Vivek Ramaswamy is running for Governor of Ohio, and on today's show, we talk to him about the future of American Finance and what does the future look like with AI and how do states prepare? And Senator Mike Lee on Gold and the Rains Act.
00:00:37.240Normally, I don't agree with her, but she makes a case that's very appealing to keep our undocumented workers.
00:00:44.220Also, Vivek Ramaswamy, he's now running for governor of Ohio.
00:00:48.620We talked to him about that and the future.
00:00:52.340What does the future look like with AI and how do states prepare?
00:00:56.320And Senator Mike Lee on Gold and the Rains Act, all on today's podcast.
00:01:01.500You know, one of those things that stands out the most to me about American financing, more than just about any other company that I talk about on this program, is they had to prove themselves to me because this is a mortgage company.
00:01:15.720And when they first came to me, I said to them, yeah, no thanks, because I saw the collapse of 2008 when it was coming.
00:01:24.980They called me and wanted to be a sponsor on the program, and I said no to them in 2007.
00:01:29.660And I said, call me after the collapse.
00:01:31.340And they're like, no, no, Glenn, we actually believe you're right about the collapse that's coming, and we don't do all of those things.
00:01:36.080And I said, well, we'll see how your people fare after the collapse.
00:01:39.780And I talked to them after, and their people were fine because they don't work for the banks.
00:04:40.960There, on Main Street, in your own hometown, its windows dark, its tables bare.
00:04:46.300Remember, the aroma-simmering spices replaced now just by the dust of neglect.
00:04:53.000Oh, you might say, I'm finding that hard to imagine.
00:04:59.980But it is the precipice which we teeter upon when we contemplate casting out the undocumented souls who breathe life into our nation's veins.
00:08:01.080These are not the faceless cogs, but they're human beings propelled by the same hunger for betterment that drove pilgrims across the oceans, they'll tell you.
00:08:13.760They rise before the sun, hands blistered, knees bent, harvesting what we consume without even a second thought.
00:08:21.520Yes, California growers have said that they've posted ads for years and locals just don't apply.
00:08:27.400These jobs are theirs because no one else will do these jobs.
00:08:31.240And the data concurs in states like Texas and Florida.
00:08:34.840Native-born workers shun the fields, leaving 80% of crop labor to the immigrants, documented or undocumented.
00:19:09.080But I just really want somebody that I trust to actually look at the gold and be able to look at all of it.
00:19:16.880Not just, I mean, back tonight, I'm going to show people, it is amazing.
00:19:21.640There are all these cages or all these rooms with gold.
00:19:25.040In the 1950s, I think they only opened three of them.
00:19:28.420We don't even know how many there are, but I think it's over 20 for sure.
00:19:31.540Just in Fort Knox, they only opened three of them, and then they counted up and across, did the math, pulled out three gold bars, did a sample test of all of them.
00:19:42.920In the 1970s, they only opened one room to let people see.
00:19:52.780That's right, and most of the video footage that I saw from that visit in the 1970s, which is the most recent one I've seen, it looked to me like mostly a lot of fanfare about the door.
00:20:03.760I mean, there's this giant door that's like 10 feet thick, and about 10 guys it took to operate all the wheels to open it.
00:20:11.680But, you know, there wasn't a lot of time spent on the gold, very little time spent actually inspecting it, testing it, making sure it was there, that it was what it purported to be.
00:20:20.720That's one of the many reasons why the American people, as our government has gotten bigger, as it's gotten more expensive, as it's gotten more intrusive, as it's gotten more, frankly, dishonest.
00:20:30.540People don't trust it, and they want verification.
00:20:32.700And this is important for the full faith and credit of the United States government.
00:20:37.040It is important that people know that we have what we say we have.
00:20:40.300The only problem is, Mike, and I honestly, I wrestle with this.
00:20:44.700We go in, and you find out that the gold's not there, or the gold has been re-hypothecated, which I explain in tonight's show.
00:20:53.260You find out any of these really nasty things, that's not good for America.
00:21:48.920So, Donald Trump did get his tax cuts and everything that, you know, he wanted, but we didn't get what I really wanted, and that is a Republican Party with a backbone that says, we're serious this time about cutting.
00:22:03.380They passed an almost $90 trillion 10-year bill, but I think it was like $1.4 trillion in cutting.
00:22:24.340Yeah, that seems a little bit anemic for what is needed here.
00:22:29.680Now, if they start, one could say, I suppose, that it is a good start, but remember, this is not the budget that the Senate still would have to act on it.
00:22:38.600And I personally prefer a much more aggressive approach and would much rather see a more aggressive approach like that.
00:22:46.500It's been discussed extensively by my friend and colleague from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson.
00:22:52.000Senator Ron Johnson has pointed out that if we just went back to pre-COVID spending levels and then made upward adjustments for inflation and population increase since COVID,
00:23:03.800with respect to Social Security and Medicare, that we could get very, very close to balance, we could be at balance within just a few years, like two, three years.
00:23:15.660So why not take a more aggressive approach like that?
00:23:19.100Why not use the budget as an opportunity to set that plan, set that predicate, to just say we're not doing this anymore because we can't afford it,
00:23:26.280and it's going to shut our country and our economy down if we keep messing with this?
00:23:30.620So why is that not being taken seriously?
00:23:34.660Well, OK, so there are a lot of reasons.
00:23:38.240A lot of people are eager to point out, look, House Republicans have a tough.
00:23:43.060They've got only, you know, depending on the day, the face of the moon, the day of the week,
00:23:48.700they've only got that one, two or three seat majority cushion.
00:23:52.720And there are a lot of variances of opinion.
00:23:54.680But this is exactly the kind of moment when we need leadership.
00:23:57.220We need bold people to just stand up and say, no, we're not doing this.
00:24:00.600We're going to be more aggressive about it.
00:24:02.360So there's still opportunity to do that.
00:24:06.800We're still very near the beginning of the process.
00:24:09.020And I personally hope that the Ron Johnson approach will gain more appeal and more of that will get injected into whatever ends up getting passed.
00:24:16.620You know, I was kind of excited, you know, about a month ago.
00:24:20.260I thought, oh, wait a minute, we might even be able to get the RAINS Act, which is something people either don't know what it is or they've heard it for, you know, the last 10 or 12 years.
00:24:29.260And, you know, honestly, maybe it just needs to be called the we're going to do a lot of really cool free stuff for the American People Act and we'll get passed.
00:25:18.960Because Article 1, Sections 1 and 7 makes that clear.
00:25:22.000And yet, for the last 85 years or so, Congress has been in this death spiral of delegating its lawmaking powers.
00:25:29.420In short, we will say things like, well, we shall have good law in Area X and we hereby delegate to Agency Y the power to make good law in that area.
00:25:37.880That's nonsense. That makes the work easier for members of Congress, and it insulates members of Congress from political accountability in all the wrong ways.
00:25:46.440But even more, does it not violate my right to representation?
00:25:54.920100%. Because these people who make most of your laws measured by weight, volume, regulatory compliance costs, you name it, are now made by men and women, not of our own choosing.
00:26:10.140He said, in effect, he said, it'll be of little avail to the American people that their laws may be written by men of their own choosing.
00:26:16.200If those laws be so voluminous, complex, and ever-changing, they can't know from one day to the next what the law says and what it requires.
00:26:22.220We don't live in that dystopian nightmare.
00:27:16.140The new provision of the RAINS Act that I inserted last year would allow an individual who had one of these enforced against him or her to raise as an affirmative defense, hey, I wasn't on notice.
00:27:29.460You have to be adequately placed on notice.
00:27:31.380It's one of the hallmark characteristics of due process.
00:27:33.600You're placed adequately on notice as to what your obligation is.
00:27:36.900And the way you need to be placed on notice is that something is passed by both the Houses of Congress and then given to the president for signature.
00:27:44.620And if you can point out that the affirmative legal obligations in that regulation were not evident on the face of any statute passed by Congress, then you could use that as a defense and you can be let off the hook for that.
00:28:00.120But currently, you can go to prison or have your business shut down if you don't comply with whatever the bureaucratic thing you have to do.
00:28:36.880They both ended up serving prison time just for clearing some land.
00:28:41.020They hadn't even built anything on it yet.
00:28:43.140They started to clear some land to get ready to dig a foundation for some homes.
00:28:48.000They had no reason to believe they were violating any regulation.
00:28:51.420But unbeknownst to them, some bureaucratic pinhead had designated that a wetland area, even though it didn't have any visible wetland characteristics.
00:29:33.280First of all, why do you want to be the governor of Ohio?
00:29:38.880Well, look, I think that Donald Trump is doing a great job as U.S. president.
00:29:42.280But that means that a lot of federal programs are going to come down from Washington, D.C., from education to health care, back to the states and to the people where they belong.
00:29:54.220That's one of the things I saw in my early effort in helping get Doge off the ground is the same thing.
00:29:58.620Federalism is the way forward to our golden age.
00:30:02.380And that is going to require strong governors to actually step up and do their job in leading and managing education, for example, in the right way.
00:30:11.820And so, I was born and raised in Ohio.
00:30:13.740It's where I'm raising my two sons today.
00:30:15.980I think it's one of the better states in the Midwest.
00:30:18.440But I want to lead Ohio to be the top state in the country to raise a young family, to grow a business, and to live the American dream that I have.
00:31:09.580I have to admit, I think the job is going to be far easier for me at the state level than it is doing it at the federal level, which is a gargantuan project.
00:31:20.380But I do think that giving taxpayers the transparency, first of all, how their money is being spent, fixing the regulatory state, all that's required.
00:31:28.360At the level of Ohio, I think this is actually immediately achievable in ways that improve people's lives, right?
00:31:35.940I'm into bringing the American dream back to Ohio.
00:31:39.180Flash every bit of red tape in the state.
00:31:41.400I mean, think about the overregulation that comes from that bureaucracy.
00:31:44.620That is the easiest thing we could fix right out the gate.
00:31:47.92018 to 36 months for a natural gas pipeline, that should be six months or less.
00:31:53.180I haven't met a single person in Ohio.
00:31:55.420I haven't met a single person in the country, Glenn, who says that we have too little red tape.
00:32:00.020I've met a lot of people, especially business owners, who will tell you that there is too much red tape.
00:32:05.180And so I do think that this idea that this is just an academic project, no, it's not just academic solutions to address a deficit number or a debt number or a GDP number.
00:32:15.280I think these are vital improvements to our economic and social fabric so that little league teams no longer have to shut down because they can't find a local company to sponsor them because they went to another state with a more favorable regulatory environment.
00:32:28.700So a mom doesn't have to think twice before having a second or third kid for fear of the cost of a bigger car because the tax rate's too high in the state.
00:32:37.360So one of the things I want to do is to drive the income tax rate down, eventually down to zero, like eight other states that have done the same thing.
00:33:40.580I don't actually own anything if it can be taken from me because of tax.
00:33:44.960I mean, that is like, isn't that the story of Robin Hood?
00:33:47.340I mean, it's actually funny you say that.
00:33:51.180John Locke was one of the intellectual progenitors of our country's founding, as you're well aware, and the ownership of private property was foundational to the formation of the United States of America.
00:34:03.760And so I think we would do well to remember those basic time-tested principles.
00:34:08.980Capitalism is the greatest system known to man to lift us up from poverty.
00:34:12.700We've started to apologize for that as well.
00:34:16.540And look, I say this for Ohio, but I say this because it has a national significance too, Glenn, is I want Ohio to set the standard for the rest of the country where we embrace property rights, where we embrace capitalism and meritocracy instead of apologizing for it.
00:34:30.900And the beauty of our system is that so much of saving our country actually has to come from the level of the states, has to come from the people.
00:34:45.880The path to our golden age runs through federalism.
00:34:49.840And that's why, look, I think that saving this country is a team effort.
00:34:52.680That's why I chose to run for this position after great conversations with President Trump, with Elon.
00:34:58.180Frankly, both of them, they came out within hours of my announcement, within an hour to both endorse, and I was proud to receive their support and others statewide here as well.
00:35:08.500But that's because this is going to be a team effort to save the country.
00:35:12.260And I do think leadership at the level of the states, especially starting a year or two from now, after a lot of those programs have been pushed back down to the states and the people where they belong, I do see a bit of a leadership gap there.
00:35:25.040And that's a big part of why I was called into this.
00:35:27.720And we're going to set a national standard.
00:36:03.060So I do want to talk to you about something that you are, you're qualified to answer.
00:36:09.700And I think there are very few people that are qualified that people trust and know that can speak on this.
00:36:17.920You know, Musk came out and talked about the singularity on Sunday and said, we are on the event horizon of the singularity.
00:36:24.060For anybody who really understands what's coming our way in the next three to five years, the world will be completely different in ways that none of us can imagine in five years from now.
00:36:35.020How do we how do we explain this to the American people and how do you prepare a state to be nimble enough to be able to adapt?
00:36:48.000I mean, I really believe we're at the very beginning here of a maybe 18 to 36 month change where at the end of these 36 months, it's going to be entirely different.
00:37:02.780And people will have to understand you either adapt right now or you're out.
00:37:25.140So it's interesting about a position of from the perspective of state leadership.
00:37:27.980Right. As the next governor of Ohio, I want Ohio to be the state where we use AI not to take jobs, but to make jobs.
00:37:36.400And what I mean by that is there's there's a lot of focus on a lot of investment across the country and the world into algorithmic improvement, into actually improving the computational power driving new AI algorithms.
00:37:49.880And that's important. But where I don't think we've invested enough is how to apply that AI, how to use that next generation of intelligence to apply it to their respective fields from health care to financial services to construction design.
00:38:03.520And there you're talking about using skilled workers who are already in the state that don't have to be programming the next generation of AI.
00:38:10.140We've trained the AI. What I want to do is to train the human beings on how to use that AI and apply it to enhance their own productivity on their own terms.
00:38:19.840And I think that last part is really important, Glenn, as we're headed to the future.
00:38:23.820The future is coming, whether we like it or not.
00:38:25.680Do you want to be dragged by it or do you want to shape it?
00:38:27.760And I want to be a leader who helps us shape it to harness the power of that.
00:38:43.100So I think one of the things we need to do is invest in workforce training and education and allow the private sector to already do it by getting out of the way.
00:39:19.760But we also want to be the state that has two and one year and even six month or nine month vocational programs that train people to be an electrician or a welder or a builder and give them also in their respective fields.
00:39:34.760Even the training needed know how to use that.
00:39:38.080How to use that generation of technology to apply it to their respective fields.
00:39:43.040That's what true modernization looks like.
00:39:44.740So I don't want to fall in this camp and say, oh, well, that technological revolution is for somebody else.
00:39:49.600How do we harness the fruits of that to actually improve our own lives, even in fields that weren't traditionally thought to necessarily be technologically forward fields?
00:41:31.980Well, the truth is one of the paths is grow, grow, grow.
00:41:34.980It goes to that spirit that you talked about.
00:41:37.000That's where I think as a great leader of a state, you can at least help in that regard, where if you're depressing economic growth, then your debt to GDP ratio becomes even worse because your GDP growth rates are lower.
00:41:48.680So one of the areas to focus on is just robust economic growth through mass deregulation, through mass unlocking of private sector potential, through slashing and burning bureaucracy wherever necessary.
00:42:02.120On the other side, though, Glenn, and you raise a good point here, I would just say there are ways to rationalize the budget that actually lift people up in the process.
00:42:12.920I'll give you one example, and I'm going to lead the way here in Ohio on this front is reattaching work requirements to welfare, Medicaid and other forms of aid.
00:42:54.080You're looking at a lot of the spending in Medicaid, a lot of spending in welfare.
00:42:57.440It's a great way to bring down spending.
00:42:59.180But even more importantly, it is an even better way to help those Americans to actually realize the American dream rather than to be permanently dependent on a state that serves as a ceiling for what they're able to achieve in their lives.
00:43:12.840And there are a lot of that does have to be done and led at the state level.
00:43:16.860The federal government, there's a role to play.
00:43:18.840But I think there's also an important role for what does a leader look like who has the spine to step up and actually do that?
00:43:25.600Ohio is a state that doesn't have work requirements attached to Medicaid right now.
00:43:36.360One is it enhances economic productivity and GDP growth.
00:43:39.300The other thing it does is it brings down our debt and our spending.
00:43:43.500But the third and most important thing it does is it brings back our sense of national spirit and self-worth and individual self-confidence for so many who have lost that in this culture of victimhood and entitlement and dependence on the government.
00:43:58.860It's time for us to graduate from the era of dependence and move back to our era of independence.
00:44:04.960Think about that as a modern day declaration of independence from the government.
00:44:08.420A modern day Northwest ordinance centered right here in Ohio.
00:44:13.780And I personally think, Glenn, a lot of politically homeless people, independents, libertarians, not just Republicans, maybe even some orphaned Reagan Democrats will come along with us for this ride.