Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-08-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Mises Institute President Thomas J. Dilorenzo joins the show and we talk Trump Tariffs, economic freedom, where to now? Former State Senator Baertschiger talks the local and state politics and do Dems care at all about the deficit?

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. We'll have some more open phones a little bit later in the hour, maybe especially eight o'clock hour too for that matter. But I wanted to bring on Thomas J. DiLorenzo. He's the president of the Mises Institute and not to be a slobbering fanboy.

But a number of years ago, I had my government school. Well, I looked at Thomas J. DiLorenzo's books as a cure to my government education, my government school education. And I'll always remember the first time I read The Real Lincoln. And I realized that, you know, how much, well, how many lies I've been told, how many lies I've been told by the education system, by the historians. And ever since that, I pay attention to what Thomas J. DiLorenzo does. Now he runs the Mises Institute, former professor of economics at Loyola University, Maryland, longtime member of the Mises Institute.

He's written 18 books, like I mentioned, including the the real Lincoln too. So sorry for slobbering over you Tom but it's Thomas it's great to have you on though. Good morning sir. Oh glad to be with you. Okay let's talk a bit about about the terrifying situation and the drama that we see all around us. Stock market is soaring today because it looks like there's going to be a little bit of relief on this. As a rule, Mises Institute, you want sound money, free market economics, not a real fan, I guess, of what's been going on here, to be fair? Well, these are tariffs for taxes, and so what the president is doing is, first of all, it's unconstitutional because raising taxes has to start in the House of

Representatives, and then it goes to the Senate, and then to the president. The president can't just dictate one of the biggest tax increases in the 21st century, which is what this is. And so that's one point as far as that goes. And no one ever created prosperity by raising taxes. And it contradicts what President Trump said on the campaign trail. He wanted to cut government, and he hired Elon Musk to cut government. But then he's out there bragging, he's saying, we're going to raise so much money, and he repeats himself, so much money in tariff taxes. And of course, all that money comes out of the pockets of Americans, Americans and ends up in the

federal bureaucracy. So he's going to be fueling the federal bureaucracy with hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff revenue. That's his plan anyway. And it's a flat contradiction of everything he ran on when he's running for president. I think that he's looking at this, not to put words in Trump's mouth because I could never do that, but isn't part of this in some ways working with the deficiencies of the monetary system.

In other words, he's trying to band-aid over the gaping wound of our Federal Reserve economic system and even the economic problems that we have right now are at root you can look back to a hundred years, more than a hundred years of fiat currency really well yeah, the fed is the root of all evil, there's an old book by a man named Frank Chodorov who was sort of the old right person, a great writer

he was called the incomecome Tax, Root of All Evil. But you can write a book called The Fed, Root of All Evil, also, because everything that we complained about, everything that Elon Musk is trying to get rid of is, well, not everything, but most of it is financed by legalized counterfeiting by the Fed. And so the politicians love the Fed because they don't have to take responsibility for raising taxes to spend more money. They can play Santa Claus 12 months out of the year.

And the average citizen doesn't realize that inflation is a tax, and all these never-ending boom and busts that we have in our economy and crashes, they're also created by the bubbles created by the Fed. And I think what happened in the last couple of days in the stock market was all the talk of an international trade war sort of began to burst the bubble in the stock market that's been created by the Fed over the past several years.

And it's interesting that the stock market bubble created by the Feds because essentially with the funny money or the creation of credit, the money is going to flow someplace. No one was going to put it into a United States factory, let's say, so it would tend to go into assets, whether it be real estate and or in this case the stock market, right? Is that the simple way of putting it then yeah they call it financialization of the economy they've been calling it that for 20 years or so now and you know when the fed increases the money supply they buy bonds and they use the new york most of the new york bank investment banks to be the traders of the bonds so they inject all the hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking

system in that way, starting in New York. And that's why there's so much wealth in New York among the banking business. And they're the beneficiaries. But then those of us who have to get a pay cut every year, because the Fed tells us we have to always have at least 2% inflation. And that's their policy. Yeah, that's the minimum amount of theft that we need from people's purchasing power, right? Yeah, we need to sort of surreptitiously steal 2% of your income every year, at least 2% every year. You know, just a few years ago, when Biden first came in, what was it? Almost 9% was the official inflation rate. And so that's just a

robbery. I call it surreptitious because there's no robber there and it's not even a tax, but it's a hidden tax. Your money becomes worth less and less. You know something, Thomas? I agree with the problems with the Fed, and yet the challenge that I think that President Trump faces is that whether the Fed should exist or not is not really on his ballot or even within his, I don't know, is it within his ability to just change this as just the executive? What would you say? Well, what could be done is what Argentina is proposing to do is defend in the 1930s.

It was created in 1913, but it wasn't until the 30s that the Congress created this law allowing it to buy short-term government debt. And that's one of the ways in which it monetizes the government debt and expands the money supply and creates inflation. That could be repealed. And the president could propose that, to do that and get the money supply and creates inflation, that could be repealed. And the president could propose that, to do that and get the Republicans in Congress to go along with it.

They wouldn't have to abolish the Fed altogether. They could do that. And the president is sort of encouraging competing currencies. He had this big Bitcoin cryptocurrency conference a while back, but it's sort of ominous that he wants to get the government involved in the cryptocurrency because, you know, once the government is involved in anything,

it will eventually ruin it. Yeah, yeah. What better way to ruin Bitcoin, right? Yeah. I love that. Yeah. In the 80s, I remember when the oil industry was being deregulated and there were all these hearings in Congress. There was a senator, I think it was Jake Card from Utah, I think it was from Utah, he said, if you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, we'd have a sand shortage. And that's basically how it operates.

That is a classic line for sure. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, president of the Mises Institute, of course, former professor of economics at Loyola, and certainly understands his stuff. Of course, you look at it from an Austrian point of view, you know, Austrian monetary point of view. You were talking about how you think that President Trump's terrifying that he's been doing, everything that he's been that's been causing all the drama is unconstitutional.

And I know that there are Congress people who are looking to rein that in and they're looked at as kind of traitors to the cause at the moment. I'll just say this is just kind of spitballing on how this looks. Is not the president though taking emergency powers to do this? He's taking and using an emergency power to do this. It is and wouldn't that in essence make it constitutional? Well he claims that our economy has been sliding for 90 years, and that's an emergency. That's ridiculous. It's not an emergency.

Well, he is right that it's been sliding that long ago. You agree with him on that much, I would guess, right, that there is a problem, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. And the problem is always caused by too much government, too much regulation, too much tax. That's the problem. And they're working on that in different angles.

This is not the only angle, but this is reversed. This is raising money, giving the federal bureaucracy more money, increasing the prices. Yeah, but we're being teased that this could lead to a reduction in income taxes, or else this pays for the income taxes. That would be a work on. That would never happen unless we first abolish the IRS and end the income tax altogether,

because if you do it any other way, we'll end up with the income tax and high tariffs at the same time. That's what happened when the income tax came in. Originally in 1913, farmers of the country thought that they were being discriminated against unfairly by the tariff system, more of the country thought that they were being discriminated against unfairly by the tariff system, more than the average American was. And so a deal was struck. The politicians who wanted an income tax said, we will cut the tariff rate, which they did,

if you, the farm lobby, support income taxation, which they did. And they said, well, it's only going to be the rich people. You have to make $100,000 to pay any significant... Oh boy, what a bait and switch, huh? Right? And so we got that. And so within 10 years, we had the federal income, the highest, the top tax rate was 77% income tax rate.

And the tariff rate was bumped back up double, more than double than what it was originally. And so, you know, it was the biggest bait and switch ever. And that'll happen again if they really are serious about this. But keep in mind, when we had tariffs financing the federal government, the federal government was tiny compared to what it is today. And so it was possible to fund the constitutional functions of government with mostly 90% or so of tariff revenue. But you're not going to be able to do that with today's size of government, you know,

running it with tariffs? No, not with our monstrous welfare warfare state and military bases, you know, 800 military bases around the country and the world and all that. Unless we get rid of most of that, that'll have to happen. And so that's the big danger is another bait and switch like happened before and all we got was more tax and more government. President Trump has promised to make America great again

and he got our votes for this reason, okay? And we've seen the hollowing out of the United States economy. This has been a real thing Thomas You've seen it yourself, you know, no doubt and So he's looking at Taxing certain nations and I think it is good I think it is better to call it the tariff a tax so that way people understand it more

I know that a tariff is a word that sometimes kind of hides the true intent for how this ends up really working. But he is looking to generate more re-industrializing of the United States economy. And I think that would be a good thing, don't you? And is there any good that could come out of what he's trying to do? And if not, what would you suggest instead? Just curious. Well, part of the economy will be de-industrialized by what he's doing,

because a lot of the imports are inputs into the production of goods. There's American companies buy all sorts of things. You know, the car companies buy car parts from all over the world, and they'll be all more expensive. And so therefore, it'll be more expensive to manufacture cars in America. He's talking about tariffs on the steel and aluminum. Well, look at that. There's a lot of steel and aluminum in the cars.

Well, that's ostensibly to reinvigorate the domestic steel industry, though, correct? Yeah. As I said, some Americans will benefit from this, but it comes at the expense of harming and plundering other Americans with higher prices for their inputs into their production of things and consumer prices. And so, there's no such thing as benefiting quote America. Some Americans will win and some Americans will lose. It's always the case with...

So every tariff then, every tariff, even though we think we're going to help protect one particular industry will always have a bad effect on another industry here too. It's almost always that way? Just a choice? Well maybe not, maybe not. I wouldn't say every tariff but it'll certainly, you know, it's a tax increase so the people are going to pay higher prices. A tariff is basically a government orchestrated redistribution of income. Well, it's a sales tax, essentially, isn't it? From the consumer class to the business class.

But isn't it essentially a sales tax, an import sales tax that you're having to pay? Yeah. You call it that. Sort of indirect, you know, they impose it on the person from Europe who's importing his goods into the United States, but then a lot of that ends up being passed on to us as consumers of these things. That's the whole purpose. That's the whole purpose of a protectionist tariff, as they're called, is to make the competitors from Europe or wherever less competitive with American industry. And by the way, if you want to make the competitors from Europe or wherever less competitive with American industry. And by the way, if you want to make American industry stronger, you want competition, you want to subject it to competition. You don't want to protect it from competition.

I used to have a Wall Street Journal headline on my office door that said, and this is maybe 20 some years ago, it said, if you like your new American-made car, thank your neighbor with a 15-year-old Honda. And the idea was when the Japanese really took over the car industry in the early 80s, that lit a fire under the butts of the automobile executives and forced them to be more competitive and make better cars. Because why weren't they competitive? Well, protectionist tariffs. They had been protected from competition during the 50s and 60s,

and they got fat and lazy. And they had a big wake-up call when the Japanese came in and took over their markets. Isn't ultimately the competitive advantage for the United States hobbled by the fact that it doesn't matter how high your tariffs are, you can't make up for the wage heights and the regulations and the tax structure of the United States. It doesn't matter how much you charge in other places. Very few companies, I think, would want to relocate here, even under President Trump. And then they would think that whoever comes in next would just Reverse it. What do you think?

Yeah, well, they're working on that with regulation I you know, I used to live in Maryland and they would brag that there's a there's a layer of state regulation like environmental regulation for example on top of federal regulation and the politicians in Maryland the liberal Democrats would brag that their And the politicians in Maryland, the liberal Democrats, would brag that their regulations were even more onerous than the federal regulations, and they seem to have no understanding at all that these are costly. They cost the business and make it harder to be in business and to employ people, to employ Americans.

And I'd like to see happening on the regulatory front what's happening with Musk on the spending front and start sort of abolishing entire regulatory agencies. And you know, RFK Jr. is proposing doing, has been doing that already, getting rid of a lot of the regulatory gear craft at the FDA and elsewhere. Okay. What do you think would be the best use of a tariff at this point in time here, Thomas? And could it be just a negotiating leverage? Which it does appear that President Trump is looking at.

A lot of countries coming up there saying, okay, let's talk, we'll cut ours if you cut yours or something. Well, we'll find out what his true intents are soon because the European Union has proposed, they said, okay, we will have zero tariffs on American imports into Europe if you have zero tariffs on American imports into Europe, if you have zero imports on European imports into America.

Taiwan has done the same thing, and a couple of other countries have done the same thing. And if President Trump doesn't accept that, well, then he will reveal his true intent of having protectionist tariffs to protect certain industries from competition. And that would be the main thing. And so, and that's always a bad thing. protectionist tariffs to protect certain industries from competition. That would be the main thing. And so, that's always a bad thing. That's sort of legalized plunder. You're plundering American consumers and other types of businesses for the benefit of one type of industry. There is a new documentary that Mises has out now called Playing with Fire,

Money Banking in the Federal Reserve. Is there a lot of this kind of conversation that you and I have had in this? What can you tell us about that? Well, yeah, we just, you know, the average American knows very little about this mysterious organization, the Fed, but then every time there's an announcement that the Fed Chairman is going to say something about interest rates, the entire world sits on pins and needles waiting for the great man to appear like the Wizard of Oz from the curtain and make some announcement about this. But they know nothing. So we put

together a 38-minute documentary. Ron Paul is in it, I'm in it. Jim Grant is a well-known Wall Street trader, and a number of other academics. And to explain in trading, and playing with this, what the Fed is all about, and it came out in October, and it already has over 750,000 views on YouTube. And you can just go to our, go to YouTube, and it's called Playing with Fire, and you'll find it. Or you can go to our website, Mises.org slash fire, and you can either watch it for free. And we want to, you know, just do our

part to educate the public on what this is all about. I appreciate you coming on here, Thomas. We'll have you back, certainly, playing with fire, money, banking, and the Federal Reserve recent documentary from the Mises Institute. So as far as President Trump's intent, true intent on the tariff, whether it's about cutting better deals and then helping American business or just being pure protectionism, the jury is out at this moment. Is that the conclusion here? We just don't know at this point. I think so because he's had counter proposalsproposals that said, we will eliminate all tariffs on American products if you eliminate all tariffs on our products. And that would be the best of all worlds for Americans and let our companies compete and

then get to work in deregulating and cutting taxes that our companies have to pay. And for example, Paul Craig Roberts said what he should do is tell you if these companies that he wants to bring back to America, is it okay if you're in China or wherever, your corporate income tax is 50%. You come back here and you make your product here, it's 10%. And because tariffs can always be manipulated by the passing on the cost of the tariff to the consumer. But this is something that can't be manipulated like that. And that would be a more direct way of getting some of these companies to come back.

So give them a comparative advantage with the tax rate. That's where you start with. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, president of the Mises Institute, famed author too. Appreciate you coming on and we will talk again. Thank you very much. Be well. Take care. Have a good day.

I will. Mises, M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G. 730 on KMED. You're on the Bill Meyers Show. 2x4, 2x8, food invited by dish. You're hearing the Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. 733, we're gonna have a quick break here, catch up on some of the news, see how the markets, markets soaring this morning up about three and a half percent, 1360 on the Dow. So after three days of torrential bloodletting, it's kind of like someone just said, okay, let's just cut open the wrist and let it bleed, let it bleed. Might be a relief rally here. Hopefully not a sucker's rally. That's all I will say. Okay, we'll talk about more other issues with the economy in Texas. Do Democrats even believe

in the deficit or worried about deficit spending anymore? I'm going to talk with former state senator Herman Baerchuk. We're going to kick that around here in just a little bit. Yesterday we had a great talk with Chad McComas. Chad McComas, of course, formerly of Rogue Retreat, and now they have this Joy Community that they're building, which is the homelessness camp for, not a camp, but it'd be a tiny home community for elderly people. Elderly people having a lot of challenges here in Southern Oregon might have very modest social security and not a lot of other assets. And then you get 900 bucks,

a thousand bucks a month on social security. What do you rent these days for this, right? But he's doing it all with private money. And I am really admiring that. That just cheered my heart to see this done. And even Chad himself said, hey, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this with government money. The moment you get the government grant money in there

and they start pulling all your strings, look how they went after him. Because, well, he's a Christian. This is his ministry. That's what he was doing. Granny wrote me about that yesterday because I talked about how government has kind of sucked the joy out of being generous because you're forced to contribute at the office and so you're irritated by this whole thing.

Why is there this problem? Why should I have to give any more? They already plundered me for 30-40%, you know, at the office. Why should I have to pay any more? And Granny says something, says, Bill, government didn't take or suck anything away from the people that they didn't relinquish willingly. Yes, we still have many folks that love and care, as scriptures say to do, just not enough to move an entire nation in the right direction. Yeah, you're right. Granny, we allowed it to happen. You're right. We allowed government to take over what we should have been doing all along. And then you see the way, you know, when you provide private charity, when you yourself decide that I'm going to be generous to this person in need and

we're going to help, you know, get them back into it. Unlike with a government program, when you do it yourself, you do it in your own community, your own area. You have the benefit of feeling good about having done good, which never happens through a government program. Appreciate your email, Granny. 736. Appreciate your email, Granny. 736. Before you know it, it will be summertime in muletconstruction.com. We built this city. This is Randall with Advanced Air, and I'm on KMED. Looking at the price of gold this morning, a little over $3,000. It has recovered. Of course, gold has not been hit that hard at all.

In the midst of everybody else with their hair on fire running for the exits. Gold, silver took a little bit more of a hit, but gold up a percent today, it's not near its all-time high of 31.60 at this point, but yeah definitely recovering. And yes, there is evidence that a lot of people were selling gold because they had to raise cash. They had to raise cash because, oh my gosh, we bought a lot of stocks on margin because everything will just go up forever. Let's borrow money, and then they had to do what's called a margin call.

Interesting stuff. But whether you're looking to buy and or sell, gold does really preserve wealth for the long period. It's been doing this for thousands of years. Talk with my friends, the recognized experts, Jay Austin and company, gold and silver buyers in Ashland at 1632 Ashland Street. There's also an office in Grants Pass too, 6th and G.

If you have scrap gold and silver, boy, we're still looking at nice valuations. Get it in there, talk to Mark and Andrea, they'll help you out. Or if you're looking at a $3,000 gold and thinking, you know, I don't have enough, well, they can help you with. Or if you're looking at the $3,000 gold and thinking, you know, I don't have enough, well they can help you with that too. jhaustinbrokers.com and grantspasscoins.com. But better yet, you can even buy it right now. Fortunereserve.com. It's fortunereserve.com.

Former state senator Herman Baerchicker. We talk politics and just kind of noodle around with kind of the news of the day every Tuesday. Herman, welcome back. How you doing? How you holding up, you big bully? Oh yeah, yeah. Still in the newspaper. I haven't set foot in the courthouse since I left and I'm still, yeah. You know what's interesting about all that? They talk about ethics complaints and bully complaints. They're all been dismissed. Well, I know it's been that way for you and John West, actually. They're all been dismissed. Well, I know it's been that way for you and John West, actually. You hear... And John sets the record.

He had like 27 or some... And everything but one's dismissed, but the courier just says, ethics complaints, ethics complaints. You know, that... And people still try to convince me that that newspaper's not biased. Straight down the middle here Herman just reporting the fact that I hate it. What can we say? Yeah they called me they called me up and wanted me to comment on you know them getting rid of a couple directors and I

said why are you calling me? Yeah you're not you not the, you're not a county commissioner any longer. It's like, well... No. I guess the point being though is there is a lot... Now, what we have observed though is that a lot of people exiting Josephine County government, but we knew this was going to be coming because, as you said, the COVID money be gone, right? Back when you were still county commissioner, right? Just gone. It's just mathematics, you know, that's all it is. It's not, it's just numbers. But it's just kind of like the people that were out protesting last weekend. Did you observe that? Did you get up close and kind of watch the, look at the signs? Yeah, I looked at it. All they were doing is screaming. That's all. None of them were talking about solving the national debt.

None of them were talking about solving the overdoses of fentanyl. None of them were talking about trying to end these stupid wars. No, they weren't talking. They weren't bringing any solutions to our problems to the table. They're just out there. Save our democracy. And I bet nine out of a ten of them could even tell you what the definition of democracy is. We're a republic, moron. Well, our democracy, saving our democracy, I think, really means, and whether they realize it or not, saving our status quo. Isn't that really what they're

talking about when they say save our democracy, Save the status quo on how the United States government is run. I Don't think they know what they're talking about a true democracy is nothing but mob rule We're a republic and we and under laws Okay, we're not you know our true democracy is in the old days where they thought somebody was guilty They took them out to the the hanging tree and hung them. That's a democracy. Yeah, that's right. One vote, 50% plus one means the person dies, right?

That was all there was to it. Exactly. And no rule of law and no representation. These people are crazy. They don't even know what they're doing. It's pretty sad. Now, is there a possibility though, that maybe what the leftists were complaining about

may have some truth, maybe some of what, when it comes to Elon Musk. My concern about Elon Musk is that, as glad as I am to have him flushing out waste and fraud in the system, and that's good. That's a good thing. I also know that ultimately he's in for the next government grift and that is going to Mars.

And so I can see why there's always going to be a little bit of that driving his motivation. Am I wrong? Am I unfair to even think that? Well, you know, there's those possibilities, but it presented, you know, the facts presented in front of us right now, he's doing good. So I would, you know, I would weigh that. I don't know. Just hold off then. Okay. Yeah. I, you know, I would hold off on the criticism until we start going down that road. Okay. Yeah, and because I talk about Musk all the time with Eric Peters, and we have a good

conversation, and this is the guy that built the company through the government grift of the politically favored nature of the electric vehicle. And so this is the way he works, and now he says, hey, I'd love to get rid of this. We don't need the subsidies anymore. Yeah, because he's already there. Well, I think, I think he just preyed on the stupidity of these people that believe in climate change and driving a Tesla is going to save the world. I mean, I think that's what he did.

And then we have all those people in Grants Pass, you know, protesting on Saturday and in Medford and Ashland and everywhere else that it's, you know, hey, all I have to do is key a swastika into a Tesla and I'm helping. I'm making a difference here, I guess. I don't know if that's where they're running to go or not. Well, what I worry about is what I used to talk to you know and I mentioned Peter Courtney a lot and the reason I mentioned Peter Courtney a lot is because I learned a lot about politics and and these kind of things but

him and I used to talk about the level of angst and the level of angst means you know people getting upset and more and more and more and more upset. I mean, we've seen it in in the Oregon legislature. Oh, people are wound very tight, both sides of the aisle, really. You know, this is a bipartisan winding. That's not a good thing. Let me tell you. That's not a good thing. And yet there's a reason for this though, because we have incompatible and I would argue these are incompatible worldviews that we have competing right now and one of them is that you can print yourself to prosperity and deficits don't matter and the other side of this says deficits don't matter unless you want to do big war and military industrial complex that's a republican side usually

you know that kind of thing right you know we we're all kind of believing in some fables, right? No, I mean, and you cannot argue the merits of your position. It's just you're wrong and shut up. I don't want to hear it. There's no debate anymore, Bill. It's just, I'm right, you're wrong, that's it. And that's what Dwayne Yonkers experiencing up in the legislature as well as every other Republican up there. Yeah, I was talking with him last hour. I talked to him an hour ago and really about all he says he's trying to do right now is just to slow the process and gum it up as much as possible. That's probably all you can do unless you can walk out, right? Yeah, but they're still, they hold all the cards, so they're still going to do what they're

going to do. So, you know, they... But they do need Republicans for a tax vote now to pass a tax. No, no. And they get... No, no, they do. Actually, they do right now because they're down one Democrat in both the House and the Senate because of illness.

They have some health problems there. Oh, listen, I've seen them wheel people in on a gurney. Oh really? Oh yeah. Now I remember they wheeled, didn't they wheeled Packwood into the United States Congress one time, Bob Packwood? Yeah, and they, you know, I mean, I watched it even with, in the Senate, you know, they've done those kind of things.

So it just happened. If they need the vote, they'll get it. They will get it. Okay. All right. I'll just tuck that away because, you know, a fella can dream about this kind of stuff, Herman. It's just like, wow, they actually need a Republican in order to pass those $1.9 billion in road taxes that they brought out that they

rolled out last week. Right? I'm thinking, woohoo! Yeah. And how come people aren't... You know, you talk about inflation and everything. When you raise the price of energy, you instantly started inflation. And look, we did the, or we did, they did the transportation package 10 years ago, which phased out over 10 years. The last gas tax just took effect this year, and now they raised, now next year,

it's gonna be raised again. Well, to be fair about this, and I try to be fair about this, I don't like paying the gas tax, but I like paying the gas tax more than I would chipping my car, Herman, okay? No, but when we did the last transportation package, that was supposed to be, oh, this will fix ODOT, this will fix all the problems. I don't think they saw the massive inflation coming that you might have back at that time. I don't think anybody thought that.

Gas tax doesn't keep up with inflationary pressures. You know that. Well, you know, it's like they have all these engineers working for ODOT. I used to say, why do we have all these thousands of engineers and we're not building one extra mile of road? Well, they have to have engineers there, Herman, in order to check the work of other real engineers that actually build things. I don't know. That's a great question though. If ODOT's not actually in charge of building the freeway,

I don't know. Oh man. It's crazy. The world is crazy. It really is. I want to go back though. I want to go back to the hands-off people that were out there. All right? And they were defending the federal workforce. And I know that there are people that would do good work in the federal government, but when you borrow $1 out of every three that you're spending, you're in trouble.

And do they get that? Do they even care? They don't care. Bill, I just said it. All they're doing is screaming because Donald Trump's president. They don't care about any of the problems or any of the issues. I mean Bill Clinton let go 400,000 people when he was the last one to balance the budget. Oh, wait a minute. So, this is something that not too many people have heard.

So the great Bill Clinton, you know, depends on what the meaning of the word is, is, you know, that kind of thing. That guy fired 400,000 federal workers. Really? Yeah. You know, he, so he took on the economy that Reagan created. He had a great economy and they balanced the budget. I've got to take my hat off. He actually cut government waste and government spending.

And I don't remember hands off then. What's the difference between now and back then? It can't be just the party label, or is it? No, people don't pay attention to the facts. They just run on emotion and they get spurred up and the Democrat party knows how to spur these people up. They say all the right things and they know that they're not going to take the time to look at all of this stuff. And so that's what happened. Herman, I'm going to ask you a question about state government, you having been a former state senator.

And then we'll probably wrap for this week. So we know that Democrats don't care about the debt, Republicans care about the debt, well to a point, but not even then all that much. Otherwise, we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation that we have at this moment. Is there a possibility that having the federal money going away, and so much of it being going away, and so much of it needing to go away? You know, I'm reading this morning about the latest histrionics over $3.5 million in a reading program at the Oregon Department of Education going away. It's like that's a drop in the bucket.

That's a rounding error in school districts in the state of Oregon. Three and a half million bucks, but oh, this is horrible. But is there a possibility that real reform finally comes to Oregon when there's not nearly the amount of federal graft coming in to backfill the budget? What is your opinion about that, knowing what you know about this political process? Well, you know, since they're bonded out on everything, since they're just going to have to cut, I think... When you say they're bonded out, what do you mean're just going to have to cut. I've seen... When you say they're bonded out, what do you mean by that? People may not know what that means.

Well, they've borrowed it. So the state can bond, and you're bonding on the projected income. Okay? And so you can't really go over that because then you lose your bond rating, which means you pay more interest. Oh, all right. So the state of Oregon has already borrowed Peter to pay Paul over long term. Was a lot of this with PERS? Is this the PERS bonding, things like that, or others? No, this is just bonding, capital improvement bonding. They've bonded the lottery. They've borrowed against the lottery. I don't know, they're probably out 25, 27 years with it. So the only money they can actually, let's call it borrowing, it's bonding, it's really

not borrowing, it's bonding, is what bonds mature. So they have to pay them off, then they can sell bonds again. And that's not going to be enough to fill the holes. It's just not going to be enough. So I think you're going to see downsizing probably not so much in 25, but 26. Because remember, the legislature is working on a two year budget. And is this the beginning of a two year budget or the middle of a two year budget where we are right now? They're working on for the next two years. Okay. So and remember that starts July 1. And we're still working off then on the 2023 to 2025 budget, right? That's where we are right

now. That's right. Okay. So the real pain is next year, right? Yes, yes. That's when you'll probably see the real pain. Will we know that at this session, at the end of this session? No, we won't because you won't see it until they start running out of money, which will be, you look for it next. Well, you know, they'll have the emergency board, but I would look for adjustments in the short session next year. Yeah.

What do you think happens with the 1.9 billion transportation budget? The tax increase they want to go? They're going to pass it. They're going to pass it? transportation budget, the tax increase they want to go and throw in us. They're gonna pass it? Yeah, they're gonna pass it because there's more money. Okay, so 340 gas will be four bucks a gallon by the time they're done, very quickly. We'll be right up there with California. And then we'll have a chip on our car too, right? We'll have that. That's right, because they don't want to use any general fund money to shore up ODOT.

Okay, all right, that's the warning. That's right. They don't want to use any general fund money to shore up ODOT. Okay. All right. That's the warning. Bill, you know, we were talking about Clinton. I wanted to touch on this one point. Not that I'm a Clinton fan, but I have to take my hat off to his fiscal responsibilities. When you look at his eight year period of him being president, he only raised the debt about one and a half trillion in eight years. Were the presidents after that, in the Republican-Democrat vote, about two trillion

a year, and Biden hit the record, but even through Obama, Trump, and Bush, yeah, they're all raising it about two trillion, one and a half, two trillion years, where Bill Clinton only raised it one and a half over eight years. So he was fiscally responsible. He was just morally reprehensible. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad they removed the red curtains off the Oval Office, you know? Uh-huh, I get it.

Hey, Herman, I always appreciate the noodling around, okay?? Uh-huh, I get it. Hey Herman, I always appreciate the noodling around, okay? You be well this way. All right, take care Bill. All right.