Senator Marshall: The Democrats are Destroying Our Democracy
Senator Marshall Joins The Vince Show
WaKeeney – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), joined The Vince Show with Vince Coglianese to discuss why the Senate is in recess, the Democrats’ continuing refusal to work with Republicans for the good of the country, and the plan going forward for election integrity.
Click HERE or on the image above for Senator Marshall’s full interview.
On the Democrats’ refusal to fund DHS:
“Well, Vince, I wish I had a great explanation, and I really don’t, and I don’t pretend to have one. All I can tell you is that the Democrats do not want to fund ICE, they don’t want to fund DHS. They want these 10s of millions of people that are in this country illegally; they want to give them a path to citizenship and a path to vote, so we’re just beating our head against the wall. Remember, it was 30 days after they shut down DHS before they were willing to even sit down and talk to us. I think they’ve proven that we overestimated that we could get 10 of them across the aisle to join us in funding DHS or ICE. We’re just at an impasse, so we need to work on a reconciliation bill. It’ll take them two weeks — Leader John Thune, Speaker Johnson, and the White House — to figure out what that reconciliation package looks like. As soon as they get it together, you know, we’ll come back and vote on it.”
On why the Senate is in recess:
“Yeah, Vince, well, no one’s on vacation. You know, I’m in the middle of my 105-county tour, I’m back here seeing and meeting the people of Kansas, we were getting nothing done in Washington. You know what insanity is: doing the same thing over and expecting a different result. When you’re in the minority of the Senate, it gives you the advantage so we tried to drag this out as best we could with them. But when you’re in the minority, you can ask for quorum calls, you can put amendments on the floor, forcing the majority to stick around. So we saw that — we stuck around over a week, and 10 of them checked out. You know, who was the first one on the train out of town? You know it’s Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for the weekend. They don’t need to stick around for the votes, but when you have the majority, you have to stick around. So it punishes the majority, and that’s the way it was set up; the Senate was set up to protect the minority. Remember, we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic, so it protects those who are in the minority, and the Senate, in general, protects small states.”
“Yep. Vince again, I can assure you that at the leadership position, they’re trying to hammer this out. The Democrats have said hell no. They’ve said hell no to voter ID — not one Democrat senator would vote for voter ID, despite 70% of Democrats supporting voter ID. And they will not fund ICE; they’re not going to fund DHS, so they have closed that circuit. Shame on us for thinking for some 40 days that we could get some Democrats to come across the aisle. Now, I do wish the Senate could do a better job of going down two roads at the same time. I wanted a reconciliation bill weeks ago, and to get started on that. But the leadership folks are putting this reconciliation bill together, working hand in hand with the White House. It’ll be a miracle for them to get this together in two weeks to figure out exactly what we’re going to fund. How are we going to put the SAVE Act into a reconciliation bill? So it sounds really easy, but right now, our staffs are working really hard, phone calls as needed. Look, I’m as determined as you are, but it looks easier said than done.”
On voter ID and securing the election:
“Yeah, Vince, I mean you’re spot on. I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver what we cannot do with reconciliation. By reconciliation, I mean we reconciled the budget. So whatever we pass vote, and vote on even, has more to do with budget than with policy. So for instance, just the last reconciliation bill — our Working Family Tax Cuts bill — we weren’t able to outlaw abortion, but we were able to defund Planned Parenthood for a year. So I think we have to use that same type of technique with this reconciliation bill, and it’ll have to be very thoughtful. So what we cannot do; we’re not going to be able to force states to have voter ID or proof of citizenship, but what we can do is use the power of the purse. So right now, 35 states have some type of voter ID, what we can do is give them monies to help them work on their voter rolls. And we can hook them up with technology to look at DHS rolls; who’s on government aid, immigration aid, we can have them look at social security information, we can have them look at the passport information and figure out if the people who are registered to vote in their states are citizens or not. So I think that there is some power of the purse here, every year we give the states about between $15 and $75 million for elections. I’m not sure if we can do this all the way, but in my opinion, if you don’t go back and go through your voter rolls every year, if you don’t have voter ID, then we’re not going to give you any of that money. So I think there’s some things we can nip at the edges, just like we defunded Planned Parenthood.”
“I think so. I think, you know, basically, we can stop funding these blue states. I think the biggest challenge to me is when you send out unsolicited ballots and you don’t have any type of confirmation of is that person dead you sent it to or not? Do they still live in the state? All those types of things as well. So I think we can defund those blue states that have no election integrity. We’ll see. Again, it’s easier said than done. It has to be thoughtful, we have to take it through the ‘Byrd Bath,’ and it’ll take days arguing this in front of the Parliamentarian.”
“Yeah, so Vince I agree with you, but it wasn’t without months of thought about it. I thought about this as much as I thought about what college I was going to go to, what medical school I was going to go to, what type of doctor I was going to be after I finished medical school. And it’s been a process for me, but I’m ready to do it, I’ve come to that same conclusion. But I think there’s only 10 or 12 of us on public record saying we’re ready to end the filibuster. I bet there’s a third of the Senate that’s a hell no, Republican senators, and probably a third that are undecided. And these are thoughtful people, Vince. However much time, with all due respect, that you’ve spent on this, United States senators have spent 10x time debating this, and we have debated it many times. Again, the filibuster protects you when you’re in the minority, and we’re not going to be in the majority all the time, and the Senate itself protects small states. Again, we’re a Republic and not a democracy. And so I guess what I’m saying is I respect where they’re coming from. But I think that election integrity is so important that I’m willing to end the filibuster, especially the silent filibuster, make them go up and hold the floor and talk as long as they want to. So I’m very willing to do that, but again a third of my Republican colleagues are not, and these are very these are thoughtful people. I know we kind of like to trash some of them, but these are very thoughtful people.”
“Yeah, I do. And this is one of my summary thoughts in my head is, I don’t want to die on this sort of principle. Look, I have my values and my sort of principle, but I don’t want to lose the Republic because of it. Right? I live in the real world; I don’t live in an ivory tower. If you would enshrine the filibuster in the Constitution and tell me the Democrats will never take it away, I would probably vote yes on that, but that’s not the world we live in. As you pointed out, there’s no longer this political middle, and we just come to a gridlock, unfortunately. That’s what it feels like to me, is we’ve come to this gridlock for a lot of reasons. It is just a different day than it was in 1917 when they started these filibuster rules.”
On Senate leadership and disagreements among Republicans:
“Yeah, you know, everyone has their different leadership skills Vince, and I would say that John Thune has done an incredible job. I think his leadership is more about listening, publicly. But every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we have lunch together as a Republican Caucus for an hour and a half, and that’s where the real debate occurs without cameras on. And unless somebody is leaking information out of there — and unfortunately, some of my colleagues do that — what is said in there is supposed to stay in there. And then John Barrasso is the Whip — I respect heck out of these people, I think they did as much arm-twisting as you can in the United Senate. Look, these are grown men and women, okay? These are not, you know, some puppets that were sent here. We’re not lemmings like the Democrats — when Chuck Schumer tells his members to jump, they jump — and that’s not who the Republicans are. We believe in our principles, and we’re going to stand up, and that’s why you love us, that’s why you love our party, that we can debate this and we can disagree. But it’s been a long time since I’ve been this part of a close team, that we are fighting together. So I think the SAVE Act is a great example. I think we have 50, maybe 51, votes of Republicans who would vote for the SAVE Act. But if we were to talk about but ending the filibuster, we lose 10, 20, it’s not even close. If it was two or three people would be much easier, but I think a third of the Republican senators are against ending the filibuster, and a third are undecided. These are grown-up people.”
“I’m just going to say, Vince, that’s a fool’s errand. I spent weekends doing AI and doing more models on how this would work out, and we always lose. When you’re in the minority, you can sabotage this. And that was my point is that the the minority can bring up amendments, and then Republicans have to produce a majority to go in there and block their silly amendments. They would give us amendments on so many silly things, and some of them would pass, right? Some of their silly amendments — and I call them silly but they’re poison pills and then would kill the bill. They could ask for a quorum call as well, and we would have to get up 10 times in the middle of the night. So we would be anchored here, it would go on for months, very time they bring up a new amendment, then each one of them gets two more speeches as well. I’m disappointed that it was presented as an easy task, but I think there’s a 99% chance that we lose that at the end of the game. And that’s my opinion, I spent hours on this trying to figure out, you know, how does it really end up? We end up losing it 99 times out of 100 if not 100 times out of 100.”
On what is ahead for Republicans:
“I hear your desperation that we’re losing our republic and I share that 110%. And I think it’s great that you can challenge me, and just like you’re challenging me, these are the same type of discussions that we have at lunchtime in the United States Senate as well, so those same conversations are happening. Look, I think we are forced to do reconciliation, as soon as we’d passed the Working Family Tax Cuts, I was ready to go ahead and work on reconciliation then. I’ve come to the conclusion that Democrats hate Donald Trump so much, if he brought a cure for cancer to the Senate floor, they would vote against it. And that’s just the political reality that we live in right now. I still think there’s some moral issues and value issues going on back home as well. And people say, you know, what can you do to help me? Look we need people with traditional American values of faith and family, community, hard work, running for the school board and all those local offices as well. So I think there’s things that we need to do back home to shore up our families. But you’re absolutely right. I’ve never seen it — it probably goes back to the Civil War when you had two parties so distantly split. One more thing, in this day and age what I see is the far right and the far left running these political parties, it’s the tail wagging the dog. These vocal minorities control the narrative, they control the fundraising, and they control the news cycle as well, and the legacy media just beats the hell out of all of us. So if you’re a moderate — and I can use word moderate — if you’re a sensible Democrat, and you want to vote for voter ID or funding ICE, I mean, you will be torn to pieces and by your own party. And it is much more difficult than I think folks back home realize what it’s like to get torn up by your own party.
“Yeah Vince, thank you for the conversation and thanks for letting me, you know, adequately respond. And we’re in this together — that’s all I can tell you and our listeners — we’re the patriots of today, we have to save this democracy, this republic, and I’m just out here battling every day with you. So thanks so much for your help.”
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Contact: Payton Fuller
