A Sincere THANK YOU Plus Omnibus Disaster & An End To The Military Vaccine Mandate

Published Dec 27, 2022, 9:00 AM
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Welcome in his verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, I hope you had a fabulous Christmas with your family Center. I missed chatting with you over the last several weeks, and I know so many people have been reaching out to you. That's same with me, giving warm wishes and prayers for you and your family. I know you missed talking to the audience a lot, obviously, but you've been spending it some great quality time with your family. Well, Ben, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I hope everyone listening had a fantastic Christmas with their family. As everyone knows, the podcast has not been airing for the last several weeks. I've been dealing with a family emergency here at home, and I just want to say thank you to all of you who've reached out with your prayers, with your support, with your encouragement. It means an enormous amount. Everyone's doing okay right now, and we're grateful for the love that has been expressed. Heidi and I have spent the last several weeks just here at home with our kids, and we appreciate also folks respecting our families privacy, and so I don't intend to be talking uh publicly about what we're dealing with, other than just to say we appreciate the prayers, the love and support uh and um and and in this this holiday time, you know, Christmas is a wonderful time to be with your family, to hug your kids, to hug your parents, to to hold on to the people you love and and it's uh, it's never more important, no no doubt, no doubt about that. And I'm glad to get to spend some more time with you today. And so many people have been reaching out. Uh, we've seen all your tweets. I can promise you that, and I'll say it is just being around you. There have been so many people they've reached out and they've been and you guys are wonderful they have done that. So thank you. Thank you for for everyone that's done that as well. Uh, it means the world, I know when you see those messages. And there's some other breaking news. You've also gotten older since the last time I talked to you. Happy birthday a few days later late as well, what well, thank you Eddie. Techicly we've all gotten older. But yeah, but I gets just I gotta stick that one in there, centor you know. So December twenty second, I turned fifty two. We had a nice, nice birthday celebration at at home with a family, and and uh, yet another day. I'll tell you what I tell my mom. My mom's eighty eight now, and every birthday she has I tell her, Okay, you're halfway there. She's she's groaning more and more as I say that on more recent birthdays. That's hilarious. Fifty two, congrats, happy birthday to that one. There's been a lot that's happened in the last couple of weeks. And I do want to get your thoughts center on this omnibus spinning bill. Right before Christmas. It was kind of a stick it to uh the American people moment. People wanted to fly home. They wanted to beat the storm that's affected so many Americans, especially uh you know that are east of Mississippi. There was a lot of centers that said, just get me home. I don't care what it costs. And it cost us quite quite a lot of money, well over a trillion dollars in this new budget instead of just passing a cr How did this happen and why did so many Republicans go along with this. Well, I have to tell you this omnibus was absolutely disgraceful. That it is a massive bill. It is four thousand, one hundred and fifty five pages, it's one point seven trillion dollars of new government spending, and it is a massive spending bill on the way out the door. It is a giant gift to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. In just a few days, we're going to have a Republican House of Representatives in Washington. Nancy Pelosi obviously doesn't want to enact the policy priorities of a Republican House of Representatives. So Pelosi and Schumer decided a team up together and ram through this final omnibus bill, massive spending that funds the federal government through most of next year, all the way through September thirtieth of next year. Now, they could not do so without the active assistance of Senate Republicans. And the reason for that is in the Senate we have the filibuster, which means it takes sixty votes to move this bill forward. At the end of the day, they got sixty votes because a total of eighteen Republicans voted with Nancy Pelosi, voted with Chuck Schumer, and voted to fund the Pelosi Schumer spending bill and simultaneously to pull the rug out from the brand new incoming Republican majority in the House. I gotta tell you, I am furious. I'm flabbergasted. There are things I've seen in Washington. They're spending bills that are indefensible. But it's one thing when Democrats act like socialists. It's at other things when Republicans actively facilitated and it was a galling and horrific thing to watch. You know, so many Americans right now center are struggling, and we've seen what's happened with inflation, with interest rates. There's been a lot of wealth that's been lost over the last year. People in their four one K retirement funds, those that invest, and when you're spending this type of money now, it costs you a lot more because this is money we don't have. We're gonna borrow this money, and it puts us into even more debt at a much higher interest rate. And that's where many economists have been saying, hey, you guys don't understand that the day of reckoning is going to come for the United States of America. You guys have spent this next generation into oblivion. I mean, you've got so much government waste. Rand Paul came out with his annual Festivals Report, four hundred and eighty two billion dollars in government waste. There are some idiotic items in there. Three million to watch Hamster's fight on steroids, two point one million to tell Ethiopians to wear shoes. I mean, these are some of the things that your tax dollars actually went for. And this is just another year of wasteful government spending that has happened, and now it's going to cost even more to bar this money. Well, look, the spending is massive, the debt goes up, it locks in Democrat priorities, and it also defangs the incoming Republican majority, which is what Senate Republican leadership wanted. If you look at the eighteen Republicans who voted for it, You've got Roy Blunt from Missouri. He's retiring, he's not going to be there next year. You've got John Boseman from Arkansas. He was just reelected, so he has six years till he faces the voters. You've got Shelley Moore Capital from West Virginia. You've got Susan Collins from Maine. You've got John Cornyn from Texas. You've got Tom Cotton from Arkansas. You've got Lindsay Graham from South Carolina. You've got Jim Inhoff from Oklahoma. Jim Inhoff is retiring as well. He's not going to be there next year. You've got Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who helped Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi pass this massive funding bill. You've got Jerry Moran from Kansas. You've got Lisa Murkowski from Alaska who was just elected in November. You've got Rob Portman from Ohio who's retiring. You've got Mitt Romney from Utah. You've got Mike Browns from South Dakota. You've got Richard Shelby from Alabama who's retiring. You've got John Thune from South Dakota who was just elected in November. You've got Roger Wicker from Mississippi. And you've got Todd Young from Indiana who was just elected in November. And I got to say, and there were a couple of others. Marco Rubio voted initially to move this bill forward. He didn't vote for it at the end of the day, but he refused to vote against cloture at the outset to stop it. I gotta tell you, Ben, I cannot tell you why these Republicans voted for it. There is no explanation that I think makes any sense. I can tell you what they were telling Republicans privately in the lunches. They were saying, Okay, there are a variety of different talking points. One they say, we need to get our work done. I don't even know what that means. Our work done doesn't mean passing the Schumer Pelosi priorities. That's not, in fact the work that the voters elected us to do. They also said it was interesting. One of the arguments they made is they said, well, this is doing a favor to Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans because if they have to come in and actually vote vote for government funding, they'll be a big fight, and they don't want to have a big fight. So if we just take this off the table, clear the decks is what they call it. That's Washington speak, it'll be good for them. I'll tell you who disagreed with that, really strongly was Kevin McCarthy. And and actually the House Republicans were loudly and repeatedly saying, do not do this, do not pass this bill, do not enable the Democrats to roll our incoming Republican majority. And yet I'll tell you a number of those folks retiring, it will not surprise anyone to see them opening up a lobby shop. And that thing was filled with earmarks, it was filled with pork, it was filled with wasteful spending. And this was the Swamp in all of its hideous glory. It's it's one thing to see the Democrats do this. You expect it when you see the Republicans do this. And and if you just need to see how excited Democrats were, all you had to do is look at Chuck Schumer and Nancy Post's reaction. They touted this and the White House if a massive policy victory, a policy victory that they could not accomplish without Republicans joining them. You mentioned some of the reasons why, but how much of this just came down to give me what I want for my stake, give me my share for the people that are lobbying me. That I need them to take care of me in the future and then you can get my vote. I mean, there were some people on that list that you just mentioned that I think shocked a lot of people in a concerned a movement. Tom Cotton, for example, was one of those where there was a lot of fodder. I saw people going, I understand some of these others, right, I get I get Alaska, I get Murkowski and others like that, but that one was shocking. Look, I have no explanation. You're gonna have to ask Tom. There's some Republicans who pointed to, well, there was more defense spending in this you know what, we could have done that next year. I don't think that remotely justifies voting for Schumer and Pelosi's budget, and that's what they did here. Listen, Washington is a town that is inherently corrupted. And one aspect of this that hasn't been fully understood is the important role that earmarks played in making this pass. So earmarks of the provision where a member of the House, for a member of the Senate can specially designate spending in their district for something they want, and it is the grease that turns the wheels of big government. And when we had the Republican takeover in twenty ten of the House of Representatives, one of the big reforms, one of the great conservative victories, was ending the policy of earmarks for Republicans, and so we had a decade where we didn't do earmarks. Well, unfortunately, Republican leadership didn't like that, because earbarks are how you buy off a problematic member. If someone's going to vote against you, if someone's talking too loud, if they're objecting to what you're trying to do, you just shovel a little bit of cash in their district and they shut up. It's the gay way drug to the rest of big government spending. Well, unfortunately in this earmarks are back and are back in incredible force, and that that has included spending. So Pat Lahey, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee from Vermont, he's retiring. He named a huge program up in Vermont, the Pat Lahey Program. Richard Shelby, the leading Republican from Alabama on appropriations, he's retiring. Also, he named a bunch of things after himself, the Richard Shelby. I gotta say, Ben, I think it is fundamentally corrupt for any member of Congress to name a damn thing after themselves. And I don't think anything should be named after a member of Congress as long as they're still alive. If someone kicks the bucket, you want to name something after him. Eight But my view, if you want the Ben Ferguson building, you got a real simple way to do it. Pull out your checkbook and write a check for it. But when you're in Congress, you're not spending your money, you're spending the taxpayer money. And the idea that you have members of Congress stick in their name on it, I think is just on its face, corrupting and a corrupt practice. There was an interesting threat that was made by the House many House members, and I want to know your thoughts on do you believe this is just political theater or is this going to actually be backed up? Where there were Republicans, including some of the new leadership, who said, for any of these Republicans that vote with the Democrats on the sound of a spending bill when they could have done a cr they could have said no, they could have allowed the next Congress to do a better spending bill with some accountability in it. They said you can kiss your initiatives and this new Congress, goodbye, your bills, goodbye. We're gonna hold you accountable for this vote right before everybody just wanted to get out of town. Do you believe there's going to be some real accountability in that way from the House or was that more just political theater to get the headline out there that you're standing up to the senators on the Republican side that basically sold us out. Well, look, I hope there's real accountability. The congressman who led that effort is Chip Roy. Chip Roy as a congressman from Texas. Chip is a very good friend of mine. I know Chip very very well. Chip was by very first tim huh. We did a bus tour stop with him. In fact, we did, and and Chip was my very first chief of staff when I was newly elected in twenty twelve, arrived at the Senate in twenty thirteen. Chips started with me on day one as my chief of staff. And Chip as a warrior. He's a conservative warrior. The battle against Obamacare that that resulted in a shutdown, but that also resulted in the biggest Republican victory in decades of the twenty fourteen election. Chip was my chief of staff throughout that Chips the one who who leveled this threat, and a number of other House Republicans joined him. I don't know if they'll be able to carry through on it. It It will prove difficult given that among the people supporting this omnibus are all of the members of Republican leadership, and so for a House member to say we're going to block anything they support, the threat is significant, but at the end of the day, blocking anything Republican leadership supports, at a minimum may prove difficult to execute. Senator, I want to go back, just before we move on from this, to the price tag on this omnibus spinning book bill. How did we get to a point where we could even imagine enough stuff to spend money on that is almost two trillion dollars. Well, look, the Democrats today have handed their agenda over to the radical extremes. That many of the Democrats in the House and Senator are openly embracing socialism. They're happy to spend all the money they can, and far too many Republicans are eager to be complicit in it. And that you roll this all together to buy up votes. The earmarks help you buy votes. But there are all sorts of provisions of this bill that reflect the fact that it was written by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. So, for example, the funding for Customs and Border patrol explicitly prohibits that funding from being used to improve border security. Let me read you the language. None of the funds provided in this subsections shall be used to acquire, maintain, or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve border patrol processing. In other words, you can use this money to let illegal aliens go more quickly, but you can't actually use it to secure the border and stop them from entering. By the way, that same budget allocates four hundred and ten million dollars towards border security for Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman. It's really striking. So we're funding border security in other countries but not here in the United States, and they're writing into law of prohibition on the money being used to improve border security. There's one point five billion for membership in global organizations, including the United Nations. All right, you want to know how you buy all votes. Here's an interesting thing. Pick a really random word that you would not think appeared in this bill much less appears forty eight times. Take a guess, right, I'm thinking of the worst people in the Congress writing this thing. So is it hand out? Is at government aide? I mean, what's their favorite word when they're more parochial than that? The word salmon as a really okay I was in a totally different world, appears forty eight times in the bill. What else is there? There's three million dollars for bee friendly highways. That's important. I know, I know that was one of your top agenda items when you were running for the Senate, right, you know, you gotta take care of the bees, and and and and this is the birds of the bees, because I got to tell you the taxpayers are getting screwed that this this is a lesson in Washington birds and bees. You mentioned the border. I just I have to get back to that for a sec We're securing the border in other countries. You had Zelenski that flew in and got you know, was the rock star of of Congress's past week, you know, kissing with Nancy Pelosi. We're giving him money literally to secure his border instead of sending that money down to secure our own border. Did that frustrate you at all that they're like advocating and how much do you need you got to secure your border? Sir, ours is wide open. We know there's a thousand and two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand coming across the border. Can't wait for you know, tile forty three to end and then they're gonna all come rushing across. And even the Democrats accidentally slipped this last week saying, well, they admit there is a crisis at the border, but we're quote handling it. It is absolutely insane, and I will say the adulation for Zelenski was bizarre. I think the Democrats it's become almost cult like and at the same time a complete refusal to have any meaningful accountability as to the money that's being spent there. Listen. I'm someone that believes it is important for our national security interest for Russia to lose, for Putin to lose, and so I've been an active advocate of supporting Ukraine. But for the Democrats it's a blank check. And it's a blank check not just for military weapons to defeat Russian soldiers, but for just billions of dollars that get poured into rat holes, and our subject corruption, our subject to embezzlement, and and and it. It is bizarre. But you also asked me how do we get there? In the debate over this bill, one of the strangest things that was said is is Mitch McConnell at a press conference said, I think the number one priority for most Republicans is funding Ukraine. Now, Ben that that is strange. I don't get the mindset that says that. I believe defeating Russia is important. But I don't know anyone in real America. I don't know any Texans. I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who says, you know, the number one priority for me for America right now is funding Ukraine. Just that that's the Republican leadership right now. When he said it, it was something that went viral quickly in Republican circles, conservative circles online. But but he meant it. It wasn't It wasn't a slip from McConnell. He genuinely was saying, this is the number one priority, not you, not your safety, not your country, but Ukraine. And if you're not with us, then then you're on the side of Vladimir Putin. I didn't like the way how in the last several weeks this has been. This framing is if I ask any questions, oh, you're with Putin. I got yelled at on TV the other day for this center where I was like, look, I'm in favor of stopping Russia aggression. I'm not in favor of us funding the entire thing. I'm not in favor of us being the one that's right in the check with no accountability or with no out auditing, no accounting of where the money is actually going. And the rest of the world, especially in Europe. And I said this, they claimed they were going to get involved. We're overwhelmingly funding this, this Ukrainian war. They're not stepping up to the plate either. And I'm tired of America always being the first one to say, here, the American taxpayers will write you a fifty billion dollar check. And then you look at all the countries in Europe, who, by the way, are buying oil from from Vladimir Putin for decades, keeping him in power. When we warned them, Donald Trump warned you know that, He warned Europe, you guys need to stop doing this. You're gonna make him powerful. He's going to be able to control you. And now they're putting hardly any money into this fight against against Russia and they're doing nothing really to help Ukraine. Yeah, listen, it is bizarre. The cult like support Democrats are showing, the complete unwillingness to have any accountability, the desire to just have a write a blank check, the unwillingness to hold Europe to account for them to pay their fair share of if the Democrats don't believe it. And of course the utter irony of this whole thing is it was Joe Biden that caused the Damn War in the first place, and we've talked about that at length, how the Nordstream two pipeline, the sanctions that I authored had stopped us from invading Ukraine, and then Joe Biden waived the sanctions on Russian Putin and caused this war. And now they're trying to cover up for their clean up on Aisle six, the mess that they made by just shoveling cash. Um, it really makes no sense at all. I do think it's important that people here and this is again in WASHINGTONC Mitch McConnell making it clear that he's going to spend your money on his top top priority is here. He is, in his own words, providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians. That's the number one priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans. That's sort of how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment. There's a lot of things that are that are that are right now, uh, you know, confronting this country. And when you go to Washington Center you sit around, is this truly how out of touchs they are with the reality of the American family who's dealing with inflation. I mean, USA to Ukraine. You have forty five billion within the omnoist bill, you had one point eight billion, and and and another package and sixty eight billion has already been sent. And he says this is the number one priority of the GOP is focused on this. That is a hell of a lot of money that we're borrowing. Again, we don't have this money. We're gonna have to borrow it, and we're gonna have to pay interest on it. Well, Ben, look that that's a big part of the reason why I helped lead the leadership challenge to Mitch McConnell just a few weeks ago, because our leadership is fundamentally out of touch, that doesn't reflect the priorities of the American people, and I think that's an enormous problem. You look at some of the elements of this bill beyond that, there's sixty five million for two programs name for Senator Pat Lahey. There's a federal building name for Nancy Pelosi. There's three point six million dollars for the Michelle Obama Trail. There's four hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars for quote anti racist training from the Equity Institute. There's three million dollars for the LGBTQ Plus Museum in New York. There's one point two million dollars for services for DACA recipients. There's four point one million in career programs for Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the richest counties in the country. It renames twenty five post offices. There's five hundred and twenty four million for a di and Structural Racism subdivision of the National Institute of Health. There's three hundred thousand dollars per year for the continuous Plankton Recorder. This is Washington corruption, plain and simple, and and it is a result. We expect democrat to be a train wreck, We expect them to be socialist. What we should be willing to expect is for Republicans not And the maddening thing is this didn't take anything particularly complicated or difficult to stop it. All we had to do was a forty one Republicans stand up and say no. The last four times there was a shift in control of one of the houses of representation, the Congress, each of the last four times did not pass an omnibus funding bill. The incoming party who was getting control had enough cajonas to stand up and say, hell no, we just won an election. We're going to set the spending priorities. Now. Look, there's reference to the uniparty. I gotta say, for the Republicans who supported this, I get the ones who were retiring why they did, although it makes you wonder what the hell they were doing previously. But I don't understand anyone who cast cast a vote for this, And I think I think a lot of the voters are pissed off, and I think they have good reason. To be pissed off. How much of this is an age thing? And I say that because you look at Nancy Pelosi at her age, you look at Mitch McConnell at his age, you look at Joe Biden at his age, and you and you look at Chuck Schumert his age. They know that when the you know what hits the fan, Senator, they're probably not going to be around to have to deal with it. There is going to be a catastrophic event economically within our government, within this country to pay back this debt at some point. And it's part of the reason why they just can do this so easily is just the fact they say, it ain't my problem. Literally, this is not going to hit the fan when I'm in office, much less I may not even be alive by then. Yes, it's going to affect my grandkids, right or even my kids, but not me, so screw it. I'll go with it. Yeah, it's it's it's not just age. I mean, the people that voted for this ran the gamut of the age. Look, there are people in the Senator or one hundred and forty two, so there are definitely some folks who are long in the tooth. But you know, Tom Cotton is one of the youngest members of the Senate. He voted for this. Todd Young is a relatively young member of the Senate. He voted for this. Marco Rubio voted to take this up initially. He's younger than I am, one of the youngest members of the Senate. So it's it's not just an age thing. But I'm going to let them speak for themselves that they can explain why this spending bill was better than a spending bill that was passed with a Republican majority in the House. I promise you a House Republican majority is not going to write into the bill the funds in this bill cannot be used to secure the border. That's something Pelosi and Schumer do. But for Republicans, they're willing to, at least some of them are willing to roll over and allow it to happen. How much does the national debt keep you up? I mean, I know there's a lot of issues you have to deal with, you have to vote on, But I sit here right now and I look at it, and it really is now becoming more of a constant kind of thought process for me of realizing that we are not as strong as we need to be as a nation, specifically economically. And I am concerned now that we've gotten so far into debt that for many of these people in the left it could be on purpose, just because they know that when the American people are hurting, they're more dependent on them. And that's how they gain power and control over you, is that when they can be your god, your savior financially, every thirty days, you're going to vote for them. That's the thing that I worry the most about this is if we go into some serious, hard, tough economic times, it is only going to, I think, help the Democrats in that moment go well, hey, hey, we can turn this more into kind of a you know, a socialist country, and we'll take care of you. Granted your wife is going to be terrible, but at least you're living. Look, I think for the Democrats, they don't care. I think the Democrats their solution at the end of the day, we're seeing it right now. Their solution at the end of the day is inflate their way out of it. Just print so much money, have hyper inflation that the debt as a percentage of as the value the dollar goes down, the debt becomes less relevant, and for them it's about power. Look, we've seen socialist governments do this all over the country, all over the world. Rather and and and I think that's on the left where it comes from for Republicans. Listen, I think most Republicans in the Senate, if you ask them, they are concerned about the debt, but they're more concerned about being criticized. They're more concerned about the media saying something mean about them. They're more concerned about not having not being reelected, and spending a bunch of cash is a great way to buy votes and and try to get reelected. And so it is. This is I've been in the Senate ten years. I've never seen it this bad with with Republicans literally undermining the ability of Republicans to pass a Republican budget. That's what they just did. Yeah, it's it's truly incredible, and it's gonna it's gonna hurt this country, I think, in so many different ways, including protecting in this nation in general from adversaries foreign and domestic. I do want to end this year on a on a on a I would say, an incredible note and it's something that you led on center, and this was the vaccine military mandate. This happened. A lot of good men and women in uniform were discharged from our military because they refused to get vaccinated. There were many of them that were not given religious exemptions, and pretty much they were laughed at when they tried to go that route. And now we have some we have a victory for those men and women. Is it a little bit too late for some of them? Are we going to be able to get some of them back in the workplace again and back in the military doing their jobs, getting back to their careers. Well, look, I'm glad we're ending this pod with a note of optimism and a note of good news. And we do have some good news, which which is the military vaccine mandate has ended. And that is a fight. I've been leading the fight against the vaccine mandate from the very beginning, from when they was first imposed. I think the vaccine mandate was wrong on day one. It's been wrong every day that it's continued, and in the military in particular, it's been horrific. I've spoken, I've visited with multiple soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines who were discharged because they made the choice not to get the COVID vaccine, and I think that was fundamentally wrong. It was abusive, it was stupid. I visited with Navy seals who spent years training, who fought to defend this nation, who Joe Biden has fired. And so Congress took up at the end of the year the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, and I joined with several other senators. We drew a line in the ground and said we should stand together and say we will not pass this bill unless you end the vaccine mandated. The Democrats beat their chest and said we'll never do it, We'll never do it, and wonder of wonders, Republicans actually held the line and the Democrats caved, and so Joe Biden signed in the law of the bill ending the military vaccine mandate. That is a terrific victory and one that we should celebrate because it's the right thing to do. Now, while we're celebrating, I think our celebrations need to be tempered because you asked the right question, Ben, It's right. Going forward, the Biden military will not fire people because they didn't get a COVID vaccine. Unfortunately, this bill is prospective only. It does nothing retrospective. I've had legislation I introduced that would allow every one of the servicemen and women who were dismissed because of not getting the COVID vaccine to be reinstated in the military if they so desired, if they made the choice, if they'd be if they'd been kicked out and they wanted to go back in, it would let them back in. It would also change their status. There were a number of people who were exited from the military with a less than honor discharge. That has enormous consequences for retirement, for healthcare benefits, for veteran status, and so my bill corrected that to ensure that those who were fired because they didn't get the COVID vaccine and who would choose they didn't want to go back now that they would at a minimum be deemed honorably discharged, so they would get full credit for their time served. That's a matter of justice, it's a matter of fairness. I had an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. I did it with Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and we had a vote on the Senate floor on my amendment, and the amendment unfortunately was voted down. The vote was forty to fifty four, so fifty four voted no. There were some who weren't there. The Democrats all voted no, and there were four Republicans who voted no. Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, Susan Collins remain Meant Romney from Utah, and Mike Rounds from North Dakota. I gotta tell you again, I don't have a good explanation. You got a Navy seal who spent ten, twelve, fifteen years fighting to defend this country. He gets fired because Joe Biden decides to throw him out because he didn't get the vaccine mandate. I don't know how to articulate why even one Senator would vote to say, nope, we're not letting that navy seal back in. I don't care that we have a recruiting shortage. I don't care that we don't have enough men and women to defend our nation. I don't care that we're no longer firing people for doing this. That guy is out of luck. It was infuriating that that particular amendment didn't pass. So the people that it is a minimum thousands, and it may be an excess of ten thousand. We have not been able to get an actual, accurate and fair accounting of just how men, any servicemen and women have been forcibly discharged. So as we go into the new year, let's celebrate the military vaccine mandate has been ended. It's been ended because millions of Americans stood up alongside me many others and fought to end it. That's a victory, but the victory should have been much broader, and I hope we use that as encouragement than to lean in and redouble the fight in the new year coming forward, no doubt about it, Senator, I know you're going to take a week with your family. You guys are going to get to enjoy each other through the new year, and I know you're looking forward to that. So for everybody, just so you know, we're going to get back to a normal schedule on Wednesday the fourth, and you we'll get back to our three shows a week starting on Wednesday the fourth. But I know you're gonna get to spend some time with your family through the New year break as well. So many people get to do that with their families, and I know you're excited about it. Absolutely. I hope every one has a wonderful, blessed new year. Have fun on New Year's Eve, stay safe, hug your family, and next year, I hope twenty twenty three is an incredible year for this this incredible nation. Happy New Year's Senator and uh and again to everybody listing, we will see you on January the fourth. Have a safe and happy new Year, and we'll see you back here. We'll get back to it on the fourth