WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.720 Joining us now is a wonderful man and a fighter for America, one of the good guys in DC, Senator 00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:09.680 Eric Schmidt from the great state of Missouri. 00:00:09.680 --> 00:00:10.680 Senator, welcome to the program. 00:00:10.680 --> 00:00:12.360 Hey, it's good to be with you. 00:00:12.360 --> 00:00:17.120 By the way, at my desk here at home, I just happened to have a pocket constitution at 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:18.120 my desk. 00:00:18.120 --> 00:00:20.560 Now, I don't think it's from Hillsdale, but I'm glad they're doing that. 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:23.720 Well, Senator, let's start with that. 00:00:23.720 --> 00:00:28.080 In Congress in general, wouldn't it be nice if most senators and members of Congress 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:29.960 would be carrying around a pocket constitution? 00:00:29.960 --> 00:00:32.680 That would definitely focus the body, wouldn't it? 00:00:32.680 --> 00:00:33.680 It would. 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:40.120 And also this like civics class that we should all revisit, which is the state created the 00:00:40.120 --> 00:00:44.520 federal government and agreed that they should have limited powers, right? 00:00:44.520 --> 00:00:48.760 So when you get to DC, it's like everybody wants to solve every problem with expanded 00:00:48.760 --> 00:00:49.760 authority. 00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:51.600 And that's just not the design of the founders. 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:55.000 I think that is the most important lesson because it's meant to protect liberty, 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:56.000 right? 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:57.000 You spread out power. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:58.240 You diffuse it. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:00.920 And the purpose of all of that is to protect individual liberty. 00:01:00.920 --> 00:01:05.800 I think, yeah, people in DC should take note. 00:01:05.800 --> 00:01:06.800 Revisit that. 00:01:06.800 --> 00:01:10.920 And one in particular, now that we're on this topic, Senator, is I would love to see 00:01:10.920 --> 00:01:16.400 the Republican House, Republican Senate revisit how we veered off course where the administrative 00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:19.960 state is able to author laws without consent of Congress. 00:01:19.960 --> 00:01:23.240 I know this is something that you've really been passionate about when you were previously 00:01:23.240 --> 00:01:24.960 Attorney General and also in the Senate. 00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:31.200 But we're talking about anywhere between 80,000 to 100,000 laws and regulations that have 00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:36.560 basically been authored and implemented without Article 1 consent. 00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:39.240 Basically, it was just this fourth branch. 00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:44.360 Is that something you'd like to see the U.S. Senate try to take up to try to rebalance 00:01:44.360 --> 00:01:46.520 the weight that we have on the administrative state? 00:01:46.520 --> 00:01:47.520 Yeah. 00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:51.560 In fact, when I gave my first floor speech or maiden speech in the Senate, the two 00:01:51.560 --> 00:01:56.680 topics I identified as the biggest threat to our Republic is the suppression of free 00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:59.960 speech and the growth of the administrative state. 00:01:59.960 --> 00:02:04.880 And I think that the administrative state, it's just as antithetical to the design 00:02:04.880 --> 00:02:07.920 of the founders that we're talking about the Constitution had in mind because the 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:11.920 whole idea of our country is that we could self-govern, right? 00:02:11.920 --> 00:02:14.160 And this was an anomaly in world history. 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:18.760 It still is, for the most part, in the world today, that the people are the sovereign, 00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:23.640 and the people grant this authority to their elected representatives to go do certain things, 00:02:23.640 --> 00:02:26.240 and they can send them home or they can send them back. 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:28.640 But ultimately, somebody's accountable. 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:32.240 The big problem, Charlie, as you know with the administrative state is nobody's accountable. 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:36.400 You have no idea who the deputy undersecretary of some agency you've never heard of 00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:37.400 is. 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:40.760 And if they could write a guidance letter to destroy your business or your livelihood 00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:45.960 or take away your liberties, or say, for example, OSHA wants to force 100 million 00:02:46.040 --> 00:02:52.080 people to take the shot, or Joe Biden with the stroke of a pen can wipe away a half 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:55.960 of a trillion dollars with a student loan debt, that's what they want. 00:02:55.960 --> 00:02:57.560 Because they want to ingrandize their authority. 00:02:57.560 --> 00:02:59.440 But that's not what they're empowered to do. 00:02:59.440 --> 00:03:04.120 And so I do think there's a couple of things that should happen by way of executive order. 00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:07.760 And I think you're going to see Vivek and Elon Musk take on some of these things 00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:09.800 that can be done from an executive level. 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:12.600 But we do have to have structural reform in Congress. 00:03:12.640 --> 00:03:17.720 Whereas if some bureaucrat wants to ban gas stoves, we should have to vote on that, right? 00:03:17.720 --> 00:03:19.600 And then the people in Missouri can judge me on my vote. 00:03:19.600 --> 00:03:22.680 The people from Idaho can judge somebody from Idaho on their vote. 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:24.560 But right now, there's just no accountability. 00:03:24.560 --> 00:03:29.920 So it really is a fundamental issue about our republic and self-government. 00:03:29.920 --> 00:03:34.400 So I absolutely think there needs to be a focus in some of the things that I'm going to be working on the Senate. 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:39.560 And of course, in my previous life as AG, we brought a lot of lawsuits that were successful. 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:44.040 But we brought that Missouri versus Biden lawsuit that showed these administrative actors 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:47.400 coordinating with some of the biggest companies in the history of the world to suppress speech, 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:49.640 which is really scary, too. 00:03:49.640 --> 00:03:53.440 Without getting too wonky, this is just for my own purposes. 00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:58.240 And the audience can definitely hopefully go deeper on this. 00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:01.880 The Chevron doctrine does not go as far on this topic. 00:04:01.880 --> 00:04:02.720 Is that right? 00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:06.800 That just means that the scope of the regulation cannot be extended. 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:12.520 It doesn't necessarily get down to the root that regulatory agencies cannot author new rules. 00:04:12.520 --> 00:04:14.680 Am I understanding that correctly? 00:04:14.680 --> 00:04:18.440 So I think the best way to describe it is, there are two cases that kind of chipped away. 00:04:18.440 --> 00:04:24.160 There was this, and then the most important one probably is this West Virginia versus EPA case that was decided a few years ago. 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:28.840 So for the audience, Chevron gave outsized authority or deference to these agencies, 00:04:28.840 --> 00:04:35.760 which basically said, hey, kind of trust the experts here and the courts would defer to their opinions in an outsized way. 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:38.400 So that starts to get chipped away over the years. 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:43.320 There's something called the major questions doctrine, which is, hey, if this is a big enough deal, 00:04:43.320 --> 00:04:45.160 maybe Congress should have to weigh in on it. 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:48.000 So that came down a couple of years ago, which was a big step. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:57.240 But in the Loper-Bright case that was decided this past summer, the Supreme Court basically said that the Chevron was wrongly decided. 00:04:57.240 --> 00:05:00.240 OK, so these agencies shouldn't have that much authority. 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:05.320 But what now remains, Charlie, is what are we left with? 00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:14.520 And so actually I'm leading a working group in the Senate working with people like Mike Lee and others so that Congress now reclaims some of this authority, right? 00:05:14.520 --> 00:05:17.160 We should be the ones that have to vote on these things. 00:05:17.160 --> 00:05:22.080 Our legislation should probably be a little bit more prescriptive, so we don't give them this much authority. 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:28.800 The other truth is some people in Congress kind of like it, Charlie, because they can say, hey, I voted for the greatest bill in the world, 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:30.920 but I can't believe what the EPA did, right? 00:05:30.920 --> 00:05:33.800 They can kind of pass the buck and we got to change that dynamic too. 00:05:33.800 --> 00:05:40.120 So there's some work to do, but that's a big opening for us with the Chevron decision being overturned, but we got to do something with it.