Exposing How D.C. Corruption Really Works | Tim Burchett

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1:49And those staff members get really cozy with the lobbyists. And you come in there and you want a great bill. And you look at a lot of legislation we pass is really just study bills. And I'll refuse to vote for them. It costs a couple million bucks. And then the studies, I told somebody, it's like that ending scene in Raiders of the Lost Art. It all goes to that warehouse. And, brother, I've never seen one of those dead gum studies. I've been here eight years. So I just quit voting for them. But what happens, you get a great bill. They're back there somewhere. Yeah. Well, you get a great bill, a great idea for a bill.

2:19You go to, you send it to the committee. And so you need to talk to the staff person that handles that. And they go, well, that's a great piece of legislation, but it's not going to pass. Oh, really? Yeah. I tell you what we need to do. Let's make a study of it and then come back next year. Now, our attention span, and I'm guilty of this too, in America, is about 30 minutes. It's like the amount of time we want our pizzas. It's 30 minutes or less. Yeah. So this staffer knows it, and the lobbyist who has his or her ear knows it because they've whined them and dined them on a little trip. Maybe it's illegal.

2:53Maybe it's not. I think there could be something else going on a lot of times with the lobbyist and the staffers, and they will kill the bill. And then that's why nothing happens. And the chairman is unaware of it or doesn't care because the committees are so big. And it's by design. And both parties are guilty of this. And that is inertly what is wrong with Washington.

3:24All right, Congressman Tim Burchett, you clearly understand the weather in this town better than I do. You're not even going to take off the jacket for this limited interview. And I'm wearing my long underwear in honor of my deceased father. I used to think, what the heck is he always wearing his long underwear for? It's cold outside, not in here, but when you walk outside, you need it. It is freezing, and I have become weak. Even though I'm from New York originally, I have become weak as a Florida man. But let's start with Game Boy and Hot Pockets, because that seems to be the viral moment of your career.

3:54We played it about 20 times on my show. We'll throw it in on B-roll here. But how did that line, it just caught the internet right. How did that just come to your head? I don't know. That guy, he's a paid tracker. And it's funny, the week later, I saw him after it already exploded, and he was asking somebody a question, and I was about to pop in on another smart aleck line. He says, I'm not talking to you. I said, dude, I made you an international celebrity. You ought to write me a dadgum check. But he's paid by the Democrat Party. It just came to me. Every day we do them, and I put them out. But you said you never played Game Boy, and you've never had Hot Pockets.

4:34Never have. I just thought, I don't know, God gives me stuff occasionally. He speaks to me, just not in an audible voice. But, you know, it was just kind of funny. And then I said, I'm going to put that out. And I think the vice president got a hold of it, and J.D. Vance, and somebody else, and then it just exploded after that. I did one earlier. He asked me some question, and I said, you should never wear black socks with short pants. And that hit about$5 million. Same guy. I always told somebody one of these days, I'm afraid he's in that backpack. It's going to be a satchel charge. He's going to take us both to glory, as they say.

5:18Yeah, exactly. All right, well, let's talk politics for a little bit. Because I always talk about Tennessee as sort of, you know, it's on the short list of sane places to live. I lived in Cali for a long time, left during COVID. I happened to go to Florida, but almost did the Nashville thing, obviously Texas and some of the countries in the Midwest. What are you guys doing right that the blue states are just doing wrong? I spent 16 years in the Tennessee General Assembly, four years in the House and 12 in the Senate. And, you know, we don't have an income tax, one of the lowest tax. We do have a sales tax, but we, you know, the inheritance tax, we've done away with a lot of those things.

5:56And we run a balanced budget. You know, if you go into a state and they're dropping asphalt, they probably bonded that, which means your grandkids will pay it off. In Tennessee, we have zero debt. It's just a debt-free state. And it's funny how people run us down. But you see the U-Haul trucks. I used to have a U-Haul business, and it was tough to get the big trucks. Now you can't give the big trucks away. Right. We call you all refugees. And the funny thing is the misnomer or whatever miscalculation by folks is it's all these Yankees coming in here with all their crazy left wing values. And I find that's not the case.

6:34I have a little area, the North City Loudoun, and they have a it's called the conservative club. And I'll speak and there'll be 150, 160 people come to us and just packed in there to hear me speak. And they're all Yankees. And they're either as conservative as I am or more conservative. I always am afraid when somebody asks a question that I'm being set up by the Secret Service or NSA because it's usually some really conservative question. And they'll say the same thing, more or less, with a funny accent. And I like to say East Tennessee is the only place in America where people don't speak with an accent.

7:11But it's always the same thing. We came here to get away from that. and and we want to warn you all do not embrace that that lifestyle or any of that because it it destroys it destroyed where we came from and we came here because of what you have right now and we want to keep it that way yeah i see the same thing in miami that there was this worry that oh my man they're going to turn this place blue and although miami proper did just go blue for the first time in 30 years there's a lot more behind that right there's way and only 20 percent of the people voted there's a lot of stuff that but we don't have to go into the minutiae of that So talk to me about the general state of what you're seeing in D.C.

7:49right now. You know, from the blue sky, I see a Trump government that I think is really working and doing a lot of good things. And then on the media class, there's just like a lot of complaining. I see a lot of corruption, honestly. I think President Trump, the trouble with Congress is, you know, when I first got to Congress, I remembered I was sitting on the, used to sit on the second row. Now I sit second row to the back. I call it center's row. Everybody gets in trouble. They come sit beside me. But I was sitting down there, and one of the old-timers leaned over and said, Tim, how long have you been here?

8:23I said, Mr. Chairman, about six months. He goes, really? And he sat back, and I leaned over, and I looked back, and I said, is that a good thing or a bad thing? And he said, oh, it's a good thing. He said, because all these kids up here, they think they're getting into something else. And when you get to Congress, I think everybody thinks that you're going to be asked by the president negotiate a trade deal with North Korea or something, you know, and it's just, if Congress was the NFL, Peyton Manning would still be waiting again because the corruption is that you have to raise so much money and you have to kiss a lot of butt.

8:57And I do a terrible job at both of those, obviously. So how do you balance what you're doing for your own district versus when you come here and then it becomes about all of the other stuff of politics? Number one, my number one goal is constituent service, always constituent service. And that's that's what keeps me in office. And, you know, we get a lot of media and that helps name ID. But the reality is when you help somebody with their disability or VA, it also gives you a good feeling. But it also lets you know why you're actually there. Unfortunately, we're we're having to take care of problems that we created.

9:36I mean, we created this bureaucracy, Congress did, and then we have to fix it by helping our constituents. But I just think that getting back to Congress, you know, Trump won with an overwhelmingly large amount. You know, his percentage was Congress has got a three-person majority. And, brother, we're literally one flu season away. Reagan said from losing, you know, you're a generation from losing everything. Rather, we're one vote series away from losing everything. And we've got to— And not all those votes are always guaranteed. And not all those votes are guaranteed. And we better start addressing what Trump ran on, you know, the strong border, strong economy.

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11:00And honestly, the committee system is made that way by design. It's, you know, we have both parties will have 50 or 60 people working in staff positions. And those staff members get really cozy with the lobbyists. And you come in there and you want a great bill. And you look at a lot of legislation we pass is really just study bills. And I'll refuse to vote for them. It costs a couple million bucks. and then the studies. I told somebody, it's like that ending scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know, it all goes to that warehouse. And, brother, I've never seen one of those dadgum studies. I've been here eight years, so I just quit voting for them.

11:37But what happens, you get a great bill. They're back there somewhere. Yeah, well, you get a great bill, a great idea for a bill. You go to, you send it to the committee, and you need to talk to the staff person that handles that. And they go, well, that's a great piece of legislation, but it's not going to pass. And they go, oh, really? Yeah. I tell you what we need to do. Let's make a study of it and then come back next year. Now, our attention span, and I'm guilty of this too, in America, is about 30 minutes. It's like the amount of time we want our pizzas. It's 30 minutes or less. Yeah. So this staffer knows it and the lobbyist who has his or her ear knows it because they've whined them and dined them on a little trip.

12:16Maybe it's illegal. Maybe it's not. I think there could be something else going on a lot of times with the lobbyists and the staffers, and they will kill the bill. And then that's why nothing happens. And the chairman is unaware of it or doesn't care because the committees are so big, and it's by design, and both parties are guilty of this. And that is inertly what is wrong with Washington. So with that in mind, do you want Trump to do more just with the stroke of the pen? Obviously, doing everything by executive action is not great, and yet you're telling me that Congress is pretty freaking broke and we've got to get some things done.

12:55I agree. How do you feel about that? I think Trump should get on it because we don't have the guts to do it. That's why I'd like to be chairman of that Doge Committee. I don't think I'll get it for the aforementioned reasons. But we do not have the guts to do it, and I think that's why he did it. Case in point, I think I put like 20 of his executive orders on notice. and obviously some of them got taken up in the big beautiful bill, but a lot of them are still out there languishing. And it just, you know, I get so aggravated. And I always say, those post offices aren't going to name themselves.

13:31When I'm talking to the press out in front of the getting ready to go vote, I got to go, you know. But that's pretty much the problem right there, brother. And it's very frustrating. So you'd be for Trump doing things faster via the pen. And what do you make of your colleagues on the other side? Because 10 years ago, I was a Democrat. And I am probably in some sense further right than you now because I know what that thing is. To me, they've almost completely lost their mind. I'm doing about 15 interviews today. We reached out to dozens of Democrats. I got one. I got Ro Khanna willing to come in.

14:06Nobody else will talk to me. Ro actually believes it, though. That's the difference between him and a lot of the liberals. I disagree with him on almost everything, but I will give him respect for always sitting with me. I do, too. But I like Ro. He represents, oddly enough, one of the wealthiest areas of Silicon Valley. Well, he's going to need their money to do some of these programs he wants to do. Absolutely. They're going to have to fund it. And ultimately, I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal is to wreck, ultimately, some of the more intellectual members of the party. I think their goal is to wreck everything and create this so they can recreate it in some sort of woke-atopia, as I like to call it.

14:42So what do you make of the general state of the government? But most of my problems are with the Republicans, honestly, because I know the Democrats are Marxist. AOC, Marxist. Like I said, I called her, she's my friendly neighborhood Marxist. We're friends. We get along. Steve Cohen and I get along. Probably close to Steve, them, anybody. He called my mama when my daddy died when we were in the state legislature. We raised the speed limit to see. But him calling my mama, I can't get past that. He'll always be my friend. Jared Moskowitz, good friend. Jonathan Jackson, Jesse's son, he's a good friend.

15:18We're in a little bipartisan prayer group together. I don't agree with them, but at least I know where they stand. But what do you make of the energy of the party, that it's going in that direction, which is not what a Democrat was 10 years ago? I think they've been ambushed. I think they really have. And they use the carrot and the stick. And it's the old thing in Congress that you just, you'll destroy the country, but as long as you get to stay in charge. You know, what is it about rule? I'd rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. And I think that's sort of the Democrat motto. They've let themselves be overtaken by this far left agenda.

15:53I always tell people, you know, it's not Harry Truman's Democrat party. I say it's not even Bill Clinton's. It may be Hillary Clinton's, but it's not their party anymore. I don't think it's Hillary Clinton's even. She comes off as moderate to me compared to most of these days. If you see what, you know, New York and all that. But it's publicly educated kids. We've turned our back on education. We, another case in point is when Beto O 'Rourke ran for Senate down in Texas, and he almost won. I think he was running against Cruz. 2.9 points. Crazy. And what did they say? Oh, it's all these people moving in from California, Chicago, New York.

16:28Has it turned out? No. It's homegrown socialist. We have, you know, these legislators, state legislators, they get invited to a ball game. They sit in the skybox, and they just let the stuff ride. The Charlie Kirk stuff where we started kicking out professors and administrators that said awful things. Great. Let's do that. But they're like kudzu. We cut them off and then five more pop up. What we got to do is get to the people that are hiring and firing these people. These presidents of these universities are far left. Their hiring practices are far left. They're human resources. Far left. And then we wonder.

17:04and then they tell, you know, we don't celebrate diversity, you right-wingers. Well, ask them how many dadgum Republicans they have in their sociology department or in their philosophy department or any of these other departments, and you'll find that it's far left, and that's who they go after. They go after people like themselves, and it's just a cluster of groupthink, and, you know, they surround themselves with people that think like they do, And so there is no real diversity, and it just goes farther and farther to the left. And we've allowed that. And this is public institutions that we're getting this, homegrown Marxists, as I call them.

17:41And we've turned our back on that because we're afraid to stand up. I always say, when I'm conservative and I'm a Christian, and I talk to a lot of Christian folks, and I say, you know, we need to tell preachers, they've got to start preaching the gospel. They've got to start telling the truth. And you, when you're at work and somebody says something that you don't agree with, don't walk away. Disagree. You don't have to jump in their face. You can disagree on Facebook, in your flower group or whatever at work. Stand up for what's right because the left sure as heck is, and too many times we just let them walk over us, and our kids do the same thing, and then our kids are indoctrinated, and then we just let it go.

18:23And, Dadgummit, we can't just let it go anymore. We're going to lose our country. So to that point, my last question will be this. I mean, how do you think we can actually get out of this? You just mentioned my friend Charlie Kirk. To me, it seems the state of discourse has gotten significantly worse without Charlie that I think we now, as great as he was, I think we're realizing he really was a dam against a lot of bad stuff. How do you think we turn this? Well, I think we better realize that we didn't get here overnight. We didn't get in this spot. And the Democrats and the left had a far left agenda.

18:55And it's been going on for quite some time. I think we better start taking it back piece by piece. And we better not give up. We better not give up. I see that flag behind you there. And I think about my mama would, every time they'd play the national anthem, she would cry. Because she'd think about her brother Roy who died fighting the Nazis. And I think about my dad who was a dean at the University of Tennessee. Probably one of the most conservative forces on that campus for 40 years actually. and he fought the Japanese in the Pacific in the Marine Corps. If I ever had to wake him up, I don't care if we were at the beach or before he died in the nursing home, I'd always have to wake him up by his big toe because he might wake up on one of those dadgum islands.

19:37You know, 18, 19-year-old Marine fighting vicious, vicious Japanese. And then I go back to the – Daddy was saying the blessing one time. It was an election night, and I had won. I was in the legislature, but there was a national election going on at the same time. And Daddy said, buddy, let me say the prayer, the blessing. And he did. And he said, Lord, please don't let us lose our country. I thought, wow. You know, a combat veteran, the guy I respected most of anybody in my life, my best friend, it was breaking his heart what was happening to our country. And that's why people say, Bertie, why don't you just give up if you don't like it so much?

20:19That makes me fight that much harder. And we've got to fight. We've got to take our country back. Too many people have sacrificed too much. We have some work to do. Thank you, brother. If you're craving more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics, check out our politics playlist right here. And if you don't want to miss any future videos, make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell. Hey, I'm Dan Harris, host of the 10 % Happier podcast. When life gets a little rough, sometimes we feel this overwhelming urge to fix everything. which really is impossible. So I've got a new series coming up called Reset, where we're going to help you find simple, practical, surgical ways to reset key areas of your life.

21:01The lineup is incredible. We've got people like Gretchen Rubin, Laurie Santos, Atul Gawande, and The Daily Show's Josh Johnson. 10 % Happier with Dan Harris. Join the party wherever you get your podcasts.