Show notes
This week on Breaking Battlegrounds, we are honored to be joined by Congressman Neal Dunn and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, both Republicans from Florida. Later in the program, sports journalist Ron Futrell calls in with his take on the A's proposed move to Las Vegas. - Dr. Neal Dunn grew up in an Army family and was stationed at over 20 places before college including in Vietnam during middle school. He was an Eagle Scout and National Merit Scholar before matriculating at Washington and Lee University. After medical school at George Washington, he joined the US Army as a surgeon completing his residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) and Surgical Fellowship at Duke University. He continued his surgical career in many stations around the world before settling in Bay County, Florida in 1990. It was during his service at WRAMC in Washington that he met and married his wife Leah, of over 30 years.Dr. Dunn was a surgeon in Panama City for 25 years and was the founding president of the Advanced Urology Institute, a 45-physician practice with over 400 employees. He also founded the Bay Regional Cancer Center and pursued a special interest in advanced Prostate Cancer. He sat on the Governor's Prostate Cancer Advisory Council and the Florida Blue Physician Advisory Board. Prior to being elected to Congress, Dr. Dunn served on the Board of Governors of the Florida Medical Association, and as President of his County Medical Society, Chief of Staff of Gulf Coast Hospital, and Director of the Bay Medical Center Sacred Heart Joint Venture. He was recognized as a Healthcare Hero by the Florida Department of Health for his chairmanship of Bay Cares, a medical charity headquartered in Panama City that provided about $30 million of completely free medical care annually to the working poor in Bay and 8 surrounding counties.Dr. Dunn was also the founding Chairman of Summit Bank, a rapidly growing 5-star community bank headquartered in Panama City. He was honored to be named to the Board of Directors of Space Florida which operates the space launch complexes and numerous research, assembly, and support facilities on Cape Canaveral. He also served as a Director of Enterprise Florida, the state's economic development agency.Dr. Dunn lives in Panama City, Florida with his wife Leah. In his free time, he enjoys quail hunting and spending time on the water. They are the proud parents of 3 sons (Alexander, Patrick, and David) and 3 grandchildren. - Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart is currently fulfilling his 11th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Florida's 26th congressional district. Diaz-Balart is a senior member of the House Committee on Appropriations, and he is the Chairman of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) Subcommittee, in addition to serving on the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) and Defense Subcommittees. Diaz-Balart passionately serves his constituents, acting tirelessly in defense of individual rights and liberties, promoting economic prosperity, and supporting a robust national defense. He is well-known for his advocacy of human rights and democracy around the world, as well as for his staunch support of our global allies. Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002, making him the Dean of the Florida Delegation and Deputy Whip in Congress. Prior to his time in Congress, Diaz-Balart served in the Florida State Legislature in both the House and Senate chambers. He chaired several committees, including the Combined Appropriations/Ways and Means/Finance and Tax Committee. Diaz-Balart was born on September 25, 1961, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Rafael and Hilda Diaz-Balart and is the youngest of four brothers (Rafael, Lincoln, and Jose). He studied Political Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Diaz-Balart currently resides in Miami, Florida, with his wife, Tia, and son, Cristian Rafael. - Ron Futrell is a longtime journalist who has worked at a number of local TV/radio stations throughout the western United States. He has covered sports in Las Vegas since 1984. Ron began his broadcasting career in the early '80s in Salt Lake City at KSXX radio and KTVX TV. From there, he covered sports and news at KNDO TV in Yakima, WA. Ron has covered Stanley Cup Finals, Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals and NCAA Championships. He has reported on virtually every major sporting event in Las Vegas over the past three decades, including major boxing and MMA events, NASCAR races, the rise and fall of UNLV basketball, the careers of local athletes like Greg Maddux, Andre Agassi, Randall Cunningham and Mike Tyson, along with many others. Ron is also well known for covering local high school and club sports in Las Vegas. Ron is perhaps best known in Las Vegas for his work covering UNLV basketball throughout its glory days. As host of the Jerry Tarkanian TV show for 10 years, Ron was able to get the inside story on one of most remarkable teams in college basketball history. Ron is also a journalism professor at University of Nevada Las Vegas and was the first to teach Sports Broadcasting classes at UNLV. Ron says some of his greatest moments covering sports have been sitting ringside at the Hagler/Hearns fight in 1985 at Caesars Palace, watching the UNLV Runnin' Rebels win the basketball National Championship in 1990 and witnessing the tremendous success of the inaugural season of the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017-18. - Connect with us: www.breakingbattlegrounds.vote Twitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_Battle Facebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegrounds Instagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegrounds LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds - Transcription Sam Stone: [00:00:24] Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. My co-host Chuck Warren, is out and traveling today. But some big news in the country and we are very excited to have Congressman Neal Dunn of Florida's second Congressional District. Congressman Dunn grew up in an Army family, was stationed in over 20 different locations, including in Vietnam. During middle school, he was an Eagle Scout National Merit Scholar, then went to Washington and Lee University, went to medical school at George Washington, joined the US Army as a surgeon, completed his residency at Walter Reed Medical Center. Folks, I'm going on and on and on because this is the kind of resume, frankly, we need a lot more of in Congress. People who have real accomplishments. You're too kind. Well, you know what, Congressman? I mean, how many people in Congress right now have an actual medical background? Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:01:20] Well, there are 17 doctors. Sam Stone: [00:01:23] Honestly. Okay. I'm actually shocked. That's more than I thought. And there were only. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:01:27] Nine when I got here, but we're adding so. Sam Stone: [00:01:30] Good. Well, see, I mean, frankly, I think that's pretty valuable given how much of the medical industry comes under the purview of Congress these days. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:01:39] It's very important. Sam Stone: [00:01:41] So before we get into more of that and and I do want to talk a little bit about your background, but obviously the big conversation that's lighting up the country right now is the agreement over the debt ceiling. Yes, Speaker McCarthy put together an agreement and despite the best efforts of the national press to pretend that never happened, uh, negotiations did conclude very recently an agreement was signed. Now, you did vote for it. I did. And as Chuck and I have said here many times, we would also and tell folks why. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:02:17] Well, so this, you know, is certainly one of those tough calls that we face in Congress. It's it's why the job can be difficult. You know, this this first off, we should say this bill really does cut the spending. So President Biden had come forth with a budget and we went after that budget to say we got a this is way too much. It's it's the kind of budget that caused the inflation that we're suffering with. And so we managed to I say we, you know, and actually the credit should go to Speaker McCarthy and the negotiation team led by Garret Graves and they just did a brilliant job getting the getting that number down by 4.8 trillion with a T trillion dollars over the the ten year window. And so that that's a big savings. There's never been a cut on the president's budget, anything like that big in history. Sam Stone: [00:03:13] A trillion here, a trillion there. Pretty soon you're talking real money. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:03:17] Yeah and you know, we used to say a million and a million here. Now it's trillions. You're right. It's it's it is. It is real money. Now let's let's don't kid ourselves. This is just a first step because the debt is still going to glide somewhat higher over the next ten years. There's going to be increased. There's still we're still going to be borrowing money. We're still going to be facing, you know, the situation where we're spending more than we're bringing in. And we have to go after that, too. But we really got some good wins on this bill. One of the things that should appeal to everybody was we we kept the IRS from getting any more new agents this year or next. And then, of course, we'll have to fight that in the 20 in the 25 appropriations process again. But bearing in mind we only control one House, the House and. Sam Stone: [00:04:12] Senate control one House. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:04:13] Yeah, very with a narrow majority. This is really a remarkable bill given the the sort of weak hand that we had to play. And so I was actually, you know, you could always wish for more. My God, yes, you could wish for more. But we did manage to protect the the defense budget entirely. So we plussed it up from the president. And and we get we this is no time to cut on the military. We got too many threats around the world right now. And we also kept the veterans intact. But everybody else took a little bath. Sam Stone: [00:04:47] Well, as they had to. I mean, the run up in spending in the last few years has been extraordinary. It has. This is the first step in starting to rein that back in it. How important was it not to default? Because I think a lot of people out there were expecting you know, there's some folks in the Republican Party saying they expected more. They wanted a more, you know, more drastic. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:05:12] It's really irresponsible to default on on debt. Let let let me see if I can underline that. So the the importance of a strong dollar, the fact that the global economy is dollarized is as important as having a strong military. It's that important. So a strong US dollar is fundamental to the national security and frankly, to the stability of the world system. Sam Stone: [00:05:39] And so and and from what I understand and different economists have slightly different takes. But if the US were to lose our status, which is is clearly there are countries trying to take it away as the as the world reserve currency that would be something like an instant 15% tax increase on every single American. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:05:58] That's right. And you would be far less safe as well. Sam Stone: [00:06:03] Absolutely. And you have an interesting background. We got into it a little bit earlier. You know, obviously amazing background with the military surgical fellowship at Duke University. Um, but you also have a background in banking and in finance. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:06:21] Yeah, I do. So, you know, what happened is I got out of the military. I'd always been getting a paycheck all my life, and I'm in private practice, and all of a sudden I'm running a private practice. And I didn't really know how to run a business at all. So I approached it like a, you know, another school course. Okay, we got to study this thing and figure out how how businesses work and and how to report and how to account for the money. And I had a great deal of help, frankly, in my I moved into a town I live in Panama City, Florida. And my patience, I'm in a surgical specialty that tends to have these older guys as patients. And so they were a lot of businessmen and they mentored me all the way through this. And among my mentors was a banker. And he he graciously spent some years teaching me about banking. And and eventually I got the bug bit and we started a bank of our own. So and it did very well. I was very pleased with it. We kept it for about a dozen years. Sam Stone: [00:07:21] Well, and that's an amazing story too, because, you know, not only do you have the experience in the medical industry, but also the financial industry. So when you go to Congress, you're coming in with a great deal to contribute right off the top based on those experiences, right? Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:07:39] Yes. And I think, by the way, the business and the banking experience was very helpful. When we come up here and we start throwing around numbers like trillions of dollars, you know, that's a scary number to throw at a banker. You know, people start talking about defaulting on that and you go, boy. Put the gun down and back away. This is dangerous stuff you're talking about. Sam Stone: [00:08:01] Oh, absolutely. Now I'm laughing and joking about this a little bit, but this is really deadly serious stuff. It is. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:08:10] It's deadly serious. Sam Stone: [00:08:11] And the the consequences of the default would have been so dramatic that I want to say thank you to you and your colleagues who had the courage to see this process through. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:08:23] Well, thank you. And I'll tell you what, I hope that we get back together in a year and we find out that we've also fought the fought the the people want to spend all this money to have standstill yet again on the appropriations next year, too. Sam Stone: [00:08:36] So that's actually one of the things I was about to get to. And I'm glad you went there first, is this isn't the hill to die on. The the full faith and credit of the United States is not the hill to go out there and die on and say we're going to hold our ground no matter what. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:08:51] Yeah, this is not the place to throw a hissy fit. I mean, we we absolutely have to, you know, meet our debt. This is why the world depends on the United States. If we default on our debt, you know, all of a sudden we become a lot less important to everybody. Sam Stone: [00:09:09] Yeah, absolutely. But there is a place to do that, to have that fight. Right. And that's absolutely in the future here in the next couple of years with the various budget processes. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:09:21] There's a lot of places to have that fight. One of them would be in November at the ballot box. But, you know, if you really feel strongly about the debt, then don't elect a bunch of people and don't nominate a bunch of people who can't get elected to office that are that are going to be irresponsible with with the dollar. You know, this stuff really matters to our children and our grandchildren. I have grandchildren, so I tend to have a longer horizon. But, you know, it's important that we don't we don't hurt them. Sam Stone: [00:09:55] Yeah, you can. You can make mistakes. Now that will take away so much of the opportunities in their future. That's right. Congressmen Neal Dunn: [00:10:03] And there's another side to this. And I get this, too, when people say that, you…
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