Rep. Thomas Massie on Shakedowns, Cronyism—and Why He's Sticking With the GOP

I've peeled back the curtain at the risk of not getting reelected I have explained a lot of the evil that happens in Washington DC I've been that person who stands up objects at that point they hate you for breathing air Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie is a thorn in the side of the GOP establishment this bill's not even written are you kidding me and we're supposed to vote on it tonight that's why I'm a he'll know he's voted against so many bills including those championed by his own party that in 2014 Politico dubbed him mr. no I will not sugarcoat this this is a disappointing day for us I didn't come to Washington to make friends I came to Washington say yeah well they saved the country elected to Congress in 2012 during the height of the Tea Party movement Massie is also an mit-trained engineer with 24 patents to his name who founded a pioneering tech company specializing in 3d scanning and touch computing he drives an electric car and lives with his family in an off-the-grid farmhouse which is the subject of a new documentary Massey is an environmentalist who co-sponsored legislation last year to disband the Environmental Protection Agency solar panels may be the energy source of the future he says but that doesn't mean we have to mandate or subsidize their use reasons Matt Welch recently sat down with congressman masse at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss his battles with the Republican establishment how Trump's tariffs are breeding cronyism and the impact he and his fellow libertarians in Congress are having on policy congressman Massie thanks for joining us say for having me so a couple weeks ago I was at the Libertarian Party National Convention and just talking to people and a lot of people brought up your name you're one of their favorite people along with your pal Justin Amash and even some people said it'd be great if Thomas Massie maybe ran for the Libertarian Party ticket in 2020 why are you a Republican when so many libertarians like you look there are a few libertarians in Congress and we've all got ours next to our name there are some Democrats who get close on some issues like jared Polis will break away from the party on some libertarian issues and Justin and I are basically always on our own track which is mostly libertarian by the way a mediocre libertarian makes for a great Republican I mean ultimately at the end of the day we're trying to shrink the size and scope of government and that fits inside of the Republican platform with some allowances here and there yeah the allowances seem to be very spending notwithstanding spending spending not with NSA spying notwithstanding right like as soon as Republicans control everything in government just spending spending seems like it's perfectly fine Katie bar the door what is the positive case for someone who considers themselves libertarian at least half libertarian I don't know exactly how you described yourself Oh along those lines but what's the positive case for working within the Republican Party as opposed to in the libertarian party or just outside flapping their arms around it well the non partisan politics the difference is you can get elected as a Republican and then you can actually go to the floor of the House of Representatives and vote that's not to say there isn't a place for Big Al libertarians there's something in Congress that as we're voting we call true north and occasionally we all know that we deviate from true north every now and then I would like to think that Justin Amash and I and Rand Paul and Mike Lee are pretty close to true north most of the time maybe 10 degrees off but the the libertarian party I think is is good to have because they come up with the most morally balanced principled rational basis for the decisions that we make in government and those would be true north just to be clear are you here ruling out a presidential run in 2020 for the libertarian party I am absolutely rolling out a run for any office in 2020 as a big al libertarian very good now so you mentioned and as you do in conversation often the same names come up a lot it's you Justin Amash Rand Paul Mike Lee first of all are there other names on the list there are occasionally occasionally you get surprised I've backed candidates to come to Congress and everyone that I've backed it's pretty much sold out within a few months of coming to Congress a Jew named name says fine dad you go see who I've backed I don't have a good track track record in fact I tell people they don't want my endorsement if they wouldn't get elected and not sell out let me give you a name of somebody who's come to Congress and really surprised us Andy Biggs from Arizona huh if you see to nose on a on a bill its 428 2 to the to nose will be most often me and Justin Amash if you see three it's now Andy Biggs and he's doing it on a constitutional basis he recognizes when we when the Republicans are voting for bigger government and he doesn't fall for it what do you feel like that you have accomplished since coming into Congress not just you you but you're a group of small group of friends they're like what tangibly do you feel like that the world is a better place because you are up there either saying no or trying to say yes on some things the main thing that I think I've contributed in my time in Congress is an unprecedented level of transparency I've peeled back the curtain at the risk of not getting reelected I have explained a lot of the evil that happens in Washington DC and how it is broken because what I see back in the states and back in our districts are solutions that won't really fix the problem because they a lot of folks don't understand what the problem is for instance some people want a constitutional convention to rewrite or add to the Constitution the problem is not that we need a new constitution the problem is that my colleagues don't follow the Constitution we have so I'm not in favor of constitutional convention a lot of people think that term limits will fix things term limits might nibble around the edges but if fundamentally not going to fix what's broken in Congress the problems are bigger than that so one of my contributions I feel is to go out there and explain and no uncertain terms how that place is messed up so that the folks back home can dial in their ordinance their strikes and and come up with the right answers and and maybe unelect a few of the people that they think are doing well that aren't talked about transparency and the way things are kind of wrecked and messed up there a lot of people don't understand the machinery of the house the machinery of fundraising and the requirements of this tell us a little bit about what is usually required by custom or by pointing the chest in terms of your fundraising duties for the party and etc okay money and politics is a great example of one of those problems that people know about but they don't understand how the money is corrupting the system the reality is there are 435 members of Congress 360 of them are safe they could almost do anything and get reelected so the question is how does money corrupt them well they have to raise money and give it to the party in order to rent or buy their committee assignments like literally the party comes to you whether you're a Democrat or Republican and says if you want an important committee you're gonna have to pay us this much money not one time but every election cycle the you can't go back to your district and ask your constituents at a fundraiser to help you buy a seat on a committee you get that money from the lobbyists who are in Washington DC now let me be clear I'm not against lobbying as a profession I'm not against my colleagues who pay their dues that's a euphemism for extortion who pay the extortion to the NRCC in order to gain a better committee assignment and to keep a better committee assignment I'm calling out the leaders in our party and in the other party who've set up the structure that causes people to become captive to the lobbyists into that money who knocks on your door how does that process work oh they don't even knock on your door they come on the floor of the House of Representatives and they've got a little assessment card and they'll slip it in your pocket while you're voting and say by the way Thomas you're $300,000 overdue we expect you to pay something this quarter I mean call me crazy that just sounds like a shakedown operation it sounds like the Mafia it's a total shakedown now again what they do with the money is not a bad thing people aren't buying Ferraris and and yachts with that money in the Republican Party they're trying to get members elected in that party so they can either keep the majority in the case of the Republicans or take back the majority in the case of the Democrats it's again it's the incentive structure and the way it influences behavior that is wrong not what they do with the money not the people who are there who have to pay the extortion and not the lobbyists who are able to provide the money so is that why that all the people that you've endorsed have turned out bad is that they got caught up in that incentive structure yeah it's too strong of a word but like disappointing from what you initially expected is it because they responded to the institutional incentives they're in the way that people do it's kind of like The Hunger Games the movie you like it seems like an honor to represent your district but then when you get placed on the island you you realize you've got to grab weapons you have to weaponize and you are still running you have to compete when you're there and so these these folks get elected from their district they come and they realize I'm gonna have to weaponize I'm gonna have to get a better committee assignment than the person next to me and they do this maybe not in the beginning because they're morally compromised but because they want to represent their constituents in the best way they know how and they believe that getting a more powerful committee will let them represent their constituents better so I don't blame them for selling out I don't blame the players but we've got to change the game and the more people know about this whether they're libertarian or democrat or republican the more they can work from the outside to change it they could ask their Congressman how much do you pay your party every every quarter to keep that committee assignment so is this like Serpico or whatever like do they all hate you do all the crooked cops hate the clean cop in this case well you know I've exposed this on the internet multiple times and in interviews and nobody has once challenged at least not on record with the name maybe some anonymous Republican aide might have challenged what I've said but nobody with the name has ever challenged what I've said and so they do you become hated for breathing air next to them because you've exposed how this incentive structure works partly because they paid so much into this structure right they got there and they've decided to invest they've been good aim yeah yeah they've got skin in the game and so they they dislike you for that and it's that and other things caused them to dislike you for instance every vote in the house is a voice vote until one person objects at which point it becomes a recorded vote of 435 members now more than half a dozen times I've been that person who stands up objects demands a recorded vote on some issues that people would rather not be recorded on at that point they hate you for breathing air and in the the pressure it's like being deep underwater you physically to have so many people around you who hate you for being there it constricts your chest and you take shorter breaths and it's hard to breathe Wow do I mean is it just the feel a sense of seating or do they get up right in your face and give you the business in the cloakroom it depends on the memory I have been yelled at I've been screamed at usually it's because they lost their cool and they're come back they will come back the next day and apologize but it's mostly the people who don't say anything that are most upset with you but they're playing the game and they know part of the game is never to show that you're upset but you can feel it it's tangible the leadership will call your donors and tell them to quit giving you money and they'll give a compelling argument why they should quit giving you money they will deny your bills a hearing in committee or a vote on the floor they will take your bills and give them to somebody else who can put their name on it and pass it what has that happened to you yeah this happened a couple of weeks ago Walter Jones and I three years ago and in two congresses have introduced a bill to get rid of this perk that a Speaker of the House enjoys after he's no longer Speaker of the House the taxpayer has four years since the seventies been paying to keep an office Forex speakers of the house they get they get a full staff then get a postage budget and they get an office inside of the Capitol and they can still they can be an outside lobbyist and still keep this office that's crazy Denny Hastert milked of more than a million dollars from the taxpayer through through this office by using this office and so we introduced a bill to get rid of that we were told it was spiteful toward the ex speaker which it was nothing wrong with that somebody wrote an article had said these two Republicans are still trying to get rid of John Boehner after he was no longer the speaker we were obviously trying to get rid of the office anyways we were shut down stopped we tried it in an amendment form we tried it as a standalone bill at each step of the game we were stopped and told no we're not gonna let you get a vote and then a few weeks ago Paul Ryan announced he had slipped it into an appropriations bill and this was part of his legacy was to get rid of this office he was doing the noble and right thing and they just I mean Walter Jones was the primary sponsor I was the secondary but he just took our bill after telling us it was a bad idea and then claimed it as their own and to add insult to injury they will raise money for super PACs who will come to our districts and say we were ineffective uh well I mean the point is you keep your eye on the prize and you got a good thing passed right your oh yeah I don't mind that we don't get credit it's it's when they go and say you didn't get anything done right knowing that they took your bill and there are other bills I don't want to get into it for because I'm I will engender more hate for blowing the whistle on these folks so you and Justin Amash are oftentimes the guys to make sure that nothing gets voiced voted and I think Rand Paul does something similar he's often times the only he's a one on several occasions there and I know you're all friends and you're the state mate with with with Rand do you guys kind of have a target on the back club like a little pity party club do you just are you just hitting shots and I don't know about Amash but you and ran - hitting shots and in the back how do you deal with being pariahs in your own workplace you know there's another interesting phenomenon that goes on about once a week or once every two weeks I will have a member of Congress come to me and say I just had a town hall and my constituents asked me to be more like you or to vote more like you sometimes they come to me and say I've got a couple kids and you're their favorite congressman this is another congressman speaking to us on the floor so not everybody hates us we're not a pariah to everybody in fact I believe that some of them secretly wish that they could carve out more space to vote their conscience instead of voting the party or voting the way that their funders want them to vote and so secretly they wish they could be more independent than they really are as far as having a club the great thing about having an an ideology and a set of principles that's consistent is you don't have to check in with each other to know how the other one's going to vote on an issue I can I could go on a TV show at the same time that Rand is on a TV show and Justin Amash is on a TV show and without talking to each other I'm pretty sure we're going to be saying the same thing about a bill and so it's convenient when you don't have to get together and include and say what's our story going to be on this so is there any hope of getting more of you felt like the the wind was at the the back of people like you back in 2010 2012 all the way up to her maybe 2014 it seemed like the the pool was growing it doesn't seem like that anymore is there any reinforcements on the horizon you get a blue bird every election cycle for instance I mentioned Andy Biggs has been really good Matt Gaetz has been really good we didn't I didn't expect that I didn't know they were going to be good it's almost like the sort of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle or the act of voting actually determines how you're going to vote it's impossible to know before somebody gets there how they're going to respond to all of the stimulus that they receive and how they're eventually going to vote and so we get a few and it's almost seems random to me we get a lot of Justin Amash ah's and Rand Paul's and Thomas Massey's who I think sell out in the first six months they think they're going to do one thing they believe it in their heart their family knows that their constituents know it and they end up doing something else let's talk about something that's important to all Americans which is bourbon so we're starting trade Wars now presumably you're not a fan of trade wars although don't presume to speak entirely for you you're certainly a fan of bourbon and end of jobs you are popular in your district the president is popular in your district bourbon is popular in your district and jobs are popular in your district how is this stuff playing out right now well trade wars like violent Wars start in much the same way right now it should be Congress who decides when we're gonna initiate some kind of tariff the founding fathers never intended for one person in the executive branch to pass a tax on every American yet that's what's happening and much like the executive branch has usurped the power to make war which was reserved to Congress the executive branch is now has usurped the power to make trade war and that's where we are it's interesting the president used national security as the justification for the first shot in the trade war the foreign countries reciprocated retaliated and now we're retaliating but the justification is you're allowed to retaliate when you're when somebody imposes an unfair tariff on you and so this thing has escalated I say it's like a bad divorce in a bad divorce both spouses lose and the lawyer ends up with more money in these pockets right in a trade war both sets the citizens lose and the government's end up with more money in their pockets so yes I'm against trade wars particularly when they affect our bourbon in Kentucky you know 95 percent of bourbon is from Kentucky distilled there the other 5% is counterfeit regardless what people tell you this is a fact and so but here's the interesting thing that I've observed a lot of our bourbon brands we're bought by foreign companies due to our bad tax laws it made sense for a foreign company to hold the brand particularly before tax yeah before tax reform now that's one of the things that we fixed but I've got a brand in my district I don't call out any Dame's that's owned by a British company and so when the EU decided to impose tariffs on Kentucky Bourbon they actually they did two things they raised the price of bourbon for their own people in the European Union and they also tariffed one of their own companies and what this shows you is how complicated tariffs are in a global economy it's it's almost impossible to see all all of the permutations and and results of tariffs but when you balance the equations and reduce the fractions and figure out who wins and loses it's always the customer that sees a higher price do you have a sense of what the damage could be just to the Bourbon industry because it's so it's a closer to you well you know I think the elasticity of demand for bourbon is different than the elasticity of demand for steel and whatnot and where it comes from people are still going to want to drink Kentucky bourbon it's a bargain at twice the price right so I think there people will still pay for for bourbon and hopefully it won't affect us that much we're told this is a bloodletting that eventually this will stop and it will result in zero tariffs on both sides here's the problem with that I mean I hope that's the case I hope we get fewer tariffs for our products going into other countries and then eventually our tariffs ie taxes go away but we're also being told this will protect American businesses and that manufacturing for instance steel will come back to the United States well what CEO is going to start a new factory based on the story that it's only going to be profitable and when there is a tariff and that this tariff is going to go away as soon as possible yeah nobody's going to open a new business based on that they might keep a business that's marginal or about to fail in business for a few more months nobody's gonna start a new endeavor and invest capital based on a decision that's made by one executive and that executive says we're gonna I may change my decision tomorrow do I mean not to be rude about the sitting president of the United States but do you get the sense that he understands international trade I am going to say that his intuition on some of these things is right and what's I will tell you that I I do not like the fact that Congress is now subservient to the World Trade Organization everything that you purchase has a country of origin labeling label on it like this suit and tells you that it wasn't made in America your your phone will say where it's made your fruits and vegetables your fish but Congress we were told a few years ago that the World Trade Organization had ruled and we were going to have to remove country of origin labeling from beef and pork because it created a hardship for cattle and pigs that were coming from Canada and from Mexico and I I don't like that fact this is these are not judges at the World Trade Organization that are appointed by Congress by elected officials and so when the president speaks about going more to bilateral agreements than a multilateral agreement which requires some kind of world government not to sound conspiratorial but that's what it is it's a world court heavily tilted in the favor of the United States who wins almost all the disputes what we mean we lost the one with Canada and Mexico will be losing some in the near future I have no doubt so I don't know let's see this you know what we've got a great test case I could be wrong things could turn out wonderfully the tariffs could go away you know let me let me say something else too if and and this upsets some libertarians so it's kind of says smiling yes again but is it is it worse to tax production than it is to tax consumption I don't think you can make the case that it more moral to tax your labor than it is to tax your consumption of foreign goods so in the beginning of our country ninety percent of the revenues for our country came from tariffs now if you so if you wanted to replace the income tax if you wanted to repeal the 16th amendment and replace it with a flat tariff I could entertain that the problem with the Selective tariffs is now you've walked into the area of central planning yeah and now you're pretending that the Department of Commerce just like some department in the Soviet Union would know better whether we need more steel or less steel in this country whether we need more steel plants or less steel plants it sounds like FDR it sounds like the Soviet Union it sounds like China although they're in some ways more capitalist than we are on these issues and so I don't like selective tariffs from a central planning standpoint there's another problem that I'm witnessing firsthand in Congress with tariffs that is you can apply for an exemption to a tariff if your company endures some hardship that's going to put it out of business well you can send Wilbur Ross a letter and fill out the form and go to the website and there I think at least 10,000 exemption applications right now it's certainly in the thousands so we recently had a meeting with about 30 congressman and secretary Ross and 28 of the 30 congressmen were there to ask secretary Ross for a special exemption for a company in their district who had applied for the exemption now you are in the area of cronyism absolutely I don't like to call it crony capitalism because it's not capitalism it's its markets being driven by favors that the more access you have the fewer taxes ie tariffs you would have to pay and that's the the sort of race to the bottom that you get into interesting it reminds me of you know heavily zoned or heavily regulated local zoning ordinances and the types of places which I live unlike your off-the-grid farm yeah I end up living in Los Angeles Washington or New York so they're super heavily regulated and what do you do if you are person or a company you spend all your life going to City Hall getting exemptions getting variances of the zoning regulations and that's the friction that makes a lot of kind of money flow in politics and it just seems like a lot of wasted effort and the and it also you've just made me worry about the present moment even more it sounds like a built-in incentive structure for Congress critters including people who've spent their lives talking about the virtues of free trade well now there's the virtues of doing a favor for your constituents and looking like the you know the the white knight and a horse right which is a bad it's a little worse than that because yeah these congressmen were advocating on behalf of their constituents so they might get some credit for that exemption that the executive branch and the executive branch alone grants but at the end of the day you are enriching the executive branch frankly at the expense of the congressional legislative branch because it's the executive branch that can issue those variances so now they they become more powerful because they can issue variances to these tariffs it's a it's a really bad situation like I said if you wanted a flat 10% tariff on every product coming into this country and you got rid of the income tax that might not be such a bad thing but by allowing variances by picking which segments of the economy are going to be taxed and which ones aren't you are enriching and empowering the executive branch which is a very dangerous thing so let's find some place for optimism because I'm feeling like I need it after the end of this conversation are you getting are you is there something good on the horizon that's happening some kind of reform criminal justice are you legalizing hemp what are you doing what are they prop the prospects for a good thing happening kind of under the radar right now I think the federal prohibition on the marijuana plant will be gone within a decade oh and it's it's not going to be because of any bravery on the part of legislators that I serve with the states are taking the lead and if you remember that's how we got rid of the 55 mile an hour federal speed limit if some state said now this is ridiculous and so people started driving faster and we found out it actually is just fine and I think the same things going to happen with the federal prohibition on the marijuana plant within a decade if the vote were today the federal prohibition would go away it's just a slim number of people in leadership in Congress that are keeping that vote from happening in so a change in leadership could mean that issue gets resolved tomorrow so there's who is a prospective leader who would put that to a vote oh the Jim Jordan put that to a vote um I don't know if he would put his I don't know what his personal feelings are on that issue and if we would put a finger on the scale of that he would be far more likely to let the body do its will then Paul Ryan is right now Paul Ryan's been worse than John Boehner in terms of allowing individual members of Congress to have a part in the process far worse bob Corker in the Senate gave a speech about a month ago talking about how we just don't vote on anything anymore like it's the voting has stopped nothing gets to the floor the same kind of bottlenecking that's happening and I wonder since we're talking about incentives and complaining in general about Congress abdicating all its basic responsibilities what is what's the structural incentive for Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and and and Paul Ryan and John Boehner and everybody to act in this one and see Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi thank you to act in this way it seems you know you can ryan was supposed to be marginally better than Boehner and you and other people say that he's worse on this specific issue but there must be some kind of reward system that's making that happen what is it okay I told you there's a dus system for members of Congress who want a better committee assignment there's an assessment and it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to get or keep a better committee seat the assessment on a speaker is in the tens of millions if the speaker is expected to raise fifty to a hundred million dollars every election cycle for the party god that comes with some encumbrances to the donors if you can imagine fifty to a hundred million dollars of encumbrances and there are other incentive for short-circuiting the the power of the house is when when they when they short-circuit the legislative process and there are only four people in the room writing the bill those four people become more powerful now oftentimes at the expense of the power of the legislative branch but they are trading our power as legislators to the executive branch so that each of them can have more power so that they can go to the White House they sit down okay what do you want in this appropriations bill okay that's what we'll put in it and then after four people write a two thousand and three hundred page bill it's brought back to us and we have eight hours to read it and vote on it and so they have way more power the leadership in Congress does then if there were an open process how do you avoid just saying America you're drunk go home you know how what makes you want to continue in this line of work besides the cushy job and benefits the cushy job and benefits yes as you know I had a very good livelihood in the private sector and this is not a cushy job and it's I've turned down most of the benefits I like the health care and whatnot so what makes me want to do it I do see results look we did force John Boehner out now we got somebody who was worse but at the end of the day the swamp did not want him to leave they were in full-out panic for a few weeks until they figured out how they're gonna patch everything up the fact that you can occasionally cause the swamp to go into a full panic shows me that there is hope bringing transparency to the process I want the American people to be equipped with the knowledge they need to advocate for things that will fix Congress constitutional convention I'm sorry is not going to fix Congress my colleagues don't follow the Constitution we've got they're not going to follow a new one term limits I'm like co-sponsor to term limit bills I will vote for them they will not fix the problems we have and so I have hope I have optimism in that when the American people get the information that I've been able to obtain by being behind the curtain that they will start advocating for things that will fix the process very good well thank you very much for talking with us today congressman Thomas Massie for reason I am Matt well [Music]

Channel: ReasonTV

Views: 105,260

Keywords: libertarian, Reason magazine, reason.com, reason.tv, reasontv, Thomas Massie, Matt Welch, Washington, D.C., GOP, Republicans, Republican party, Libertarian Party, politics, Tea Party, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Justin Amash

Id: fD6wxH5gIk8

Length: 33min 38sec (2018 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 25 2018