous lottery system that we have on the on the legal side. It was a very reasonable at least first step and start and we couldn't even get there and and and I'll just, I'll just throw it out there. I think it is people that just do not want to give this president anything. Yeah, they do not want to have him perceived as any with any kind of victory or anything, even if it's a reasonable compromise the 10 years ago everybody would have signed up for 10 years ago, everybody signed up for the National what was called the National fences act in 2005. That they won't provide it today. And that's it's really frustrating. And of course, yeah,
Pete Turner 36:22
it is frustrating. And and you know, I won't I won't make you say this, but the president creates a lot of his own problems, you know, through his actions and also when he shows up people just are driven crazy by him. So even if he's culpable in some way, there's plenty of people that just like you said, won't allow a single win and it makes it makes your guys's job into legislation hard
Mike Waltz 36:43
It does and and look, there's There are all kinds of people on both sides of the aisle. They they don't like what he says they don't like how he tweets. I don't like his demeanor, I for 1am, very much focused on what's actually being run. And if you look at the actions, if you Look at criminal justice reform that, that Democrats and Republicans have been trying to get done since the 90s. It's done, if you look at the right to try legislation, which is just common sense that if you've been, if you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness, you should be able to try pretty much whatever you want. You're told that you're dying. If you look at the tax reform that's going through I mean, I can I can go on and on. You look at what actually is being done. I think more Americans than not will look at their lives this year and say, my I'm better off and my family's better off than I was four years ago. And that's what determines,
Pete Turner 37:35
yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I didn't vote for President Trump. I likely won't vote for him again, because I kind of can't take his his behavior. But I do have to say something's got to run in the face of a powerful economy, historic lows and unemployment.
Mike Waltz 37:51
dow dow 30,000. You know, right. I mean, it's their kitchen table issue. Yeah. And I have cousins and relatives. I do not come from means that that have more work than they could handle. And three, four years ago, they their business was going out of business or they were on it. Yeah. And that is, you know, regardless, you know, regardless of the rhetoric, and we could talk about that, too, but I'm focused on what's you
Pete Turner 38:18
know, I hear you and I look at the actions of the secondary market, you know, when Apple and this is years ago now, when Apple reinvest 350 billion dollars that was offshore into America, that tells me that there's confidence in our capitalist system, and and there's one guy that gets credit for that, you know, and whether we like him or not, that's that is getting done. Yeah,
Mike Waltz 38:39
well, and I think just to not belabor that point, but with usmca. And with this first phase of the, of the China trade deal, I think you're going to see a economy that is doing very well just light on fire. I think we still have upside with those with those trade deals coming into place. So we'll see how
Pete Turner 38:59
it's going. Crazy that the usmca finally gets through. Right, right. Like when he's being impeached. It's just It's a crazy time. Yeah.
Mike Waltz 39:10
Tell me, I'm right in the middle of it. Yes. Sure.
Pete Turner 39:13
How is it day to day with your democrat peers? I mean, are you guys able to have conversations or is everybody kind of cloistered and not interacting?
Mike Waltz 39:24
You know, it really depends. I'll tell you that. For the most part, everything is very cordial. A lot of the spaces there are a little bit cramped to the buildings very old. So you're you're crammed in elevators together, or you're in a small committee room. And everyone's very cordial. It's usually when you get on Twitter or you go to the microphone, that people get really brave in the in the sparks start flying. For me, my day to day interaction tends to be with a lot of Democrats who are also veterans because I'm on Armed Services Committee. So we have that commonality of service again, why I'd say we do veterans to get elected. We have that perspective of what that is, which is getting shot out or blown up, you know, not getting called a name on Twitter. So, so for mine, it's been very good. And I co founded a bipartisan caucus called for country that is primarily made up or it is made up of exclusively of Republicans and Democrats who have served and we have focused on a lot of military and veterans issues that we can, you know, come together on and that we know needs to get done. And, you know, if you think about it in the foxhole, nobody cares. What I don't even I can't even tell you my national team, what political affiliation. They were, they don't care about black, white or brown. All you care about is mission country moving and moving the country forward, if you don't get results and combat and then business really bad things happen. So so the four country caucus is has been really focused Just on how do we come together even in the most divisive of times, and come together around common legislation, and let's move the ball. How many service members are there in Congress? There is about 15% in the in the I don't know the exact number, but by percentage, we're hovering between 15 and 18% in the House and in the Senate. And that is actually a record low in our nation's history. That peak was 78%. I'm sorry, 74% and 1978. That was the peak. And we have declined, and now we're at a record low. And I think that is a big reason for the record amount of dysfunction. I really do.
Pete Turner 41:38
Yeah, yeah, I can believe that. I don't want to go past this because and it goes back a minute in time, but also in terms of immigration. We have got to get better at supporting the people from another country that support us from interpreters. It's It's embarrassing to me as a guy that has used a lot of interpreters to think that, you know, these are potentially great Americans. We just allowed it, you know,
Mike Waltz 42:01
absolutely legislatively. We reauthorize. It's called the SI visa Special Immigrant Visas. We reauthorized those this year and the defense bill and then we also expanded it to the Kurds. Previously, it was for Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it's for the Syrian Kurds, as well. But bottom line, these are people that have stood and fought with us. They don't just put their lives on the line. They put their entire family's life on the line, because if they are found out by the terrorists or by the insurgents, they don't just go after them. They go after their entire family. In fact, one of mine was hauled out of his home was beheaded and several of his brothers and cousins were also killed with him and he was on the waiting list for this Special Immigrant Visa. I also successfully sponsored some over and And to your point, they are doing great, they started their own business, their kids are in school. I mean, they're the most entrepreneurial thankful yeah motivated new American citizens you will ever come across and when we go to the broader point of who deserves to be here merit based immigration, someone who was selected off a lottery, yeah, or someone who risked their lives to fight alongside our military. So I you're not going to find a bigger supporter than you do here. And I recently did an event with General Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker for an organization called no one left behind. It's a nonprofit that focuses on helping these new citizens these Siv immigrants integrate once they're here,
Pete Turner 43:37
I want you to put your half of your diplomat hat on and half of your representative had on our Kurdistan relationship. You know, there isn't technically a Kurdistan, how do we how do we go forward? is there is there a Kurdistan in our future Do you think and what is what is your sense for this, looking at both sides of it because it's it's
Mike Waltz 43:56
very complex and and unfortunately, only A simple answer accepted, accepted at each in each country where there are Kurds, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The answers are all very different in terms of I think, where they are going forward, I think for the United States, they are one of our best allies in the Middle East. There are moderate Muslims that share many of our values. If you look at the areas that are thriving in Iraq, and and those other countries, they tend to be Kurdish areas. So I think that relationship needs to stay strong. I think we need it from a geopolitical standpoint, but then also, from a value standpoint, not you know, I'm a big advocate for it.
Pete Turner 44:43
I know. So first off, everybody should know this is Michael Walters representative from the sixth district in Florida. And we're just trying to have this calm, rational conversation. I'm going to tee up a couple of hard questions and you can pick which one you want, and you don't have to answer either of them ultimately, but when I look at where we're at right now, if Pete was pressing Right on day one, I wouldn't do anything I'd look to you guys, and how do we build consensus? So I see consensus as being a major problem for our country. And then our national debt. You know, at some point, we have to do something about this because it's going to get leveraged against us in a negative way. So you can answer either one or both whatever. But what are your thoughts in those two things? So
Mike Waltz 45:19
so let me take the consensus. First one is, I think consensus often comes from shared experiences, right. And that's why I'm a big advocate of Nash getting us back to national service. What do I mean when I say that? That's not mandatory? Like the draft? Yeah, that's not necessarily just military. One. I think we can incentivize it through a lot of educational benefits and others and to not just military that can be inner city tutoring national parks, elderly care to America or Teach for America. But bottom line, how do we get young folks off the couch, off their phones, off the video games and out in their community, and our Serving again with a sense of service. What did we learn from the draft? You know, when you had kids at 18 years old that learn leadership followership, teamwork, all of the all of that goodness. And the other piece was they did it alongside other Americans that they normally wouldn't interact with, you know, inner city, inner city kid from Detroit, farm boy from Western Indiana, Jewish kid from Brooklyn, all forced together and if you couldn't overcome your differences, you had a drill sergeant boot in your rear end to help you get there. And then you went back into American society and lived your life. It really came home to me with a with a veteran, a mentor of mine that told me the first African American the first black man that he ever uttered a word to coming from the segregated South was his bunkmate in the Navy. He in his words, he said his parents were bigots, his family were bigoted. He was in the segregated South never spoken to a black person and he probably would have stayed that way. Had he Not had that forcing function. I'm convinced if we get back to that forcing function, you will then have a society like we have with the greatest generation. It was no coincidence that the civil rights movement came after that. Right after they came back from World War Two where, you know, everyone was forced together for a common cause. So that's one piece. I think legislatively, we need to focus at least first on the low hanging fruit that is bipartisan, say like transportation, infrastructure, getting our veterans what they need, I mean, things that can, you know, success typically begets success. And I wish we had focused their first in 2016. And then finally, on our national debt, look, you know, all of the things that we debate, the defense budget, food stamps, Homeland Security, those are a drop in the bucket compared to our entitlement spending. That is what's called the mandatory spending by law. We can't adjusted, and it is exploding. That's what's exploding our debt and what's undermining undergirding that is the cost of healthcare. And it is just exploding through the roof for all kinds of reasons. The difference of what I think you're going to see in 2020, is when I say we need to lower the cost of health care. I mean, selling across state lines, I mean, tort reform, pre market reform, right things that are actually drived getting after fraud in a serious way and things will actually drive down costs. When the democrats tickling the national side that are talking Medicare for all say we have to lower costs, they mean government takeover. And if you just look at the problems with the VA, that is government run health care, that's 1200 hospitals and clinics. The government is running. I don't think that's the answer. I think that'll actually explode costs. It'll just shift it from, you know, the insurance industry and people paying it to taxpayers. But the incentive to drive down costs will be gone. And yeah, I just don't think that's the answer at all.
Pete Turner 49:06
Well, I love that you said tort reform, that means I can take you seriously because you don't start there. You know, I mean, that's my bar. You know, if we can't talk about tort reform, then we can't, then we're not going to change it. And I always say, the line of people that are ready to give up what they've got and get something better. There's no one in that line who's like, I'm ready to, you know, like, everybody wants what they've got plus and it's like, it's just not going to work that way. That's right. Well, listen, I appreciate your time. I know you're super busy. And and I really seriously thank you for what you're doing. It really means a lot to me to have great Americans out there. I just I can't thank you enough for serving like this. It's fantastic. Thank
Mike Waltz 49:44
you, Pete. Look forward to look forward to next time.
