Here is the Rusty Humphries interview:

Rusty Humphries: Well, hello and welcome. It is the Rusty Humpries show! Coming up in a little bit Erin Cline will be here from Israel.  What’s happening over there, and also some of his investigative reporting going on in this country.  Also, U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss from Georgia. He has kind of, well, he’s done some stuff that I don’t agree with.  And we will talk with him, one of the reasons I like Senator Chambliss is I can disagree with him and he’ll talk about it.  He has stated, according to some of the records over the weekend, “Times have changed significantly, I care more about my country than I do a 20 year old pledge.” He’s talking about the no new taxes pledge that he signed with Grover Norquist.  That’s coming up…….

SKIP TO CHAMBLISS INTERVIEW

Humphries: Alright, welcome back, it is the Rusty Humphries Show.  He is a Senator from the great state of Georgia, good guy, nice guy, I’ve hung out with him a little bit, but we’re gonna see.  Senator Saxby Chambliss, welcome back to the Rusty Humphries show my friend.  How are you?

CSC: I’m doing well Rusty, I hope you’re doing alright today. 

Humphries: I was until I opened up the paper, I’m seeing stuff you’re saying, Senator, what are you doing?

CSC: Man, the same thing I’ve been saying for 2 years now.  What is it?

Humphries: Do you know what they’re calling you today?

CSC: Yeah

Humphries: You know what they’re calling you?

CSC: There’s no telling.

Humphries: TAXby Chambliss.

CSC: Oh yeah, well, you know Rusty, there’s some people that don’t, either they don’t understand the facts or they don’t take the time  to go in or listen to find exactly what I said.  And seriously, I’ve been saying the same thing for two years.

Humphries: I know, well here, let’s go through it here a little bit.  Now, one of the things that I remember talking about with you before sequestration was, you thought it was going to work, I told you there’s no way because the Democrats don’t play fair, they always lie, cheat and steal, and Republicans can never spend as much, we can never tax as much, there’s no way to negotiate with these guys.  You disagreed, we’re now at the fiscal cliff, I think I can say I told you so, what do you think?

CSC: Well, if you’ll remember, I did say I thought sequestration itself was a formula for failure.  That’s one of the reasons I voted against the creation of that supercommittee.  And, excuse me, that not sequestration, that the formulation of that committee was a recipe for  failure.

Humphries: Right

CSC: Because it did have as a backup sequestration. You know, sequestration, Rusty, is just one of those stupid things that Congress does that everybody thinks is so bad that we’ll never do it.  Well as you say, here we are, three weeks out and we’re getting ready to jump off that cliff unless something dramatic happens, and it is not going to be pretty if it does.  I still think that there’s a way to fix this and I’m very hopeful that Congress has the wherewithal to make some hard and tough votes to make it happen in the right way. 

Humphries: Alright, let me tell you what’s going to happen, are you ready?

CSC: Okay

Humphries: Here’s what’s going to happen.  You and John McCain and Tom Coburn and Lindsey Graham are going to agree to tax increases.  But the deal will be yes, we’ll cut spending, but in like five or six years.  And then we’ll have the tax increases and when it’s time to cut the spending, that will never happen.

CSC: Yeah, no, I can tell you that’s not going to happen, and I can’t speak for Lindsey and John, but first of all I’ve never voted for a tax increase, Rusty you and I have had that conversation, I don’t intend to vote for one.

Humphries: Then why do you hate Grover Norquist so much?

CSC: I don’t, Grover’s my friend!

Humphries: You hate him like you hate the Nazis, come on, be honest!

CSC: Oh no, Im fixing to talk to him as a matter of fact, here in a few minutes.  But you know, Grover and I have a disagreement over this.  You remember when we had the elimination of the ethanol tax credit vote about a year ago?   There was about a three billion dollar annual tax credit given to folks that manufacture ethanol, and we eliminated that at the end of last year.  Well, according to Grover’s pledge, if you voted to eliminate the ethanol tax credit, that’s a violation of his pledge.  I’m one of those that says we had ought to eliminate all tax credits, all tax deductions that are in the current code and lower tax rates, but you’ve got to take part of that money that’s generated by the additional revenue and you’ve got to pay your mortgage.  We owe $16 trillion, soon to be seventeen; we need to use some of that money to pay down our mortgage.  That’s a violation of the pledge and those are the kinds of things that Grover and I have a disagreement on.  We don’t have a disagreement on raising tax rates. 

Humphries: Okay, now getting rid of some of the credits, for example, if the president wanted to get rid of credits on giving money to charity, which I find insane, or getting rid of deductions for getting rid of your mortgage interest, you know people depend on that stuff, regular average, everyday folks, don’t they?

CSC: Well, here’s what I’ve said about that; I think you ought to eliminate all of them Rusty.  But then the ones you want to add back, and those two are very valuable, the three that are the most well thought of would be charitable deduction, home mortgage interest deduction, and health care premium deductions.  But, what I said was that if you add them back, you’ve got to pay for them.  If you eliminate everything, you generate about $1.2 trillion in additional tax revenue, but then, when you start adding those back, you take away from the ability to lower tax rates even lower than what you can do with whatever money is leftover, and I just think people ought to understand, if you’re going to have a mortgage interest deduction, okay, here’s what it costs. 

Humphries: How about all the damn spending, Senator? That’s where the problem is, not that we don’t have enough money coming in, its you guys are spending too much

CSC: And there has been no bigger advocate for reduction in spending than me, that’s been a part of our proposal from day one, that you reduce spending, you reform entitlements, and you reform the tax code.  And the reforming of the tax code’s what we just talked about.  I’m not going to agree to anything, Rusty, on this fiscal cliff that doesn’t really go after entitlement programs.  That’s spending that’s just totally out of control.  And they’re valuable programs that need to be saved and protected.  But the way we’re going now, we’re spending into oblivion and it won’t be long before every single dime of tax money that comes in will be used to fund social security, medicare, and mediacaid and we’ll be borrowing the other money that we need to run the government and that’s wrong. 

Humphries: Well Obamacare, when that kicks in, I mean, forget about it. 

CSC: Yeah I mean, that doesn’t even include that kicking in, when that does, I mean, we’re headed toward Greece even faster when Obamacare kicks in.  You’re exactly right.

Humpries: One of the things I think that Republicans have made a mistake on is we have allowed the Democrats to continue to spend money, which is allowing them to buy votes.  Would you disagree with that? Because what we have to do is right now, I think it’s spending cuts and entitlement reform immediately because this thing over the past, well, we’ll do it in ten years, it never happens, they run up the deficit, and they do it on buying votes. 

CSC: Yeah, well you just, to validate what you just said, just look at where the argument is.  Whether it was the gang of 6, whether it was Bowles-Simpson,  or whether it’s the current debate, it boils down to are Democrats going to agree to reform entitlements, and are Republicans going to agree to revenue increases.  Well, you know, I just said I’d agree to a revenue increase if you reform the tax code right, but it’s a revenue increase, not a tax increase.  But on the other side of that….

Humphries: Is that where people are misunderstanding you, is that what you want to get out there?

CSC: Exactly, oh that’s exactly where I’m being mis[understood], Grover understands it, and like I said, he and I are going to have another conversation about it.  But, on the other side of that, Democrats are totally unwilling to touch Medicare and Social Security.  Well, guess what? The independent commission says they’re going broke and we’re not going to have money to pay for those programs if we don’t reform them Rusty.  So we’ve been willing to say ‘okay, you guys say we want tax breaks for the rich’ Well, guess what? The rich are the ones that use these tax deductions and tax credits for the most part, and we’re willing to reform that, but you Democrats have got to get on board with huge numbers for reduction of entitlement programs at the same time.  And they’re not willing to do that.

Humphries: “Well, what about those poor people that can’t afford anything, and you want to get rid of those entitlements, is it you hate poor people and we’re just, us evil Republicans, we don’t want poor people to be healthy. 

CSC: No, you know, everybody has a warm place in their heart for folks that cant fend for themselves.  Some of them can fend for themselves, and we need to make sure they have a job out there, that’ll solve a lot of our problems, but I don’t want to give them a cell phone, a free cell phone and let you pay for all of their minutes, but I do want to make sure they’re clothed and fed and whatever. 

Humphries: Well, one of the things is this unemployment stuff.  It sounds good, I want to be able to have it so that if I lost my job, god forbid, you lose your job, there’s a little bit of a safety net, we pay into it, we get some money out.  But what are we at, two, three years now?

CSC; Yeah, and looking after those folks for a temporary amount of time is fair, and we ought to do that.  But we’ve extended it, gee, I don’t know what it is now, 100 weeks, that means somebody can stay on there for 2 years.  And I cannot tell you, Rusty, the number of employers that have told me, ‘I get folks in here looking for a job, I need workers, but when I tell them what I’m going to pay them, which is in excess, obviously, of $7.50 an hour, they laugh at me and say hey, I can draw unemployment, and get food stamps, and do better than that’.  So it’s, this is a real problem that needs to be addressed in a way other than just continuing to extend unemployment benefits. 

Humphries: Because, are we giving too much money for unemployment, is that part of the problem?

CSC: Yeah, I’ll be honest, I don’t even know what the rates are, and that maybe part of the problem.

Humphries: Yeah

CSC: But its tax-free, and you know, they don’t have to pay any tax on that.

Humphries: You know I was at a convenience store yesterday and I was noticing that right next to the energy drinks- ‘EBT cards gladly accepted’

CSC: Yeah

Humphries: For energy drinks, and but there’s an analysis that just came out today by Bright Barton News, found that the number of individuals on food stamps now exceeds the combined population of 24 states and the District of Colombia. How, there’s no way to fix this. 

CSC: Yeah I mean we had reform of our welfare system back in the 90’s when Bill Clinton was president, interestingly enough, it took us three times to pass something that finally could get signed, but at the end of the day we did reform the program. Well guess what? It’s gotten out of control and folks have figured out how to abuse that system now and we really need to overhaul the whole system again.

Humphries: I agree. Um, by the way senator, I just heard that unemployment insurance is not tax free.  I don’t know if you said that on accident, but that’s one of the things that I’m being told.  You know that?

CSC: Well, the reason I say its tax free is that most of the time on unemployment they don’t earn enough to pay taxes.

Humphries: Ah, okay, that makes sense.  Senator Saxby Chambliss here on the Rusty Humphries Show.  So you’re taking a lot of heat across the country, what is it that you want people to understand, what is it that you’re really trying to say, so this is cleared up?

CSC: Well, what I have said all along is I favor tax reform.  I do not favor an increase in tax rates.  I’ve never voted for a tax increase and I don’t intend to.  And my friend Mr. Norquist knows and understands that but a lot of people confuse the fact that I said, you know, you have to look at that pledge and sometimes when you have a disagreement, I simply have a disagreement over the definition of a tax increase.  I believe that we have a mortgage that needs to be paid, if we don’t have a plan to pay it then we’ll owe $20 trillion in another two years if we don’t have something in place to pay it now.

Humphries: Again, I don’t know, I guess one more thing is you said we need to not increase taxes, we need to reform them. What does that mean to you? If it was Senator Chambliss, you have two days to fix everything, what would you do, where would you reform it?

CSC: Well, what I would do is rip out the current code we’ve got and move to a fair tax system, that would solve a lot of our problems right there.

Humphries: Fair tax, not flat tax

CSC: There you go.

Humphries: Okay

CSC:  But the current code, if you eliminate all tax deductions and tax exclusions, you go back and if you add back charitable, mortgage interest deduction and healthcare premium deduction in some modified form or you kept those deductions for the rich, they’re the ones that take advantage of this, if you kept those deductions at either a percent of income, or at a number, a figure, $50,000 or so, you can take that money and you can reduce rates in a very significant way and….

Humphries: Senator, man, when you say rich, they keep saying millionaires and billionaires, but they really mean $200,000 a year.  Who is rich?

CSC: I don’t have an answer for who is rich, but if you take the code right now and you apply it to everybody, then it’s pretty obvious that somebody making $50,000 is not going to have a $50,000 deduction cap. But someone with a $1M income, probably that is going to impact them.

Humphries: Is anyone working on a fair tax, flat tax thing or are we just kicking that can down the road too?

CSC: Well, you’ve got to have a president that really believes that that ought to happen.  And I have been the sponsor of the fair tax every session that I have been in the Senate and I continue to do so, I’ll reintroduce it next year.  But until we get a president in the white house who believes we ought to have a total new tax system, you’re not going to change the current code we’ve got, unfortunately. 

Humphries: Alright, last one- prediction for taxmageddon, the largest tax increase day in the history of the United States, January 1, is that going to happen?

CSC: Well, I hope we don’t kick the can down the road, I think that’s the worst thing that could happen, I’m just hopeful that my colleagues are willing to make the hard and tough votes that are going to be required and they’re not going to be politically popular, Rusty, the votes that are going to have to be made.

Humphries: These guys won’t make those Senator, they can’t even vote in a budget, how are they going to vote in something hard?

CSC: Well, you and I agree as usual, but if folks are willing to do that I think we can solve this problem before the year ends.  Otherwise I’m afraid it might be a short term solution that truly does kick it down the road and we’ll be talking about this next year. 

Humphries: Alright, Senator Saxby Chambliss, thanks very much for being honest and being on the Rusty Humphires show on a day like today, a tough day, I appreciate it. 

CSC: Thanks Rusty, always good to be with you, man.

Humphries: Take care buddy.