back this afternoon for their lame duck session. watch the house live, 2:00 p.m. eastern, over on c-span, the senate live at 3:00 p.m. on c-span2. and here on c-span3 this afternoon, coming up at 2:00 eastern, senate judiciary committee, holding a hearing on the state of the financial system, ten years after the collapse of lehman brothers, the fourth largest u.s. investment bank that filed in the nation's largest bankruptcy case. that senate judiciary committee, again, 2:00 p.m. eastern, here li live on c-span3. until then, part of today's "washington journal." >> -- we're joined by david macintosh, president of the conservative group, club for growth. in the end, how much money did the club for growth and its various arms spend on election 2018? >> yeah, for the cycle, the two years, all of our different entities raised almost $50 million. other than that, about $30 million went into the different elections. some of those are -- we bundled

zre direct contributions, but about $25 million of that was what they call super pac, independent expenditures, helping various candidate. >> what did you get from that investment, that work that you did? z >> yeah, thank you for that question. we won 85% of our races, so much higher percentage than the republican party in its contested races. >> 85%, how many did you plan? >> this is in the fall, 20. 17 out of 20. so i'm counting the florida senate as a win. i know that's still being recounted. but we're doing very well. our candidates did well. one of the lessons i took away from this was, for republicans, if you ran away from core republican principles, you didn't talk about the tax cuts, you didn't talk about the need for more freedom and free markets, you ran into trouble. because your democrat opponent defined the issues in the election. our guys stood by their principles and they did well.

>> a day after the election, you talked about squishy republicans. define "squishy." >> i think it's people who want the office more than they care about the principles. and so they gave lip service to -- or for conservative principles, or for freedom. but then when it comes down to really tough votes, am i going to vote for our against the tax cut measure? am i going to stand up for really changing and fixing the health care problem? am i going to stand up and say "no" for excess spending? it's too hard. i don't want to do that. i want to find a place to run and hide. >> dave brat of virginia, rod bloom of iowa, they lost, would you define these folks as squishy? >> no. >> so what happened in their elections? >> i think those were cases where it was such a closely divided district. dave brat fought hard. we spend half a, on expenditures

to help him and he just got outspent. his democratic opponent was on media here in washington, d.c. that just touched a sliver of the district. that was too expensive for us to spend money on and for him. >> dave macintosh, the club for growth, with us until about 8:45 this morning if you want to join the conversation. phone lines, as usual, independents 202-748-8002. let's look forward a little bit. republican leadership locust e in the house are taking place this week, today and tomorrow. what did republican voters signal they want from republican leaders? >> i think they want to see a change. i think they want to to see a change in the house in terms of supporting president trump's agenda, would be the way most of the voters would express it. but it essentially means they want to see leadership there that will fight for those proposals. paul ryan will say, well, we

passed them all and then sent them over to the senate. but when you're speaker of the house, you have to sign off on the final bill and he always caved to whatever the senate came up with. and they don't want to see that. they want to see someone who's really ready to get in there and fight for it. at this point, what they need is somebody who understands, how do we come back from the minority? and you can donate that by cutting deals or playing small ball politics, you know, on these little things that the voters actually don't really pay attention to. it looks to me like they're on the path to doing more of the same, which is, you know, einstein defined as insanity, if you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. >> why is that? because kevin mccarthy is going to be the -- >> it looks like he's going to be the inside favorite for being that majority leader, and he's been right there at the table, part of the last two leadership in the house, where the republican base has been enormously frustrated. >> where does jim jordan end up

in all of this. he's challenging kevin mccarthy. >> he is. and jim is a fighter. i think jim would make a great minority leader. and what i think he'll end up doing is -- depending on whether he wins or loses, if he wins, he'll able to lead caucus, i think back to a majority, as soon as the next election. if they don't choose him, jim's a team player, in the end. so i think what he'll do is follow the current path he's been on and go to the public with the values and show there are republicans up there with fight in them. >> what about the senate. do you think mitch mcconnell should remain majority leader? >> i do. mitch had a much better year. many of the problems were in the senate and, you know, if you talk to him or others, they say, well, we had a one-vote majority and we couldn't coa lot do a lo things because people would object. he'll have a better majority and that will make it easier for him. the problem for mcconnell is the

appropriations process. and i have heard him brag about, we ran a wonderful appropriations process. the real problem for appropriations under republicans was the deficit spending. every poll that we took showed that was the number one or number two concern among republican voters and you've got almost three parties. republican, democrat, and appropriators in congress. and the leadership in the senate squarely sides with the appropriator party. skpf the house did nothing under paul ryan to counter that. that's one of the sources really of frustration that republican voters saw government grow with this congress and wanted to see a change. >> david mechanic acintosh, how have you been president of the club for growth? >> this is my fourth year. so two election cycles zp cycle. >> and what is it? >> we are a free market, small

government, political group. we're organized as a nonprofit to advocate for positions. but the main way we do that is through our political groups, our pac and super pac, to elect champions for limited government, free markets. our view is that most problems can be solved in private society. and that when you have economic growth, a lot of other problems end up being easier to solved and fall way. so we look for republican candidates who not only say that, but you can tell from their life and their voting records in the past, their experience, that they'll stand up and they'll fight for it. >> we'll talk a bit more about how you go about do that, but let you chat with some callers first. david, treasure island, florida, you're up first. >> yes, what happened in florida? why weren't these corrupt election officials done away with? i mean, rick scott has been here for like eight years and pam bondi, you know, i called her

office on friday, and they had a long weekend. they took the weekend off. you know, this is just ridiculous! >> yeah, what happened in florida? >> and we're seeing a repeat of 2000 all over again. i was talking to a friend of mine from florida who said in those counties, had rick scott removed the person who was there, the corruption is epidemic. and so would have just bubbled up under whoever he replaced them with. so at least at this point, he's dealing with people that he knows are not on his side and not the kind of dark underbelly in the process that is willing to cheat and steal elections. >> do you think that's what's happening in florida right now? >> from the fact that they mixed all of the votes, the ones that should have been kept separate and dealt with altogether as a way of making sure that votes, many of them, invalid votes were counted anyway, yeah, i think that's an effort to try to steal the election. >> to california.

jim, santa cruz. go ahead. >> hey, how you doing? i was calling about all the corruption and everybody's complaining about this and that and it's unbelievable. they had $20 trillion in eight years thatbaum took in for taxes is gone and then -- where's that go to? everything's in shambles and not to mention -- just everything. and on top of that, they have $8.5 there deficit. >> david macintosh, debt and deficit right now, how big of an is that for this congress? >> as i was sharing with you, as we talked to voters throughout the last six months, it was a top issue, either number one or number two in republicans, but across the board, democrats and independents. this congress has failed utterly to address that. they keep spending more. they don't want to do -- they've removed the restrictions that were there to try to limit the growth of spending.

and they think there's no political price more that. in the end, the countries can't survive this type of growing debt. we're not yet at that tipping point, but the experts will always warn you right now, we're getting close. we need to do something about and have fiscal restraint. >> did you think that would happen in a republican-controlled house, republican-controlled senate and with the president, the white house being republican-controlled as well, coming into this 115th congress? >> yeah, no. mick mulvaney was the head of the omb for president trump and he fourth a tremendously insightful budget that started to whittle away at the wastespe could, and it was ignored by everybody, it appears. and congress just went about its habits that had been inherited from democrats, republicans. as i said, appropriators are kind of a group unto themselves. they did it for various reasons.

some of the conservative members said, we want to have defense spending increase, so we'll cut a deal with the liberals and increase domestic spending and welfare spending. others said, we like these programs. why aren't you spending more to the trump administration and it's truly a disappointing issue. when i was there in the '90s, we actually balanced the budget. and it was hard, but it took willpower from john kasich and newt gingrich, who basically told the appropriators, you're going to chair this committee, but only if you agree to -- with us that we're going to cut spending. >> do you think we'll see a pla balanced budget again? >> i think it will take a long time and it will take a political effort to gain consensus on that discretionary spending that i talked about. but even more on what to do about entitlements. we're starting to look at that and president trump has made it clear, i'm not going to touch social security and medicare, so

that means you've got to look at some of the other entitlements, the farm spending, food stamps and welfare part of the entitlement programs. >> birmingham, alabama, is next. natasha, a democrat, good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you? >> doing well. you're on with dave macintosh with the club for growth. >> caller: okay. well, my issues are that trump actually pulls the worst out in americans. and the republicans cheat at everythi everything, with the gerrymandering and others are blamed for the state of jobs and when those big companies wanted to, wanted to make bigger profits, so they took the jobs

over to poor countries, to have them work for wages and didn't want -- but anyway -- >> well, natasha, let's talk about some of those issues you bring up. jobs and jobs going overseas. >> yeah. natasha, thank you for that question. one, everybody blames the other and yes, we -- i think most americans, republicans and democrats today, want to see some effort to work together. it's very hard up here, because all of the members remember the last time somebody did something to hurt them. and it works both ways. but on the question of jobs, natasha and john, one, we're in the best place that we've been in a long time on job creation. the unemployment rate is in an historic low. new jobs created over the last 12, 14 months have been at

record highs. that's been very good, as a result chiefly of the tax cuts and the reduction of regulation in key industries like the energy and the health care industry, that have let american companies invest and create jobs here. we do have a transformation in our economy on low-wage manufacturing jobs that as natasha pointed out, have moved overseas. what we've seen that happen, if you look throughout history, all of the time. countries that engage in trade, that means people buy and sell with each other around the world, the low-cost producer ends up making goods that a higher-cost producer really shouldn't invest in. america is a high-cost production company. we do well when our companies invest in jobs like the tech industry and research and development, that are costly, but we have really talented

people that can do those more effective than anywhere else in the world. so we make those products and sell them overseas. >> president trump focusing on the wine industry just a few minutes ago on twitter. on trade, france makes excellent wine, he writes, but so does the u.s. the problem is that france makes it very hard for the u.s. to sell its wines into france and charges big tariffs, whereas the u.s. makes it easy for french wines and charges very easy tariffs. not fair and must change. what are your thoughts on the president's thoughts on tariffs? >> tariffs are a tax on americans. they're really a bad idea. take, for example, here. yes, it's very easy to sell french wines in america, but the people who enjoy french wines are americans. so if the president puts a trough on them, that means americans are going to spend more, because they get taxed more. what we did see in north america was the steel and aluminum

tariffs brought canada and mexico to the table for a better trade agreement, as a temporary measure, in order to re-write some of these trade agreements, i can understand what the president is doing. there's a cost to it. and in this case, for example, we're calling on him to -- now that he's got a good agreement with mexico and canada, to lift those aluminum and steel tariffs, because it's really hurting united states' jobs in the car industry. so in the end, tariffs hurt the country that puts them on, their citizens pay those and their businesses can't compete around the world. >> david's out in l.a., an independent. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i first have to start off by really thanking david for his honesty. and to go up a little further on my appreciation for his candor, when he talks about how much money the fund for growth has contributed to a particular type of candidates, and what their

payoff was and they're contributing to these candidates, i think david should make a good point, if you demonstrate why it is you have to get money out of politics. now, you've already begun with this saying, how do we now balance the deficit after your boys, the koch brothers, have already received all of these big tax write-offs, right? now you want to go to entitlements. what are entitlements, right? the entitlements are -- are you still with me? >> yes, sir. >> caller: the entitlements are social security and all of these so-called discretionary spending things that help the people, but your corporations don't want to actually be good americans, where you can pay your taxes, right? you get all of these tax

write-offs and billions of dollars, and you do your -- you know, your stock buybacks and you really don't invest in america. but you want the american people to believe that all of your politics is about the benefit of america. i think your honesty, david, have demonstrated who your loyalties are. >> well, david, let's give mr. macintosh a chance to respond. >> yeah, thank you for that question, david. thank you, john. essentially, corporate america is -- are americans. and many of them are international companies, so they're employees that are working overseas or other nationalities. but when general motors makes cars here, and then has to pay a tariff, so it's going to shift, make its cars more expensive, and they can't compete, that means americans are going to lose out. either their shareholders who tend to be average people with their company in their 401(k)

plan, or their employees, like in my home state of indiana, they shut down a lot of plants over the last 30 years, so corporations are really just a way of people organizing themselves to engage in economic activity, work that they can do together better than separately. what we're seeing in politics today is a lot of special interests on both sides. by the way, the big corporate entities here in town don't particularly like the club for growth candidate, because they don't vote for subsidies to corporations. when they don't vote for the special tax breaks, they vote for the general tax break that everybody can take advantage of. so today, if you start a small business, you're going to form a corporation, and you're going to pay less taxes than you would have before our tax cut. and that's any individual who decides they want to go into business. that incentivizes people to take a risk with their savings. a lot of people will run up

credit card debts when they start a small business. they're hoping that their dream will come true and they'll be successful and be able to earn money back on that. if the government taxes it, it's harder for them to do it. >> david said you want to go to entitlements next. is that true? >> i think -- and let me be very specific about that, not social security, not medicare, so i don't really call them entitlements, i call them the wale fair program that we've set up as entitlements, meaning that congress doesn't have to vote to increase the spending on them. so we have to restructure those programs, and there is a huge problem in our society of welfare being too rich. because then people don't want to work in those entry-level jobs. and in fact, social workers will tell them, don't go work at mcdonalds. you can get more if you don't work and go sign up for food stamps. and that's a bad deal in society. people ultimately feel dependent, they lose hope, and we need to restructure that to

actually channel people into endeavors that will let them be successful. zpr dav >> david macintosh is the president of the club for growth. you can check him out online, clubforgrowth.com. we talked at beginning of the segment about how much money you raised and spent on the election 2018. how much of that specifically was spent during the primaries in republican-on-republican race s? >> i would have to go back and look, but as a rough ballpark figure, i think about a third was. so probably two-thirds in the general election to help the republicans ultimately keep the majority in the senate and reduce their losses in the house. our guys won their races for the most part. but we do spend a lot in the primaries. and that's part of our whole goal is to improve the quality of the republican candidates by looking for men and women who really believe in the things republicans say they're for. really believe in smaller

government, really believe in less spending, really believe in lifting the heavy hand of regulations, so people can pursue their lives in the private sector, without having to worry that the government's going to hold them back. >> on a day like today, a week after the midterm elections, where there's so many close races, do you think that one third of your spending on election 2018 could have been better used to take more republican seats, to hold more republican seats as well? do you wish you had that money? >> no, i think it was a great investment. in several cases, by getting the right candidate in the primary, we didn't have to spend money in the fall. >> what's an example? >> i would say as a couple of examples down in texas, we helped brian wright win his nomination and didn't have to spend money in the fall for that one. there was a guy, michael cloud, getting the right guy in texas again. and those were races where it was very successful. van taylor, another texas example, mark green in tennessee. they shored up their victories

way before november, because they were good candidates. >> should so-called squishy republicans expect that you're going to be playing again in primaries in the 2020 campaign? >> yes, and look for where there's going to be a new member one way or the other. but we're also looking at other races and saying is this person really not with the program and their voters want to see somebody who is. >> do you have a budget for what you're going to spend in primaries. you expect one third of your total? >> we're putting it together. it really depends if we want to get back to demonstrate how we decide that, last time we looked at the senate map and there were ten seats where president trump had won, a democrat had to defend it. that became a key priority in the primaries. finding people like josh hawley, marsha blackburn, kevin nicholson. rick scott, who found us,

really, essentially, but supported him. by getting those good candidates in the primaries, then republicans had a better chance of winning that seat. >> what happened in montana? matt rosendale, club for growth spent $5 million on that. >> that was our biggest spend. a disappointment. we lost that narrowly in the end. what really happened there, john, was right after the primaries, we didn't have any money left. we helped him win a tough primary. and tester to his credit did a good job and immediately started attacking him. so june, the month of june, matt rosendale had so many negative ads run against him that by the time we replenished our coffers in july, he was under what they call underwater. more negative impressions than positive. and that just hurt us from then. now, i will say we demonstrated to everybody that would have been a good investment because he was down ten points in july, and we narrowed it down to really a tie towards the end.

tester with a big surge of voting in the end won by 2%, 2.5%. and jon tester ran a good campaign. had we had a little more money in june, i think we would have won. >> richard in kentucky, republican. thanks for waiting. >> caller: yes, sir. you know, i'm 71 years old. i watched all this unfold. you know, sir, just like this year. i will give you an example. i was at the lake, and this woman behind me, she was a school teacher. she said, you know what. my brother-in-law worked for general motors. he was making close to $50,000 a year. i went to school for four years, and she said i went to school for five years, and i couldn't make that kind of money. i said you have to work at general motors because labor is only worth $2 an hour, and college is worth $100 an hour.

so sir, the sad part is the american people don't understand that $10 shirt they buy at walmart, they pay for a guy's welfare, the guy's food stamps, housing. that shirt really costs $30. and american people standing here today, well, we stand by trump. we have to pay more for our clothes. but americans will be working. >> i know, sir, that that's the hope and the dream. i grew up in indiana, in car country. a lot of those jobs aren't there. but look at the textile industry today. i don't think even if we had huge tariffs on shirts coming in from around the country, we would rebuild that. it is the case in a good healthy economy that things turn over. something that was successful for generations, someone figures out how to do it cheaper and

more efficiently, and that business doesn't thrive anymore. look at sears and robucks. the original mail order catalog, kind of amazon of 100 years ago. they were huge. went through a great cycle, and now they're facing the possibility of bankruptcy. that's the way a good healthy economy works. if you take stock with the old, you end up being beat by the competition. you have to innovate and come up with either new products or new ways of doing it and delivering it. so amazon is the giant today. if they do only what they're doing right now, and it happens a lot faster, 20 years from now, they'll be like sears robucks. it's a healthy dynamic. it's stressful for people like your friend who went to work for $50,000 and hoped he would do that for all of his life, and over that lifetime, the economy shifted around him. and we do have to find ways of helping those people be part of the new economy.

>> you mentioned amazon. any reaction to the news yesterday that part of amazon's new headquarters is going to be just across the river here in virginia. >> that's exciting for us in washington and in the virginia area. you know, and it's going to be good for amazon and the tech companies. they're kind of isolated out in california. have a different view of what makes the world tick. i wish they would have picked one of the midwest or southern cities. at that point, if they had an east coast, west coast, and somewhere in the middle, amazon is a company would really understand three different types of american cultures. >> tim is in florida. republican. good morning. >> caller: hi. my question is this. okay, i mean, i have been following -- i'm up ipmy 50s. i feel like politicians when you want to talk about people selling the country out. they sold this country out when they did the nafta agreement. because they didn't really care. it destroyed our manufacturing

once nafta went into effect. now, trump, he's come in and renegotiated this deal with canada and mexico. now, i have a relative that is a farmer. and as a matter of fact, i talked to him this weekend. and he told me, we were talking about it. he said in the short run, financially, it might be a little tough. but in the long run, the agreement that trump made with canada is going to benefit the farmer in the midwest. and another thing that really bothers me is that you get these politicians that leave office, and once they leave office, they go to work for lobbyist groups. there should be some kind of mechanism put in where if you're a representative, i don't care if you're a senator or in the house of representatives, you should never be allowed to take and go lobby the government

because they know all the ins and outs. and basically, that's where your money goes. they don't care about the american people. >> mr. mcintosh, your comments. >> let me start with trade, and that is essentially nafta. yes, the old auto parts jobs aren't here as a result of that. they have moved overseas. i think that would have happened whether or not we had nafta because companies could have basically the same thing for less overseas, and therefore, americans everywhere paid less for cars. nafta was actually good for the farmers. your friend was right, and the new agreement will be good for the farmers and may help us on manufacturing. >> what is the future of the new agreement under a democratically controlled house now? is that in limbo? >> only because they'll play politics and not want to give president trump any kind of

victory. it should be very favorable to their base. it was essentially negotiated by an old union rep, navarro, and is very pro-labor. so you would think they would want to go ahead and move forward with that to help. i'm a little worried the whole two years will be played out under the shadow of the presidential election and we won't see even good things get through. i do think politics is self-interest, and i think that shows up even more on the spending side. and someone on the tax side. the solution to congressman becoming lobbyists and working here in washington is really to reduce the amount of government money in the system. lobbyists only exist because government affects people's lives. no one would pay these congressmen to lobby for them if government wasn't spending trillions of dollars threatening them with regulations and taxes. if you scale those back, and that's the basic platform of the

club for growth. reduce all of that. then you don't need lobbyists. so by the way, lobbyists don't really like the club for growth because they see us as a threat to their whole industry. >> what was the rules for you back in 2001 when you left congress, and are those rules different today for former members of congress? >> when i was there, it was a year cooling off period where you couldn't go back and lobby on issues you had worked on or committees you served on. i stayed home in indiana for about three years. and then did come back and joined the law firm, was a registered lobbyist. but we had that cool eingcoolin period. today, i think they have extended it, but it's not very much of a restriction. and i know people who they're very careful that don't cross that technical line where they have to be registered as a lobbyist, but they help advise their clients. here's what you need to do. i know how that committee works. and honestly, if the committee

weren't spending taxpayer mon money --

we welcome you all today to our hearing. we'll call the hearing to order. if you don't understand why mr. cornyn, senator cornyn is sitting where i usually sit, it's because i have to leave at 2:30. and i ask if he would continue. today's hearing is on bankruptcy reform. and the anniversary of the largest bankruptcy