one individual -- i don't care that it is musk. i think highly of the guy. he has accomplished a lot. but how do we have one individual going in with a team of people who have committed their lives to the federal government, their education, knowledgeable people? what they used to do in corporate america 20 years ago when they had to make a major cut, we have to cut expenses. our balance sheet is horrendous, right? what they would do is every department eliminates 25%. you know, you have three months to give us a report of how you were going to create efficiencies. you are the experts for your departments. a be the department gets eliminated. but it is a faster process. the reality is we are talking about this, we are going to know the repercussions of this. it may take us a couple of years. morning. i want you to keep calling in. he will get back to your phone calls, but we want to go up to capitol hill now. it is congressman russ fulcher

of idaho, a republican, energy and commerce and natural resources committee joining us from the rotunda. guest: good morning. thanks for having host: me on today. i wanted to lead with the latest when it comes to the budget reconciliation process. the lead story in punch full news today, house republicans racing to show budget progress amid senate pressure. can you bring us up to speed? guest: what is going on is, people are trying to figure out ways to change the trajectory for spending over the long-term. that is a problem we have had for a long time, as you know. we are $36 trillion in debt. and that is difficult to do. the president and doge group are doing their jobs. they are identifying areas that need to be reduced or eliminated, but congress now has to act. just long-term, to put these policies in place and situations where permanently-speaking we

change the trajectory of this spending in washington, d.c. that is where most of the debate is. how do we do that, still maintain the priorities that are important for us to maintain, yet cut the spending stuff so we can have a chance to have a balanced budget someday in the future. host: if you were advising elon musk where would you want doge to look next? guest: probably irs-related stuff. there is a lot of things there. there is also the medicaid area, where there needs to be some changes. we know that there is a lot of fraud going on in that area. we know there are excess dollars being spent that should not be. he is already going after the usaid stuff and the foreign policy and dollars leaving the country. now let's go after the fraud within the country. i think he's going to find a lot of stuff there. host: you mentioned the irs. what is the keep act? guest: keep each and every

penny. the idea behind that is to eliminate federal income tax on overtime pay. that was a bill we released last year. didn't get a lot of traction, but now with president trump, he has caught onto that. what we want to do is encourage work. we want people to be able to keep more of what they earn. especially in this post-covid world there is a real problem with that. the idea is if you keep more of what you earn your going to invest that money and you were going to do it more efficiently than some government program. that is what the idea is. it is similar to the no tax on tips president has come out, but now he has -- he is supporting both of those. hope to put those in the reconciliation package and reward work and people willing to take that initiative. host: when you say it is similar to the no tax on tips, what is the major difference? guest: it is difficult to put a

number, like, a cost or benefit on those things, but what we do know is that when people are able to drive where their money goes it is more efficiently-spent and invested. the no tax on tips is something the president came out with, and, you know, that frankly the idea on the no tax on overtime pay for federal income tax, that came through our office. the president has embraced both, so we feel good about that. host: since you are joining us on a friday at 8:30 a.m. eastern, the first friday of the month, let me ask you about the unemployment situation in this country. the bls report coming out minutes ago. payrolls rose one how to 43,000 in the month, the unemployment rate edged down to 4%. guest: i want to make clear that our keep act, the no tax on

overtime pay, does not impact the payroll tax. so your social security, your medicare, all of that is untouched. the other point i would make on that is, what is going on with our foreign adversaries and what is going on with the jobs being pulled into china and whatnot? and automatically that transitions the conversation to some of the tariffs. we have had an issue losing jobs to other countries and we are not necessarily on a level playing field with those other countries. i think that tells you why the president has taken some of the policies and approach on the terrace he has. everything is related in this issue. you see that report, out on jobs it is tied to our foreign competition and how we handle the policy internally. host: i know we only have a couple of minutes with you. i wanted to ask about the gem state. it suffered one of its worst wildfire season's last year and

i know you had a meeting with federal and state officials to talk about wildfire management. did you talk about lessons that could be applied to 2020 five and the wildfire season that is expected? guest: thanks for bringing that up because it doesn't get a lot of air time in the east all the time and that is a huge issue. we have burned up a million acres in the last year. it is mostly on federal land. we have a tremendous amount of federal land and the reason is it is simply not managed. you heard about the southern california fires. that happened because they did not have their water management in idaho it happened because we did not manage the fuel load. the logging and the clearing of the brush and whatnot. lightning strikes hit these vast, open areas, and it turns into fire. we tried to do is get the four -- forest service, local loggers, stakeholders to the table to try to address that, figure out how to work together. because no one entity has the

resources to stop this. we can do it, but it takes management and we are not doing that collectively. that is the whole purpose of my meeting with those stakeholders. host: on the cleaning and management you need from the forest service, concerns that efforts to downside the federal government, could that impact the number of people out there doing those things that you note are necessary to keep these wildfires from spreading? guest: very good point, and that is all the more importance of why we need to pull the local stakeholders in. they don't have the resources now, and likely with the spending trajectory going down they are going to have less. so, that means they have to rely on the state, they have to rely on the locals, they have to rely on people that are living on the ground. frankly, that is what we want. we on the local level want more control over that land, and this

is one of those things where they be not the circumstances you want to drive that decision, but that is what is happening and it needs to transition to more local control. host: what also you working today on capital -- working on today on capitol hill? guest: we have issues coming up in energy and commerce. name, image, and like this, that is a huge deal. college sports. have to do something in that arena. now it is a free-for-all with money going to student athletes and all kinds of agencies and potentially bad interests getting involved in that. that is kind of on the short-term radar. different topic entirely but important one. we want to save college sports. don't typically like the federal government to get involved, but now we need to because there is a lot of bad stuff going on. host: let's have you want on the road to talk about that issue and others you are working on on capitol hill. a