message is and i don t think anybody has been able to argue it other than the dissemination of our society and our free markets and our entrepreneurism. he supported it because he wants to give it energy and fuel so it continues to grow, the media continues to focus on it so we don t talk about 9.1 unemployment. let me ask you a question. to what extent is the president s class warfare rhetoric contributed to the message? it is interesting because congressmen and women are exempt from insider trading laws, as we exposed last night. it s interesting because the president is you talk about cronyism, solyndra and all the green energy issues, i think they should be protesting in front of 1600 pennsylvania avenue but to what extent did he inspire with the class warfare rhetoric that the rich don t pay their fair share, this movement? the rich, it is going to come down to economics. i know we are going to talk about the president s approval rating which is abysmal, as well.
roughly equivalent to last year s one year deficit alone so it is a modest effort. even if we don t succeed it is backed up what is known as sequester or automatic cut of essentially the same amount, 1.2 trillion. the bad news for many of us half of that is aimed at our national security. secretary of defense leon panetta said that would begin to hollow out our . bill: is concerned about it too. he should be. i m committed as i think most are insuring we have at least 1.2 trillion of deficit reduction but have 13 months to do it in a way that does not hollow out our national defense. i m equally committed to that as well. bill: i have to squeeze in one more topic here. scott brown introduced this idea, should lawmakers be exempt from insider trading laws, would you two for that? of course they shouldn t be exempt. bill: you agree with brown on that? yes. now, we have laws on the
investigated. from my perspective the program itself was a huge mistake that should never have happened, led to the death of one of our border agents. it was handled absolutely improperly and, by those two things alone, bill, the department needs to be held accountable. he needs to exhibit leadership as the head of that department and step down. bill: we re going to watch for this letter, you say it will be done by the end of this week. we ll see what is contained in there. also we ll see how many people agree and sign on with you. another topic, should lawmakers be exempt from insider trading laws? absolutely not. look, i m just a freshman. i m one of the poorest members of congress to boot but this is what ink aers angers a lot of american people, we should not be a special class of citizen. we should be held to the same laws that the general population is held to and if members of congress violated insider trading laws, there
curious. what is also very curious is the fact that if a staff member from one of these members of congress were to trade on the inside information, they could go to prison. however, if their bosses, the esteemed madam or sir from a particular state does just that, it s a cake walk. they can make money. really, the only class in america that is exempt from these insider trading laws are members of congress. and it seems to me that the first people you d want to watch would be the politicians in washington. you have $174,000 in actual salary, put another $100,000 with perks on top of that. that should be enough. yes. and you found out, too, former speaker denny hastert came in, a guy with a farm that left with $11 million. how does that happen? he did what i point out in the book is the land deal. this is completely legal amazingly so. in hastert s case, he went out and bought 160 acres of farm land. put an earmark in the transportation bill to build a $220 million highway w
to buy bmw s and give them to people? i mean, this is just out and out, beyond the pale. this is arrogant stupidity. i don t think he s in a category by himself. i think that this is how business i ve been a critic of insider trading laws and there s a lot of stuff i think should be made legalized, barring going out and stealing information, me having better sources than you and trading off of that i should not be put in jail. that said, i know for a fact, what he s doing a lot of po people have done on wall street and my sources basically tell you that clawing up distributors at apple and finding out what they re planning to distribute, how their profits are, that s come on. isn t that due diligence. they say it s insider and one thing that amazed me in the entire case, without getting too involved was that for a billionaire, he was trading for gains, relevant chump change, tens of millions, and i ve he seen this story before.