H2, Segment 1 - Mark Sanford discusses his Senate campaign, budget cuts, and voter laws

What this episode covers

Transcript [Pledge of Allegiance] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [Music: America the Beautiful] O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! [Audio Clip] America is back! [Charlie James] Yes, sir! And we are back. Welcome back to the program. Please welcome right now former congressman, former representative of the First Congressional District here in South Carolina, and now Senate candidate Mark Sanford. Governor, representative, congressman Mark Sanford, how are you, sir? [Mark Sanford] Just go with "Hey you." I'll go with "Hey you." How about that? How are you? It's been a while since—it was great to see you at breakfast this morning. [Charlie James] It was fantastic. It was great to see you as well, and a treat to visit with a bunch of folks up in the upcountry, Upstate South Carolina. I tell you what, it was a nice crowd. [Charlie James] So, you talk a lot about the budget. And I believe that you have a voice that needs to be heard as far as the deficit is concerned. Is that the main reason you chose to run for Senate in this race? [Mark Sanford] It is. As you well know, I've for a long time cared about that issue and made noise on it and pushed on it and prodded on it. At times, you know, was frankly just yelling into the wind. But, you know, there is such power in the Senate seat to actually have an effect, to make a difference. And I worry to death about our four boys and my now grandchild and a lot of other young folks that are out there on what comes next if we don't get these numbers turned around in D.C. [Charlie James] So how do we do that? How do we get those numbers turned around? Where do we cut the spending in order to make some sort of a difference? [Mark Sanford] It's one step at a time. You know, you have to have a broad—you know, two pigs—careful to remind folks I carried two pigs, one under each arm, you know, 22 years ago when I'd gotten into a fuss with the legislative body on an unconstitutional deficit, which you can't have if you have a balanced budget requirement as a state, which we do. But nonetheless, it had been swept under the rug. We dealt with it. And was there a lot of wrangling and fussing and—I mean, nine months of negotiation! Nine months got us to within $16 million of completely closing it off, and then they said, "Well, we got to do what we got to do. We're just going to override your line-item veto." I said, "All right, you got to do what you got to do, then I'm going to do what I got to do, which is to look for some more colorful way of raising a constitutional issue. And this is one that's going to set precedent for the next 100 years on the sanctity of our balanced budget requirement as a state." And next thing you know, the pigs came. That's a long-winded way of saying in getting at this issue, there is no silver bullet. It's going to take a lot of prodding and a lot of, you know, fussing and carrying on. But, you know, when I was governor, we created a thing called the MAP Commission, which was sort of a precursor to what Elon Musk and that group did for a little while. And we really began to look under the hood. So when you think about our government, I mean, you know, if you just start with ABCs—I mean, you start with A, let's say Ag. You look and, you know, a lot of the corporate subsidies that were there, you know, were designed to help a family farm, but now they're helping out just a large multinational corporation. Well, that's not the original intent. Or you think about, you know, the idea of—going back to corporate subsidies, I guess Ronald Reagan was right: the closest thing to eternal life is a government program. These things ...

Distinct summary based on available episode metadata or transcript content.