Senator Mike Lee on Inflation, the Supreme Court, and the Housing Crisis
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with Chuck Morin and Sam Stone. We have a special and fantastic show for you this week. On the line with us right now, the senior senator from Utah, Mike Lee. Mike was elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th senator, spent his career defending the fundamental liberties of all Americans and advocating for America's founding constitutional principles and done a darn good job of it, Chuck. Yes, he has. Absolutely. He is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust.

competition policy and consumer rights, and on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on public lands, forests, and mining. Pretty relevant in both Florida and Arizona these days. Exactly. Exactly. But relevant for the entire country. What is going on with inflation with the Biden administration right now? They are off the rails. Yes.

Yeah. Let's let Mike, let's talk about inflation. So Joe Biden is trying to blame Putin, Ukraine for inflation. And those of us who say more government spending causes inflation, he tells us we're dumb and we don't understand it. You have proposed some bills on inflation. Could you tell us a little bit about what your bill does to help tame inflation and why Joe Biden's wrong on basic economics?

Yeah. Look, inflation's a problem, and I'm against it. And I'm also against this nonsensical farce that the president's trying to perpetuate.

which is that this is somehow all attributable to Vladimir Putin. There's no question that any time a conflict like this arises, it can have some effect on prices in the United States, but it's at the margins. Look, inflation, even before this conflict in Ukraine started, was already way, way up.

And it's in Utah. It's now at 9.7%. Nationally, the number is 7.9%. Cost is really real. And research from my staff at the Joint Economic Committee shows that Utah families are paying on average over $580 more each month just on stuff they buy.

have to buy already. They were already buying before and will have to buy tomorrow. For so many families. Due to President Biden's spendthrift policies and his disastrous economic management. That's $580 a month more every month just to live. It's not like they're getting, you know, a

$580 worth of education for their child's education fund. And they're not getting those pay raises. And for families that are living paycheck to paycheck, that is absolutely disastrous. Now you're down to deciding what bills to pay every month. No, no, it's exactly right. And then on top of this,

Energy is one of the major drivers of inflation. It's not the only one, but it's a significant one. It gets folded into everything else. Gasoline is more expensive than it's ever been. Oil is more expensive than it's ever been. Getting to work and driving the kids to school is costing more and more. And this isn't a problem that...

that materialized overnight. That's what makes this excuse that it's all Putin's fault so crazy. I mean, Putin is a bad guy. He is making everything in the world worse right now, and he needs to stop or be stopped. But President Biden himself has crippled our energy security over the last year. His actions from shutting down the Keystone Pipeline to issuing a moratorium on energy leases on federal land and then asking, going hat in hand to OPEC countries

asking them to fill up the gaps. These have all systematically stifled production and raised costs. And so oil and gas leases in places like the U.N. Basin in Utah, where there are huge energy reserves, are almost impossible to get under the Biden administration. They keep climbing the gas prices.

are out of their control. It's simply not true. The truth is that regardless of where you live, life's more expensive now than it was a year ago, and Utahns and all Americans deserve better. And they also deserve to not have a Congress that's systematically making it worse by spending trillions of dollars a year more than they have. And that's why I've introduced legislation requiring that such legislation, when we're above $1,000,

3% inflation in any given year, we should require a supermajority spending threshold for any additional spending. How is that being received from the original people you've talked to? By and large, Republicans love it. Democrats, as the party in charge and also the party that fully embraces their desire to spend indefinitely in indefinite sums, are less enthusiastic than Republicans.

But look, it's important to get people focused on these things, Republicans and Democrats. Because truthfully, even though both parties have contributed to the mess, and even though Democrats do so more wholeheartedly and unapologetically, we need people in both parties to recognize that there are real costs when Congress spends trillions of dollars a year more than it takes in

That's really just a backdoor invisible tax on poor America. And it's wrong. Yes, Senator. In that vein, we've actually seen just in the last couple of days, the Biden administration come out and say two things that I think are absolutely crazy. One, that there's some effort underway to look at yet another COVID, you know, COVID excuse relief package. But secondly, to come out and say very directly that government spending actually reduces inflation, which is insane.

It's a straight lie, right? Yes, it's a straight lie. And, you know, when President Biden said that at the State of the Union address, I was just a few feet away from him. I had to restrain myself so that I didn't audibly laugh as he said it. For a moment, I almost thought he must be joking.

Because it's like saying, you know, there are wildfires breaking out in our forests, and the answer is we need to have trucks with hoses and tanks full of gasoline that we will then spray onto said fires in order to control them. I mean, this is that kind of logic that we're dealing with. As a kid who grew up on a ranch with a gas tank, I can tell you that doesn't work. No. That's right. No. No.

I'm sure you might have experienced that in one way or another and quickly concluded that's not a good way to put out a fire. Possibly so did part of a barn. We're with Senator Lee, Republican from Utah. So it was announced recently that Saudi Arabia is now considering accepting the U.N.,

instead of dollars for Chinese oil sales. And they're angry over our lack of support with their Yemen civil war. They're mad about the attempt to strike a deal with Iran, which is their blood enemy in a lot of ways. And they're upset about the withdrawal of the U.S. and Afghanistan. How badly is Joe Biden angry

one, affecting our stance in the world, and two, help Americans understand what it means that the U.S. dollar is not the dominant currency in world trade. Yeah. Look,

To whatever degree that happens, to whatever degree the U.S. dollar is debased as the world's reserve currency and is the currency in which large oil transactions, for example, are denominated, it's very bad for our economy. We have all benefited, every one of us who are alive today, for our entire lives, have benefited from the fact that the U.S. dollar is the stock and trade of world economies.

And if that goes away, we will...

see economic times more difficult than we've ever experienced. And I don't think there's any way around that. I don't see any alternative. If all of a sudden the dollar were replaced by the yuan, that would be catastrophic. The fact that there's any hint of that, the fact that Saudi Arabia is talking about doing that with its oil sales, is itself terribly disturbing. And it's also something that they wouldn't do.

If they didn't sense that we were on the ropes, having been put on the ropes by Joe Biden himself, who on his first day of office canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, canceled oil and gas...

leasing programs on federal land where a lot of our energy reserves are found. All these things put us in a position of vulnerability, and none of this would have happened. None of it would have been on the table. Blackboard jailed Biden's mistakes. Absolutely not, Senator. And one of the things I think people don't understand, the Biden administration keeps saying there are 9,700 federal leases already in existence, but a lot of those may not have oil under them. But secondly, they can block a lot of exploration even on those lands that

by refusing people the rights of way and the access points to them, which I understand from folks I know in the oil and gas industry, they are being very aggressive in limiting access even to existing leases.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Both observations are correct, and it's especially important to point out here that the idea that they've got enough because there are a lot of leases already in existence, it doesn't address the issue at all. These are like ships passing in the night. Look, not every lease has oil, and not every lease that has oil produces abundantly and in terms that make its production, the production of oil or gas on that lease,

make economic sense. And so these companies that buy the leases don't just buy them willy-nilly, and they have no interest in buying a lease that they deem not productive. But they don't know until after they buy the lease, in many circumstances, whether to what extent it's going to pan out.

So this was one of the most tone-deaf statements I've ever heard about the president. Almost as bad as his statement of the State of the Union to the effect that, you know, companies worried about costs should just cut costs, or people worried about the price of oil should just buy an electric car. This one was comparably tone-deaf to those statements, maybe even worse.

It really is the equivalent of saying, "Let them eat cake." It shows that he has utterly no clue of how this industry works and how the American economy depends on the availability of affordable, clean oil and gas.

Yeah, if we could run this country on gaslight, I think we'd be doing really well right now. Exactly. Exactly. We would. You could harness that coming out of Joe Biden. Man, we could power the whole world in perpetuity. We're with Senator Michael Lee, a Republican from Utah, the senior senator from Utah, who also serves on the Judiciary Committee. So next week's a big week. You begin the consideration of President Biden's Supreme Court nominee. How will Republicans...

do this differently than the slash and burn tactics of the Schumer Democrats in the Senate. I'm hoping we show a lot more class than they ever did. Yeah. And I'm so glad you asked that question, Chuck, because.

This is an important differentiator. First of all, I sit on the Judiciary Committee, and I can assure you right up front we're going to be thorough. We're going to read everything we can get our hands on in terms of our prior written opinions, our scholarship. We're going to learn everything we can about her, and I'm already doing my homework and have been for weeks on this, and we'll continue doing this right up until this process has come to its natural conclusion.

But one thing that you cannot expect, because one thing that you will not see, because you've never seen it, and we're not about to change course, you will not see the politics of personal destruction being brought to bear by Republican senators against a Democratic Supreme Court nominee.

Now that is not something that they can claim equally on the other side. In fact, they can't claim it to any degree, because we've seen it over and over and over again. We saw it with Robert Bork, and we saw it with Clarence Thomas, and with Sam Alito, and with Brett Kavanaugh, and with Amy Coney Barrett. They tried to do it with Neil Gorsuch. Didn't succeed to quite the extent they had hoped, but they've tried to do it with basically every Republican nominee that we've seen in the last generation.

What you have never seen. You can't find a single example in U.S. history where Republicans have done that to a Democratic SCOTUS nominee. Absolutely not. But it isn't just the nominees. That's actually kind of their tactic politically in everything right now. I think because they are...

Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Morin and Sam Stone. On the line with us right now, the senior senator from Utah, Mike Lee. Let me ask you this question about the Supreme Court nominee. So whoever Biden puts up is not going to fit what all of us here today believe ideologically.

Are you of the mindset, though, if his nominee comes through with a clean personal record and so forth, that, you know, to the victors go the spoils and court nominees? I know that's been a Lindsey Graham position in the past. It was a McCain one in many ways. Do you believe in that or just say, no, I'm I'm.

Adam, I'm only opposed to her ideology and philosophy of the Constitution. I'm a no if I disagree with that. Or do you feel like Joe Biden won? He gets this pick. We're not going to make this thing a charade. Well, he may get this pick. He did, in fact, win it. And he does, in fact, control a majority sort of in the Senate, meaning it's a 50-50 split Senate. But they've got the tie-breaking vote with the vice president.

And so in my mind, those are two analytically distinct questions. Whether he will get the nominee through is one, and another is whether I will vote for that nominee. And those are different questions to be decided according to different standards. It's never been my standard to say, look, as long as there are no known pathologies, as long as the person has the academic and professional knowledge

intellectual wherewithal to do the job, then I will vote for that person. That's never been the standard I've adhered to. Some of my colleagues are more inclined to go in that direction. That's not me. To me, judicial philosophy matters.

Because as part of being qualified, he's having a judicial philosophy that's compatible with the powers vested in a Supreme Court justice under Article 3 of the Constitution. That's what I'm looking for. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. But if you're Biden, where do you find a nominee who isn't simply – I mean, you look at Democrat judges across this country are making decisions at every level based on the politics of the moment. Well, it seems like on the Supreme Court – Yeah, well, Sam, he said it wasn't politically motivated.

He wasn't politically motivated. He wasn't going to be guided by politics. He outlined other criteria that he would follow, and he followed those. I just know, looking at the Supreme Court rulings the last five years, if I was to go to take a betting app,

that the only open-minded people on the Supreme Court are the ones that are appointed by Republican presidents. It's never the Democrats. I could bet my house each time how the Democrats are basically on any sort of cultural or wedge issue, or the case may be how they're going to vote. I can't say that about three or four of the Republicans on it because, oh my goodness, they're open-minded and take lots of things under consideration, it seems like.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right, Chuck. And, you know, it's important to remember most of the cases that the American public generally isn't presented with this information because it's not most journalists don't find it interesting or helpful to report on. But most of the cases decided by the Supreme Court, in fact, the vast majority of cases decided by the Supreme Court,

are not five to four or six to three. They don't necessarily break down along party lines of the appointing president. In fact, the most common configuration

for a Supreme Court ruling is for all nine justices to vote together or eight to one. But between the nine oh, eight to one, seven to rulings, that makes up the overwhelming share of Supreme Court rulings. It's relatively rare when they come down to a five to four configuration or otherwise to a configuration exactly mirroring the partisan affiliation of their appointing president. But

But in those cases, in those cases that are politically charged and that do involve questions of partisan ideology, you're exactly right. You have some crossover from Republicans joining the liberals, meaning Republican nominees joining the liberals. You see almost none in the other direction.

Now, you were a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Alito. Is that correct? Yes. What did you learn about him when you were his clerk? What did you admire about him? He's a fantastic human being and I absolutely think the world of him. I clerked for Justice Alito twice. First, when he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

And then a second time, after he got himself put on the Supreme Court, I joined him for his first full year on the court. What I learned about Justice Alito and what I learned from Justice Alito all relates back to a central grounding principle that he lives by. He lives by the idea that you have to do the work to find the right answer in the law, and that his sole objective is

as a jurist is to figure out what the law requires to achieve that correct result. That doesn't mean everybody's always going to agree on what the correct answer is, but he knows, he believes that if you do the work,

you can figure out what the right answer is and that you have to find that. Well, that may sound trite. It may sound obvious. It actually is kind of a differentiator. There are plenty of those who believe that more of a cynical view of the court, which is sort of there's no such thing as good or bad, just stuff people do. There's no such thing as a correct or an incorrect ruling. It's just the will of the judge, justice, or justices in question.

He doesn't accept that premise. He accepts the premise that if you really read the law correctly, you can figure out what the right answer is. And that's what I refer to as judicial humility. Judicial humility, properly understood, keeps judges judges and allows legislators to be legislators and doesn't incorrectly cross them.

That's fantastic. So you're a Supreme Court clerk, and you're in the U.S. Senate. What surprised you about the Supreme Court when you were a clerk, and what has surprised you about being a U.S. Senator? You know, I always imagined, before I clerked at the Supreme Court, I imagined that the moment when the justices meet, they meet in what's called a conference. Sometimes it's the day of argument, other times it's a day or two after argument. Okay.

to decide cases, I always assumed that it would be a more prolonged and often contentious deliberation between the nine of them. Understand, there's no reporters present. In fact, there are no staff present, not even a single secretary or a law clerk, just the nine of them. And what I discovered, each time they would meet in their conference, Justice Alito would come back and convene these four law clerks and tell us what had transpired.

I was amazed by how quickly they were able to perform their work and the fact that most of the time, like the overwhelming majority of the time, like 99% of the time, the conversations were neither drawn out nor particularly contentious. They just, they would state how they were going to rule very matter-of-factly and then after the fact, they'd

The chief justice usually would be the one to assign who wrote the opinion. As far as what surprised me most in the Senate, shocked me there that here, when I got here, how many lawmakers are willing to vote for stuff they've never read, they don't understand? Sight unseen, they'll vote for a bill, even a bill that spends trillions of dollars, they'll vote for it. How many pages of legislation a year would you have to read if you read it all? I mean, have you thought about it? How many pages are there?

Okay, so let's take, for example, Chuck, this spending bill that we passed just a few days ago. 2,700 pages long, just that one spending bill. Spent about $1.5 trillion, a little over $1.5 trillion.

Um, it was written in secret by what I refer to affectionately as the law firm, uh, the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi, McCarthy, and then released to members to read, review it for, um, about 36 hours before it was voted on. Do they at least give you a PowerPoint on it? No, no, no PowerPoint. They just sent it out. They sent it out. We received it at 2 AM and, uh,

And, you know, we scrambled to understand it for the next 24 to 36 hours before we had to vote on it. But that sort of thing, which I assumed would be rare because I had heard about it happening, you know, Obamacare passed before I got here. I heard about Nancy Pelosi famously saying, you know, you're going to have to pass it to find out what's in it. I hoped and assumed and fundamentally believed that that was rare, that that was the exception. It's not.

When it comes to big pieces of legislation, it's the rule, not the exception. And it's tragic, and it's got to stop. Breaking Battlegrounds will be right back. Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with Chuck Morin and Sam Stone. We have the senior senator from Utah, Mike Lee. Senator, we have only about four or five minutes left here, but I did want to go to one other bill that you're working on right now because it's such a big issue in Utah, Arizona, and Florida. It's a bill to help alleviate some of the housing shortage.

by leveraging federal lands. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I know that's a huge issue for a lot of people listening right now. Yeah. The bill you're referring to is something I'm working on getting ready to introduce soon called the Houses Act, and it would allow states and municipalities to purchase land

from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, land that's not being otherwise used, and allowing them to do so at a rate that allows for those governments to build housing infrastructure. But let me give you some background on why I'm doing it. You know, over two-thirds of Utah's total land masses are owned by the federal government.

Another significant portion of Utah's land is encompassed by federal land and therefore rendered mostly unusable because there's this patchwork quilt where people have to cross federal land for any kind of order to get there. Sometimes the federal government has made that access very difficult.

And we've also seen that the secrets out of it, that people are flocking to Utah is the best place to raise a family, to start a business and live a free life. And Sam, I'll also note here, Arizona is also a fantastic place to live and happens to be the state where I was born, by the way. But, you know, because of all these factors, housing prices are skyrocketing in Utah, just as I know they are in Arizona as well.

Some cities in Utah are seeing prices increase by more than 8% annually. Just ask any buyer, any builder, any realtor, and they'll all say the same thing, which is we're running out of space and there's insufficient inventory to keep up with demand. We're running out of space for housing. In the case of Utah, because the federal government's occupying way too much land,

And BLM's not putting it to good use. In many cases, not putting it to any use. Oh, keep in mind, when some people hear federal land, they immediately think of, you know, delicate archery. Yosemite. Yosemite. But we're not talking about national parks. We're not even talking about declared wilderness areas. We're talking about the garden variety Bureau of Land Management land that's just sitting fallow, idle. Right.

being put to no good use. And if you're talking about it here in Arizona, it's about 90% of our state land that is controlled by the federal government. Yeah. Yeah. And just think about the economic impact that has on the people of our state.

That means less revenue going into state and local government coffers. That means an inability to fund education systems, your state education system. It means diminished ability to fund everything from police to fire to search and rescue, all because of poverty.

Some pinhead bureaucrat in Washington is saying, no, we can't let this be put to use. And so this bill would change that. The Houses Act requires that these states and local governments allowed to purchase this land for housing and housing infrastructure, use the land for housing and housing infrastructure for at least 15 years after the sale. This can help us provide housing.

for all those people and all the families who want to come to places like Utah and Arizona and allow them to achieve the American dream. Thank you. Today we've been fortunate to have with us Senior Senator from Utah, Mike Lee. He's up for re-election this year. If you want to help out or contribute to his campaign, go to LeeForSenate.com. Senator, before we sign off, one last question. What was the best song from the 80s? Okay, the best song from the 80s,

You know, I'm probably going to have to go with something by U2. I would put it squarely in the category of the Joshua Tree album. Yeah.

No, that's a good choice. That's a good choice. Yeah, I think that works. Folks, thank you. Senator Lee, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Folks, if you want to support Senator Lee, and we recommend you do, go to LeeForSenate.com, join out, help, volunteer, contribute. Senator, thank you so much. We look forward to having you on again soon. Thanks so much, Chuck. Good to talk to you. Good to talk to you. You too. Thank you.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from GoDaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Fantastic interview with Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Thank you again, Senator Lee, for joining us.

In the studio next, and no pressure, Matt. None at all on you here. Matt Grass, he's an Arizona conservative running to represent us in the statehouse. He is a common sense, small government, balanced budget, individual liberty conservative. Makes him my kind of guy. Mine too. Yeah, absolutely. But we want to get into the weeds with this guy because right now he is working on something that is –

I think a mystery to most people. That is the state budget. Matt is the state's top budget chief for the Arizona governor's office of strategic planning and budgeting. He's also served as a school board member who fought valiantly to try to keep our schools open during the COVID pandemic. And he is a faculty associate at ASU and a budget analyst at the Capitol. That means he's a nerd like us.

Welcome to the program, Matt Grass. It's good to be on. Happy Friday. Where do people find you, by the way? You're running for state legislature. Tell us real quick where they can find you, find information on you. Sure. It's mattgrass.com. And, you know, this is the battleground district of Arizona. So almost as important as a U.S. Senate.

seat in Utah. So close to that. More of a battleground than a U.S. Senate seat in Utah. Of course, this program is on the air in Arizona and Florida. So we're covering the big battlegrounds that everyone's fighting over right now.

And you're in maybe the key swing seat if Arizonans are going to retain, Arizona Republicans are going to retain control of our statehouse here. And that's a big deal. It is. It is. And we have a one-seat majority for Republicans in both the House and the Senate. And this is one of a handful of districts approved by the Independent Redistricting Commission that are considered a quote-unquote toss-up.

And Democrats are pouring, Chuck, huge amounts of money into this state from California, from New York. It's not local money. It's not local money. They're pouring millions, literal millions into statehouse races that used to cost $50,000 to $100,000.

I think just in this last cycle, Senator Mesnard faced millions of dollars. It was like 1.3, and he raised like $300,000. Yeah. 1.3 million, $300,000. Most came out of state. It's quite incredible. Your race will be the same way. As you go door-to-door, I see a lot that you go door-to-door. What is the usual question you're being asked? Are there some top three questions or concerns people are expressing here in Arizona? Yeah.

Absolutely. And I actually enjoy this part of the job more than anything else, getting to meet so many people and hear their stories. In fact, just as a little story here, I met a gentleman over near Piestewa Peak, and he said, I've lived in this house for 50 years, and I bought it when I was your age. I'm 33. And he said, I want to give you something.

And he said, I've had this in my closet for 30 years. And I don't think, you know, my kids aren't into it. They're not going to really appreciate it. But I know you will. He goes in, pulls out.

Barry Goldwater for president poster signed by Barry Goldwater. And he said, I want you to have this. Oh, that's fantastic. Oh, that's cool. And I was talking to Barry Goldwater Jr. this week, had lunch with him, and I showed him the picture and he just got a kick out of it. But, you know, what's on the mind of so many, it's inflation, inflation, inflation. I can't afford inflation.

to buy a house, housing affordability, housing access, and then the border. The border is top of mind and public safety backing the blue. And I, you, I've said this before, but you cannot have prosperity without public safety.

And never in the history of the world have you had a prosperous society without a safe society. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so those are those are really top of mind for voters that I'm coming into contact with. Fantastic. It's amazing how fast inflation is.

which is just obviously skyrocketing and really starting to hit people. But it has overcome almost everything else right now when you're out talking to people. Well, I have people literally tell me they manage where they drive to now, even if it's parents or friends.

based on gas prices. I mean, I'm hearing people cutting at least a half a dozen trips they would usually make on a monthly basis just because of gas. What is the increase here in, we had Mike Leon earlier, and he talked about, was it 500 some odd dollars extra for a Utah family? 500 extra, but here it's actually higher. Here it's $1,300. More a year right now. More per year right now. And we've had one of the largest spikes in gas prices here in Arizona recently.

compared to the rest of the country. Inflation here is running over 10%. So Matt, let me ask you this. You're not running for the Senate, so you're not controlling this crazy trillions of dollars they spend like it's just falling out of the sky. If you're in the legislature, what can the Arizona legislature, what can the governor, our next governor do to help control inflation?

It is a big issue, and there are macroeconomic considerations here that span beyond the state. But to me, I think the value proposition for Arizona has always been

Low taxes, light regulation, affordable cost of living. And at that intersection are a couple of different levers that the state can control. I think development has been a big topic. This past weekend, a veteran in his 20s, late 20s, was so distraught. He's like, I served my country and I can't even afford to pay rent in this region.

you know, house that he wasn't happy with. And he was like, I grew up here and I can't even afford to live here.

having given, put my life on the line for my country. And a lot of people in my age bracket, millennials, got waylaid by the Great Recession. And now, as recovery was happening, they're getting hit again with inflation. So I think the state can step up by keeping taxes very low, competitive. I helped craft the largest...

single largest income tax reduction here in the state of Arizona, putting us at a 2.5% flat tax. And thank goodness the ill-advised and out-of-state supported scheme of Proposition 208 that would have taken us from the top 10 in terms of low-cost states to the top 10 in terms of high-tax states.

was struck down as unconstitutional by the court. So taxes low, businesses, having the government get out of the way of allowing businesses to grow and thrive and prosper. And then housing, I really think we have to partner with our local communities and the county to have responsible, reasonable zoning.

Well, and I talk to developers here all the time, home builders, all that sort of thing. COVID has taken a bad problem with zoning, with permitting, with all of these processes at the cities that were taking maybe 18 months to two years to get approvals, have ballooned that up to three years or more. And those costs add up and that goes into the cost of that house that gets built or that apartment unit that gets built. Sure.

And I am kind of at the point where I think the state needs to step in and set deadlines for how long a city or a county can mess around with these things. There's no reason approval shouldn't take – should take more than six months for any of this stuff. Well, what's – I mean, the housing crisis, what's the graph you and I got from our group chat about the housing starts the past five decades and now? Yeah.

I mean, you have a basically an 80 percent drop in the total number of housing units built in the last decade. You know, and so when I posted that, I had a lot of people say, well, why is that reasoning? And there's lots to it. It's a complex problem. So I don't pretend like I was. But the part of it is taking so long to get these permits done right now. COVID obviously played a factor.

lack of skilled labor. But that chart is actually only through 2020. Oh, yeah, that's right. So it doesn't even go into the COVID disaster. Oh, yeah. Matt, let me ask you this. Two questions quickly. So first of all, how is it working with a governor who's basically an accountant? I don't think many states have that. So as you're doing a budget, you probably have a different he has a different perspective since he understands actual numbers. And then two,

Being 33 and a professional, does your experience being a young professional play a role in these budgets and how you view it when you're in the legislature versus somebody who's 60 and 70? And I'm going to just stay off the bat. Someone who's 60 and 70 says they don't have a different perspective. It's just not being introspective, right? So...

Tell me, first of all, let's start with Governor Ducey, who you work for. And how is it doing a budget with a guy that made a living being a CFO for a corporation and is an accountant? He has his eye on the balance sheet all the time. I mean... That's why he loves a rainy day fund. Oh, exactly. He's like, what do you think for a day? I have a rainy day fund. Okay.

Well, he definitely keeps an eye on the balance sheet. And wherever he goes, he always has facts and figures with him in terms of job growth, in terms of our tax competitiveness, revenues year to date. And we're doing really well. Double digits. Double digit revenue growth, right? Sure. Like over 20% year over year, year to date.

Which throws the entire Democrat argument for higher taxes out the window. I mean, Arizona is just being inundated with cash. They are. And when we're creating this, when we're creating the budget framework, he is top of mind that he's looking at the rate of growth in government spending. What's ongoing versus what's one time. He never wants to leave the state in a position of financial peril. Right.

When you think about it, the last several gubernatorial administrations have had to face recessions, alt-fuels. You think of Janet Napolitano inheriting the alt-fuels crisis and coming out of that recession. You had the Great Recession with Governor Brewer taking the reins from Napolitano and having to cut oil.

$3 billion in a matter of months. And then Governor Ducey, when he took over, we were facing a billion dollar deficit. And that first budget, which we had to get through, and it was a painful budget, you know, taking your medicine early,

And, you know, facing the realities that you can't spend more than what you have. You know, that's kind of the business mindset that he brings versus saying, oh, we'll go find the money elsewhere. We'll go take that money and tax people to make ends meet versus cutting spending first.

to balance your budget sheet. It's very refreshing. He always has his mind on that, even if it's not politically popular. It's the right thing to do. I'd imagine that's fairly unique among our 50 governors. Again, I think having his financial background, you just view a budget differently. I think you've got one in Florida who views it a lot the same way, right? I mean, he's really focused on... Yeah, I think probably the difference would be is he's all...

There's some ideological to it. Right. I think his are... There's addition, subtraction. There's interest rates. And he looks at those things probably more closely than other governors. Well, I think the states with governors who act responsibly, like Governor Ducey, like Governor DeSantis, those...

People are moving to these states for a reason. Right. Absolutely. And what's crazy, not crazy, I guess, it's expected one out of four Americans moving in this country today are moving to Arizona. I mean. What is that number again? One out of four are netting migration.

One out of four Americans are moving here to Arizona, which is amazing from revenue growth, our economy's expanding, more jobs, more opportunity. And it also creates challenges related to housing, et cetera. But the ingredients that are bringing people here, not only the five Cs, but I'd say the sixth C, good conservative governance. Yeah.

So quickly here before we go to break, how does your perspective being a 33-year-old professional play into when you look at policies?

Well, some people think that I'm 60 and I say, well, I have a very good skin moisturizing regimen here. But, you know, I look at it, you know, from the perspective of long term. Where do we want to take our state? Where are we going to be 30 years from now? Whether it's educational attainment, whether it is housing. I mean, those are longer term. Water.

These are areas that we have to address now. Now, I will tell you, working with people in their 60s or 70s, they still bring with them the passion and zeal into these budget negotiation. And they have an experience. You know, Sam and I have talked about it. No one should be running for Congress that doesn't own a home. Right.

You should have a mortgage, right? Now, you can't put that in the Constitution, but there are certain experiences that life give us for each chapter. Matt, before we end our radio segment here, give us again how folks get in touch and how they follow you, how they can help you out with your campaign. And then we're going to keep you on for the podcast-only segment after this. Excellent. Well, you can find more information about me at www.mattgress.com. I have my issues up there, donate page.

And email. Perfect. We'll be back on the podcast segment with Matt Grass, Breaking Battlegrounds, back on the air next week. Welcome to the podcast-only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Continuing in studio with us here, Matt Grass, candidate for the State House in Arizona, a fellow nerd, fellow traveler on the road of small digits and big numbers. Matt,

When we went to break, you were talking some of the budget stuff, K-12 education. So, Matt, the last, you know, all you hear about in Arizona is, you know, Red for Ed and all these groups tell us that, you know, we're not investing in education. Can you please tell our audience how much new money the Ducey administration, the Republican legislature have put into K-12 the past four years?

Well, we have put in billions of dollars. And going back to 2015, I would argue we've put over $11 billion cumulatively into K-12 education. Is that new and above? New and above.

And that's why I thought you guys hated teachers. Why are you putting 11 billion into them? We are spending the most ever in state history on K-12 education, even if you adjust for inflation. What percentage of that money that we spend on per student, how much of that actually goes to teacher salaries? Or are we losing it in the like the iCloud? Are we losing it to administrate? I mean, what's going into teachers actual salaries?

You know, that's a good question. And the auditor general has tried to find that out every year. Which would take a school district cooperating with them to get that number, right? It does. It does. And it's about 50. Which doesn't happen. Yeah. 55% of every dollar actually makes it into the classroom. What should it be? If you were governor and you were king for the day and say, you have to spend this percentage, what should the percentage be?

As close to 100% as possible. So at least 70% should go to teacher salaries, right? But the national average is like 62%, right? 60, 62%. I don't have that stat on top of my head. Is that what it is, though? It's about 62%, if I remember right. Let's just say it's 60. Yeah. Or 5% less. Right. I mean, that's insane. And that's hundreds of millions when you add it up, right? Oh, absolutely. And the average classroom is...

is receiving the state aid formula pays three hundred thousand dollars per classroom so if you imagine you're looking at uh... and matt ladner had something to say about this a few years ago have at teacher look at how many pupils are inside the class right and then uh... multiplied out by what the state's paying which i believe is somewhere in eight thousand but uh... you you have uh... at three hundred thousand dollars based on the average class size

And teachers are getting, on average, $60,000 of that. So where's the rest of the $240,000 going? Well, it's worse when you add it all up because the state money is one portion of the money that our brick-and-mortar public schools get, but they also get federal funding. Some of them get a lot of federal funding if they are subject to some of the racial discrimination rules of the past based on busing and some of those things.

And there is local money. They get bonds and overrides. They get property tax revenues from their local area. The total per student is over $14,000. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we have schools in this country. They say, bring us more money. We'll do better.

Well, they never actually say we'll do better. They just say bring us more money because – Yeah, I've never heard the promise we'll do better. No, because you look at there are schools in this country, districts that are spending, entire states now that are spending $25,000 or $30,000 per kid per year.

Well, look at D.C. Right. Not that we're D.C., but are they number one, District of Columbia, in spending per pupil? Yeah, they are. And they're, I mean, they showed yesterday, and folks, you can go find it on Breaking Battlegrounds Twitter. You know, I mean, it's dropped 20, 30 percent reading comprehension for black students, Hispanic, and then white students dropped five or six percent. Yeah. It's pathetic. Yeah.

You know, money is not the end all and be all. Illinois spends twice as much as we do per pupil, and they perform just about as well as we do academically. It is one variable. And you raised a good point that I was thinking about just the state funding portion of it. But when you look at it all in, I mean, we're spending $16 billion a year in federal, local, and state funding.

on Arizona's K-12 education system. Now, there are really good investments that we can make. Prop 123 was a signature accomplishment of the governor that put in $3.5 billion into K-12 education. And for folks who don't know, especially if you're in Florida, Arizona has a state land trust. Right.

That's land that was given to the state by the federal government when Arizona became a state to benefit primarily public education, also a few other things. The governor stepped in when we needed more money for schools and didn't want to raise taxes and said, let's take a little bit more of that money. Opponents of it said, this is going to destroy the land trust. It's going to be out of money in 10 years.

What's happened to it since then, Matt? The land trust is even larger than it has ever been. And the corpus has never been invaded, which was that initial seed money from the federal government. Have you got a mea culpa from any of these folks that said that it's going to rain cats and dogs and destroy America and Arizona as we know it if you use the land trust?

No, no, nothing, nothing. Not a peep. I haven't even heard of seeing editorial on it forever. It's amazing how often these school, you know, red for ad, bring us all the cash to the state house to our schools. It's amazing how often they're wrong about everything.

100% wrong. It's literally they never get it right. I mean, every initiative that we've put on there, I mean, we've increased per pupil spending in Arizona at a faster rate every year uninterrupted than at any point in modern Arizona history. And there's no acknowledgement of that. Why is that? I mean, so last week we had Tom Horn on and I've had quite a few people say, I love the show. I just didn't know these things about school boards or public education.

What can Republicans do better to get these numbers out? Because whenever I tell people how much new money has been put in, and I just use the number three or four billion, it's higher, obviously. They're just astonished by this. And I say, no, that's not just growth because of inflation or population. That's like literally new money.

What can happen? I mean, do you share that message and you go out and say, by the way, this is what we've done? I don't think people know. Well, what happens is there are a couple of different ratings that get passed around. The average teacher pay in Arizona, which all this data lags several years prior. So you don't really know all of the things that they're just saying, well, we're 50th or we're 51st. And when you look at the per pupil metric, for instance, no one wants to say, well, okay,

per pupil spending is down, but we have one of the fastest growing student populations in the country. And some of these higher per pupil spending states have shrinking student populations and they're high tax states. So they're spending the same amount of money on education

They just have fewer students to... So let's do a little math equation here real quick. I got my trusty iPhone calculator out here. Okay, so how many students do we average in class? Chuck, didn't your teacher say you would never have a calculator in your pocket when you needed it? Oh, my teacher just ignored me in math. But nonetheless, we're going to do it. So how many students do we average...

Per classroom in Arizona. Let's use the Arizona Education Association numbers. We'll use those numbers. What do we get? 23 students. So 23 students times how much per pupil? $13,000. $13,000 to $14,000 when you look at that. So that's $299,000 per classroom. Yeah. Let's go and say with benefits and everything, teachers, let's say we say they get $85,000 of it. Okay. So let's just say $85,000.

It says $214,000 left. Matt, where's the $214,000 so parents know? Well, you know, that's a great question. And the Auditor General, and I do want to acknowledge that we have school counselors. No, no, those are all important. I mean, probably counselors is probably as important as anything right now. You have buses. I get that. But let's go, let's do this differently. Okay, so let's take textbooks per classroom. Let's knock off another $10,000.

Yeah. That's probably really high, and that also tells you just how what a scam the textbook industry is, okay? Yep, that's true. So that's $204,000. Right. Let's say each classroom spends $25,000 on transportation.

I just lost the whole thing. Anyway, you see what I'm getting at? At the end of the day, if you and I did this for everything, administrators and everything, you still can't tell me where $100,000 of this money is. Well, you can, and that's one thing that I'm going to focus on in the state legislature. There are bills going through right now that are focused on curriculum transparency, and I think that's really important and needed, and parents need to have a seat at the table when it comes to what their children are learning versus...

Thanks for your feedback. We're going to continue on doing our thing. Correct. But what I really think is so desperately needed is

is financial transparency. And here's how the state funding formula works. We see the number of pupils you have in your classroom of 23, and they have varying characteristics. Some have special needs. Well, the state pays that school, or the state generates in the formula a higher per pupil amount to meet those special needs. So we send all of that money for each classroom and each school to

to the central district office. And I think that's where you find, at least in my school board days, that's where all of the money starts to get moved around and not following the child that generated that per pupil. We should be funding students, not systems. And I've talked to teachers here in Arizona who say the classroom spending figure gets gamed a lot

because you have administrators that they classify as classroom. I think a great campaign piece for you was to do a table. This is how many students per classroom based on the Arizona Education Association. This is how much we're getting per pupil. Okay, where's the money go? And just put the columns and let them guess.

Because they're all going to come up with $100,000, and then they're going to be really mad. Well, I mean, and even if you use the 55% measure of classroom spending, and we go through that math that you just said, $300,000 per classroom, 55% of that's $165,000. A teacher makes...

70, but let's just say the teacher makes 65 or 60,000, but the benefit load includes a little higher than that. You have close to $100,000 that's spent in the classroom, but why are teachers having to pay out of pocket for supplies? Yeah, and that's insane too. I mean, no teacher should ever pay out of supplies. I mean, it seems like, matter of fact, this would be a good idea for a good bill for you that every parent gets a voucher for school supplies.

Say here's $300. Every pupil gets a $300 voucher for school supplies. Whether you're a public school, private school, or home school, you get $300 for school supplies. And then there's no excuse for the teacher to do it because I don't think teachers should be pale of pocket. I want teachers to make good money. And I think teachers need to go moan and groan to their school board and their supervisors and ask them, where the heck's the money? Well-

Yes. And also, but when are we ever going to get a promise of actual result? Right. Well, the demand is always more, more, more, more, more. But the promise is never anything other than mediocrity that we say on that. That would be unfair.

Everybody here, I'm being sarcastic, but that's what you're going to get. Well, I'm proud of our public school systems. And I think something that the AEA and many of the Democrats have done is they've said, we are horrible. We have the worst school systems in the country. I...

And that's why we need to fund them more. And I categorically reject. I think we have some of the best school systems in the country. And we can have a conversation about funding. But to your point, we should be funding for results and outcomes, not just funding for the sake of funding. Here's what they don't understand. If they were truly honest about their budget numbers.

I think most people, if they were truly honest and really did a year, say, go to have these town meetings, say, this is what we're spending on. Then look, they may say we needed a 2% increase or something on it. I mean, who knows? Because we just know they're not being honest. There, there is so much, uh, smoke and mirror, uh,

going on with these budgets. And if you even want to look at a budget, you have to go to the website, click 15 different times, and then you get an Excel spreadsheet with 10 tabs and all of these codes, code 1000, code 2000,

The taxpayer is getting deceived for all intents and purposes. It's called Forrest Gump accounting. I don't know if you know this story, but when Forrest Gump came out and did almost a billion dollars worldwide, and there's people that had a percentage stake in it, the studio said, I'm sorry, we lost money on this. And based on their accounting, they could show they lost money when everybody knew, yeah, that's not true. Right.

And that's what I think it is. I think the Arizona Education Association and their progressive allies, they do for scum accounting.

It is. I feel like that is happening. And, you know, what's interesting is the governor had proposed teacher pay raises. We did that ultimately resulted in the 20 percent by 2020, where we calculated the number of teachers based on the salary information, which was really difficult to get from all the schools. They didn't want to give that up.

But we got all of it and we calculated it and we said, okay, this is how much money you would need to get a 20% pay raise. And the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, nonpartisan committee, validated those numbers and said, yep, this is how much you need.

So we said, all right, we're going to put that into the schools. And how the funding formula works, like I mentioned earlier, goes into this per pupil funding, goes to the school board and the district office, and then they have almost complete discretion on how to spend that money. And do you think the 20% that we funded got to the teachers? It did not. No. No, less than half of it got to them, right? No, no. It's just embarrassing. The auditor general came back and I said, like, they got a 17% raise from

versus a 20% raise. Um, and then the media said, well, you didn't give the 20% raise that you promised. Um,

They don't understand school boards. We're very clear with the footnote. We said, we're giving you this money because we have a teacher retention crisis, a teacher crisis. We have a number of classrooms that need teachers. Let's give them more money. You know, Chuck, we've talked about this before, but at the end of the day, look, the local newspaper here has a half a dozen writers who literally just print the press releases from the Teachers Association,

from AEA, from Red Fred, they basically just put their name on top of press releases. You have the opinion writers there who validate those. I'm putting validation in air quotes, validate those press releases with their opinions. Well, there is a media complex that supports this

And there is no, I mean, there's no one really here fights the other side. And we saw that firsthand when you helped on this tremendously and Sal and I funded responsible budgets for the city of Phoenix to fix a pension problem that the Arizona Republic has

did a fabulous job on reporting. So remember the strategy always was like, well, shoot, they're going to support us on this. Remember, that was my idea. I read, and so I thought, they're going to be honest. They just ignored us. And for folks who don't know, all this did, this ballot measure we were putting up,

was require them to honestly account for their pension debt and publish that information. Nothing else. They were more concerned about I split time between Utah and Arizona than they were the actual game. Yeah, no. I mean, it's insanity. And that's just when I thought, like, you really don't care about what you're saying. No. No.

Well, and if Janet Napolitano had authored the budgets that have resulted in unprecedented amount of money going into K-12 education, they would have a big statue in front of their headquarters to her for just how much courage and bravery she displayed in getting more money into K-12 education. Well, that's better than the Hydra statue they have now. One head is Katie Hobbs, the other is Kate Gallego, the mayor of Phoenix, and there are...

The liberal champion secretary of state is the Camelback Rushmore. Yes. The other thing is school facilities that my opponent on the Democratic side said that she was inspired to run for office because she had originally taught in a classroom and a ceiling tile fell on her head and that we're underfunding. Yeah.

We're underfunding school facilities. I hope she's okay, but it's a little funny. And I'm like, okay, well, when did you teach? And I don't think she's been in a classroom for a number of years. We're spending 5,000% more on school facilities. We recognized the need to spend more on building renewal and on new school construction, and we did. We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year. When did the ceiling fall on her head?

I don't know exactly. I mean, was she wearing a mask? Is she being all right then if she's wearing a mask? Well, that solves everything. No, but look, I worked with the superintendent in Oklahoma. One of the issues we had, one of the challenges we had is schools are actually really terrible at managing their own facilities. They waste extraordinary sums on facilities management because they don't know what they're doing, mostly because the people doing it are teachers, not facility managers. And I don't mean to insult teachers by that, but there's nothing in being a teacher that

that makes you a good facilities manager, which is a very specialized skill for large facilities. Look, there's a lot of things that people aren't good at that they're great at something else. Why we can't be honest about that. It's like when I'm asked all the time, well, does your company do social media? No.

Right. Why? Because I don't know how to do it. You know, I mean, it's just, yeah, I can get on Facebook. Well, look, Sal is about to. You know, it's ridiculous. So, Matt, you've been fantastic. I feel we could talk a long time here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So tell the folks again how they get a hold of you, how they volunteer, how they donate, how they walk with you. Well, it's, you can go to my website, www.mattgress.com, G-R-E-S-S, Matt.

Don't stress. Vote Gress. Love it. Love it. You'll be impressed with Gress. I feel you've thought about this a lot. There's a lot of quiet time at night you've thought about this. You're running for office and driving around other than watching your gas gauge. Right, right. What you're doing. That's right. Yes. Well, so that's the website and you can reach out to us and we're going to be doing walks. This is the battleground for control of the legislature.

So we have to get out there and nothing is more effective than shoe leather. So thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been fantastic. Absolutely. Pleasure having you. The political field is all about reputation. So don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.