Welcome it is verdict with Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you. I hope you had a fabulous Christmas with your family center on this chatting with you over the last several weeks and I know so many people have been reaching out to you.

It's same with me giving warm wishes and prayers for you and your family. I know you missed talking to the audience a lot obviously but you've been spending it something great quality time with your family.

Well, Ben, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I hope everyone listening had a fantastic Christmas with their family as everyone knows the podcast has not been airing for the last several weeks.

I've been dealing with the family emergency here at home and I just want to say thank you to all of you who've reached out with your prayers with your support with your encouragement.

It means an enormous amount. Everyone's doing okay right now and we're grateful for the love that has been expressed. Heidi and I have spent the last several weeks just here at home with our kids.

And we appreciate also folks respecting our family's privacy and so I don't intend to be talking publicly about what we're dealing with other than just to say we appreciate the prayers, the love and support.

And in this holiday time, Christmas is a wonderful time to be with your family to hug your kids to hug your parents to hold onto the people you love and it's never more important.

No doubt about that and I'm glad to get to spend some more time with you today and so many people have been reaching out.

We've seen all your tweets. I can promise you that and I'll say it is just being around you. There have been so many people that have reached out and they've been and you guys are wonderful that have done that.

So thank you. Thank you for everyone that's done that as well. It means the world I know when you see those messages and there's some other breaking news.

You've also gotten older since the last time I talked to you. Happy birthday a few days later as well.

Well, well, thank you. I mean, technically we've all gotten older. But I feel like it's just I got to stick that one in there center. You know.

So December 22nd, I turned 52. We had a nice nice birthday celebration at home with the family and yet another day I'll tell you what I tell my mom.

My mom's 88 now and every birthday she has. I tell her, okay, you're halfway there. She's she's groaning more and more as I say that on more recent birthdays.

That's hilarious. 52 Congrats. Happy birthday to that one. There's been a lot that's happened in the last couple weeks and I do want to get your thoughts center on this omnibus spinning bill right before Christmas.

It was kind of a stick it to the American people moment. People wanted to fly home. They wanted to beat the storm that's been affected so many Americans, especially.

You know, there are East to Mississippi. There was a lot of centers that said just get me home. I don't care what it costs and it cost us quite quite a lot of money. Well, well over a trillion dollars in this new budget instead of just passing a CR.

How did this happen and why did so many Republicans go along with this?

Well, I have to tell you this omnibus was absolutely disgraceful that it is a massive bill. It is 4,155 pages. It's 1.7 trillion dollars of new government spending.

And it is a massive spending bill on the way out the door. It is a giant gift to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in just a few days. We're going to have a Republican House of Representatives in Washington.

Nancy Pelosi obviously doesn't want to enact the policy priorities of a Republican House of Representatives.

So Pelosi and Schumer decided to team up together and ram through this final omnibus bill, this massive spending that funds the federal government through most of next year all the way through September 30th of next year.

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