 You're listening to highlights from The David Feldman Show, heard nationwide on Pacifica Radio, or as a podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and now YouTube. Please subscribe to this channel. For more information, go to davidfeldmanshow.com. Thank you for listening. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad, pathetic humps. Today, Georgia holds a special election to pick a congressman representing the state's six congressional district. The district was represented by Republican Tom Price until he was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Will it be Democrat John Ossoff or Republican Karen Handel? And it's turning out to be the most expensive congressional race in American history. For more on this, we are honored to have with us Congressman Alan Grayson, who was the United States representative for Florida's ninth congressional district. Why is it the most expensive one in American history? Well, it's actually for a good reason. What's happened is that small donors who fueled Bernie Sanders' campaign, who fueled my last two House races when I was the only member of the House out of 435 of us, who raised most of his money from small donors, small donors who fueled my Senate campaign, who raised more than half of our money from small donors for our Senate campaign, those small donors have poured money into that race more than any other campaign. This is not a situation where the Democratic candidate, like the Republican candidate, is spending all this time on the telephone begging rich people for cash. He's actually free to go out and campaign the same way that I was, and I was free to go out and pass legislation because of the strength of our small donor program and the fundraising from it. Karen Handel has raised a respectable $4 million last time I looked, and our Democratic candidate has raised over $20 million. And by the way, it's not entirely unprecedented that Alan West, that lunatic congressman from one term from South Florida, Alan West actually raised $14 million. No, I think actually it's closer to $20 million for his campaign, and he did that largely, almost entirely from small donors. In his case, it was a direct mail. In Ossup's case, it's by Internet ads. But in any other case, what you're seeing is something that we ought to cherish, which is the fact that people are putting where their hearts may be, and they're putting their money behind their hearts. That's an interesting development which bodes well for progressivism and for democracy. If there is a way forward out of the oligarchy, out of the plutocracy, out of the control that rich people, international corporations have over our political system, it's if we see one candidate after another after another who has nothing to anybody but the voters. Has it ever been illegal for out-of-state businessmen to contribute to a congressional candidate? In other words, it's against the law for Putin to finance a presidential race. Could it ever be or was it ever illegal for somebody in New York to fund a congressional race in Florida? I can't claim to have encyclopedic knowledge of that, but my understanding is that in state races and in local county-type races, there have been restrictions on out-of-state money. I don't remember seeing any kind of restriction like that in house races, and frankly, I'm not sure that it would be constitutional given what the Supreme Court has said about that. The right that you have according to the Supreme Court to spend your money to participate in elections would not necessarily be restricted to your own personal geography. But that would be a solution, wouldn't it? Yes, but if the Supreme Court says for better or for worse, and the Supreme Court says that David Koch has the right to influence congressional and Senate elections, they're not just talking about congressional and Senate elections in his state. They'd be talking about congressional and Senate elections all around the country. If you think of that as a constitutional right, it's an American constitutional right, not a Canton or Californian or New York constitutional right. People have questioned whether it is a constitutional right at all, but once you reach that threshold, it seems like you'd need some kind of national role, not a state-by-state role. I think I read that a local affiliate down in Georgia had to add an extra half-hour of their news to accommodate all the TV advertising that's coming from the two candidates. Did you hear something to that effect? I mean, Yossoff, the Democratic candidate, spent around $7 million just in the last few weeks on TV. And if I recall correctly, Allen West spent $6 or $7 million in his house race on TV. So that doesn't really surprise me. What surprised me and what disappoints me is the kind of ads that we're seeing run. The other side started early making ad hominem attacks against the Democrat. They're particularly enamored of a clip from when he was a college student that shows him dressing up as a Star Wars character. He's 30 years old now. And on the other hand, when you look at the ads that our side has run against, Karen Handel, who's the Republican candidate, they're really meek. They're not very persuasive. Karen Handel was Secretary of State in Georgia and instituted a brutal voter suppression program that was so bad that the Department of Justice had to get an order against her to make her stop. She stole votes from tens of thousands of Georgians before they stopped her. She would send out letters to people claiming they were not citizens, when in fact they were. This is related to the national cross check program that has stolen votes from millions of people all around the country thanks to Republicans. And I haven't seen any ads about that. Karen Handel was also the number two person and the author of the policy at the Susan G. Coleman Race for the Cure organization, an organization that exists to fight breast cancer when she cut off the funding to plan parenthood from the Coleman organization for breast cancer screenings. She cut off funding for breast cancer screenings when she was in charge of an organization to fight breast cancer. What was her title with Susan Coleman? She was the second in command. She was Vice President. And she was Vice President for policy. And, you know, when The Atlantic and Slate magazine looked into this, they found that she was the author of that endeavor to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. And they asked her why. She said because Planned Parenthood as an organization is pro-choice. But that's not the point. Planned Parenthood is doing breast cancer screenings for poor women. That's what your organization exists for. And she said, well, that's against my convictions. The Coleman organization reversed that policy after four days because of the enormous uproar against a cancer organization not giving money to fight cancer. And she resigned in disgrace. Again, a very compelling story. One you could tell in 30 seconds. I just did tell it in 30 seconds. But that's not what the ads are. So what I'm worried about is that we're spending a staggering amount of money. The other side knows how to go for the jugular. And apparently we don't. How does it look so far? Ossoff seems to be ahead in the polls. I think it's really, really close. And I don't think that's how I read the polls. There have been 15 polls done so far heading back to March where they're head to head. There's only two candidates left on the ballot. There's no third party candidates. Ossoff, Handel, and that's it. And in 13 of those 15 polls, undecided held the balance. In other words, neither candidate reached 50% plus one. Neither candidate. In two of the 15 polls so far, Ossoff had a majority of 51%. So neither candidate in any poll has reached 52%. That's pretty close. This is a district I think Romney won by 22 points over Obama. So it is a red district. Is it still considered a red district? Or is it what they call them purple? It's purple according to the last presidential election. If I recall correctly, Trump won it by two. And with early voting ending on Friday, would you think that the news is helping Ossoff? What do you mean by the news? The stuff that's coming out with the special counsel and Trump, would you say that the voters who are voting early are turned off by Trump? Well, I'm worried about the fact that Clinton came very close to Trump in this district before all of the revelations about Russia and Trump's potential collusion with the Russians to try to swing the election in exchange for releasing sanctions against Russia. And everything else he will have to live through for the last five months. And despite the utter misery that the Trump administration has inflicted on America and in part on itself through his shenanigans. Nevertheless, it's still a close election. You know, the nationwide polls lately seem to indicate that the Democrats have something like a six or seven point lead nationally based upon the fact that he's already turned into possibly the worst president for a lifetime. Maybe we should be looking at a 15 point lead. I don't know if John's going to win or lose. I just don't know. I definitely hope he wins. But it's disconcerting to me that it's even close. Right. In terms of the narrative, and I hate to bring that up, but if it's close, it doesn't mean anything. If it's a blowout, then Trump isn't a lot of trouble, right? Then he starts losing all the Republicans who march in lockstep because then they start fearing for their jobs. I think that a win for the Democrats is significant regardless, and I'll tell you why. Because of gerrymandering, Trump won 230 districts. You need 218 districts for the majority of the house. There's 435 of us. So if the election were held and the exact same results came in next year as occurred last year, then the Republicans would win 230 seats and the Democrats would come up 12 seats short of a majority, or 13 seats sort of majority. If we take a seat from them that they won last year, a seat that not only Tom Price won as the incumbent congressman, but also Trump won by a narrow amount, whether it was 2% or 1%, whatever it was, then they start to say, well, we don't have much of a margin for error here. We need to hold on to those 230 seats. We start to give seats to them that we won last year. That implies that not only are some of us in danger, but it also implies that we might lose the house. So even a narrow victory in a seat like this is somewhat significant, but a blowout would be catastrophic for them because if the electorate has moved, let's say 10% from last year to this year or from this year to next year against them, they'll definitely lose the house. I was warned that there would be math involved. So let me go back to the 2016 election results. Are you saying that the political will was there for Trump? In other words, if you look at the congressional results, even though he lost the electoral college, there was still a political will for Donald Trump and the Republicans in the last election. Because of gerrymandering, even though Trump lost the popular vote by 3.5 million votes or something approaching that, nevertheless, the Republicans won 230 congressional districts. Only 218 are enough for a majority. Because of gerrymandering, the Republicans have a built-in advantage in the House of Representatives that amounts to something like 12 seats. Okay, it's my understanding that in the past, the Republicans have won the House but lost the popular vote for the House. But this time around, they won the House and the popular vote for the House. I would have to look that up. I don't remember. The premise of your question is correct, though. There certainly have been times that they've won while losing the popular vote. I think that happened, for instance, in 2012. Right, but it does speak to your concern that Trump is still more popular than he should be. Yes, I mean, for goodness' sake, I don't have to tell you the things I've had to live through since January 20th. It's been a nightmare. I mean, just the specter of a president colluding with the foreign power and offering them favors in order to be elected, just the specter of that is shocking to most people. And then beyond that, the things that Trump actually has done in office. I mean, he has cheered on the House to pass a bill that denies health coverage to 30 million Americans and kill roughly 300,000 of them. That's a horrific number. He said it's mean. Yes, but he held a signing ceremony without actually signing it on his lawn. He invited the Republicans over to the White House to cheer the fact they passed what he now describes as a mean bill. He's betrayed our allies. He's tried to provoke a war with North Korea. He stole the Supreme Court appointment from us. He's brazenly violating the Constitution by taking money from foreign governments in his personal business affairs. He wants to hand trillions of dollars and tax breaks to himself and to what he obviously considers as a needy rich. And he wants to deport children from this country who literally can't remember living anywhere else in their entire lives. Not to mention the fact that he wants to legitimate and institutionalize racism and bigotry with his wall between the United States and Mexico and his ban on travel from Muslim countries. Is Karen Handel distancing herself from Trump? No. She invited him to the district to campaign with her and she also did a fundraiser with him. Is gerrymandering constitutional? The Supreme Court on Monday said that it would consider whether or not partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. I guess there's such thing as racial gerrymandering that they've said violates the 14th Amendment. What is the difference between partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering if the Republicans are the party of racists and wouldn't partisan and racist gerrymandering be the same thing? Well, in my opinion, the Constitution should be, the existing Constitution should be read as prohibiting gerrymandering in all forms, including political gerrymandering. The distinction that you're referring to is the fact that long ago the Supreme Court decided that you could not draw the lines in such a way so that you excluded African-Americans or other minorities from representation. So, I mean, to give you an example, let's say you have a state that is 60% white and 40% African-American. Actually, I think I just described Mississippi more or less. Those are not too far from the real numbers in Mississippi. The Supreme Court said you can't draw, let's say, five different districts in a state like that. Every single district has exactly 60% whites and 40% African-Americans because the whites may band together and you'll end up with five white congressmen and zero African-American congressmen instead of three white congressmen and two African-American congressmen. So, you now have to draw the lines in such a way so that you dilute the minority vote to the point where people can no longer choose to be represented by their own group. The Supreme Court decided that a long time ago. That was a long-standing Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has from time to time rejected the idea that it is going to stop congressmen or state senators or state representatives from being directly under the base of a party. So, let's say you've got a state that is 60% Republican and 40% Democrat. According to law up to this point, and we'll see what the Supreme Court decided in this new case, but according to law up to this point, if that state has five members of Congress, it would be constitutional for the Republicans to draw the lines in such a way so that every single district is 60% Republican and 40% Democratic. And you end up with five Republican congressmen and zero Democratic congressmen. In fact, that is essentially what they've done in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in several other states. I mean, to be fair about it, that's pretty much what the Democrats have done in Illinois. But the Republicans indicated before have a built-in advantage in the House of Representatives because of the net effect of gerrymandering in the two dozen states that they control where they control the entire state legislature and they also have a Republican governor. So what was the constitutional amendment that you introduced? I introduced the first constitutional amendment to actually ban political gerrymander, to say that you can't favor one party or the other. The reason why I was familiar with that is because I helped to enact the Florida state constitutional ban against political gerrymander. I was the first large personal donor to the effort to put that on the ballot and the Florida voters in their wisdom by 63% to 37% decided to end political gerrymandering in Florida as well as any other form of gerrymandering. We did that by amending our state constitution. So what I did was I took the successful state constitutional amendment that had passed with my help and I suggested that we amend the national constitution in exactly the same manner. How do you solve the issue of gerrymandering other than electing every congressman at large and giving up constituent services? I'm wondering if that's not the worst idea. How important is constituent services? It's not that. It's that that actually facilitates the result that I just described. You've got a state that is 60% Republican and 40% Democratic all five members of Congress in this hypothetical state are elected at large than for sure since that's 60% Republican and 40% Democratic all five members of Congress from that state will be Republicans. In fact, at large representation is one of the tools of gerrymandering that the just department has struck down in many places around the country and including one of our counties in my district. There was an at large selection of county commissioners in my district in one of the counties in my district that was struck down as being unconstitutional because it diluted minority voting. This requires a lot more time. Well, sure, but I'll just tell you that it's painfully simple. The voters should choose their elected officials. The elected officials should not choose their voters. There it is in a nutshell. I believe Eric Holder and President Obama are dedicating much of their career now to the 2020 census and gerrymandering. We're hearing a lot about civility. After the shooting last Wednesday the issue was we have to dial back the rhetoric. Was that your first reaction to the shooting that we need to watch what we say? I don't think the shooting was motivated by rhetoric. The shooting was motivated by a lunatic taking gun and shooting at people. You know, I don't think that the actions of a crazy person are somehow attributable to the actions of rational people who are making persuasive cases in the body politic. I just don't think there's the same. I don't think so. Tom Brokaw was on Meet the Press yesterday saying the problem is we just don't know how to communicate with one another anymore. It's infuriating to hear that, isn't it? Let's look at the Unibomber, okay? This is the case that most votes for everyone. It's the Unibomber. Do you think the Unibomber was motivated by a lack of political civility? I don't think so. No. So, I mean, this is a terrible thing to have to even talk about, but it just so happens that the worst mass shooting in history took place eight blocks out of my district. The pulse shooting in Orlando. Fifty people died in a matter of minutes. Do you think that was motivated by a lack of political civility? Right. It was motivated by easy access. A lunatic with a gun. That's right. A lunatic with a gun that shot very quickly. No, look, as I said at the time, you can't control what's in people's heads, but you can control what's in their hands. And I don't think that pro-clutching about political discourse is the answer to all of our problems. Steve Scalise, what's in store for him now? Because we moved on past Gabby Gifford. You know, he was shot in the hip. He's got years of rehabilitation, but we're going to move on. What's in store for him for the next couple of years and his family? Well, already a great tragedy, of course, needless to say. I mean, in Gabby's case, it was blistering because, you know, those of us who are newer and I knew her quite well, her office is directly above mine. We used to often bump into each other as we were walking across the street to vote. We served on the same committees and on the same subcommittees together in Congress, my first term. You know, Gabby's never been the same and never will be the same. I'm going to ask you a rude question. It's not an attack on Gabby Giffords. It's an attack on the system and why it is the way it is. She was shot. She had political capital when she returned to Congress. She used her political capital, as I recall, to convince Republicans to raise the debt ceiling. She got a standing ovation and I remember watching that thinking, LBJ used the Kennedy assassination. He had political capital. He used that to pass the Civil Rights Acts. Some say Kennedy had not been assassinated. Johnson wouldn't have had the political capital to do that. Gabby Giffords had the political capital and she used it to raise the debt ceiling, not speak out on gun control. Why? Gabby started an organization called Citizens for Responsible Solutions. After she quit Congress. Yes, that's entirely dedicated toward gun safety and actually promoting and assisting pro-gun safety candidates. But why could she not do it? That is her issue. But why wasn't it her issue? And again, I don't mean to be disrespectful and I know she represented a district, a pro-gun district in Arizona. That's correct. But why can't a Congressperson have a come-to-Jesus moment while they're in Congress? Why does it have to happen after? It's not really that way. I mean, there are members of Congress now who are outspoken proponents of gun safety. There are people who have taken it upon themselves to make that their issue, if you will. And they exist. They don't get a lot of airtime because that's not the way they do their work. But there are people who are outspoken advocates for gun control and against assault weapons, for instance. And frankly, after the pulse shooting, I was one of them. I mean, I was on national TV a number of times explaining what I just explained to you, which is that it's far easier to control the weapon in people's hands than the ideas that float into their heads. Right. So I think such people exist. Such members of Congress exist. And it is, you know, not exactly a forlaw and cause. I mean, we had a 10-year ban on assault weapons in the United States. It just simply wasn't renewed. So it's not impossible that such a thing would happen. It's harder over time, I think. But unfortunately, the tragedies keep coming. And the political will within the NRA is for an assault weapons ban. It's run like the Politburo, the NRA. Believe me, I think it's worse than that. During one of the recent election cycles, the NRA did not endorse a single Democratic candidate for Congress in the entire state of Florida. We have 27 districts in Florida. You think they could have found somebody they liked? I mean, basically, the NRA is sort of the gun arm of the Republican Party to whip up the public to take extreme positions in favor of the Republican Party. It's an entirely partisan organization at this point. The NRA represents gun manufacturers, not sportsmen. Well, if you look at where their money comes from, that seems to be correct. But, you know, their motivations, whatever they may be, don't really account for the harm that they do. The harm that they do is reflecting the fact that, you know, every year we have some five-figure number of deaths in the United States that are directly attributable to the firing of a firearm. People in Congress know this. Mike Thompson, who's a congressman in California from Northern California, has been making an issue of this for years. He's not the only one. Sometimes it's somebody like Mike who represents a suburban district. Sometimes it's somebody from an urban district. One of the members of Congress from Chicago has been extremely outspoken against assault weapons because of a huge number of gun deaths in Chicago in the last few years. So, we come to these views from a variety of different places, but what we all know is that these lives could be saved. I'm being told on the congressional election in Georgia's 6 that the Republican congressmen are watching it because if John Ossoff wins, it's going to scare all these Republican congressmen, and they're going to turn their back on Trump because the way democracy works is Congresspeople are always looking at for themselves. That's the beauty of the system. And I think if I'm a congressman, especially a Republican congressman, I don't care if I win or lose because if I lose, I'm going to go get a great job over at K Street and become a lobbyist and get even richer. I'll cash out. How many of these Republican congressmen are afraid of losing their seats? Well, the answer to your question is 50. It's around 50. It's funny because if people think politicians never answer questions, I just did. How many of them? I said 50. Not 49. Not 52. The answer is 50. There's a lot of math on today's show. My head is spinning. There's about 50 seats where you can sort of picture in a wave election that the Republican candidate would lose. There's something called the PVI. It's Charlie Cook who's a political consultant, created it, and basically it mixes together the results of the last two presidential elections. It's called the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which is abbreviated as the PVI. And the theory is that if the PVI in your district is heavily Democratic, meaning that twice in a row the Democratic presidential candidate won, or heavily Republican, there's no particular reason why the votes can be different for you. In most cases today, people don't know their congressmen. In fact, in most cases, people only know the vice president is. They'll go look it up. You'll find that that's the case. So if you're talking about the typical district, people tend to vote the party rather than a specific candidate for Congress. And I think that's true even now. Most people meet Ossoff-Handel race who are not voting for Ossoff-Handel. They're voting for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. They're voting for the Trump Party or the Anti-Trump Party, as the case may be. So if you're in a district like Jose Serrano's, where in the last two presidential races the Democratic candidate won by 44 points. That's an actual number, by the way. In Jose Serrano's district, which is a Hispanic district in Manhattan and in the Bronx, the Democratic candidate won by 44 points. You're just not going to lose. The only way you lose is if you don't run. You don't get the nomination. But whoever has the nomination is done. And the same thing is true on the other side. There are districts in Texas and Georgia and Utah and Alabama and Tennessee and Oklahoma where the nomination is what the race is all about and the race is over way before November. Whoever's the Republican nominee is just going to get into Congress the next time. There's just no two ways about it. So there's only about 50 Republican members of Congress who are in districts that the Republican presidential candidates won by less than 10 or they won by less than 10. That's pretty much the sort of mental dividing line. If you're a member of Congress and you won by double digits, you don't think too hard about whether you're going to win next time or not. If you won by better than 55 to 45, you don't think too hard about it. You don't worry too much about it. And the same thing is true on both sides in that regard. We tend to take seats that they have that are less than R plus 5. They tend to take seats that we have when they take any seats of ours that are less than D plus 5. My seat was a D plus 6 seat when I had it. Originally when I ran for Congress, I ran a Republican district in 2008 and I won. I snatched away a seat from them that was an R plus 5 seat, which was a tremendous coup. My district had not had a Democrat in Congress for 34 years when I won it. That's how stable it was as a Republican district, being an R plus 5. That's sort of how it goes. There are 50 Republican members of Congress who are keeping an eye on the polls, raising whatever money they can from lobbyists and rich people and multinational corporations, and working it for their next campaign. I think others pretty much know that it would take an enormous wave election to even make it interesting in their districts, much less put them at risk. So the answer is 50. You still didn't answer my question. It was a great answer and I'm honored that you're on my show, but you didn't answer my question. I'm going to rephrase it, okay? Go ahead. You went to Harvard undergrad. You went to Harvard Law School. You became, I don't know how you made money, but you made money on your own before you turned to Congress because you were interested in the ultimate game, which is I'm being presumptuous here, but I think it's true for somebody like you where you say, all right, I've won at law. I won at academia. I won in business. Now I want to do some good. I'm going to go to Congress. So you like being a congressman. You're a Democrat. Most of... Well, I think I'm pretty good at it. I passed 120 pieces of legislation in four years. Nobody else in Congress did that. You're one of our heroes on this show. Now my reading of Republicans, and this is prejudice, but it's true. They're not well educated. If they are educated, they're mercenaries. This new woman brand who's going to be third in command over at the Justice Department, she went through all the right schools, but she was groomed by the Federalists. She's a tool of the Koch brothers. They're in it for the money. They don't view government as a good thing. They go there really to take a vacation. That's why you become a Republican congressman. That's the beauty of being a Republican congressman. You don't have to do anything because you're supposed to slow the wheels down. If you're a Republican congressman, aren't you still going to toe the line and not be afraid of losing because it doesn't matter if you lose. You're in it for the money. You leave Congress and you go be a lobbyist for Boeing or for city group. It's just another job you're going to get. It's all about the money. Are they really frightened of losing their seat or do they enjoy being in Congress? And if so, why? Why would somebody... Why would you enjoy being a Congressperson if you're a Republican? That's a lot of questions, but I think you can answer it. Why would you want to be a Congressperson? It depends on the person. There are plenty of Republican members of Congress who, in their own view, want to make the world a better place. I'll tell you, there's a libertarian caucus. Congress didn't call themselves that into their libertarian so they can do whatever they want. But it's a defined group that knows who they are. They're not interested in graduating to become lobbyists. They're motivated people who believe that government heavily restricts individual freedom and they want to try to change that. It's a coherent worldview that gives meaning to them and their work in Congress. We have progressives in Congress who, on our side, feel the same way. Not everybody is selling out, even among Republicans. I think it's just not accurate to say that they're all just serving time until they graduate to be lobbyists. And frankly, there's an awful lot of Democrats who do exactly the same thing. It is true that there is a divide in Congress between people who want to be something and people who want to do something. But that's true of both parties. If you are a Republican and you're running for office, especially be a Congressperson, your job is to go to Congress, toe the line, not say anything, don't be a troublemaker, and make sure nothing gets accomplished. Your job is to just do what Paul Ryan tells you to do. That's my understanding of it. You're just a tool. I know there are the people like Rand Paul and you said the libertarians. They're the exceptions to the rule. But for the most part, these 50 Congresspeople, these Republicans who are afraid of losing their seats, they don't have any core principles other than keeping the money coming in. There are many members of Congress who are Republicans and want to do things. The problem is not that they don't want to do things. The problem is they're all bad things. You know, there are Republicans who want to ban abortion to give you one example. Okay? There are Republicans who want to drive this country into enormous debt so that they can eliminate corporate not just cuts, but eliminate corporate income taxes. There are Republicans who want to build a 50-foot wall between the United States and Mexico. Trump's not the only one. There are Republicans who want to deport 12 million people, including all the dreamers. There are Republicans who want to make it virtually impossible for black people to vote because so many of them are Democrats. And so on and so forth down the line. It's not like they don't have a legislative agenda. They do have a legislative agenda, and it's horrifying. Right now, right in our faces is their legislative agenda to make it impossible for people who have existing health conditions to get insurance. That's 43 million people, for God's sake. So, no, it's not that they're simply there to do nothing. You quickly learn that one reason why the Republicans hate government is that they're so bad at it. They're just not very good at legislating. I put my legislative chops against any of them any time. But that doesn't change the fact that they'd like to. It doesn't change the fact that when they do have power in places like Wisconsin, in places like Pennsylvania, in places like Florida, they use it ruthlessly. Kansas. Every year, Kansas, another example, every year the Chamber of Commerce in Florida comes out with a legislative wish list. And every year of the 10 items they put on our legislative wish list, they get either 9 of them or 10 of them every single year. So, yeah, they'd be happy to legislate if they could get their shit together and if they could wish away Senate filibusters and so on and so forth. They're not just like putting in time at all. They have an agenda and it's a bad one. Right. Congressman Alan Grayson represented Florida's ninth congressional district, and please come back as soon as possible. Okay, thanks for the invitation and thanks for putting a good show on the air that is thought-provoking and honest. You're listening to Highlights from the David Feldman show, heard nationwide on Pacifica Radio, or as a podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and now YouTube. Please subscribe to this channel. For more information, go to DavidFeldmanshow.com. Thank you for listening.