Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-11-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

LIstener calls and news stories start, a talk on Sanctuary State issues, how will this play? Guest is former State Senator Herman Baertschiger.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. I love pebbling your shoe Tuesday with open phones. Got a lot in the air this morning. We've been talking terrorists. We've been talking energy.

We've been talking pennies. Maybe we'll get into pennies at some point, too. I don't think the pennies can go away, or should go away. And I still haven't even really completely explained my case. But let me go to Steve. Steve, I want to talk to you first about the tariff issue. You were listening to my talk with Mr. Bonser last hour. Go ahead.

Yeah, well, you know, the things that are being considered are the aluminum and steel and chip foundries. And believe it or not, chip foundries are big energy users because they have a plasma furnace that they have to maintain to grow the chips. And the silico that they make the chips out of basically. So if you're running a business, you've got input costs, and then you've got the market that you're trying to enter into to sell your product. Well, if you don't fix the, if you've got a problem functioning as a business, and you can't control your input costs, then you can't make it work no matter what. And so putting a tariff on incoming steel doesn't fix the fact that our electricity prices keep going up.

And there has not been any policy to affect that. And I know that there was a reason why the aluminum companies were over there by the Bonneville power plant, because of the cheap power. And hydropower, properly done, is still some of the cheapest stuff available. But that's politically risky here right now. I mean, they want to take those dams out. Everywhere you look, they're popping dams out instead of putting them in. Yeah, well, when Kulingowski started giving credits for windmills and solar,

they changed the structure of how those people got paid. Well, they redefined renewable power, and they didn't include hydro in that. That wasn't renewable. Well, because they couldn't pay their cronies with the power because Bonneville was cheaper. And then when they started making the grid by wind and solar first, it screwed up the balance of what those aluminum and steel plants, well, we didn't have steel plants. Yeah, but still, terrorizing the Canadian aluminum coming in is not going to fix that energy problem here in the Northwest,

is the bottom line, is it not? That's absolutely true. You know, if you've ever worked at running, I've never owned a business, but I've been in management and I've tried to play with the plasticity of the input costs versus what your market was for your product. You can't fix that energy cost problem. And even the wood products industry today, I don't know if we could compete with the large amount of electricity that's necessary to run a modern sawmill. So it all starts with the price of energy, the major input cost. Thank you very much.

Steve, it's good to be schooled on these such things okay let me go to i need her theme hello lucretia how you doing good morning morning lucretia what's on your mind here about the aluminum you have aluminum on your mind in a different way huh yeah yeah yeah just because that's one of the key things David Key, top-tier engineer, said that they would be using. And Dane Whittington asked the question, well, do we know it's safe? Well, we haven't tested it. You know, yeah, you talk to any fireman, and you know if you've got aluminum barium, it's going to burn harder and faster. And Mark McClandish is a former defense industry technician who spoke at the Mount Shasta meeting in 2014. And he said, you know, not only are they putting this in the fuel of the planes, but, yeah, it's definitely being sprayed out. That is total baloney.

You could not put aluminum in the fuel. You know what you would do to the engines? No, he's a... Mark is a former defense industry technician. I don't care. They're not putting aluminum in the fuel, Lucretia. They can't. It's nano. He says one particle combines

with three oxygens and it allows for it to burn hotter but also it's explosive. so don't tell me that i'm telling you that no well they're not putting aluminum in the in the jet fuel it would destroy the equipment over time no i'll send you articles but the other thing let's go on okay i'll send you articles okay on that. The next thing is we know from the 2025 Air Force wants to own the weather that we have the ability with putting just carbon black dust that LBJ talked about in 1958. You know, he talked about whoever controls the weather controls the world. And he talked about the carbon black dust.

They have it in there. And we're right next to the ocean. All you have to do is spread it, spray it out there. It creates more heat. It creates more water. Okay. All right. Spray more water. Okay.

All I can say is that find the people that are punching the computer buttons and get back to me on that, okay? I appreciate the call. Let me go to Vicki. Hello, Vicki. You're up next. Go ahead. Hey, Bill.

How are you doing? Fine. My comments are about the fire and how they are managing the forest. I get people, you know, doing fire, you know, cutting a bunch of stuff down around their house to save their homes and their animals. But in the forest, I've lived out here 30 years and they're trying to make the forest look like parps. They're cutting all the undergrowth out, which exposes the land to the sun and the heat in the summertime. And I think that if Trump can do executive orders for fracking and some of these other things in these other states, he really should look at Oregon and

make it mandatory for us to be able to log again in an environmental way so you don't have, you know, a thousand people on your beep. Yeah. i wonder if we have enough meals to actually be able to uh process what could be harvested here and i'm not i'm not being a naysayer necessarily on this but you know these plant a lot of our plants left a long time ago in fact that equipment ended up going to china in many cases i think of rough ready. It's a classic example of that. Well, right. But the severity of the situations with the fires that we have here, I think it would be worth building, you know, bringing them back. I mean, if you think about it, it's like an environmental control and trying to, you know, make the forest safer and not have these huge fires burning up towns, burning up, you know. And I'm sympathetic with you. I don't see how an executive order removes the actual restrictions that have been placed on logging out here.

Can he reverse that or put new policies in order because this is this isn't like you know well anything that can be done by executive order could then be undone and unless people see a permanent change to something they're not going to invest in the industry that's that's the one point but let me talk to ed about that let me ask his opinion of it too vicky but i'll take the suggestion all right hello uh Ed, how are you this morning? Go ahead. Welcome. Well, Bill, I'm sitting back still amazed at some of the conversation and some of the interpretations and everything else.

And, you know, there was talk about high prices for power. Well, high prices for power have come at the behest of the Public Utility Commission listening to the public input from people outside of our region, stakeholder groups, in pushing for programs to increase or punitively harm the people for what they're supposed to provide by law is economical power. And the moves come incrementally on a lot of levels, but they come to increase the price so you use less. And that's their solution. The wonderful solution of the stakeholder consensus process that they've imposed without doing real public input. And what I talk about is provable.

If you go to the Pacific Power public input process, you can start reading some of the comments. And these are the comments that are directing Pacific Power to do things. Now, this is done under the threat of lawsuit is basically what happens. They sue, and it comes out of the time period of what they had with the sue and settle, and everything is an environmental lawsuit, but it's based upon a lie, okay? It's based upon the climate change lie. It's based upon all different types of things that are basically just misguidance of the truth. especially the gangrene globalist world set of you aren't supposed to be able to produce very inexpensive power because that's bad. It's carbon, et cetera, et cetera, yada, yada. And that keeps the status quo.

So we have to disrupt the status quo. We have to go to an environmentally perfect thing, but it's a cabal, and it's a cabal that's in trouble right now because, you know, the current president is moving in a direction of, you know, removing the power base of agency rules, okay? And that's a good start, isn't it? Well, it is, and this is where Oregon is going to fall apart, okay, because they've moved into an unconstitutional thing, okay? If you read the Oregon Constitution, they literally only have power pathway where they can influence that. And these people get into a mindset where the concept is to burn to pre-existing conditions before white settlement. Okay? Landscape scale restoration to pre-white settlement conditions. Now, as I sit here,

I just am in disbelief of the statements like that that they use. They will, you know, and I can tell you right now, I sent you the package again yesterday. If you look at the mapping process that they have done, okay, now, this is supposed to be done because it affects all of us with oversight and protective measures. Now, they have a fiduciary obligation and duty to make and ensure that we have a way of life that's continued and without threat of harm by their actions. That's the reality of why government exists. But now you look at this whole thing and the mapping situation is done. Oregon State University was in charge of the mapping. Well, they contracted with a group called Pyrologic. Now they are owned by a group.

OK, now they you can say owned a partner. They use two different terminologies. But the big news release was they were bought by Vibrant Planet. And Vibrant Planet essentially is a burn the forest landscape, isn't it? Well, if you and all you have to do is listen to the one person, again, a Silicon Valley business person that has much in the way of assets, money. And this person, when you listen to the TED Talk, it's about landscape scale restoration of burning the forest to pre-white settlement conditions. Which is a ridiculous concept in modern society, Ed. What we're doing is allowing one person that has an extreme viewpoint, and if Jeff Goldman can listen to this and research it,

he will see what a mistake he is making. His construct, his concepts, every aspect of his direction in allowing these intruders to come in and ruin the West. I'm going to watch that video that you sent me this morning, and I'm out of time at the moment here, Ed, but I appreciate that. We'll keep in mind with you. I want to watch this, but we have been essentially ruled by a cabal of people with extreme viewpoints for quite some time. And Jeff has been going along with him from the looks of it, whether he realizes the source of this or not. But this is, what's the name of the planet again?

What's the planet? Vibrant. Vibrant planet. Yeah, the people behind the wildfire mapping software. Yeah. And the vibrant mapping people, vibrant planet people, essentially are in agreement that burn the landscape.

Hmm. No wonder. Ed, thanks for that. And if you're on hold, I will get to your call here shortly here, folks. 770-5633. It is Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. Honey, we're out of water again. Did you call Closet Drilling? SingleCare.com or download the free app today.

The Bill Myers Show is on. Newstalk 1063 KMED. All right, I got to talk with Marty because, Marty, you're saying I missed the obvious question when I was talking to David Bonsing, the tariff guy. What did I miss? Go ahead. Oh, Bill, of course, the most important question of all. How many shares of Cleveland Steel stock did Nancy Pelosi buy before all this was known? Six months ago. Okay. All right. Just for that, a real American salute. Smart ass.

I love it. He's right, though. How many shares of Cleveland Steel? Yeah, because Cleveland

Steel popped, right? There are people that make millions just following the Pelosi's stock trades. It's kind of like

looking at, you know, the deep state extent. Maybe they should of like looking at the deep state. Maybe they should just make an exchange-traded fund out of that. Deep state congressional exchange-traded funds. Whatever the Congress critters are trading on, right? Okay, who do we got here? Patrick.

Patrick, good to have you on. Morning. Good morning. It certainly is good to have you on. Morning. Good morning. It certainly is good to have me on, Bill. You remember now, you're talking about the problems of getting back into the woods and the mills have been disassembled and sent overseas. And we still have some, but to think that we'd be probably at large-scale extraction, boy, that's a lot of capital expenditure that has not been made for a long time i don't know am i wrong about that or what do you think what i think is do you remember

or maybe you're too young to remember when uh we were putting the logs were going out of here going right over to coos bay on the ships and going to Japan. So you don't have to mill the logs here. But I would also say there's no use trying this unless you go to the root of the problem, and that is the college professors that are turning the kids into budget idiot liberals. There's been a lot of investment in turning kids into idiot liberals for a number of decades. That's the place to start. Point well taken, Patrick. Yeah, that's a generational issue that we're dealing with. Let me talk with David.

David, good to have you here. Morning. Welcome. Hey, Bill. Good morning. So, you know, I kind of had a little revelation about this. You know, everyone's got a lot of energy or at least, you know, concern about the fires. And it's not clear to me that if there are forces that want to burn the West Coast or destroy any area, you know, what we think of as destroyed,

at least. It's not apparent to me that you can stop them. And so what I started thinking about was, what does a community look like after fire, right? Because essentially, we are being told the way of life is going to change, you know, even if you somehow had the money to rebuild your house up in one of these drainages, you know. You know, you're going to be a fire adapted community from their point of view, right? Well, I mean, what if, let's say any one of these drainages gets completely destroyed by fire, right? I kind of see it, honestly, and this is not – I hope not too far out there to think about, but I kind of see it as an opportunity to really change the way we interact as a community because it's not apparent it will ever be built back with our types of infrastructure and stick-built homes we're used to.

And I'm not sure we should be thinking about preventing fire if we can't prevent the fire, right? That's like tilting at a windmill. If there are governments and NGOs that want to burn this place and the fire cycle is so out of whack, it's going to happen. So I've turned my thoughts to what does it look like after a burn, right? What does it look like when our dwellings change and our community interaction completely changes because all our infrastructure and our stick-built homes are gone? And almost like maybe a more agrarian-type, simpler society that, to be honest, if you go on the Internet, it seems like everybody kind of wants to live in anyways.

Does that make sense? I don't know. So we don't want we don't want stick built we don't want stick built homes what uh we want all our homes to look like uh uh what was that uh luke skywalker's uh parents on was it tata uni or whatever was the name that you know it's not semi-buried homes i mean what you know you can't have a stick though let's just say you can't have a stick though you don't have the money? Let's say you live in a teepee. How much are your taxes on a teepee? Probably pretty cheap. How much do you care if it burns? I mean, you got some clothes

in there, right? I mean, there's a whole different mindset. We're really hung up on real estate, investments, generational wealth. Now you got the taxes. Now you got the insurance. And now everyone's got their panties in a bunch. I'm saying, okay, like, I'm not a person of means. How am I going to interact with the world just because I can't have my stick built home on 40 acres, right? Well, then we will essentially be a large homeless encampment right now. Yeah, and you know what? Those homeless kids aren't worried about all these taxes and all their 40 years of mortgage they've been paying. You know, they're enjoying the world.

A lot of them are addicted, but... I just don't know if I can advocate for us all becoming the housing equivalent of the homeless community with tents everywhere we look. Well, let's think about Native populations, and let's weigh Native populations without sick-filled homes, and let's weigh their happiness and their health against our modern society. And you tell me that a complete change here on the West Coast would be so bad. I mean, obviously, I feel for people and their material loss. But I'm just saying, rather than all the energy into stopping fires that apparently you can't stop.

I mean, hey, I'm not a leftist idiot, but let me tell you something, Bill. How many mills do you think it would take to clean up the 7 million acres on the West? How many mills are you imagining running to stop the fire cycle issue that we currently have? Has anyone thought about that volumetrically? How many mills do you think we got to open to fix this problem? I mean, maybe what you have to do is look at how many have been lost over the years and they'll give you your answer. Look, you can let a thousand wild horses go and you can build a hundred mills and you're not going to fix the fire cycle right now. You're definitely not going to fix it right now. Okay, so I'm just saying think about what you'll do after a fire.

That's what I'm thinking about. All right. I'm thinking hard. I don't like it. I appreciate the call. Let me go to next line. Hi, good morning. Who's this?

Welcome. Yeah, Ron Gratchpass. I'm very concerned that we're being made to harden our property against wildfires when the state and the federal government who has lands all around and adjacent to our lands are not at the forefront doing that first because they need to protect our property since the majority of the fires are started because of the large volume of land. Yeah, and that is the linchpin of this whole conversation. We're talking about fighting wildfire, a natural process, you know, really. And Dave was right about that.

You know, this tends to be the fire cycle we're looking at. But this has been a human-created hazard up to this point, Ron, and that's my concern. Let me go to the next line, too. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hey, this is Wayne, Central Point, Bill. Yes, Wayne. Yeah, the English language is really pretty weak, and I'm ready to offer all your listeners $100

if they can chip out a piece of black ice and show it to me. Okay. There's no a piece of black ice and show it to me. Okay. There's no such thing as black ice. All right. That's an interesting pebble this morning, but a point well taken. Once you get it away from the asphalt, it's no longer black, right? Just a figure of speech. 7-7.

Well, actually, hold the calls right now. Afternoons, we're going to talk with Herman. We're going to shift the gears away from the fire, maybe into the the immigration issue here and the way the sheriffs have been responding and people all hot and bothered about that. As a business owner, you likely do

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News Talk 1063, KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. On a personal note, I called up Frank Millett the other day, and he came to my house yesterday. He came to my house yesterday because I've been concerned about what I thought was a foundation that might have been causing some problems, and especially cracks in a driveway, cracks in a garage floor there by it. And I was perfectly prepared to spend thousands, maybe even $10,000 or more to have some work. And then I called up Frank, and Frank came over, brought his measuring devices and everything else. We had a good talk.

Great guy, straight shooter. I found out he did foundation work for all sorts of my relatives. And it's just amazing. And then Linda and I were dreading Frank coming. So he comes, because we're just thinking, oh, man, lots of money. He measures the house, and he says, you know, Bill, I'd love to sell you foundation work. You just don't have a problem. You know, there's maybe a little less than a half inch down in a couple of areas. He said, I'd just watch it.

And do you know how great it is to hear somebody come there that had the potential? And I would imagine other firms are different about this. But he said, no, I couldn't in good conscience sell you any work. And he came out, he lost money on me. But I got to tell you how great to have someone that candid and just telling you the truth about it. Now, he did explain what I needed to do some work with the driveway. It has to do with some moisture there and fill problems.

But I just thought it was interesting, and I just wanted to let you know that experience. And I was just knocked out. And he said, no, just watch your foundation if you see anything change on that one. They said the people that built your house actually did a really good job with the fill preparation and such.

I just thought that was interesting. I just want to give you a little personal side of that. Good going, Frank. Frank Millett. It is 7.43. Let's talk with Herman Baerchiger. Hello, Herman. Senator, how are you doing this morning?

Great to have you back on. I'm doing fine, Bill. And, you know, just make sure everybody knows that I'm former senator. I don't want people to get confused. And, you know, Noah Robinson is the current senator. He's the current senator. But, yeah, you always keep the title for the rest of your life, though. So we'll say former Senator Barrett Sugar, okay?

All right? All right. Well, Herman, we find ourselves in an interesting time here. I noticed that folks are hot and bothered to and I understand this, when it comes to sanctuary state law. And there are a number of laws out there that the Oregon State Legislature passed quite some time. I don't know. Did they pass any while you were in the state Senate, or was most of that in the late 80s or so? What do you say?

You know, I think it's more executive order, if I remember right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we do know that there was some official uh statutes passed in the late 1980s i know that 1987 is when it really first started so eos have been kind of adding to it ever since that time right all right right where do you and they're kind of tricky so what it what it says is you it says says that it's kind of tricky how they did this. So basically what it says is that we won't help the federal government enact the federal law.

That's basically what it says. It's not that we won't obstruct obstruct it we just won't help they're pretty tricky how they they they wrote that the point being though is that according to federal statute not helping is akin to thwarting in many cases because you know a lot of times these people are coming in through the criminal justice system and if the criminal justice system your local sheriffs or the osp or anybody else will not notify in some cases or or help people understand then what part of thwarting the federal immigration law you know is that because federal law and you look at the courts and the constitutionally it's

been pretty much decided that the states have no say in immigration law period but federal government it is their purview for sure right exactly and then you know i'm not the best legal mind in the world um but you would think that that if you have a uh an undocumented person in your jail that you'd be harboring them you know yeah so um you know it's just bad look at another good example marijuana is legal state law right still illegal federal law so but the state uh but the federal government seemed not to care too much about that and i think maybe that's the difference right and now the federal government is beginning to care about immigration law but oregon is still wishing to not care about that right exactly exactly it's pretty confusing for the for a citizen, to be honest with you.

Sheriff's kind of between a rock and a hard place on this one, aren't they? Yes, exactly right. So I don't know. It's it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. I see. You know, I just heard listening to your show here that there was another lawsuit filed because uh trump isn't funding something and i'm thinking to myself how can a judge says oh no you gotta fund it if there's no money to fund it because federal contracts are usually written with some kind of uh some kind of caveat in there this is always subject to funding being available. And if the executive says the funding is not available, right? Well, yeah. If the policy of the federal government is not to borrow any more money, there's going

to be a lot of stuff that won't be funded because there is no money. You can't force the federal government to borrow. At least I don't think you can force the federal government to borrow money to fund something. So could there be a possibility that it is not the executive overreaching as much as the judiciary thinking that they can force the executive to permit money to be spent? Yeah, I mean, we have three distinctive branches of government. And I think that the judiciary branch is kind of uh getting out over its ski shall we say yeah yeah it'll be interesting where this comes in here now uh are we going to get to the point i wonder if some government judge is going to end up saying you know president trump you can't cut funding to the sanctuary states

just because they're going against federal immigration law and not willing to help you. But yet, I'm thinking to myself, the state of Oregon has danced to the tune of all sorts of other federal grants that had to do with other stuff. That if they didn't hew to the federal policy, that they'd lose the money, right? And where am I wrong about that? No, I think, and then what are they going to do to the executive branch if they don't follow what the judicial branch says to do? Could we be reaching one of those historical precedents?

Like, what was it happened back in the early 1800s? I forget, was it Andrew Jackson that the Supreme Court said something to them? They gave him an order, and then Supreme Court said something to them. They gave him an order. And then Andrew Jackson said, okay, the justice has given his order. Now let him enforce it. I don't know. You remember that? I forget the story exactly.

Like I said, these are interesting times we're in. They're interesting to watch. I wanted to pick your brain here on the fire talk. What is your overall take on what you've been hearing about the fire mapping issue here and i know that now you're in the fire fighting business so i don't know if this colors your uh your opinion about what is going on or not what do you think well i'll be honest with you i'm leaving Wednesday, and I've made some appointments, and I will be having some discussion with some legislators up in Salem on my thoughts. When I left the legislature four years ago, I was working on these issues. I was kind of the head of the sphere at that time, and I have some ideas, and I think I have some legislators that are very interested in my ideas.

So let's see where this goes, because right now the fire map is not helpful. The overall problem is this, Bill. this bill the problem that we're trying to solve is to reduce fuels on private land to help slow the spread of wildland fire in the state of oregon and the wildland fire though is largely coming from public lands is it not or am i wrong about that um yes the the the large fires in Oregon really do have a long history of coming out of public land. So it is about like what even Ed, Mr. X, was talking about. They want to force you to harden your property to allow the feds and state lands to burn through your area when they happen, when they get the ignitions i i also agree that that um private lands do have a a problem with uh too much debris too too many tons per acre and that's what the whole conversation is about um whether you you blame it on federal lands burning onto your property or whatever. It's an incentive. We're looking for an incentive for people to reduce fuels on their own property.

And that's how it should be looked at, an incentive. And I think the fire map, the way the fire map went, that was more of using a stick to get people to help reduce fuels on their property, where we should probably use a carrot and have an incentive to do it. I think that would be a much better way to approach this issue. I know Commissioner Roberts in Jackson County had mentioned that. Everything about this Senate Bill 762 seems to be a bat with which to hit you over the head. Fair enough? Right. And that's what happens when you use the stick approach.

And that was my argument four or five years ago. And so I'm going to try to argue that point again. But there's people willing to listen and sit down and listen. So let's see what happens because the fire map just isn't going to work period don't you find it interesting that uh according to ed i haven't watched the video yet but the people behind the fire map essentially are burn the landscape people you know that's their that's their point of view does that surprise you or not oh i don't. The people that created the map, I question their absolute understanding of the whole fire environment. So I'll leave it at that. Okay. All right. You're being politic in this case. All right. We'll just.

Well, I'm trying to accomplish something right now, Bill. So you're right. All right. Well, we'll stay tuned. Hey, Herman, back on the immigration issue here. Do you believe, from what you know about Oregon state government and your experience within it over the years, that a grant stream funding cutoff of the Trump administration or a serious reduction in it over the sanctuary state issue, would that get the state's attention, and might the state actually consider modifying some of the sanctuary state thing? What does your overall gut tell you about this state? Or will they just sue, sue, sue? I just don't know how they can ultimately keep forcing the federal government to pay the state of Oregon when the state of Oregon is not a cooperating group. You know, it's going to be answered in the courts, and I think how it's going to work, to be honest with you, Bill, is I think the Trump administration says we're not borrowing any more money.

We're not adding to the national debt. So we don't have any money. I think that's going to be their position. And you can't, I don't think the state can mandate that the federal government borrow more money. I think that's where this, that's where the conversation is going to head. And it makes sense because you've heard me say it many times. The $36 trillion is not good. And that's where all this money has been coming from, all these grants, all this money has been – like I said, what was it, $300 and some thousand dollars for every taxpayer, if you do the math? Yeah.

So I think that's how the Trump administration is going to fight this in the courts. So the courts may come back and stop him, you know, to start with. They stop him right now and they put an injunction in, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, if the money ain't there, money ain't there, right? I think that's my point. And I think that's the point the Trump administration is going to make. Boy, no wonder Dan Rayfield's filing a lawsuit or joining a lawsuit every day, right? He's looking at the rice bowls potentially being broken in our state, huh? Well, and you know, that's all Oregonian taxpayer money to file all these lawsuits.

You do realize that? Well, we have all those attorneys that are working for Kotech up there. I guess you've got to make them do something, huh? They can be busy doing other things. But I think once they win, once the administration wins one of these lawsuits, the other ones will go away. So it's going to take some while. And listen, you're not telling me that the Trump administration has planned for this. They knew this was coming. So surely they got a plan and they got an argument.

And I guess we're going to all stand by and see how this goes. I'm going to tell you what I think the plan is. I think the whole idea is to attract the lawsuits. I think that liberal states like Oregon fall into a trap when they sue the Trump administration, because ultimately this is going to get kicked up to the Supremes at some point. That's the way I look at this one. And I think that this whole idea that states should somehow be mandated to be paid is going to get a hearing. What do you think?

That's exactly what I think. And I think the position of the Trump administration is we don't have the money. And if Congress doesn't borrow the money, they don't have the money. I think that's going to be the argument. Watch the battles on the debt ceiling raise then. Exactly. If all they do is raise the debt ceiling enough to cover the interest on the federal government, let's say they just did something like that. I'm just spitballing, right?

Right, right. There's not going to be additional grant stream funding, will there? No. It's going to be an interesting year, Herman. Congress has the purse stream, and the administration is at the whim of how much money congress gets so this is this is going to be i just don't see how the state can sue the federal government making them borrow more money and congress says we're not going to borrow more money because there's essentially no grant stream funding coming into the state of o Oregon that isn't borrowed right now.

Across this country. Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. All of it. Because the actual tax money that comes in there takes care of just the minimum basics, I think, of government. Not all the other goodies that they've been writing hot checks for. And that's what's been getting borrowed.

Yeah. So on the discretionary funding, what comes into the federal government right now basically will cover the interest on the national debt and the defense. And that's about it. So that's discretionary. Remember, there's all this non-discretionary spending, which is Social Security. Medicaid. Medicaid, stuff like that.

Medicaid is discretionary. Yeah. Medicare is mandated, but Medicaid is discretionary. And that's going to be a big one across this country. Because here in Oregon, Medicaid is the Oregon health plan, and it's not healthy that we have one-third of the folks in Oregon on Oregon health plan, right? Oh, just in my eight years of being in the senate when i went in uh medicaid was about 19 of the people in my my district was on medicaid and when i left it was almost 40 oh it's more than a third now okay

yep yeah that's uh that is an issue all right former states so that's discretionary funding and this is you know that's going to be a big deal. There's going to be a lot of big deals, Bill. Yeah. Well, you look at what's been going on with like our nurses strike at Providence. And I was trying to explain to folks last week or the other week that Providence has been losing money hand over fist for a number of years. Right. And so no matter where they come up with it's not making providence anymore financially sound there's no way about that you have oregon health plan which last time i checked only pays providence and asante for that matter maybe 56 percent of what they would normally

charge for something how sustainable is that and oregon health plan is discretionary funded by the federal government yep yep yep it's gonna it's gonna be a big one oh oh i tell you and it's and i i don't want to see you know i mean i don't want to see people suffer i don't want to see people get their medical benefits and everything but how long i've been doing this with you for years now, how long have I been trying to pull people's attention to this huge national debt? And that huge national debt has been backfilling the insane spending in the state of Oregon and built up its bureaucracy, too. And now we're looking at contractions.

Honestly, I don't see another way of going through this. No, I don't see another way of going through this no i don't either you know when i when you know i'm a numbers guy this is all mathematical equations that's all this is and you know so you go back to 1980 when about 30 34 percent was the ratio between the national gross domestic product and the national debt. And now it's about 130%. So it's unsustainable. It's unhealthy. It has to stop. And by stopping it, it is going to be painful, period.

Yeah. Just prep for that. Sorry. Former State Senator Herman Baerchiger. We have a caller that's been holding here for a while. I don't know if they want to talk to you or not did you want to talk to herman or was it for a different reason hi caller morning hello hi did you want to talk to her uh well i mean yeah it kind of goes along the the uh issues with the sanctuary state laws um if i was an executive branch employee, I'd be very concerned with the federal immigration training that they are required to take.

You were actually taking an acknowledgment to uphold the Oregon state sanctuary laws. Oh, that's the training that's going on in the state government right now, right? Yes. But there was a letter that was sent from American First Legal on December 23rd to Governor Kotek. It's a six-page letter. It's very well written. If anybody has access to it, I invite them to look at it. Encompassing in it is some concerning issues. If you are in line with that and upholding that, you could be held criminally and civilly liable. It does state that in the letter. And it also has put Governor Kotek and her subordinates on notice.

So that is something that they might, you know, kind of want to look at. That's interesting. Thanks, caller. I appreciate you making that. That's an interesting kettle of fish to wrap up, Herman. Wow. Well, and that's when we were talking the other day. It puts our, let's use our sheriff, okay?

The sheriff is the number one law enforcement person in each individual county. It puts them in a horrible spot. It really does. Because, you know, they're worried about, you know, are they breaking federal law? But then they're also worried about, well, is the governor going to cut any funding to my sheriff's office? So it puts them in a horrible spot. And this really needs to stop, you know, because these people are these are the people that are out on the streets trying to keep our our neighborhood safe and everything. And now we've put them in this horrible political spot. It's not right, Bill. And so we've we've got to come to some reason. And I think we're going to come to some reason, to be honest with you.

It's going to come to a head. And what I'm really going to watch is what happens with the state of Illinois, because Bondi, of course, filing lawsuits against not only the Chicago mayor, but also the state of Illinois over the thwarting and not helping out of ICE. And I think a lot, that could be the blueprint of where things could be going. And you could see Oregon, California, various other states be named in similar actions. Get the pop card, my friend. All right. Yeah. And you can see both political sides, how they do things. So we see the administration, they're always pointing out undocumented illegal immigrants that are committing these horrendous crimes.

So they're always pointing that out in the news. And then you have the other side, the sanctuary city side, that are trying to say, oh, they're throwing these poor women and children out of the country and stuff. So they're using these arguments for each side. And it saddens me. We've got to come together on this issue somehow. Yeah, I do. I come on the side of the issue of follow the law is what I'd like to do, okay? All right, Urban, we'll chat next week, all right? You be well.

Take care. All right. Take care, Bill. Former State Senator Herman Barachiger, and yeah, definitely a sheriff's between a rock and a hard place. At this point, they're hewing to the rock known as Tina Kotek. And I don't know. Maybe that balance will change at some point. This is the Bill Meyer Show.

Hi, this is Bill Meyer.