The Trump Budget Is A Total Disaster

Congressman Morgan McGarvey on the budget process, caring for veterans, and more

I could try to characterize the state of the President’s fiscal leadership right now, but others say it better:

• The Penn Wharton Budget Model about the President’s budget proposal: “[P]rimary deficits would increase by $5.1 trillion before economic effects and by $4.9 trillion after modest, positive economic effects.”

• Tax Foundation: “Extending the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) would decrease federal tax revenue by $4.5 trillion from 2025 through 2034….Long-run GNP (a measure of American incomes) would only rise by 0.4 percent.”

• Republicans who care about the debt and deficit, according to US News & World Report: “A group of nearly 20 fiscal hawks and ultraconservatives in the House began pushing back hard against the blueprint, saying there were portions of the plan that spend more than cut.”

• The White House: [nothing]

• Representative Thomas Massie (R, My District): “I knew all along they’d trade the cow for magic beans. These beans are like the rest; they don’t sprout.” (Side note: this Into the Woods reference is the most represented I have ever felt)

• Today’s guest, Congressman Morgan McGarvey (D, KY 3rd): “The Trump budget is a total disaster.”

Listen to hear more from another Kentuckian who likes the details, wants to do good work, and, as you’ll hear outside of politics, has a soft spot for family and friends. - Beth

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Episode Resources

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Congressman Morgan McGarvey

• Morgan McGarvey (Congress)

• Photos capture 40 years of a family's life (The Courier Journal)

• An American Family : The Picture Show (NPR)

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:08] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:10] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:12] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. We're delighted to be joined today by Representative Morgan McGarvey from Kentucky's 3rd District. He serves on the Budget Committee. We had lots of questions about that. He's out there thinking about the midterms. We had thoughts on that as well. We had a great conversation with him and you definitely want to stick around for Outside of Politics, because Representative McGarvey has a very unique life experience you're going to want to hear about at the close of the show.

Beth [00:00:37] Before we share that conversation, we do want to remind you, with Mother's Day fast approaching, that if your mom has attended a political protest in the past year, or if she reads New York Times every morning, or if he listens to podcasts, we have a gift guide that will be perfect for you. Check out our exclusive 10th anniversary merchandise, a video pep talk, tickets to our birthday celebration event, gifts as passionate and engaged as your mom is. Find the perfect way to celebrate your mom and get her a treat to get her through in our show notes.

Sarah [00:01:09] As you know, we are celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. We're also celebrating 1,000 episodes at the start of June. It is incredible to think it's been that long and that many shows. We'd love to include your voice in our celebrations. We're collecting listener stories, memories, birthday wishes to feature in special series of episodes this summer. Please check out the links in the show note if you're interested in contributing. Next up, Representative Morgan McGarvey. Congressman, welcome to Pantsuit Politics.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:01:46] Thanks. I am so excited to be here.

Sarah [00:01:48] Well, listen, we like to kick it off with softballs. What's going on with the budget and government funding and are Democrats going to shut down the government?

Beth [00:01:58] Just among us Kentuckians.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:02:01] Let's just start, let's put it on the key and let you hit it.

Sarah [00:02:05] Easy!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:02:06] I'm on the Budget Committee this year, which has been really interesting. It's really fascinating stuff.

Sarah [00:02:10] Is that a kind interpretation- interesting, fascinating?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:02:14] Well, so the Trump budget is a total disaster, and it's been a train wreck. But the learning about the budget process has been really-- I mean, I learned this when I was in the state legislature. So I was there for 10 years. And in my second year, I got on Appropriations and Revenues. When you start to figure out how the budget works, that's when you really start to figure out how the rest of government works. Particularly in the legislative branch, when, yes, we do a lot of stuff, we make a lot laws. There's a lot of great work that goes on. At the end of the day, we spend money, right? That's what the legislature does. We control spending, we control taxation, we control those things. So what's going on with the budget right now? Let's look back and then look forward. They put forward this process called reconciliation, which just by saying the word probably bores a lot of people. But it's just the process just like reconciling your checkbook. If you're like, okay, here's how much is in my checkbook; here's how much after I spent. All reconciliation does is it sets the rules for what will be in the budget.

[00:03:19] But the reason to do reconciliation, once you set those rules and they're there, not only can they not be broken, they can't be filibustered. So this makes this budget that's coming up filibuster proof, which makes all the work that's not going into the budget that much more important. So now we talk about what's in the budget because they've already told us. So like one of the disastrous things (and since there's a bunch of Kentucky people on this particular podcast right now, I'll talk a little about Kentucky, but it's the same all across the country) is the cuts to Medicaid. And so the Republicans for a while have been saying, oh, we're not going to cut Medicaid and Medicare. But now they're actually going to have to put the numbers to the budget. And if you look at the reconciliation bill, which, again, tells you what's going to be there, it says there has to be at least 880 billion dollars in cuts from the Energy and Commerce Committee. Okay. Well, what does the Energy Commerce Committee oversee? Energy, Commerce, Medicaid, and Medicare. And here's just the mass of it. We can argue about whether it's a good or a bad thing to cut these programs, but if you take Medicaid and Medicare out of their budget, push it over to the side, they only oversee about $500 billion in spending. They have to have $880 billion in cuts if you don't include Medicaid and Medicare.

Sarah [00:04:41] Now that math doesn't math.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:04:43] It doesn't math. And I went to law school so I wouldn't have to do math and it's pretty easy to say that 500 billion is less than 880 billion. And so if they zero out the entirety of the rest of the spending they oversee-- which they're not going to do.

Sarah [00:05:00] I was going to say it seems unlikely.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:05:02] They're not going to zero it out. Then they would still have to cut over $300 billion from Medicare or Medicaid. Now, where does that take us? They have said every time they possibly can, "We're not going to cut Medicare. We are not going to get Medicare. We're going to cut Medicare." All right. When asked about Medicaid, they're always more squishy on it. If they actually don't cut Medicare, then the cuts are going to have to come from Medicaid. And for a state like Kentucky, it is just devastating. Nearly 30% of Louisvillians use Medicaid as healthcare; 46% of Kentucky's kids are on Medicaid. We have areas in the state where 50% of people in Kentucky use Medicaid to get their healthcare. I was in state legislature. The entirety of the Kentucky state budget, so everything you spend in a year in the state government in Kentucky, is less than the amount of money we get in federal Medicaid dollars.

Sarah [00:06:06] Wow!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:06:08] So you put forward a 5% cut on Medicaid, where does a state like Kentucky get that money to provide healthcare to kids, to seniors, to students, to people with disabilities? There's a lot of talk about all this going on right now. And we're not looking at behind these cuts, its people, its families. And you don't think about it like what student needs Medicaid? I had a room full of students where I'm sitting right now in my office, we had a room full of students from Kentucky, and they're all studying to be CRNAs, which is certified registered nurse anesthetists. So they're specialized nursing. Well, nearly everybody who does that. They have to already be a nurse. They have to have practical experience before they study for that. And then they can't work while they're in this three-year intensive nursing program to do this. One of the things that the students were telling, me and I wasn't expecting, is they're too old to be on their parents' health insurance. They're not working. They're studying to be nurses, which we're short nurse anesthetists in Kentucky. We already have a shortage of care providers. They get their healthcare through Medicaid while they're in school.

Sarah [00:07:19] Wow!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:07:21] It's just one example of people who are going to be impacted by this. Not to mention I was on the phone with a mom today who's got a 25-year-old son whom he's had four open-heart surgeries. He had a brain bleed his first week after he was born. He's had so many medical complications. He cannot go anywhere else. He cannot live anywhere else. His parents are still working around the clock to help him. And could not do it despite their care, their jobs, their love, without the Medicaid dollars that pay for some of his care. It ranges the entire spectrum of people who would possibly be impacted by this and a significant human cost.

Beth [00:08:04] Congressman, while we're checking in on the numbers, do you not see $800 billion in fraud in the Medicaid program? I mean, that's how I've heard they're going to make this work.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:08:12] Right. That's the thing. Get rid of all the waste, fraud, and abuse. Get rid of it. Nobody wants there to be waste, fraud, abuse, in government because those are dollars that can be used to help people out. But look at Medicaid. Again, I dealt with this on the state level. There are so many people overseeing Medicaid that there isn't $880 billion in waste, fraud and abuse. If there's $890 billion in fraud, we would know that, right? We would know that. That is there are not 880 billionaires living in the United States. This is a massive amount of money. And even now you're seeing the Republicans say we know that. Just this week you saw Don Bacon, who's from a more moderate district, the district that Kamala Harris won in 2024 in Nebraska. And he said, "Okay, I'm not going to take anything over 500 billion in cuts to Medicaid." In that statement, of course, it's implied, if not explicitly stated, there's going to be cuts to Medicaid. Why $500 billion? Where are you going to take that? Who's going be harmed by that?

Sarah [00:09:20] Yeah, how are they going to make it work? Are they going just tell the states, "This is what you're not getting" and the states figure out who to cut? I know I've heard discussions of work requirements, but how's that going to lead to kicking people off the rolls?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:09:33] And I'm hearing rumors of how they're going to do it. You're hearing rumors from other members, from people around here. One would be to put some caps on. One would to reduce the match. Again, now we're starting to talk like boring policy stuff, but...

Sarah [00:09:48] It matters.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:09:50] It matters because like in Kentucky, there's a 70-30 match on Medicaid. The federal government pays 70 percent, Kentucky pays 30 percent. Then there's an 90-10 match on the Affordable Care Act population, the expansion population, people who are now covered by the expansion of Medicaid. If you reduce that match, again, the states have to make up that money. In a state like Kentucky where the budget is already cash strapped, where state legislatures cannot borrow money, where do you get that money? Or do you? Do you get that? So a state legislature is going to have to come in. Do they have to cut Medicaid? No, I guess technically they don't, but they're going to be cutting from your roads, from your bridges, from your infrastructure from your schools, from wherever else to get that and put it in Medicaid.

Sarah [00:10:36] And by the way, they have to start doing their disaster management, too. Like they're piling all kinds of stuff on the stage.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:10:42] Out all sorts of things on there. And then or they are going to cut Medicaid as well as probably cutting some of the other services. So it's a really nasty budget that they have put together. Because, look, they're talking about taking away healthcare from people. They're talking about taking food away from our kids, from our seniors, from our veterans. We have a lot of veterans who unfortunately are in a position where they're relying on Medicaid for mental health trauma, or they're relying on SNAP for food. And so that's what's in this budget. It is really a cruel budget. And then I think you have to look at why are they doing it? So why are they doing it. Well, the answer is right there in the bill text and it's right there in the way everybody's talking about it. They are making these cuts to veterans, to seniors, to kids, to basic needs in healthcare so that they can pay for the largest tax giveaway to Donald Trump's billionaire buddies in the history of America. This is a tax cut that is going to take vital basic services away from kids, veterans, seniors, to line the pockets of the absolute wealthiest billionaires in the country. And in doing so, they're also going to add over $2 trillion to the nation's debt. I said I don't ever want to hear a Republican Talk to me about the debt again if they vote for this budget.

Sarah [00:12:15] Well, that's my question. Where are the Freedom Caucus? I know Kentucky's been front and center in a lot of this because of Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, who at least stick by their guns on some of this stuff. Where are the people who are concerned about the deficit, the Chipperoys and all them, where are they at?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:12:35] Boy, they sure claim to be concerned about the debt and the deficit until Donald Trump tells them not to be. And I thought they worked for the American people, not for Donald Trump. And you got to give Massey a little bit of credit, right? I mean, you don't have to believe me. Look at Thomas Massie. Thomas Massie says that this bill is going to add trillions of dollars to the nation's debt. Even if you look at the most rosy economic forecasts for growth, which by the way, keep in mind, the United States last quarter had negative growth. We did not grow in the last quarter.

Sarah [00:13:09] Yeah. First time since Covid.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:13:09] First time since Covid. We lost growth because of Donald Trump's chaotic handling of trade and the economy and his disastrous policies. But even if you take those rosy forecasts that they're providing, you add a minimum of $2 trillion to the debt on this budget.

Beth [00:13:25] My ears perked up when you said that you were hearing rumors about how they're going to do this because you're on the committee. So take us into how this works, like just the nuts and bolts of you are on the budget committee, but in the minority party. What is the information flow like? We hear like conversations are happening. How are they happening? Who's in the room?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:13:46] Yeah. Okay. And we'll take a step back. The budget committee, for our part, has now voted on the reconciliation package. So part of when I talk about the rumors I'm hearing is because now it is actually going out to the appropriations process, to the committees and subcommittees that actually draft those bills. So when I say I'm hearing rumors, I'm not on energy and commerce. Energy and commerce will actually put those numbers into the parameters that were in the budget bill. And I know we're getting like hyper technical now, but--

Sarah [00:14:19] Yeah, everybody knows they're supposed to do those bills and they very rarely do. Are they actually going to get the 12 bills? When was the last time we got all 12 bills.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:14:28] It's been a while. Even under democratic leadership, it's a while since we got 12 bills. But now they have a reconciliation process. If they want to use reconciliation, they have to follow it. That's the thing. It is filibuster proof, but it locks them in to a certain extent. So will they get this done? Will they get it done by September 30th or by the end of the year? There's two deadlines. September 30th is the end of the fiscal year for the federal government. But the Trump tax cuts do not expire until the end of the year, so they could do a continuing resolution September 30th, kind of keep the government open and still work on this big budget and tax package.

Beth [00:15:11] Does that seem like a likely scenario to you?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:15:14] I don't know yet. And I don t know yet because, let's see, Donald Trump got the House to elect Mike Johnson on the first speaker vote. He got through the budget and the reconciliation votes through a House, again, through a lot of people who've said they would never vote for bills that would add this kind of debt and now they've done it. This is the hard part. The academics, the theory is now out of the window. The numbers have to be plugged into the sheet where people can see them. And the rumors can swirl. And how we're finding things out, how we work with our colleagues, that'll go on, but the numbers have to ultimately be put on a piece of paper that people vote on that's available to everyone to then go through. That's going to be the tricky part for them because they're going to have to face these Medicaid cuts. They're going to have face these cuts to basic needs and services and their tax plan. They've showed us what it is.

Sarah [00:16:12] Yeah.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:16:13] A massive tax break; 83% of rich goes to the richest 1% of Americans. We know that's where they are. Are they going to be able to do that? And it's interesting. You asked about rumors, though. I'll tell you one of the best spots to get information still is the House gym in the morning. That is where you go. Members of Congress still get along. We're all leaving our families. We're all coming up here. A lot of us are up here because we really want to do the right thing for the right reasons. You get a lot of information, you still talk a lot, but then I've never seen anybody have as much control over their political party as Donald Trump does right now.

Sarah [00:16:59] Well, what I'm concerned about is all these rules they're passing so that they just keep making it harder and harder and harder. I was reading this morning that they passed a rule that you couldn't-- I don't even remember. It was just like one more layer of you couldn't stop anything he does. You couldn't force a vote. You can't do this. You can't do that. They're just removing their own power in a way I find really concerning.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:17:24] It's concerning. It's pathetic. I'm a legislator and regardless of who the president is, I want to preserve the power of the United States Congress. I love being in the state Senate. I love being in Congress. I love being a legislator. And I think that there's a reason Congress is an Article One, not the presidency. We're the first thing that was thought of in the radical form of government that America represented when we were founded, which is to be a government that gets its power from the people. The consent of the government. A government of, by, and for the people starts in that legislative branch with representative democracy. It's why we have the power to declare war. It is why we the powers of the purse. It‘s why we had the power to have law and policy. And you are watching these Republican line up like lemmings to walk off the cliff and give that power away to a guy like Donald Trump, who has showed he wants that power for himself, his friends, not for us, and to use it in a corrupt and destructive way for the American people.

Beth [00:18:30] That seems like a good transition to tariffs. I am really interested in hearing your worldview about tariffs because a lot of Democrats have said there are instances where it's a good tool. This is not a good tool. I was just listening to Rahm Emanuel talk on Gavin Newsom's podcast about tariffs. I thought he had a more coherent worldview about tariffs than I've heard from a lot people. So I'm wondering where you are. How do you think about them in a vacuum? And then we can talk about the president's chaotic use of them specifically.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:19:12] Yeah, so I like to think about tariffs in a vacuum. It's that tariffs are neither good nor bad. Tariffs are a tool. And so a hammer is neither good or bad. It's a tool. And it's a good tool for putting a nail in a wall. It's bad tool for trying to fix your iPhone. It's an non-existent tool if you just leave it in the drawer. It doesn't do anything. And the point is how you use a tool matters. You can use it to build things, you can use it to be constructive, or you can use it inappropriately in a way that is really destructive. And I think that Donald Trump's use of tariffs, his lack of cohesive strategy, his lack of any strategy at all, the way he uses them to try and be punitive, the way he doesn't think them through, the way he says, "They're tariffs, now they're not. Yes, they are. No, they not. Yes, there are," the uncertainty that he's created in this environment, we've seen the results. The Dow Jones had the worst first 100 days of a presidency since 1932. But keep in mind what was going on in 1932. This is all Donald Trump's self-made error.

Sarah [00:20:25] No, no, no. It's Biden's. You didn't hear? It's Biden's economy still. Don't worry.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:20:29] Right. The economy that had been growing quarter over quarter, and then all of a sudden something happened on January 20th. What was that? It was Donald Trump. Let me lodge a few other things about Donald Trump. Donald Trump always wants people to forget that he was president for four years. He talks about this as if he was never president and doesn't have any responsibility for what's happened in the last eight years. And then he stood there on inauguration day acting like he had never been president before and saying the golden age in America starts today. And then for the next 100 days tanks the economy worse than any other president has done in modern history. That's what he needs to be held accountable for. And I'll tell you what, regardless of what he says, the American people are seeing what's happening. This is showing up in town halls. It's showing up in the carpool line for my kids. It is showing up on the street. It is showing up in polling. It is showing up at the ballot box. Look at Wisconsin in the Supreme Court race where Elon Musk put $25 million into that. And every single county in Wisconsin trended to the left from the 2024 presidential results.

Sarah [00:21:49] Well, why isn't it showing up with Republicans in Congress? You'd think they'd be spooked, but man. Even in the gym, are they spooked in the jam? Even in the gym.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:21:59] Yeah, they're scared. And I think there's a few structural things that I think we should look at when we talk about running for office right now. One is the Citizens United decision, which is a disastrous Supreme Court decision. The second, of course, is how gerrymandered so many districts are right now. And on both sides there are gerrymandered congressional districts. And so what these Republicans see is they see districts where Donald Trump is getting 65, 70, 75% of the vote like he did in some congressional districts in Kentucky. And they're going, okay, you know what? I just have to win my primary. And Donald Trump has such a control over the Republican primary. This is a guy who was twice impeached, who was convicted of 34 felonies for paying hush money to a porn star because he was having an affair while his wife was home with their infant son. He is someone who has belittled nearly everybody. He's degraded everybody. He doesn't have a good record from his first presidency and he dominated the Republican primary in 2024 after all of that happened. They know who he is and so the Republican members of Congress I think are really scared of having Donald Trump weigh in their primary and then of course having Elon musk, the world's richest man, weigh into their primaries as well. And that's where I say, look, we work for the American people. We work for the people who live in our districts. We have to work for our local communities, not for Donald Trump, and quite honestly, his selfish, destructive agenda.

Beth [00:23:41] Agreed about all of that. I'm having a hard time personally figuring out how to respond differently than I did during the first Trump presidency. Because I felt all those things then. These Republicans are afraid of him. He's super politically powerful. He tweets about them and it seems like a bomb has gone off in their lives. I'm sympathetic to all of that. How do you think that the threat of losing, which seems to be what this is all about, becomes real enough to Republican legislators, that they start to exercise some of the power that they seem to want so much that they couldn't possibly give it up. I struggle with what people want to be in Congress for, because if you don't get to make any decisions, it seems like a real bad job to me. But I also look around and think, isn't there a self-interested case for Republicans to rein some of this in?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:24:35] Yeah, I definitely think there is. And even look back at the first Trump presidency. Say what you want to about Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell-- and believe me, I've said plenty. They did not cede legislative independence to Donald Trump in the way that we're seeing them cede right now. And I think there may be two big things that have happened since then. First of all, Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party has only grown since 2016. Remember that Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene actually didn't serve during the first Trump presidency. They were elected in 2020 and so barely overlapped with the Trump presidency. There are more people now elected from the Republican Party who also look like Donald Trump than there were during the first Trump presidency. And then I do think the ones who are still here again it's not that I agree with them on necessarily how we should handle assault weapons or the marginal tax rate or things like that, but I think who really do believe in the American system of government and American democracy and a working government that is controlled by the people of this country, where are they? When are they going to stand up? And the analogy I use is the one of the boiling frog. And I told that to one of my colleagues here from California and I said it's like when you put the frog in a pot of water and then you turn up the heat, the frog doesn't know that it's boiling until it's too late. And he's looking at me and he goes, "Never heard that one before, but I think I know what you're getting at."

Beth [00:26:23] He'd never heard that one before?

Sarah [00:26:25] That's crazy!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:26:27] Maybe it's a Kentucky thing. But I think that's where some of the members are too on their side, is the analogy of the boiling frog. I think if you ask them in their heart of hearts, they truly believe I'm going to stand up when it matters. And what my question immediately back is, when do you think that is? Is it from taking power from Congress that the Constitution doesn't allow for? Is it taking away people's rights? Is it tanking the economy? Is it defying the Supreme Court? Is it being involved on January 6th and encouraging people to come violently overthrow a valid election? When do you think that moment occurs that you should stand up to him? And I think even when you look back at what happened on January 6th and one of the interesting things I've encountered while being here is talking to the Capitol police officers who were here that day. Talked to lots of the members who were here that they obviously too are still traumatized by it. But talking to the Capitol Police officers and getting their reactions to it, they know what happened here that day.

Sarah [00:27:35] Well, I was thinking about that last night. I was thinking about 3 a.m. wake up mad at Donald Trump kind of situation. And I was thinking about how outrageous it is that he trumps up the crime angles on these deportations after he pardoned violent criminals from January 6th.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:27:51] The most violent criminals from January 6th. Yeah.

Sarah [00:27:53] Who some have already recommitted crimes, have been arrested again for stuff. Like, it's just completely outrageous. But I have a more electoral question for you because there is a part of me as a Democrat that realizes there's a strength in the Republican side that they've had so much turnover, that they have so many new responsive members that have come up in a new political moment and a new media environment. I think there's hunger for that on the Democratic side. Are you feeling that, that there's time for some turnover and some generational change?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:28:28] Yeah, look, big time. And we're seeing it. My class in Congress was significantly younger. We're seeing a lot more younger people run for office on our side. And we're seeing the need to believe and take charge a little bit in terms of talking about this new media environment. I was a journalism major in college. I really value the role of the press and the fourth estate, not just in our daily lives, but particularly in government of providing that transparency accountability that we all need in government. But the legacy media is just not what it was.

Sarah [00:29:14] So many people out there doing cable hits. Spread the word, save your time

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:29:19] Save your time. Come on, do more forms of media. If you look at a couple of weeks ago, MSNBC's nightly numbers were around 600,000 viewers. Fox News' nightly numbers were about 3 million. Elon Musk has 220 million followers on Twitter. There's a Republican influencer, honest to God, their name is Catturd, who has over 3 million followers on Twitter. That's who people are going to listen to. And the Republican numbers have an advantage right now on platforms such as X and Facebook and Instagram in particular. And I think that's in part it's not just people talk about the Democrats and the Republicans; I think part of this goes into that Republicans for a long time have hated the media. And so I think we're faster to adopt the newer communication channels. By being faster to adapt that, by giving people a platform where they were giving them content, what they saw soon is that the legacy media was covering what they were doing on social media. And I think that the democratic side was slower to adopt that.

Sarah [00:30:42] You get the best of both worlds. You get to say what you want the way you want to on social media and then get coverage for it.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:30:47] I remember, so I was in the state Senate in 2021, and I knew I wanted to get us on TikTok. Not a lot of politicians were on TikTok yet.

Sarah [00:30:56] Yeah, I remember that!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:30:58] Yeah. And I hired a summer intern who had never worked in politics, but had social media experience. And I said, you can't fail, but let's try this out, try something different. And the reaction, we had local reporters and others initially making fun of us. And then we had over a hundred thousand followers within just a couple of months and had videos that were routinely getting hundreds of thousands of views or millions of views on a TikTok account, which was a reach that the Kentucky State Senate Democrats just simply didn't have without it. And I think we're seeing more members now say, okay, the rules have changed. The rules of the game have changed and we have to be more intentional about how we're getting our message to everyone across all platforms.

Beth [00:31:48] I don't want to get too bogged down in the David Hogg, DNC fight, except to note it as an illustration of one of many things it seems like the party is trying to work out for itself post-election. What do you think is one of the most meaningful struggles in the Democratic Party right now, as we're trying to find new leadership and a new way forward?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:32:11] Look, I think it's really hard when you lose elections like we lost in 2024. We got our flocks cloned. But it also is a good opportunity to do some looking in the mirror, to do some self-evaluation. And I think that that's good. You are seeing even with a guy like David Hogg, you're seeing newer leaders step into positions of power to get their voices out there. And, look, as it comes to the party stuff, this has been pretty simple to me. I don't think primaries are a bad thing. And I think that when you take a leadership role in the party, like to the extent the Democrats have their party, if you take one of those leadership roles, your job is to bring Democrats together after the primaries and win elections. That's really hard to do if you are in one of leadership positions and also actively playing in primaries. I think there's still even some distrust that lingers after the 2016 elections from people feeling like party leaders were putting their thumb on the primary scale. So primaries aren't a bad thing. To the extent we have a working party structure that has to be there after the primaries, it's a lot harder to do and have that trust if you have people playing in those primaries.

[00:33:29] But you know what? Getting younger voices, getting newer voices, continue to get people engaged, making sure that we are putting forward a good, simple message that we're willing to repeat. I think one of the problems we've seen with Democrats all the time is Republicans are governing in headlines; we've been governing in fine print. We've got to make sure that we are getting our message out there in a way that people understand it. So not just me sitting and talking about reconciliation for five minutes. That's not going to move anybody, but talking about what the budget does, how it hurts people, how it takes health care away from kids, how it takes food off of veteran’s plates, making sure that people know these things that we're talking about, being willing to repeat it. I think sometimes Democrats always want to talk about whatever is going on and making sure that we are talking about the core message of what they're trying to do.

[00:34:17] And then to also recognize that, look, this is a different moment in time right now. Just look back in time, the Republican nominees for president were Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump right. That is a very different thing. And the rules have change. Democrats don't have to be nice about what Donald Trump is doing to our country and to our people. What he's doing to us, we don't have to be nice about that. And we can be direct and we can honest and we make sure that people know a guy like Donald Trump and what he is doing. Sometimes you got to know when to fight fire with water, sometimes you got to know when to fight fire with fire. And Donald Trump only understands fighting fire with fire.

Sarah [00:35:09] Well, speaking of that process, you skipped over that part of my question in the beginning with the budget and spending with government funding. Like, do you see a fight? Do you see it a government shut down? Because after last time, I don't know when the next deadline is but it feels highly likely to me that at least the Democratic base is going to push for a shutdown.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:35:28] Yes. Keep in mind the Democrats voted against the continuing resolution of the budget and then the reconciliation. Those were two separate bills. But the Democrats in the House, with the exception of one, all voted against it. The reality is, in the House, we're so much different than the Senate. In the Senate, one person can stand on the floor for 25 hours and shut the thing down for 25 hours. In the House, we really are a majority-based body. We need three Republicans who are willing to stand up and say what Donald Trump is doing is chaotic, crazy, and wrong, and we're actually going to provide some rationality and common sense to what's going on. They have not done that. And I didn't mean to gloss over it, but I think in what even we've been saying about the power he holds over their party right now, that is showing up in these votes. The Democrats all voted against the reconciliation bill.

[00:36:28] So when you say the Democratic base wants this, the Democrats are voting against these terrible budget bills. The continuing resolution is through September 30th. We don't have a budget for this year. So representative democracy, which is our community sending us to Washington to advocate for them to say, you know what, when you're talking about spending federal money in Louisville, Kentucky or Paducah, Kentucky, maybe you should consult somebody from there. Maybe the people of Louisville should have a voice in that process. By doing this continuing resolution, there's no community project funding. There's no input from the people of Louisville into crafting a new budget that meets our needs now. It's just a continuing resolution of last year's budget that has no new projects. It doesn't help the people of Louisville. They gave that up. The Republicans gave that up and it's going to hurt people in the process. So does the budget, does the government get funded if Donald Trump tells them not to shut the government down today? He's three and O.

[00:37:41] And what we need is we need three Republicans to stand with the Democrats to say this budget is cruel, it hurts people, hurts our seniors, our kids, our veterans. It hurts the future growth of our country. It hurts us with our allies. It makes us less safe. It makes us less prosperous. We need people who are willing to stand up and say those things. And then because in the House, at least, particularly in the house, even with a narrow majority, if you have 218 votes, you can pass something. If you don't have 218 votes, you can't pass something. And so I think the Democrats have been unified and strong on those key points. We need some Republicans who are to also exercise their legislative independence and say, we're going to stand up for a budget that helps the American people, too.

Beth [00:38:39] So as we think about being responsive to voters and fighting fire with fire, I'm in Representative Massie's district. I live in Union. And we consistently send him back, which I interpret in some ways as our community being responsive to his argument that we spend too much money. And even if it seems cruel, we're spending too much money and we've got to do something about it. And that does seem to be a prevalent sentiment. The public had more tolerance for DOGE, especially at the beginning, than you might have thought. I think that many people are saying, no, not like that. And I think that's often what's going to happen with the budget. Not like that, that's not what I meant. But how do you think about talking to people who sincerely are worried about the debt and the deficit or sincerely believe that their taxes are too high?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:39:30] I'm sincerely worried about the debt. I actually come out of state legislatures where we balanced budgets. We had to balance budgets. I would like to see us balance budgets in Washington. I don't think that's a radical notion, but we have to talk honestly about what we're doing, and who's getting helped and who's get hurt in the process? They are getting ready to do the largest tax break in American history for the billionaire class. That is going to add trillions of dollars to the country's debt. And on that point, Massie and I agree. You can see what he said about this planned budget with these planned tax cuts. Now, you can rest assured that Thomas Massie and I would write drastically different budgets if either one of us had the pen, but we agree on what this current budget proposal is. It is a massive tax giveaway to the richest Americans at the expense of everyone else that adds trillions of dollars to the nation's debt. And so that is how I think you can talk about it.

[00:40:53] And look, again, I worry about efficiency in government. I want to make sure we are being efficient, that we're helping people out. So like I'm on the veterans committee. We've got to do better by our veterans. We made our veterans-- the men and women who are willing to put on a uniform and quite literally sacrifice everything for us and our freedom, we made them a promise. Both a legal and a moral promise that after your service we will take care of you. We will make sure you have healthcare. We will even try to make sure that you have training, that you can get a job, that your service to our country is not forgotten. We're not doing enough by our veterans right now.

Beth [00:41:37] What's the conversation in your committee about the massive cuts at the VA?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:41:43] Yeah. And so when they talk about these massive cuts at the VA, we need to do better by our veterans. Cutting 70,000 VA workers through DOGE isn't the way to do it. And I hear from Republicans all the time let's run government like a business. Fine, then run government like a business. No business would ever do a reduction in force the way you guys did this. By going in and just saying, "If you've worked here in this department less than two years, you're fired." How many future CEOs, how many future secretaries did they get rid of in that purge? They went through it and maybe got rid of some of their most talented and promising people who are there to help our veterans.

Sarah [00:42:20] Some they probably recruited.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:42:22] Some they probably recruited. I talked to a guy in Louisville and talked about him on the floor. This is a guy who served in the military in two different branches. When he got out of the military, decided he would go to HUD and work at HUD and trying to help veterans find housing. This is the guy who got laid off. I'm sorry, I think in America the word homeless veteran should never ever be put together. Firing the person who's helping find housing for veterans is not a way to help that problem out.

Beth [00:42:58] So what can your committee do about that?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:43:00] Yeah. So the Veterans Committee, there's still bipartisanship on the Veterans Committee. I do think the Veterans Committee understands its mission. Our mission is to take care of veterans. Now, there are still fights, there still disagreements on how to do that. But even some of the hot button issues, we talk about a little differently. We have to. What's the fastest growing population in veterans right now? And this is not something that existed 50 years ago. We didn't have tons of women veterans after the Vietnam War. We've got a lot of women Veterans after the 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so what happens when you have a woman who served her country, who has an ectopic pregnancy and is in a state where they don't offer abortion? Normally, you're talking about abortion, which is like the granddaddy of political issues. But on the Veterans Committee, we have to also say, how do we get this woman veteran who served our country the healthcare she needs? And how are we making sure that we have all the healthcare services available to women? From mammograms to pap smears, how are making sure we're taking care of all of these needs? And so, we talk about these issues, I think, a little differently on the veterans committee, and there's concern.

[00:44:38] Now, there's not the type of concern where people are standing up and railing on the Trump administration yet. I think this goes back to what we were talking about in the fear that exists in the Republicans of publicly rebuking him. But then there's also times when we're going, okay. We had a hearing not long ago where we had some agencies there who were trying to help veterans navigate their benefits claims, that they have claims for benefits. And, look, we have these companies who are coming in, they're not being accredited, they're are not registering, they are making tons of money off helping veterans navigate their claims to get the benefits that they should already have. And you saw people coming together and you saw Nancy Mace after I was asking questions in this company saying, "Tell me why you're not accredited? Tell me why haven't gone through this process? Tell me how much you're doing for our veterans?" She just said, "Answer me yes or no. Did you make more or less than $100 million last year?" He would answer the question.

[00:45:41] So these companies who are coming in that might be preying on our veterans, how do we combat that? Then the flip side, we look at that and go, okay, if veterans are so desperate that they're turning to unaccredited companies to get their benefits claims already, what we need to be focused on is making it easier for veterans themselves to get the benefits claims. That's not going to happen by cutting 70,000 people from the VA. We do a little better on bipartisanship and the Veterans Committee, but we still need people to stand up and say, okay, Trump administration, you talk about this, what are you really doing to help our veterans right now? How are these cuts to SNAP going to impact our veterans? A lot of veterans in Kentucky right now, they use Medicaid to make sure they're getting treatment for things like even PTSD. How do we protect that? And where are you going to be on that? So it's, like I said, we're getting to the point where they're going to the numbers behind this budget, we're going to see where they really are.

Sarah [00:46:55] We'd like to move on from these tougher policy conversations and have a little exhale at the end of our episodes. So we wanted to talk to you about something that I'm obsessed about with your family, which is the photography.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:47:14] You are the first person who's asked me this question since I've been in Congress.

Sarah [00:47:17] What? I'm obsessed with it. Okay, so you guys, this is what happened with the congressman's family. This was your older brother, right? When your older brother was born.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:47:26] Yeah, it's my older brother.

Sarah [00:47:27] When his older brother was born, a photographer named Pam Spalding from the Louisville Courier Journal came and originally planned to just like do this year after the birth because was he a New Year's baby?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:47:39] Yeah, born on New Year's Day. Wow, you know-- I've probably noticed.

Sarah [00:47:41] Listen, I'm obsessed with it. I think it's the coolest thing ever. Okay, so then she comes and then she just stays. And when I say stays, does she still come and take pictures of y'all sometimes?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:47:53] Yeah, she does.

Sarah [00:47:55] You guys. How old is your older brother?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:47:57] He is 48.

Sarah [00:48:00] So there's a book. When did the book come out?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:48:04] Came out in like 2008-ish 2009. So the first 30 years.

Sarah [00:48:09] The first 30 years. This is a fun story. Josie Raymond gave it to me because I talked about how cool I thought this was. And she's like, there's a book. And I was like, what? And she was like, yeah, I'll send it to you. She stayed at my house for an Emerge gathering. Then she sent me the book as a thank you present. So I have the book. And it's deeply nostalgic for me because we're very similar in ages. So just watching these pictures, just the toys and the way your house was decorated, it's just so-- but I cannot express what I would give. Like your parents, oh my God, what I wouldn't give to have like basically your entire family life, every milestone, every moment photographed by this incredible photographer.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:48:55] Yeah, it's truly bizarre. Like, let's get rid of the elephant in the room. It's truly bizarre. In fact, so my wife and I, when we were dating, I just remember one time, it's like when you're dating somebody, you remember certain moments, and she said, "Tell me something about you I don't know." And I was like, "There's this woman that follows my family around taking pictures."

Sarah [00:49:20] And has for several decades.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:49:21] And she goes, she's like, "What, I'm sorry?" Yeah. And so it's a wild story. I'll give you like a little bit of the background on it as I understand it because I was born into it. So it's like nothing ever happened, right? It's the only existence I know. But the Louisville Courier Journal used to be one of the best papers in the country. It was owned by the Bingham family and they were a talent pipeline. They kept a lot of talent and they paid people well. They valued journalism. I said a young photographer at the time, Pam Spaulding, who birth photos were the rage in the '70s. So people were taking pictures of giving birth. And she had her own child who's about a year older than my brother, and she said, you know what, everyone's taking pictures of a birth. Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time. What really alters things is when you bring that baby home from the hospital. So she had this idea that I want to do a year-long photo essay on a family that's having their first born child. And so she went to Lamaze instructors at the time. There's no any internet. This is 1976.

[00:50:37] And so she gets turned down and she gets turn down repeatedly. And so she calls my parents and tells them, I only want to it for a month. So she shortened it. And my dad worked his way through college and law school at UK by being a television reporter on WKYT in Lexington, Kentucky. And my dad, if you knew my dad, this would be even more surprising because my dad is like the nicest guy, but does not have a high EQ. My mom and my dad-- I forget whether it's the right brain or left brain, but my mom is all the emotion and my dad’s all the analysis. They come together and make this great, cute couple. And so my dad's like for all the times I've asked people to do a story on them and their lives, I can't say no the first time someone asks me. So my brother was born New Year's Day, 1977, she followed them out of the hospital and said she was going to do it for a month. After a year, they did a story in The Courier at the time on my brother. And then she just kept coming back. And about five years into it, she'd been doing it, I've been born at that point. My sister hasn't been born at that point. And she was talking to one of her mentors who's at National Geographic. And he said, "No one has ever done a long-term documentary of a family. You should keep doing this." And so when I say this, I think part of the reason it worked, Pam's awesome, and I now realize how okay my parents had to be with that, which is probably pretty vulnerable.

Sarah [00:52:16] She could have asked me for the year and I would have said yes immediately. I've done this myself like a little week in the life project and they're my favorite pictures I've ever taken, but I can't do it all the time every day.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:52:27] She does it, all of that, but what's new for us, we never saw the pictures.

Sarah [00:52:33] I forgot about that part.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:52:35] We never saw them. And so people are like, how did you think about this? It's like, this woman came around, she was taking pictures, we never saw them. She has this remarkable ability to blend in and not be noticed. She makes it about what she's taking pictures of, not herself. She really just like blends in.

Sarah [00:52:53] I remember Sarah telling me she came to her 21st birthday party. Was like out drinking with her and her friends.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:52:59] She was there when I got engaged. My wife had no clue. I might have pointed out. So the book comes out after 30 years and there's a book editor and he sat down with each of us individually and he showed us the pictures in the book to get our reaction. It was the first time I'd ever seen them. I'm no kidding. I'd seen two pictures in the book before it was published. And one of the pictures, he flips the page and it was the most bizarre experience I've ever had because you're watching your life that you've totally forgotten. Like it's totally forgotten. And so she's flipping the pages and there's one page I started bawling. I started crying and I had forgotten she was there. She was in the balcony of the church, but it's one of my brothers and I and our mutual best friends died when he was 20 of a rock climbing accident. He's a super, super guy. And we were the pallbearers in his funeral and I'm like 18 and Dave's like 21 and, and the pictures of us and our friends carrying the casket down the aisle in the church. It's kind of got me now. And you don't think about that. And she just turned the page and I couldn't even speak. You're just like, oh my god, all those things that come back, for all of us who've who's lost a childhood friend. [Inaudible]. And so it's like it's these amazing images, but we never saw. And so it was this like--.

Sarah [00:54:34] Do you see them now? Now that the book's out?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:54:36] No, we don't see them now. She still comes around. We don't see them. My kids know who she is. And she just like sometimes she'll come to big events, and then sometimes she's just like, "Hey, what are you guys doing today?"

Beth [00:54:50] Yeah, I wanted to ask you, like, what's the coordination here?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:54:54] We're terrible at it.

Beth [00:54:54] Is she just on every invitation list or like what happens?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:54:57] No. I think she's probably frustrated with us right now because we're really bad about we never reach out to her. My wife works full time. I've got a pretty busy job myself. We have three kids. It's a lot. But sometimes she'll want to know things are happening. And example, before I got this job, my life was the one who traveled a lot; and so she'd be like, let me know when Chris is in that town. And she would come over and she'd be like she wanted to photograph just because when she started this project in the late '70s, there probably weren't a lot of men who were staying home while their wives were traveling for work. And like what that looks like and the difference of a generation. And the one thing we heard her explain was I said looking through the pictures was really bizarre. The second most bizarre thing was we all came up here to DC to National Geographic, (I guess it's like maybe '09) and she presented not just the pictures of us, but like her vision for it and what she was doing. And we're all sitting there like we felt like subjects. Like we felt we were in the zoo.

Sarah [00:56:06] You are.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:56:07] We are. We're in this. And she's talking about it and she said one of the things that inspired her is she showed a picture of a whole bunch of really old cars. And I don't know all the types of cars, but it was like the Model T cars. They looked like really old-timey cars and they were parked in a park in Louisville and it looks so beautiful because they're these beautiful cars. And she's like what I realized about this picture is that if anybody had seen it the day it was taken they would have said oh there's a bunch of cars in a parking lot. And what she really wants to show is not for us today. It's for somebody a hundred years from now to go, "That's how they eat food? That's a McDonald's? Wait, they had a birthday party at McDonald's? What's McDonald's? Or that's what a McDonalds looked like?" And it's like what you said about the toys. It's the metadata on top of everything else. And even now, if you think back to it, when I was a kid, we had landlines with phones. When my kids come to Washington, one of their favorite things to do is go in the cloakroom because there's still the phone booths that have a phone and they're like, "Okay, okay, can we make a call? Can we make a call?" And I'm like, yeah, you can. By the way, we carry phones [crosstalk] everywhere now, but you can have a phone. Yes.

Sarah [00:57:30] That's what I tell people I love the most about old movies. Like Home Alone is my favorite movie because I'm his age. But the movie houses are not real houses. Like they're still highly designed. They're not capturing what it was really like to be a kid and what your kitchen looked like in 1987. And so to see those, I think exactly like that metadata, that like background, I love it so much. I think it's so important. And that's what's fun for either like old family photos. Like it's obviously amazing to see your family members, but you're like, where's that couch? What happened to that couch? That couch is wild. Like, where'd that go?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:58:13] Yeah. What was going on? It's interesting. We still don't see the pictures. She still comes around. And in less than two years, it'll be 50 years that she's done it.

Beth [00:58:21] That's amazing.

Sarah [00:58:27] Is she going to put out another book?

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:58:28] I don t know. A publisher would have to get ahold of it and she'd like to do it. And back to Pam, obviously, I've been around her my entire life in all sorts of situations from weddings to funerals to hospitals to birthdays to Christmas to just hanging out in the kitchen. She is so much about the work that I think Pam is going to be famous after she's dead.

Sarah [00:58:55] Wow!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:58:55] I don't think she wants-- and also, by the way, the pictures are not left to us. They're left to a historical society. And so we don't even get the pictures. I'm sure someone will probably let us make a copy to a few of them that we like. But we don't even the pictures. So at this point I need to use numbers, but I'm guessing millions of images.

Sarah [00:59:22] Right!

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:59:23] Millions of images. And who knows what they show?

Beth [00:59:27] I feel like if I were you, I'd be calling Pam all the time to be like, "I've got this bill in front of me. What do you think about this, Pam?" Because it has that kind of vision and perspective to see the world in such a unique way. What a valuable person to have in your life. That's incredible.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [00:59:43] She's so great. The Courier got that talent in and she did a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and she's a talented accomplished photographer all in her own right. So yeah, well, National Geographic, I hope they do in some ways the first thirty years of our lives were wonderfully boring. My parents are still married and like they're not just married, they still hold hands. They're a super cute couple that's been married for over 50 years.

Sarah [01:00:12] But can we talk about the wild happenstance and fate that she picked a family where one person turned out to be a congressman? That's kind of wild.

Beth [01:00:24] I just think Pam's instincts might be credible here.

Sarah [01:00:27] You aren't even born yet.

Beth [01:00:28] Can I have Pam's number and just go out with her sometimes? I feel like Pam understands some things about the world.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [01:00:34] It's so weird. She didn't even know my parents. And I think it's interesting when you look at the three kids, my sister's a teacher, my brother's active duty military. I've served in my capacity in government. We did all gravitate towards service. We did all gravity towards those careers and that's probably a lot of our upbringing. But, like I said, I'm not the project. My brother's the project, which is also just yeah.

Sarah [01:01:04] I was an intern with your sister for a congressman Ben Chandler. And I still remember her telling me about this and being like, hold up, what? I haven't stopped thinking about it since 2003 whenever we interned.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [01:01:16] For me, I didn't think anything of it until the book came out. And then when that book came out, you're kind of like, oh. But then after that, we had super preemie twins. There's been some interesting just like life things. We lost all our grandparents-- all of my grandparents, except for one was alive when the book came out, which is also weird. [Crosstalk].

Sarah [01:01:39] With you and your little 80s pumpkin haircuts. They're so cute.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [01:01:42] Yeah, that my mom did, right? That was like so funny.

Sarah [01:01:48] I love it so much. Love it so, so much. Well, thank you for sharing that. Well, first of all, just thank you to your family because I do think this is an important historic project that you guys have made an enormous sacrifice to be a part of. So thanks for that because I enjoy the book. Yeah, and thank you obviously for your service in Congress. Thank You for coming on our show. Just we really appreciate it

Rep. Morgan McGarvey [01:02:11] Thanks. Thank you guys for what you're doing and hope to come back.

Sarah [01:02:17] Thank you to Representative McGarvey. Please don't forget to check out our Mother's Day gift guide and to share your Pantsuit Politics birthday messages. Links for both are in our show notes. We'll be back in your ears on Tuesday with another episode. And until then, have the best weekend available.