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In this special episode of Washington Watch, host Joseph Backholm discusses the changes expected with the second Trump administration compared to the current Biden administration. Topics covered include the shifting policies in the Department of Education, the considerable differences in educational and economic policies, and the newly announced cabinet picks under Trump’s leadership. These changes are set against the backdrop of America’s daunting $36 trillion debt and how bipartisan forces have contributed to it, posing crucial questions regarding federal spending and economic policy.
SPEAKER 10 :
from the heart of our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., bringing compelling interviews, insightful analysis, taking you beyond the headlines and soundbites into conversations with our nation’s leaders and newsmakers, all from a biblical worldview. Sitting in for Tony is today’s host, Joseph Backholm.
SPEAKER 13 :
And welcome to this Wednesday Before Thanksgiving special edition of Washington Watch. I’m Joseph Backholm. I’m a senior fellow for Biblical Worldview here at the Family Research Council. It’s my pleasure to be with you today. Today on the program, there’s a lot of interest in how things will be different in the second Trump administration compared to the Biden administration. Today we’ll talk about the changes we should expect in the Department of Education and in education policy more broadly. Also, the United Nations Climate Change Conference recently concluded, and a lot of money will be changing hands as a result. We’ll tell you who’s getting that money, what it will be used for, and whether it will save the planet or not, coming up later. But now, our top story today. When American voters gave President-elect Donald Trump his decisive victory this month, they made clear they want change in Washington. And with the announcement of his cabinet picks, Trump is making clear that the status quo is not in his plans. That’s a welcome message in a nation that just hit $36 trillion in debt, a figure that is rising by $1 trillion every 100 days.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is time to transform this country because if we don’t do it now, we’re going to lose it. If we don’t constrain spending now, if we don’t set the trajectory of lower debt now, we will not have a dollar, we will not have a strong economy.
SPEAKER 13 :
That was Texas Congressman Chip Roy last week on the House floor. So how might the incoming Trump administration deal with the nation’s fiscal nightmare? Joining me now to discuss this is Paige Hauser, policy director at the Center for Renewing America. She previously served as associate director for domestic policy in the first Trump administration and a special assistant at the Department of Education. in the office of post-secondary education. Paige, welcome to Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, you heard Congressman Roy’s comments there. In your opinion, just how serious is America’s debt problem?
SPEAKER 06 :
I mean, $36 trillion, that’s, that’s more money than I think anybody’s ever heard of. The numbers are staggering. So It could not be more serious, as Congressman Roy articulated there. We are we are on the precipice. We like to say at Center for Renewing America that the hour is eleven fifty nine and time is of the essence. So the massive victory of President Trump on Election Day could not come at a better time.
SPEAKER 13 :
So how would you describe the difference in the economic policy of the upcoming Trump administration, or at least what we expect, compared to what we’ve seen from the Biden administration over the last four years?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I think it’s an important question, and I think it’s one of the huge reasons why President Trump won. You can feel it in your everyday life. You go to the grocery store, things are more expensive than they’ve ever been. Rent is expensive. People are finding it difficult to buy a house, start a family. That is all part and parcel to the Biden economic agenda. We had their Inflation Reduction Act, which did the opposite. It created more inflation. They’ve got more spending than we have ever had historically in the country. And all of that makes everything more expensive for Americans. And You couple the economic policy, which makes everything more expensive, with the lack of border security, and we have an invasion across our southern border with millions upon millions of illegal immigrants coming into the country. That creates job problems. That creates housing problems. It creates strains on our school systems and our health care systems. All of that, the American people see every single day, and they said they’ve had enough, and that’s why I think President Trump won.
SPEAKER 13 :
Now, I think you’re right. I think there’s a discontent with what has been over the last several years. But when it comes to this $36 trillion debt problem we have, this has been created by bipartisan forces. And we know that President Trump was president before, and he wasn’t exactly a slash and cut spending kind of president the first time. Just to go over some of the numbers, in 2017, He had a $665 billion deficit. In 2018, it was a $779 billion deficit. In 2019, it was a $984 billion deficit. Now, that’s all before COVID, and we know that was an unusual situation, which certainly led to additional government spending. In light of this history and even in light of kind of how he campaigned, and he wasn’t campaigning as a guy who’s going to dramatically cut government spending necessarily, what do you expect in light of how he has conducted himself as president in the past? Is he actually going to cut spending?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I think you make a good point calling it a bipartisan problem because everyone knows that the way that spending works for the federal government is Congress passes their appropriations bills. Usually it’s not the 12 annual appropriations bills, but it’s all one big one jumbled to jam together, usually at the end of the year, right before Christmas time. And they force a situation where it’s signed the bill or shut the federal government down. And usually they’ll get signed. I will say that President Trump, when he was in office, put forth a balanced budget every time he. So, you know, the president proposes a budget and then Congress usually disposes of that budget and they pass their own spending bills. And and on we go. Thirty six trillion dollars later. I do think that you will see. more from President Trump of balanced budgets. My boss, Russ Vogt, has been tapped to go back to the Office of Management and Budget. I think he will take with him the same idea that we put forward at CRA, a budget that balanced in 10 years. It cut trillions of dollars in discretionary federal spending. And then I think you will see that. And then I think the pressure is also going to be on Congress, which will be majority Republican, to actually do something about the federal debt and to not just look at it through the lens of what can we afford, what can we not afford, but also the fact that the federal government is woke and weaponized against the American people, that the federal spending is not just bad because we can’t afford it. We’ve never heard of numbers like $36 trillion, but also they are funding things with your taxpayer dollars that are Absolutely against your interests. It is the DEI. It is the gender fluidity ideology that you see in public schools across the country that there is a moral outrage over. And I think that Congress and the president will have no choice but to stop funding that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, and we certainly hope they will and there does seem to be momentum in that direction, but though I don’t know the numbers, I assume the amount of money that would be saved by cutting out CRT and DEI, kind of the ideology from our federal spending is a fraction of a fraction of the $36 trillion problem that we have. Do you think the American people are really willing to accept the consequences of reducing spending in a way that will meaningfully impact that kind of a debt problem that we have? Or do we have this debt because it’s what the American people are currently demanding? Are the politicians willing to tell the people the truth about this situation?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, you say it’s a fraction of a fraction. I would just push back a little bit and say it’s a huge amount of money. I mean, the Federal Department of Education is something like a $70 billion agency right now. The State Department is a $50 billion agency. and they spend that every single year and that begins to add up to the point where you do get $36 trillion. We at the Center for Renewing America put out a budget which would balance over 10 years by just mainly cutting the discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is what we’re saying is primarily woke and weaponized against the American people. It is not going after the Medicare and the Social Security Those so-called entitlement programs. We have a budget that says you can actually balance without touching Medicare and Social Security. You can actually go after and reduce the size of woke and weaponized government. You have to grow the economy. You made the difference between or pointed out the difference between the Biden economy and the Trump economy. You have to grow as well. But you can cut huge amounts of spending. And I do think the American people want that. I, in fact, think that they will demand it when they find out. that their federal taxpayer dollars are funding critical race theory in the schools, social-emotional learning, that they are doing the gender fluidity unicorns in K-12 schools instead of actually teaching them to read and to do math. All of that is outrageous to the American people. And I think, one, as I said before, that’s why President Trump won. But I also think that they will demand that their taxpayer dollars stop funding that.
SPEAKER 1 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 13 :
To that point, Paige, Scott Besant has recently been nominated to be the Treasury Secretary, and he said very recently that he thinks we can grow our way out of the debt problem, which is a way of saying we can grow our economy in such a way that we have so much more revenue that we can pay down that problem. Do you agree? I mean, that’s the optimistic view of this. We’d all like to think, hey, we’re just going going to grow. There’s going to be so much more money that we don’t even have to cut our spending in order to do that. Is that realistic? And is that 10-year budget you referenced that you put together part of that answer?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I think it is part of the answer. I do not think that you can only grow. Growing is essential. It is important. I think there are other sources of revenue. We’ve looked at changes to the tax code that actually increase revenues into the federal treasury. If you, if President Trump does what he has said he wants to do and raises a tariff that will increase revenues into the federal treasury. You have to be able to grow your economy. But no, that is not enough. You must also cut spending. And I think that the president and Congress will have the moral high ground to do that cutting. It is necessary. And that is what the American people demand, especially when they hear that their money is being spent on gay pride parades in Prague and drag shows in Ecuador. That is not something that they think that their money should be spent on. DOJ has a huge responsibility in this. Raiding school boards and parents that show up at school boards and treating them as domestic terrorists, all of that costs money. All of that is being fueled and funded by federal spending. Stop spending that and, yes, grow the economy, and we would get way closer to a balanced federal budget.
SPEAKER 13 :
One of the controversies in Congress in recent years when it comes to spending is the process Congress goes through in order to pass budgets. And these omnibuses have become normal. Instead of considering different packages, different budgets where members of Congress get to debate those provisions and propose amendments in a way to perhaps, that would perhaps lead to greater efficiency, everything is just put is put together in one giant bill under the pressure of, is the government going to shut down? And so everybody feels an obligation to, to pass it without real deliberation of the details. Do you think that’s something that’s going to change in the next two years when Republicans are in control of the White House and both houses of Congress?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. We euphemistically call them Christmas tree bells because they usually show up at the end of the year. They are not very nice, though. They are loaded with all kinds of bad spending that, of course, if anybody knew or if it was broadcast what was in the bills, they would never pass. And as you say, they don’t read them anyways, and they just go on business as usual. I think there will be enormous pressure to stop doing that. Congressman Roy at the beginning of the segment there, they cannot keep doing this and they do not have the excuse anymore of saying, oh, well, we’re we’re in divided government. We just have to do this or else the federal government will shut down. No, you have a Republican controlled. House, a Republican-controlled Senate, and you will have the presidency. We do have a spending fight coming up at the end of this year before all of that change takes place. There will be pressure to do a Christmas tree, but I think that that can be resisted knowing that if they just do a short-term funding bill.
SPEAKER 13 :
We are up against the deadline. I’m sorry to cut you off, but thank you so much for joining me.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 13 :
When we return, we’re going to talk about some of the cuts that might be able to happen in the Department of Education. Stay with us.
SPEAKER 04 :
The throne of Jesus Christ is unchallenged. His name was never on the ballot to begin with, and it’s never going to be on the ballot. He’s the King of Kings, and He’s the Lord of Lords, and nothing’s going to change that. And so our mission stays the same, preach the gospel, make disciples, get ready for heaven. In the meantime, that we’re to advance the concerns of the kingdom of God here on earth.
SPEAKER 05 :
America has entered a critical and vulnerable period from now until January the 20th. Join Family Research Council for Operation Prayer Shield, a 10-week prayer initiative for our nation. From now until January 20th, our country faces global challenges, a transition of leadership, and a lame duck session of Congress. This season calls for heightened spiritual vigilance, discernment, and prayer. Text the word SHIELD to 67742 to join us. You’ll have access to prayer points, scripture, prayer calls. Text SHIELD to 67742. Unite with us and pray for our nation.
SPEAKER 17 :
Let’s not be discouraged. Don’t lose heart. Don’t lose the faith. Stand now strong because the Lord has given us the great privilege of living in a time when our choices matter, when our lives matter, when our courage matters. So let’s stand together and save this great country. God bless the United States of America.
SPEAKER 14 :
The American Republic has a freedom like no other. It has roots in the scriptures far more than any other heritage. And if we as followers of Jesus and conservatives don’t defend it, who will?
SPEAKER 01 :
Neutrality is not an option. There are many Christians who believe that if we just keep our heads down, if we just don’t say the wrong thing, that somehow we will come out of this unscathed. You’re naive if you think that, because what they want from us is not our silence. What they want from us is our submission.
SPEAKER 16 :
Part of the dilemma of Christianity in our generation is that we’ve relied a little too much on human wisdom and human reasoning, human strength, human resource. And we’ve relied too little on the power of God and God’s ability to open doors that we can’t open and do things that we couldn’t even hope to begin to do.
SPEAKER 07 :
This may not be an easy task. But we are living in a moment of challenge, but also a great opportunity. And we know always that we are not alone, that his spirit empowers us and protects us, and that he can do the unimaginable. Dobbs, after all, was never supposed to happen.
SPEAKER 05 :
Father, we thank you. You have entrusted us with this moment in history, and I pray that we would be found faithful, and that as a result of our faithfulness to you, that thousands, millions would come into the kingdom as they would experience the forgiveness of sin and the new life that is found only in Jesus Christ. Amen.
SPEAKER 13 :
Welcome back to Washington Watch. I’m Joseph Backholm sitting in for Tony today. President-elect Donald Trump will have much to course correct when he returns to office on January 20th. And one of the top priorities will be to put a stop to the woke DEI radical LGBT indoctrination that the Biden-Harris administration has been pushing on America’s kids. Of course, the left is not happy with the reforms that the Trump administration is expected to bring to Washington.
SPEAKER 11 :
Trump, it seems to me, with all of his choices, it seems to me like he really is in the burning down mode. Let’s just destroy all these organizations and then start over again. Something like that’s going on in his little brain.
SPEAKER 13 :
That was America’s favorite talk show host, Joy Behar, on ABC’s The View last week. What will be different in the Trump Department of Education in January? Will schools return to prioritizing math and science over pronouns and Pride Month? Here with me now to unpack all of it is Meg Kilgannon. She’s a senior fellow for education studies at FRC. She previously served in the U.S. Department of Education as director of the Office of Faith and Opportunity Initiatives during the first Trump administration. She joins me in studio. Meg, good to see you. It’s good to see you, Joseph. So to start, what would you say are the primary Biden administration education policies that need some adjustment?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I obviously the the push for gender identity in all corners of our lives, the Title IX rule was just egregious. That obviously needs to go. But they also brought back they resuscitated some Obama era policies that have been course corrected. in the first Trump term in terms of racially based disciplinary procedures or the lack thereof. The fiasco with the federal student aid form that they revised and essentially broke. And then just the lawless actions related to the student loan forgiveness programs. I mean, it’s a long list, really. We could waste most of the segment just listing out there.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, without going through. Yeah, we don’t want to just read a list for for our time together. But has the Trump administration signaled in any way what their priorities are going to be when it comes to education reform?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I think that you can look at what happened during the DeVos term as a good start. And you can look at what the president has said from the stump as directional. Right. As as goals that may or may not be achievable immediately, but it’s something to work toward. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah. And with reference to the first Trump administration, because that is the context, it’s actually very helpful. There was some discussion about, hey, maybe we’re going to shut down the Department of Education. And Betsy DeVos was certainly a proponent of that, it seemed. But it didn’t happen. So why didn’t it happen? And he’s talking about it again. Why is this time going to be different, or is it?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, Republicans like to blame Jimmy Carter for the Department of Education, President Jimmy Carter for the Department of Education. And, you know, I think that’s reasonable. But it was, in fact, created at his direction, but by an act of Congress. And so we need an act of Congress to shut it down. And we really haven’t had serious bills to shut down the Department of Education to date. there’s there’s a there are the bit the iterations of the bills are getting better right they’re getting more and more teeth in them as Republicans in the Senate are starting to actually think about the fact that we could put maybe do this we did just cease legislation introduced to eliminate the Department of Education I don’t remember who the sponsor was by no I saw the headline right is that a serious bill it’s a better bill it’s a better bill but I don’t think any of this talk is very serious if it doesn’t include Increasing funding for Title I schools and increasing funding for special needs kids. Explain why that matters. Because you need 60 votes to get this done in the Senate. And while Republicans have the majority, we do not have 60 votes. We need to get 60 votes. That means we have to go to incredibly liberal and out of touch senators in the U.S. Senate from deep, deep blue states. to get their agreement on this. And so it’s going to have to come with a little sweetener, we call it in D.C. parlance.
SPEAKER 13 :
Is that realistic?
SPEAKER 09 :
I think it is. I think it is. Because the blue states are poorly run. They need education dollars from the federal government because they’re over-promising and under-delivering in their states as it is. And so I think if you promise them increased funding for certain programs that the left loves… And that, honestly, I mean, I don’t think anybody who voted for President Trump wants poor kids to suffer. And we certainly don’t want special needs kids to not be served in school. Obviously, we do want those things. That’s the whole point of federal government. It should be pretty much the basics of federal government is taking care of the situations that are difficult, that are beyond a state or a locality’s need, right? So… That, I think, could get us somewhere on shutting down the Department of Education.
SPEAKER 13 :
You mentioned the 60-vote threshold that is required to get something through the Senate. And that doesn’t seem to have ever been a problem for the Democrats when they have a trifecta in D.C., yet not 60 votes in the Senate. In the past, it seemed that’s always kind of been a hurdle for the Republicans. Is there any part of you that’s afraid that we’re talking this really big game? You still got to get all of Congress involved, including the Senate. They have the 60-vote threshold requirement. Is there any part of you that is concerned that they’re going to be like, gosh, we would love to, we just didn’t have 60 votes in the Senate, so nothing happens?
SPEAKER 09 :
Of course. Of course. That’s highly likely. I mean, we have a lot of experience. What was it Rush used to say? experience wisdom guided by experience or something like that yeah we we know that that is likely to happen because that’s what has happened previously so what we need to do is to while we have a department of education we need to be running it like republicans should run it what does that mean to you That means to me that we’re going to not weaponize the institution. We’re going to run it in a fiscally responsible way. We’re not going to flout constitutional norms in running the student loan program, for example. We’re going to stay within the rules, within the guardrails of common sense and with an understanding of what it is that people expect from the department, which is not much.
SPEAKER 13 :
People don’t expect much, you mean?
SPEAKER 09 :
People shouldn’t because education is the purview of states and localities. And so little of the funding for education comes from the department that it should not wield this level of influence that it wields. That’s part of the problem. It’s a big bully pulpit.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, and the question is really, who should be making the decisions about education? President Trump was very clear, as candidate Trump, that this should be made at the local level. Let’s get the federal government out of that process. Stay with us when you come back over the break, because when we do come back, Meg will still be here, and we’re going to talk specifically about how do we root out the D-E-I-C-R-T, all the acronyms, out of our education system. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 08 :
All of us are born with the desire to find truth and meaning. Where did I come from? What happens when I die? While our answers to these questions may divide us, we are united in our need for the freedom to answer life’s biggest questions and make life’s biggest decisions for ourselves. That’s why religious freedom matters for everyone. Religious freedom matters because the powerful have long wanted to control those who are less powerful. Religious freedom matters because the freedom of those who are different is often threatened by those who believe different is dangerous. Leah Sharibu, a Christian teenager in Nigeria, remains a captive of Boko Haram for her refusal to renounce her Christian faith. Chinese pastor Wang Yi is serving a nine-year sentence for speaking publicly against the Chinese government. In Pakistan, Asif Pervez is on death row for allegedly sending a blasphemous text message. All of this because people in power decided different is dangerous. at the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council. We promote religious freedom for everyone because the only alternative is religious freedom for no one. We encourage Americans and the American government to engage and advocate for the persecuted, and they do. We work every day to bring good news to the afflicted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. We do it because that’s what Jesus does. We work to give freedom to others because we ourselves have been set free.
SPEAKER 12 :
Welcome back to Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 13 :
I’m Joseph Backholm, sitting in for Tony today. Thanks for tuning in to today’s Washington Watch, and if you’ve just joined us, I’m continuing my conversation with Meg Kilgannon on how President-elect Trump can restore sanity to the Department of Education. Meg is a Senior Fellow for Education Studies at FRC, and she previously served at the U.S. Department of Education as Director of the Office of Faith and opportunity initiatives during the first trump administration now meg picking up on our conversation um how do we specifically there are lots of concerns about the ideology that’s being transmitted through our public education system much of which is very concerning to parents How do we actually stop this stuff? Because it’s nice to say, hey, we want to get CRT out of public schools. We’re going to get DEI out of public schools. But you can’t go like to that spot in the library and grab the DEI or the CRT book and remove it and say, hey, guys, we did it. How is this actually transmitted? And then consequently, how do you solve that?
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Well, I think you’re seeing from the other appointments that the president has made, president elect has made, that they view this as a whole of government problem, which it is. Right. So in terms of for the Department of Education, there’s a lot you can do with financial incentives and disincentives for having diversity, equity, and inclusion staff on college campuses, for example. There are ways to use the Office of Civil Rights that incentivizes people in order to avoid investigations for civil rights violations. Because when you have these programs related to DEI and CRT and gender identity, you are infringing on the civil rights of many, many other people in the process of advancing that agenda. So if you use the Office for Civil Rights to start investigations in some big school districts, to let people know that we’re not going to tolerate that behavior, I think that people will conform. Now, that’s not going to change their belief system. It will change behaviors. And so we can’t fool ourselves about what people believe is needed and true, right?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, and that leads to a follow-up question for me because so much of the worldview instruction and the value system instruction and the promotion of gender theory and everything has to do with the sexual revolution. has to do with the individual teacher inside the individual classroom. And for generations now, we’ve been cranking out these little progressives out of our education institutions and putting them in front of eight-year-olds and nine-year-olds and 14-year-olds. How do you make that reform if those teachers are still thoroughly committed to progressivism and they’re still sitting in front of the classroom? I mean, they’re not going to say, here’s the DEI part of the curriculum. They’re not going to put it on the syllabus for the class, but they’re still there with the same mission because that’s what they were trained to do. How do you solve that problem or do you?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I think you can start solving that problem by addressing the problem at the higher ed level. When you get DEI out of the educational institutions that create the teachers, then you have a better prepared teacher. And if we encourage teachers to expect behavior in the classroom, to have disciplinary policies and procedures that are fair, that allow students to learn, and we have teachers who are actually taught How do you teach reading? What is the science of teaching reading? How do you teach mathematics? How do you have a literate and numerate class at the end of your year? That will go a long way toward addressing the problem. But still, you do have this issue of the ideology. So I think that we’re going to see They talk about the border, the idea of self-deportation, people who find it difficult to be here or benefits get cut off and they leave. I think you’re going to see sort of an outward migration from a lot of areas and one that I hope we see, an outward migration of people who… who have a belief system that is in contradiction with what we’re talking about. And then we need people to go into the system, right? This has been a whole part of our effort at Family Research Council is to encourage Christians to engage because we tend to focus on building our own institutions and creating our own school systems, which we need, which we must have, which I support totally. But we also can’t let the public school system be such a drag on the rest of the educational situation. Otherwise, it’s going to end up ruining the schools that we start too.
SPEAKER 13 :
It seems to me a really big kind of long-term problem. I think back to when my wife went through an education program. This is 20-some years ago now, and the words CRT and woke and D, that wasn’t even part of our vernacular, but it was exactly the same stuff. So this has been happening for a very long time. Those students are still teachers. They probably all voted for Harris, right? Trump’s the… He’s now going to be the president, but… Their mission hasn’t really changed. And it’s interesting to think that we can create different incentives from the White House, but we still have a system that is philosophically oriented in one way. There’s a lot of momentum in that direction that is at least decades and maybe generations in development. And so that’s a big… Big problem.
SPEAKER 09 :
It is. It is. But I think we’re going to find that there are people who’ve been holding their tongue and just holding their fire while the really crazy stuff was happening. And we’re going to find that there’s a group of people who are ready to lead now.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, I hope that’s true. And I also think, I think one of the things we learned from the last election is, is that their extreme positions are actually a liability now. So we might see less momentum and less enthusiasm, even on the left, for these ideas now that they realize it’s actually costing them cultural power. Meg, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. And when we come back, we’re gonna talk about another power struggle and this one at the UN. They recently had a little gathering to figure out how to save the planet from climate change. A lot of money is gonna be changing hands. We’ll tell you who’s giving and who’s getting and whether it will save the planet or not when we come back.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello, I’m Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council here in Washington, D.C. Behind me is one of the most recognizable buildings in all the world, the U.S. Capitol. What does it stand for? Well, most people say government. But you know, the Bible talks about four institutions of government. You know what they are? And do we have a republic or a democracy? Well, what do you say? Also, what about this saying separation of church and state? Does that mean Christians shouldn’t be involved in government? Guess what? We address those issues and more in our new God and Government course. I invite you to join us to see what the historical record and the Bible has to say about government. Join us for God and Government.
SPEAKER 13 :
Everything we do begins as an idea. Before there can be acts of courage, there must be the belief that some things are worth sacrificing for. Before there can be marriage, there is the idea that man should not be alone. Before there was freedom, there was the idea that individuals are created equal. It’s true that all ideas have consequences, but we’re less aware that all consequences are the fruit of ideas. Before there was murder, there was hate. Before there was a Holocaust, there was the belief by some people that other people are undesirable. Our beliefs determine our behavior, and our beliefs about life’s biggest questions determine our worldview. Where did I come from? Who decides what is right and wrong? What happens when I die? Our answers to these questions explain why people see the world so differently. Debates about abortion are really disagreements about where life gets its value. Debates over sexuality and gender and marriage are really disagreements about whether the rules are made by us or for us. What we think of as political debates are often much more than that. They’re disagreements about the purpose of our lives and the source of truth. As Christians, our goal must be to think biblically about everything. Our goal is to help you see beyond red and blue, left and right, to see the battle of ideas at the root of it all. Our goal is to equip Christians with a biblical worldview and help them advance and defend the faith in their families, communities, and the public square. Cultural renewal doesn’t begin with campaigns and elections. It begins with individuals turning from lies to truth. But that won’t happen if people can’t recognize a lie and don’t believe truth exists. We want to help you see the spiritual war behind the political war, the truth claims behind the press release, and the forest and the trees. Welcome back to Washington Watch. I’m Joseph, back home, sitting in for Tony today. Diplomats from nearly 200 nations gathered this month for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP29. And on Sunday, the conference concluded with an agreement to funnel, by the year 2035, $300 billion each year to developing countries for, quote, climate action. That’s up from a previous goal of $100 billion annually.
SPEAKER 02 :
It has been a difficult journey, but we’ve delivered a deal. This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity.
SPEAKER 13 :
That was Simon Steele of Grenada, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So what are we to make of this insurance policy for humanity? Joining me now to discuss this is climatologist Dr. David Legates, director of research and education at the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Dr. Legates, welcome to Washington Watch.
SPEAKER 15 :
Nice to be with you, Joseph.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, let’s set the stage a little bit, if you can. Tell us about the summit and who attended.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, it’s attended by almost everybody, governments around the world. You think it’s about climate. They’ve always said it’s about climate. It isn’t. It’s always about wealth redistribution and economics. I mean, a number of years ago, they sort of pulled off the cover. And they said, well, this really isn’t a climate summit. It’s about economics. How do we redistribute the global wealth? And you can see it right now. What we’re going to do is take $300 billion and move it around to poorer countries. I’m not saying they don’t need it, but at the same time, if you’re taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, and a lot of that cut goes to the UN, it’s really not to save the planet from climate change. It’s to redistribute the wealth around the world.
SPEAKER 13 :
So are there or have they determined exactly what the money is going to be spent on? You say it’s just kind of a wealth redistribution scheme. Are they just kind of honest about that amongst themselves or have the paying nations stipulated that this is what it needs to be spent on?
SPEAKER 15 :
Not usually. I mean, usually the money is given and then the UN decides later what we need to spend it on. Sometimes it’s on carbon sequestration. Sometimes it’s on just simply enhancing various people’s bank accounts. It really doesn’t do what the goal intended. And it’s a climate conference. And everybody understands this is what we’re supposed to be doing is fixing the global climate, which, of course, doesn’t need fixing. And the answer is that’s why we’re not fixing it, because it’s not really about climate. It just never was.
SPEAKER 13 :
We hear about things like the Paris Accord, which has to do kind of emissions agreements that we make. How does something like this relate to, connect with something like the Paris Accord, or are they even connected at all?
SPEAKER 15 :
They’re connected. The Paris Accord was an earlier conference of parties, which is what COP stands for. And so everybody gets together and they decide what they need to do and they ask for more money. And usually it’s the United States that kicks in a lot of money and some of the other countries kick in some. And the third world countries, a lot of the other developing nations, which include China and India, get in line and say, well, we would like to have money from this as well. And so there are the benefactors, and we are sort of the losers in all this, but we go along with it. So yeah, the Paris Accords, the Kyoto Protocol, all of those were precursors to what this year’s COP29 is all about.
SPEAKER 13 :
Now you mention nations like India and China saying they want in on the action, so to speak. They want to get some of this money, which is interesting because if you just go by the size of national economies, China should not be one of the recipients because they are, of course, the second largest economy in the world at this point. How do they determine who’s paying and who’s receiving?
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, generally, it’s Europe and the United States pays most into it. Like I said, if this were really about climate, then the two big producers of carbon dioxide are India and China. And I mean, China, for example, is putting in another coal-fired power plant every week. So the question is, why wouldn’t we be working with China to try to reduce this? Because that’s not how this works. It’s under the guise of climate and climate change, but it’s really just simply how do we take the money from existing rich nations, so to speak, and distribute it among poor nations and the United Nations?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, we’ve seen a lot of ways in which the United States has been sending money abroad in this conversation. Does the U.S. object at all? What was our posture to a result that said, essentially, give us a bunch of money?
SPEAKER 15 :
Generally, we’ve gone along with it for the last four years. Whatever we wanted, sure, we can just print more money and it’s not a problem. Somehow they don’t understand what the debt is all about, but we can just send more money overseas. That sounds good. laudable goal. If we take the countries that need money, need development, and give them lots of money, won’t they develop? But in a lot of cases, it gets wasted. It gets taken by the petty dictators that are running the country. They build more monuments to themselves, and the general population doesn’t doesn’t get better, but we’ll just give more money the next time around. Somehow down the road, the climate is going to be fixed. Global warming will be abated. And again, that’s not what this has ever been about. It’s what they all talk about, but it’s not what it’s about.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, we talked earlier about the Paris Accord, which was an Obama administration agreement that the United States got into. President Trump was elected in 2016. He withdrew from the Paris Accord. Of course, President Biden then reaffirmed our commitment to the Paris Accord. We expect President Trump, and this is maybe a question for you, to again pull out of that agreement. Do you expect the Trump administration to also withdraw from the commitments just recently made in COP 29?
SPEAKER 15 :
I hope so, and I hope it’ll be better this time. I served in the Trump administration towards the latter portion, I think I was there, about four months. And the problem was that they didn’t bother to replace a lot of the rank and file. So many of the deep staters were still sitting in political positions, such as chief scientist at NOAA and so forth. And a lot of the political appointees did not have the goal of the administration in mind. And so when I was there, you were fighting the deep state people, you were fighting the political people that either had been holdovers from the Obama administration or were brought up from the deep state to fill in gaps. And they had no interest in furthering anything that the Trump administration wanted to do. And so it became this internal struggle where there were people that wanted to do what the administration wanted to do. And there were people that literally were there to drag their feet so that nothing got done. And so we could move on with the next administration and not lose ground. And like I say, I’m a pessimist generally at heart only because it works two ways. One, if I’m right, I’m prepared. And if I’m wrong, I’m pleasantly surprised. So it’s a win-win situation. But what I’m starting to see, I think they’ve learned from last time that this time it hopefully will be different and that changes will be made and that the administration will move towards a more rational climate policy than the the the situation that we’re currently sitting in now.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, you were in a position to advise the first Trump administration on what a more rational climate policy would be. What would your advice be to the incoming Trump 2.0 administration?
SPEAKER 15 :
One of the things we were working on at the time, and I was only in the White House for nine weeks, so there wasn’t much to do because one of them was Christmas and New Year’s, and by the time you subtract all that out, there wasn’t much time left. But what we were working on was the National Climate Assessment. The National Climate Assessment is like the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it’s produced every five years. And essentially, Betsy Weatherhead had been brought in by the administration to lead that. When I left, she was still in charge. And by three months later, the Biden administration had kicked her out. and brought in their own people and that’s why we got another climate a national climate assessment that is very alarmist uh has a book of poems associated with it all sorts of nonsense like that but hopefully what they’ll do is bring betsy or somebody back like that to create more of a centrist, a more of a balanced viewpoint on climate change. What we will do is look to try to change the endangerment finding. If you’re not familiar with the endangerment finding, it came about from Massachusetts versus EPA in 2007, was written in 2009, has been used for litigation ever since and has never been updated. And I think it grossly needs to be updated and modernized so that it’s much more of a moderate perspective as opposed to the alarmist perspective that it has. It dictates legal issues and legal will for the government going forward. So it really needs to be revised. It’s been 16 years. It needs to be revised. And the third thing is that I was executive director of the US Global Change Research Program. And I was appalled to find that everybody working for that, except for me, was employed by ICF Incorporated. ICF Incorporated started out as the inner city fund, which was Tuskegee Airmen working with some NASA scientists to try to get federal funding. That changed over about four or five years later, and they became an environmentalist group. And they’re very much a leftist environmentalist group, but they run the National Climate Assessment. They run the Annual Report on Climate Change to the Congress. And they run usglobalchange.com, excuse me, globalchange.gov. So the idea is here is a… independent entity that is a think tank, but it’s masquerading as a government agency, writing policy for the government, makes it look like it’s coming from the government, when in fact it’s coming from an outside agency. That kind of thing has to be stopped.
SPEAKER 13 :
Now you mentioned that concerns about climate change are often used as a pretext essentially to redistribute wealth from richer nations to poorer nations. What do you think is the right way to think about this issue of climate change and for governments to respond?
SPEAKER 15 :
There’s two issues associated with it. One, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It’s a life-affirming gas. In fact, one of the things we would expect is with more carbon dioxide that plants would grow better. And indeed, from like 1982 to 2018, satellite records have shown that except in areas where there’s obvious deforestation, desertification, urbanization, or desertification, what we’re really seeing is that the planet is becoming greener. Essentially, temperatures are rising. That has been due in part because we’ve come out of the Little Ice Age, which was a cold period from about the 1650 to about 1850. In that period, we’ve come into a warmer condition. Historically, we’ve seen that civilization has done better under warmer conditions than under colder conditions. Colder conditions kill more people. It’s harder to feed people. Warmer conditions generally are easier to develop in a very hot afternoon. You can just go in out of the sun and work in the morning and night. Cold conditions, there’s almost no way to get around them and no way to work much. So civilization has developed when temperatures have been warmer. And in particular, what we really want to see is the poor do better. And in general, when we have energy from a variety of different sources, including fossil fuels, including nuclear, including wind and solar where appropriate, then we can be able to bring people out of poverty. That is the key that I think that we’re really trying to do. If you look at the early 1800s, about 90% of the population lived below the poverty line. And even though population has grown tremendously since then, the total number of people living below the poverty line has decreased substantially. And that has been due to the Industrial Revolution. That has been due to inexpensive energy. And that is only a good thing. And it’s what Matthew 22 effectively is all about.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, in light of that, are there things that you hope the Trump administration does to change existing Biden administration policy with respect to energy and climate change in perhaps the first hundred days, if not the first day?
SPEAKER 15 :
As I said, one of the things we need is a more appropriate energy supply. We look at all sources should be on the table, all conditions. We look into nuclear, look into other things. We can’t eliminate ourselves from fossil fuels. Otherwise, we’re going to make energy so expensive people can’t use it. If you do, we’re going to send people back to poverty. And that includes here in the United States, as well as in third world nations that we’re supposedly worried about with things like COP 29. So I would hope that we have a much more balanced energy strategy going forward, that climate change, we recognize that climate issues are always gonna be a fundamental problem. We’re going to have hurricanes, we’re going to have tornadoes, floods and droughts. They’re not going to magically go away, But instead of worrying about how do we stop climate change, we worry about how do we take care of people when these things happen and alert them before they happen and make them more resilient. I think that’s a better approach than trying to spend lots of money on climate change, which in effect is not going to change anything in the long run.
SPEAKER 13 :
You obviously care a lot about energy policy because we need energy. I think President Trump shares that. Chris Wright has been nominated to be the new energy secretary. What’s your take on him?
SPEAKER 15 :
I’m very positive with what I see in the energy secretary realm. And like I say, I’m always pessimistic, but in this case, I am hopeful that things will be different. I think the past has shown that the last administration made some mistakes. And I think this time around, I’m hoping those mistakes won’t be made and that we have much better, as I said, energy policy, climate policy, and we have a human focus as opposed to worrying about the environment as being our worldview.
SPEAKER 13 :
No, that is exactly right. I think that is the change in priority that a lot of people are seeing as costs have risen. And President Trump did this well, I think, in his campaign, is he connected so much of the inflation and the frustration about rising costs to the fact that energy prices affect the cost of literally everything we buy. It’s just not plane tickets because they need fuel. It’s every… Every vegetable we buy, every appliance that we buy requires energy, and therefore the cost of energy drives the cost of those up. If we lower the cost of energy, we lower the cost of everything. He seems to want to do that. Hopefully he succeeds. Dr. Legates, thank you so much for being with us today.
SPEAKER 15 :
Thank you, Joseph.
SPEAKER 13 :
And friends, we thank you for joining us on this Wednesday edition of Washington Watch. So much to be thankful for, so pray that God blesses you and your family tomorrow on Thanksgiving. Until then, fear God and nothing else.
SPEAKER 10 :
Washington Watch with Tony Perkins is brought to you by Family Research Council and is entirely listener supported. Portions of the show discussing candidates are brought to you by Family Research Council Action. For more information on anything you heard today or to find out how you can partner with us in our ongoing efforts to promote faith, family, and freedom, visit TonyPerkins.com.
