The Daily Signal - GOP Congressman Warns Socialism Is Taking Hold in America | Warren Davidson

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

Rep. Warren Davidson witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the failures of socialism firsthand. Now, decades later, he's serving in Congress alongside self-described socialists. Davidson joins Rob Bluey on The Midterm Report to warn about socialism's growing influence in America, the national debt, China's threat to American manufacturing, and alleged abuses of government surveillance powers. The Daily Signal's Ohio coverage: https://www.dailysignal.com/category/state-politics-news/ohio-politics-news/ Follow Rep. Warren Davidson: https://x.com/Rep_Davidson NEW FILM by the Heritage Foundation: “Preventable: The System That Failed My Daughter.” Available now.   https://youtu.be/HxiwOSSRT6s?si=r9k6BFD-iMmvnvpn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. Now to say another Reagan quote, you know, freedom's never more than one generation away from extinction, you go from that experience there where I'm seeing firsthand how failed these ideas are, so I'm serving in Congress with people that describe themselves as socialists. Congressman Warren Davidson, thank you so much for joining the Daily Signal today. Great to see you from the eighth congressional district in Ohio. It's an honor to join you. Thanks a lot.

Well, you have spent the past few weeks back home in Ohio. The House, of course, decided to recess and give members like yourself an opportunity to talk to constituents and take care of some business back home. What have you been hearing from your constituents, particularly, you know, as we look ahead in a political season that we are with so many hot-button issues on everybody's mind? Well, like the first two weeks, people were going, why are you here? We thought you were going to be in session, getting XYZ done, things that were really important to them. But beyond that, people are talking a lot about affordability. You know, gas prices is one of the big things. To respond to that Republican frontrunner, or the Vivek Ramoswami, our Republican candidate for governor,

you know, pushed for a plan to suspend the gas tax. And the state legislature, which wasn't supposed to be in session until after the election, came in for one day, they suspended the gas tax until after the election, state level tax. So it'll save people about 40 cents at the pump. It's already showing up prices at the pump or down. I think that's popular. But beyond that, you know, affordability still is a big issue. Corruption is one of the big ones when you look at when is somebody going to jail.

People still ask that question a lot. And the fraud cases are really getting a lot of attention. Certainly Minnesota has some, but Ohio has some as well. people are talking about that. And I think people are still talking about the border. Border security is a big deal. In Ohio, that's shown up in a couple ways where you had commercial drivers who weren't really even supposed to be here.

They're here illegally, but they were given commercial drivers licenses overwhelmingly in California. I've had fatal vehicle accidents here in our area a couple times. And so those are some of the hot topics. Well, Congressman, I want to come back to a couple of those, but since you brought up the immigration issue. You have been an outspoken leader in the House saying that the Senate needs to get the job done when it comes to the Save America Act and that you would take a stand and insist that the Senate continue to debate that. Of course, we know that the champion over there,

Senator Mike Lee, has made it a point to really want Senator Thune to force Democrats into this talking filibuster or do everything possible to make this front and center. Obviously, that's not going to happen before election day. But why have you decided to stake out such a strong position on that particular piece of legislation? Well, I think it's vital to save in our country, honestly. I mean, if you can't have an honest election, what are we doing here in election season? And, you know, if you can't even tell me who voted, I don't know how you can say that you had an honest election. So voter ID to me is common sense. And they say, well, illegal, it's already illegal for non-citizens to vote. Well, yeah, but you don't have a very good detection method. And

And what we're finding out as we've had lawsuits getting down to the county level to get voter registration data, you've got tens or hundreds of thousands of non-citizens who just normally through motor voter and they just automatically get registered to vote. In Ohio, the Secretary of State is supposed to screen those things and you don't register people who aren't citizens. But in some states, they don't do it that way. And that's why you need a federal law that applies to federal elections. This polls at 80% with the public, but it breaks on party lines. I took a position along with maybe a few dozen other members that said, I'm not voting for a Senate bill until the Senate at least gives us a vote. I haven't said they have to pass it, but I at least want the people that are opposed to it

to be on record for opposing it. And Democrats have been outspoken against it, but apparently some Republicans are a little gun shy on it as well. I think the public deserves a vote on the Senate floor. Well, there are certainly a lot of things that the House is sent to the Senate. They simply just haven't acted on, including a reconciliation bill that I think is still awaiting some sort of action. Do you think that there's a prospect, perhaps, after November 3rd, to bring some of these bills that the House has acted on to the Senate floor and actually see them advance to the President's desk? Well, I certainly hope so. You know, we've got about 700 bills there and, you know, in inventory waiting on Senate action. And, you know, not all. of them are party line vote issues, save America tends to break on party lines, but we had a bill that called the Rakepayer Protection Act that was supposed with data centers, another hot topic,

driving up energy prices. People are concerned, hey, this is going to cause my electricity prices to go up. We had a legislation that passed 417 to 3, so there's no partisan nature to that, and said, hey, before the approval, at least screen the environmental approval so that it also includes what's going to happen to people's electricity rates. John Hustead, who was appointed to be Senator when J.D. Vance became vice president, is up for election right now. And he's got the lead bill in the Senate to deal with this. Because of that, Democrats blocked it. Now, this is the same language of the same bill text that passed the House 417 to 3. So you can't say it's a partisan bill. They're just using the 60 vote rule to block all kinds of things. And I think one of the most urgent things for the

Senate to do, if not for the rest of the session, for the next session, has changed their rules. The 60-vote rule has been tripling. Well, Congressman, you have been a leader on so many issues, and you mentioned the waste, fraud, and abuse earlier. I know that as a limited government, conservative, you're somebody who cares deeply about protecting taxpayer resources and money. Tell us about the efforts not only of the vice president, who's taking a lead on this task force to root out some of this wasted money. But what more can Congress do, either through

an oversight mechanism or just by simply pulling back the purse strings and not allowing states to spend this money recklessly, as we've seen in Minnesota and other places? Well, the administration's doing one additional thing, which is Russ Vote, who's at Office of Management and Budget. He's using the Impoundment Control Act to hold back about a little under $900 million. Now, you know, $900 million, dollars is a lot of money as a percentage of the two trillion dollar deficit. I mean, it's still a $2 trillion deficit with that number. But it is a big deal to use the Impalment Control Act to say, hey, we don't have to spend all the money on all these crazy grant programs that were literally funding illegal aliens with federal dollars. So they're turning some of these things off that

way. But more importantly, Congress shouldn't appropriate the money in the first place. So when we had the $95 billion plan with reconciliation, they passed it with no offsets. They want to spend $95 billion. And I was opposed to that, first and foremost, because of not having any offsets to pay for it. So I've heard an amendment to save $4 trillion, $3.99 trillion over 10 years, which is, you know, only $400 billion a year. I mean, that's 25% of our deficit. That's, you know, significant, too significant for them to allow a vote. And I would have used that money to supplement Social Security, which we know is going to run out of money in 2032.

So payroll taxes will no longer fund it. You'll have to be digging into the general accounts to even pay for Social Security in the next few years. So we are at a crisis. The bond market is telling us that you really need to pay attention to the giant deficits. And unless you do, we're demanding higher interest on the bonds. and so hopefully Congress will change course. I certainly hope so.

I mean, I long for those days of the 2010s when the Tea Party was certainly, you know, demanding action on both the annual deficit and the growing debt. To think about how far we've come in the 16 years since that time and how much we've added to the debt, it's truly astounding. And you're right, I think the day of reckoning is probably coming soon.

Yeah, I mean, that unfortunately is probably what will force the issue. I mean, Republicans generally know to campaign on a smaller, more accountable government, but we didn't get there because one party's bad on spending and the other party's great on spending. A lot of Republicans are also a big government. All the Democrats are big government, and they conspire together during appropriation season to say the real problem are these conservatives that want less government. I fear that when we do arrive at the crash site someday, say 2032 with the Social Security being the tipping point, they'll say, you know, if we just spent more money, we could have avoided this. And we'll say, no, this is how we got here. And I think that might be the sad realities.

It might take something that start to force a change of course, because right now spending's popular with the public. I mean, Republicans barely have the votes to defund NPR, which is just my own. mind-blowing. I hope that we can get in and get after a smaller, more accountable government. I always say, you know, I want a government's small enough to fill within the Constitution. We could afford a government that size. Yes, yes. Well, I hope more people joined the bandwagon with you because we certainly need to move in that direction. Let me talk about an issue that's this close to home, not only for you and your constituents, but you have a background in manufacturing before you came to Congress.

You are somebody who is working on issues through your committee assignments on national security. There's a particular bill called the Connected Vehicle Security Act. Tell me about some of the concerns not only when it comes to kind of bringing back those manufacturing jobs to places like your district and other Midwestern towns, but also this competition we're in with China and why that's important for Americans to pay attention to. Yeah, I think three layers there. If you think about manufacturing, go back to the 90s, Ross Perrault said that if you do these trade deals with China and Mexico, you're going to hear a giant sucking sound of our jobs leaving America for China and Mexico. And with the benefit of hindsight, you know, he was right. Republicans and Democrats ignored Ross Perot. They signed a NAFTA

deal and they made China part of the World Trade Organization. The problem with China being in the WTO is they're not doing even what they committed to do. They said they would be a market economy, but they're not. They block their market. They subsidize and dump to steal market share. There is no market price for a lot of things. If China says they want to be in it, their government will fund things so it's below even cost that it's hitting the market. And Western governments haven't responded. They've just been like, oh, great deal. We got cheaper stuff. But it's really consequential. It's hollowed out our own economy, not just with jobs, but with real security vulnerabilities. We saw that during COVID, and that's the fear that if their auto industry

starts doing the same thing they've done in a number of other sectors, that they'll kill our auto sector. When you think about the surveillance aspect here in the Connected Vehicle Security Act, I don't really want anybody to be able to spy on my vehicle, my government, anyone else, a company, and certainly not a government like China's. I don't want them to have my data. And so this bill doesn't go so far as to give you full control over every signal coming in or out of your car and ownership of the data since it is your data. That's where I would like things to go. But you're actually, at least does that for China. And it says if you can't secure the data, then you can't sell the car in the United States. And the related thing is,

like I say, China would do the same kinds of abusive practices they've done. As chairman for national security and Lysip Fini, that's one of the big things that we've worked. on is an outbound investment scheme. So we've got a review with the committee on foreign investment of Chinese investment into the United States. We've tried to make that more robust. We've also added a review for outbound investment, and that's sort of what held up mythos, the anthropic artificial intelligence tool that people have used to crack codes to all kinds of encryption. So I think there's some real concern about China having more reach in our economy. Yeah, let me ask a follow-up question to that.

You know, our neighbor to the north, Canada, Mark Carney, has signaled that he's willing to import vehicles from China. What is the current status here in the United States when it comes to that type of scenario? I would imagine China would love to have access to the United States market. Yeah, they want access to the United States market, and they're already really kind of controlling Canada in a lot of ways. I mean, Mark Connie has very clearly just said, you know, Xi Jinping's going to be in charge in China longer than Donald Trump in the United States. He's basically given the United States a middle finger while Donald Trump's president and trade relationships there aren't going well at all.

So I hope that the people of Canada change course. And, you know, I hope that the negotiators between the United States and Canada take some of the personalities out of it and just do what's in the best interest the United States and Canada. I mean, even under USMCA, the US-Mexico Canada Agreement, which is up for review, they're just common sense things that we can do to make a better deal for both the United States and Canada. But Canada depends on our security in a lot of ways. They're a NATO member, but they're also really our neighbor. And Big Brother does provide their security in many ways. They've massively underfund their security. They're undermining that security for themselves,

But very importantly, for us, was this kind of cozy relationship with China. Congressman, I want to cover two other topics before I let you go. The first is you've been also a leader speaking out on the pitfalls and the dangers of moving towards socialism. You could very well be serving in the next Congress, the 120th Congress, with several Democrat Socialists of America endorsed candidates who have diametrically different perspective on not only our country's founding principles, but certainly policy ideas than yourself or myself or other conservatives. Why have you decided that it's important to educate Americans about socialism? Well, a lot of young people weren't around for the Cold War.

You know, I graduated in high school in 1988, enlisted in the infantry and I got sent to Germany. At that time, the Cold War was up. The Berlin Wall was there separating East Germany from West Germany, and that was the Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, on the other side effectively. And Mr. President Reagan had said, Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. Ultimately, Gorbachev didn't, who was the leader of the Soviet Union, didn't tear down the wall.

Reagan didn't tear down the wall. The people in East Germany found it out the truth. They tore their own wall down. And I was able to go there in 1989 for U.S. Thanksgiving, so a couple weeks after 9 November, 1989, and see people experiencing their first hour, of freedom. And they were like, is it like this everywhere? I thought they met, you know, a big city versus a small town. And they're like, no, there's fresh milk and everyone can go buy things. I'm like, yeah, they want everyone to go in and buy things. So they sell more stuff. And they're

like, well, if they sell all the stuff, how do they have more things on the shelves? You know, we always run out. The first people get things and everything's gone. I'm like, well, obviously, we have a totally different system. And they were told that, you know, we had a couple blocks for show just like they did. And we were more poorer than them. I'm like, well, buddy obviously you've been lied to he's like yeah it's just mind-blowing and um now to say another reagan quote you know freedom's never more than one generation away from extinction you go from that experience there where i'm seeing firsthand how failed these ideas are so i'm serving in congress with people that describe themselves as socialists uh you know mandami's the mayor of new york

city so nothing inherently to worry about here in ohio except people are copying his platform and getting support from the political left in the United States. He said, I campaigned as a socialist, and I will govern as a socialist. And when you look at their platform, I mean, this is, you know, maybe you're voting for it instead of pure communism, but it's essentially a communist ideology. Al-Sayyad in Michigan is campaigning on this platform with support from all the radical left. So, I mean, this is a crazy time that this could even be debated. It certainly is. And it's one of the reasons why I think the education system in the United States is broken. And we need to do our job, obviously, to supplement what kids are learning in school and college.

Final question for you. Thank you for sharing the Daily Signal story about Jack Smith and his spying on Susie Wiles, the chief of staff to President Trump at the White House. I think it caught a lot of us who follow the news inside of Washington. by surprise. Senator Mike Lee, who I mentioned earlier, likened it to worse than Watergate in terms of what some of the activities that Jack Smith was doing. Obviously, the House has played an important role in terms of oversight and monitoring what Smith was doing. What are your thoughts on his activities?

Well, look, there are a lot of people who said that, you know, the Patriot Act would be abused and it has been. So it's disappointing that we don't have United Republican support to claw back some of that surveillance state in the first place. I am hearing a lot about surveillance state today. I mean, flock cameras are a tool. They could be used for good, but they are being abused. We don't have good safeguards for our data.

Companies, including American companies, are harvesting massive amounts of data. And then people like Jack Smith are using the law to give gag orders. So they're getting this data and harvesting it in big scale. Sometimes they don't even get a warrant. You can buy your way around the Fourth Amendment. We've got a bill called the Fourth Amendment's not for sale. Pass the House. Last Congress couldn't get through the Senate.

But Joe Biden led this effort to target President Trump. Before that, Barack Obama led this effort to target President Trump. Hillary Clinton was instrumental to targeting President Trump's campaign. And, yes, they targeted his political campaign, but they also targeted the press. They targeted members of Congress even. I mean, they got a gag order when they targeted Speaker Kevin McCarthy's phone because he might be a flight risk. The Speaker of the House is a flight risk. Are you kidding me?

So clear lawfare, clear abuse of the power of the government. And I think fundamentally it's a sign that the government has too much surveillance power. Human beings will abuse power when they have access to it. And I think the only real remedy is to decrease the... surveillance capabilities. And of course, in the meantime, you've got to get different people, A, who aren't going to abuse the power, and B, who will help use their temporary access to it to curtail it. So we're a little ways away from that, but we are moving in the right direction by finding the problem. And I think people broadly agreeing that it is clearly wrong and an abuse of

those powers. I think that more and more Americans are waking up to that reality. And, And Congressman, thank you for championing those issues and being a constitutional conservative who fundamentally cares about the rights that were guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights, particularly as we celebrate 250 years of our country's founding. We certainly wish you well. Keep us posted on what's happening in the 8th Congressional District. A big shout out to our Ohio correspondent, Rebecca Downs, who covers the state. If you want more coverage of Ohio from the Daily Signal, we'll be sure to

leave a link in the show notes, as well as to Congressman Davidson's social media accounts so you can keep track of what he's doing. Thanks so much for joining the Daily Signal today. It's always an honor. Thank you so much. God bless you and all your listeners and viewers. Many Americans are going to have a big wake-up call. We have never seen net migration as high as it has been in the last few years. This year, there have been more people coming to the UK in small boats than ever before. You did an extreme thing to the country. is facing a migrant crime epidemic. We don't actually know where they're coming from, who they are, how old they are.

Why would you let in millions of people who are undetting, if not to change the country from within? There is no other word for it, demographic replacement. England's a bluefin for America. It's coming. It's just a bluefin. Thousands of daily migrant crossings. A political earthquake threatens to reshape America. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our country.

Not all cultures are the same. You cannot ban Sharia. America is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. The Immigration Crisis. Watch now on the Heritage Foundation's YouTube channel.