Won the election in november of 2014 and when i arrived i realized that i was learning the details of how this town is as opposed to having a general feeling of the fact that it was dysfunctional. As i wrote in more detail about it was important the American People know the details so they can take action so they can help fix the problem. Its not going to get fixed by people inside d. C. Working on the problem. Scott to have america involved in helping so i decided to write a book about it. Host we are going to get into the problems and the solutions that i do want to share with viewers a bit of your history. You have a career became you came to washington. You have been a federal prosecutor and you ran successfully for the senate in 2010 and decided to run again in 2014. Tell us about yourself and your district. Guest i actually started out of law school with cheney who is a congressman from wyoming if they time on the irancontra investigation here in d. C. So that dates me a little bit of a came here in 1986. 1987 i left the committee as it ended and i went to the department of justice in d. C. And i were there for three years and i moved to colorado to join the u. S. Attorneys office in 1990. I worked there for a number of years and eventually became the chief of the Criminal Division of the u. S. Attorneys office that i left the u. S. Attorneys office and ran for District Attorney in northern colorado. I worked there for 10 years. During that time i ran in 2010 for the state senate and in 2014 iran for this house seat. Host in the book you talk about the Health Crisis this seems to have influence your decision. Tell us a bit more about that. Guest in 2013 i had cancer , stage iv nonhodgkins lymphoma and as i recovered from that cancer i started questioning what do i want to do from here . The thing about the District Attorneys job is his term limited and while i have a cave for term limits here i was at the time 52 and 53 years old. What do i want to do with the rest of my life and i decided i wanted to run for office. I was fortunate enough to serve in congress and i want to do that. Host are you in good health now . Guest im great help now thank you. Whiskey you make it to washington in january 2015 and what do you find . Was surprised about the . Guest the first thing right after the election in november of 2014 all the members were brought together for orientation and there is one lavish party after another and the message is very clear. If you are willing to play the game life in d. C. As a member of congress can be very comfortable existence in the game is agreeing with leadership and agreeing with a specialinterest group on how to vote and how to govern. I am not one of those people thats very agreeable so i was not interested in doing that. They came to d. C. Because i have a passion for trying to reduce our debt and reduce the size and scope of the federal government. It was much more difficult for me in my first term in d. C. Host going back to those parties before you were elected with what way were they conveyed to you that there was a game that needs to be played . Guest when you show up and the army choir is singing and there is a deep tenderloin and salmon and all sorts of waiters and alcohol. I dont drink as much alcohol as you want to consume and you are in the cannon caucus room which is a really beautiful room or in the old house chambers there is a clear message that this is how you now live. You are given gifts from the time you arrive by leadership or others that are thanking you for your sacrifice for coming to d. C. Ive never consumed as many calories as i did when i was in the orientation session so the other thing is you are told pretty quickly that you never vote against a rule and there are some things you dont do as part of your party. Both sides get the same rules and the same instructions and the idea is that the most thing you can do is to get reelected and the most important thing to get reelected is to make sure you play the game. Host so you are defining play the game as being in line with your party not necessarily in those early sessions. Its sort of and understanding that you are developing about who the leaders are and what they expect of you. Guest i think thats right in the fact that you have as a member of Congress Special access to various areas. One of the parties was a new National Archives after hours. It was opened up. George will came and spoke to the group. There is definitely a feeling of being special as a member of congress when you are constantly given special privileges. Host you dont hold back in his vote. You used tough language to describe the men and women who serve. For instance writing. Nicole members of congress are for the most part happy allocators who feel. Darned comfortable in a swamp of washington. What i mean is there our swamp creatures. When you rely in d. C. And have the surroundings that i described earlier they are comfortable in that situation and you dont want to take up those comforts and the way you continue to earn those comforts us to spend more money and to grow government and could not solve problems but to create programs and take credit for those programs whether they are inefficient and whether they are affected to take credit for those programs. Members of congress are here. Its the best job they have ever had in the highest paying job they have ever had and its a job that they dont want to give up. They are election is more important than the actual problem solving that needs to go on. Host you also write that influence in washington comes with a price tag and you talk about that members must must pay to the committees to secure and retain their seats on influential committees. I wonder if you can talk us through the dues that are required and how they climbed depending on the importance of committees and how you deal with it and what your dues are . Guest the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have dues based on Committee Assignments so if you are on a Committee Like appropriations for energy and commerce the dues for a republican, the 115th congress are 450,000. The person on the b or c committee if you want to be a chair you have to pay 1. 2 million in dues for that privilege. The way you earn those dues and the way you raise that money you have perceptions and the lobbyists represent a special interest come to those receptions and donate money to you. If you dont vote with the lobbyist, lobbyist dont show up to those receptions so its a way to coerce members by having outrageous use of 850,000 or 1. 2 million its a way for members to vote as lobbyists and specialinterest wants you to vote. Host you are an an aids committee and you pay your dues. Guest i pay my dues. Host how do you pay the dues wouldnt describe the system as though you feel lobbyists are asking you to vote a certain way . What do you do . Guest unfortunate. In colorado with two events events in the fall of the chair during the election cycle. We have private individuals come together for those events and support the four republican members of the house of representatives at those events. I dont hold receptions for the purpose of paying my dues to the rcc and i am along with the other three members from colorado we have our dues paid by those events. Host at those events to interact with lobbyists . Do you feel as though they are trying to influence the colorado delegation . Guest actually and im not 100 sure but i cant remember a lobbyist. We have individuals that support the Republican Party and believe the republicans should be in the majority. I think and let me back up. I dont think its a wrong to expect members of the house to raise money to try to win a majority. I think thats part of the reality of politics that the favorite part of politics what i find offensive is the linkage between raising money and assigning to a committee raising money and being in leadership. I think there has to be a merit pay system to decide who gets somewhat committee. If you show up to congress you have an extra case and that is not whether you can pay more money to the doctor. It shouldnt be determining factor whether you make that committee or not. Host how much do you pay . Guest 200,000. Host he also spilled the beans on leadership if you will in this book. You have described and you talk about house leaders taking overseas trip since subcommittee chairmanships. You also write about your position as president of the freshman class in your first year after you busted the party brats over at vote. Can you describe what happened in your case and how you dealt with that . I didnt really lose. It was not an attempt to unseat me as president of the freshman class. I was elected president of the freshman class. There were four other members and the freshman class is a wideopen job. You do what you can to bring people together to help other members of the class. Theres no real job description. It did mean a lot until they try to take away and all of a sudden it became a competition. He became more meaningful at that point. I worked with others in the class and had a chance to win the vote if it had to be called above that i was notified that there would be meeting and this came on the heels of voting against the rule of the trade Promotion Authority bill. It was very controversial and it was a vote that leadership was very mad that members of the Freedom Caucus were voting against them in that particular way. Mark meadows had his subcommittee chairmanship taken away from him on the government reform committee. We had four members from the Freedom Caucus that were removed as a result of their vote against the rule. There were a number of actions taken against individuals for voting against the rules. It showed the petty retaliation involved in that kind of the vote. Host what were your interactions like with ms this was unfolding . Guest what do i think of house leadership . Host what did you say to them . Guest i didnt have a lot of conversations frankly. A surprise when it happens but i think house leadership has a job and part of that job is to maintain Party Leadership and maybe they need to govern as best they can to get 218 votes. A problem when the everpresent from the other party in the white house is its very difficult to govern. You have to move to the center to get something passed and signed by the president of United States and those of us on the right who are conservatives didnt like the move to the senate so was hard for leadership to get the votes they needed unless they went to the democratic side and try to get the democrats with them. It was a bad position of leadership was then in at the time. Host your book came out on tuesday. Im curious about what has been the reaction from your colleagues. Obviously congress is not in session at the moment. Have you had any phonecalls or any emails from anyone . Guest ive got a few text and voice mails congratulating me on the book and some friends. I have not heard anything from leadership or others on the book. I imagine we will probably have conversations when everyone returns to congress. Host you are Founding Member of the Freedom Caucus which is a group of about 40 or so. House members who have in recent years taken a lot of hands against the house leadership. I guess noticeably John Boehners resignation if you will in 2015 and some Freedom Caucus members recently objected to the Obamacare Repeal and replace bill associated with current house leadership and the white house. Has the reaction to the book among your firebrand to the Freedom Caucus than a little different from other members . You have been hearing from folks even before you are published having you . Guest little but really not that much. Someone will walk up to me on the floor and said that you mention in the book and i really did my best to avoid mentioning a lot of names in the book. I talk about some members and i talk about a lot of anecdotes and stories that happened. In terms of throwing people under the bus this has been going on for so long and going on in both parties for me the important thing is to change the institution. I think people are generally good people when they come to congress. I think people are wellmeaning. I think people are fanciful. The institution crops and we need to change parts of the institution. Host lets talk about that because i know one if youre know one of your concerns has been the lack of fiscal discipline and the whole appropriations process and out works but those of us whove been around for a while know that the way it used to work was the appropriations committees with past 12 separate those funding the government but that hasnt happened since i think the mid1990s. Instead its either bundled up in a continuing resolution that keeps funding at the same level or some sort of ominous package that pulls together the appropriations process usually up against a deadline and theriot and government shutdowns as result of the inability to reach an agreement. The next stopgap measure is keeping the lights on expires on april 28 so we are about to face another deadline in congress. Can you talk a little bit about the consequences of making spending decisions in this fashion the way it happened since the whole time even in congress. Guest is management by crisis and we dont have to have a crisis. We have been promised for a number of years regular order which means we deal with each appropriations bill in the house we pass it and send it to the senate. They come together in a Conference Committee and we vote on that it one final time. The president signs it and we have the appropriations process by having a continuing resolution or omnibus. We end up with very little time to read a massive document. Very few members have any idea what is hidden in that document and it benefits the special interest groups. Benefits those in leadership that can figure out how to put something into and onto this or continuing resolution. It doesnt benefit the American People or their representatives. I talk about one example where drug company got a special provision that extended the path that they were concerned about in the omnibus bill. They have given a lot of money to leadership in the senate the vote parties and they were able to get this provision in the omnibus bill. It was a tremendous, for the smallest amount of money that it gave comes 60,000 here and 70,000 there they in fact made tens of millions of dollars in profit and so it is a Business Savvy decision perhaps but it does not benefit the American People and it wastes taxpayer dollars. Host so what are the solutions . Guest there are a lot of solutions that i talk about in the book that i think its really important to disengage Committee Assignments and leadership assignments from the that we are expected to pay. Ive no problem with paying dues and no problem supporting efforts to maintain majority. I have a deep problem with that link so ive written a letter to the Ethics Committee in a fast the Ethics Committee to make it unethical for an individual to consider fundraising when making an assignment to committee to a chairmanship position. I hope that we do that. Part of the house rules that prevent that from happening. Host what you think is likely to do that . Have you had any response to the letter . Guest i have not had a response yet. I dont expect a response right away but we have been dealing with a lot of major issues and taking a lot of attention away from some of the more routine issues that we face. My plan is to go to the members of the Ethics Committee and talk to them about this and plan on getting other members on board and showing support for this effort and we will see if we can get Something Like that pass. The process. Its a process that people need to think through and the language has to be carefully drafted. The last thing i want to do is to help create an ethics rule that has an unintended consequence and a member or somebody else suffers as a result of that. Host one of the things he mentioned earlier, term limits. I gather this is something that you would like to see as well and we could talk about the procedures for getting there. Its a great question. A lot of the bills that are out there and i support term limits bills that are out there but some of them are too short. We have to be realistic about if you have the speaker of the house who is third in line to the presidency that person should have served a sufficient number of years to have learned the entire system. Its not practical for speaker of the house to serve four years and becomes the are of the house for two years but that sort of turnover would be healthy but to empower the staff that now we see the bureaucracy and the executive branch and the executive branch having as much power as they do. Is hard to pinpoint the exact number that would be the maximum. When you Start Talking about 30 years or 40 years there are members that i serve with that have been around from the time nixon was impeached. Thats a long time in the swamp. Host do you think it gives them Institutional Knowledge and they can see the mistakes that were made . Guest they get the knowledge from institutions and i think they are learning from the mistakes that they made but also learning ways to avoid accountability and i think there are ways to manipulate the system. I think when you get too comfortable in d. C. You get less accountable to the people youre representing. Host one of your projects clearly is to make a lot of friends, right . I have to ask you, isnt this something that will be deeply offensive to some of your colleagues and what you are describing in these terms . Guest i didnt come here to make friends. I didnt have friends in d. C. Before and i didnt have plans on having friends were mailed last