Speaker 1: Seven oh seven to fifty five ker C Detalk Station.
Speaker 1: Brian Thomas, welcoming back to the fifty five KRC Morning Show.
Speaker 1: Dave Williams from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, looking out for
Speaker 1: where government spending our money, usually in the worst possible
Speaker 1: places and not minding the financial shop. Find them online
Speaker 1: at Protecting Taxpayers dot org. Welcome back, Dave Williams. And
Speaker 1: I'll let you know, like I've been letting my listeners
Speaker 1: know this morning. Sorry for the repetition for those who
Speaker 1: been listening all morning. I'm struggling with some really deep
Speaker 1: long coughing issues, so I'll try to do my best
Speaker 1: not to stumble. But if you hear me pause, it's
Speaker 1: because I'm hitting the cough button. Welcome back, Dave Williams.
Speaker 1: Always love having you on the show.
Speaker 2: Brian, good morning. Sorry to hear you're a little bit
Speaker 2: under the weather, and listen. I like to talk, so
Speaker 2: don't worry about uh slack.
Speaker 1: I always enjoy all conversations. David. Let us start off
Speaker 1: with something that to me is, if not the most important,
Speaker 1: got to be in the top two most important things,
Speaker 1: shutting down and reeling in government spending. And I was
Speaker 1: really excited about it. I think Elon Musk is just
Speaker 1: a neat guy. He is goofy, he's weird, he's got
Speaker 1: great ideas. He's obviously brilliant, way way way out of
Speaker 1: the box and is thinking but demonstrably successful, brilliant, multi billionaire.
Speaker 1: He knows how to cut government and looks like he's
Speaker 1: going to have at least some sort of role, perhaps
Speaker 1: a prominent role in doing that in the Trump administration. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're a betting man, Dave, is it going to happen?
Speaker 2: Wow? So much to unpack the Yeah, Elon Musk really
Speaker 2: is a fascinating guy, right, Tesla SpaceX. I mean, so
Speaker 2: many things that he has his hands in, and he's
Speaker 2: the last month or two he's been talking about this
Speaker 2: Department of Government Efficiency, really going through the federal government
Speaker 2: looking for a raceful spending, redundant spending, duplicative, you name it.
Speaker 2: And this really, you know, scratches the itch for me
Speaker 2: when we talk about doing an audit of the federal government,
Speaker 2: and that's what he's talking about, is an audit. I
Speaker 2: remember back in the eighties we had the Grace Commission,
Speaker 2: and this was a really comprehensive look at the federal government.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a long time ago, but it
Speaker 2: really set the tone for auditing the government. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know what, forty years later, now we can do
Speaker 2: the same thing, but we have an advantage. Forty years later.
Speaker 2: It's technology. We have ways of going inside the government now,
Speaker 2: and I'm hoping and looking and finding a government waste
Speaker 2: a lot easier than we did in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm excited now, Brian, I'm not so
Speaker 2: excited if you look at the history of Republicans when
Speaker 2: it comes to spending.
Speaker 1: Amen, Trump right there, go ahead, I'm gonna I'm calling
Speaker 1: out Trump right now. It's one of the biggest criticisms
Speaker 1: I had. I said, he has never been a deficit hawk.
Speaker 1: The government spending went up under his administration. Our deficit
Speaker 1: went up what five trillion under the Trump administration?
Speaker 2: It did you know, and look at before COVID. You know,
Speaker 2: the Democrats would have done nothing different during COVID. They
Speaker 2: would have spent trillions upon trillions of dollars. But let's
Speaker 2: look at what happened before COVID. When Trump was president,
Speaker 2: we had a deficit of two point two trillion dollars
Speaker 2: that's concerning. That's very concerning. So now he's coming back
Speaker 2: in January, we're gonna have a House and a Senate
Speaker 2: that's going to be controlled, right Republicans. This is their
Speaker 2: opportunity to do something, some meaningful reform, whether a speaker
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson or another speaker who comes in. It's time,
Speaker 2: and it's I mean, it's pastime, as does me. Honest,
Speaker 2: I mean we're talking. You know, interest on the debt
Speaker 2: is eight hundred to nine hundred billion dollars. That's interest, Brian,
Speaker 2: That's that's multiple government agencies put together, spending wise, and
Speaker 2: that's why this needs to be addressed immediately. But Speaker
Speaker 2: Johnson has an opportunity to do this. And again, you
Speaker 2: know Trump has been talking about this. If you're gonna walk,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to talk the talk, you
Speaker 2: have to walk the walk in. But again, their track
Speaker 2: record isn't great.
Speaker 1: No, it's not because politicians have a difficult time saying no.
Speaker 1: I mean they're worried about the next election even though
Speaker 1: the first one. Then the ink isn't even dry on
Speaker 1: Trump winning the other day, and you know they're already
Speaker 1: thinking about two years from now and running again, and
Speaker 1: to cut means you know, boiling it down to its
Speaker 1: bottom line, pissing some people off. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: eradicate jobs in government, Dave, you been following this. The
Speaker 1: biggest growth in jobs has been government jobs. It's been
Speaker 1: nothing but expansion of government over decades, and it just
Speaker 1: got worse over the past three hours, four years.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought that up because these job numbers
Speaker 2: where they say we've added three hundred thousand jobs, a
Speaker 2: lot of them have been government jobs mean taxpayer funded jobs,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people don't know that and they
Speaker 2: think that, you know, it's really an illusion of these
Speaker 2: jobs gains have been an illusion because they're really not.
Speaker 2: When the government's adding that means you're subtracting from taxpayers. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the economy is still it's the economy is struggling.
Speaker 2: You know. The administration one to put a happy face
Speaker 2: on it, and you know, they reduced interest rates and
Speaker 2: did a lot of other things, but we're still in
Speaker 2: a very weak and tenuous economy.
Speaker 1: Well, and let's look at the nature of government jobs.
Speaker 1: Unlike the private sector, government jobs live thrive and survive
Speaker 1: on taking money from us out here trying to be
Speaker 1: productive and support a basically a consumer consumption driven economy.
Speaker 1: Government jobs don't create money. They merely confiscate money and
Speaker 1: spend it on an administration and overhead and office space
Speaker 1: and you know, fiddling around and issuing edicts and mandates
Speaker 1: that further restrain our economic activity. It's just it is
Speaker 1: a you know, it isn't a recipe for making money.
Speaker 1: It's taking money out. Isn't that really the final analysis
Speaker 1: how it boils down, Dave?
Speaker 2: It really isn't. You know. The best example I can
Speaker 2: give you is the United States Postal Service versus the
Speaker 2: private sector when it comes to seasonal hiring. So everyone's
Speaker 2: ramping up for Christmas and the holidays, you know, deliver packages,
Speaker 2: deliver mail. Well, what the Postal Service does is they
Speaker 2: have seasonal hiring like the private sector, but you have
Speaker 2: the option of becoming full time after Christmas and after
Speaker 2: the holidays, because the unions have negotiated this with the
Speaker 2: Postal Service. Now, if you work for the private sector,
Speaker 2: if it's UPS or Fedexio, no, we're just hiring you
Speaker 2: until January and we are going to let you go
Speaker 2: because it's seasonal. Hence the seasonal the Postal Service almost
Speaker 2: guarantees that if you want a full time job after
Speaker 2: your seasonal employment, you can have it. So there you
Speaker 2: have the difference between the private sector and the public sector.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to stupidity and really bad hiring
Speaker 2: decisions and you know, economic decisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a wonder And I just I step
Speaker 1: back and I stare at the US Postal Service. How
Speaker 1: many years in a row have they lost billions of dollars?
Speaker 1: This has been going on for as long as ey
Speaker 1: as you have been have been talking, if not much longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a lot more hair when they were
Speaker 2: making money. You know. It's they've lost what one hundred
Speaker 2: and more than one hundred billion dollars over the last
Speaker 2: fifteen years. I mean, this is an entity that has
Speaker 2: a monopoly on first class mail and they're blowing it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would love to have a monopoly in
Speaker 2: any sort of business, and I guarantee you if I
Speaker 2: had a monopoly, I'd be making money hand over fist.
Speaker 2: But for some reason, the Postal Service, and we know
Speaker 2: a lot of the reasons that the Postal Service just
Speaker 2: can't do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hate this on them, and I know that
Speaker 1: the post guy, that person that delivers my mail is
Speaker 1: not the one that's to blame. It's the model, it's
Speaker 1: the system, and it's the refusal of those in charge
Speaker 1: to well crack down on it for reasons that escape me.
Speaker 1: Protecting taxpayers dot orgs where you find Dave and the
Speaker 1: Taxpayer Protection Alliance. Stick around, Dave. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about answering the question is the future looking brighter? Doing
Speaker 1: a little tea Lea Forado with Dave at seven twenty
Speaker 1: if afty five KCD talk station. Happy Friday to you.
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to look out for our money, and someone
Speaker 1: is protecting taxpayers dot org. Dave william and the Taxpayer
Speaker 1: Protection Alliance. Dave's joined the program as he does about
Speaker 1: once a month. And here's an interesting question. Is the
Speaker 1: future looking brighter? Interesting sort of loaded question, Dave. I
Speaker 1: guess it depends on which direction we're looking.
Speaker 2: I think the future is looking brighter. Two examples, tax reform.
Speaker 2: We have the tax cuts that are going to expire
Speaker 2: at the end of twenty twenty five next year. This
Speaker 2: was Trump's signature piece of legislation, right, I mean, this
Speaker 2: gave the economy a shot in the arm. That it
Speaker 2: desperately need. At the end of twenty seventeen and beginning
Speaker 2: of twenty eighteen, companies sent out thousand dollars bonuses to people.
Speaker 2: It really was a great time. You know, obviously a
Speaker 2: year or so before COVID hit. But we have an
Speaker 2: opportunity to extend the tax cuts to remain competitive around
Speaker 2: the world, but to make sure that people's taxes are
Speaker 2: still relatively low. Listen, there's a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to lie, but if these tax cuts
Speaker 2: expired would be awful for the economy. We had the trifecta.
Speaker 2: Now we have the House, the Senate, and the White House.
Speaker 2: There is no excuse not to extend the tax cuts.
Speaker 2: So that's where I'm really really excited about. And there's
Speaker 2: a commitment, i think, from everyone in the Republican Party
Speaker 2: to do that. There are differences in the Republican Party
Speaker 2: some issues, but not when it comes to tax cuts. Energy. Wow,
Speaker 2: this is going to be fascinating. Is he going to
Speaker 2: restart the Keystone Xcel pipeline in January? That was Biden's
Speaker 2: first thing that he did was shut it down when
Speaker 2: he came into office. I would love for Trump for
Speaker 2: that to be one of the first things that he does.
Speaker 1: It is there still time to do that? That thing's
Speaker 1: been flipped on and off more times than I care
Speaker 1: to even remember over the past what eight ten years.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've lost track on that day.
Speaker 2: There absolutely is. And what's frustrating is if they if
Speaker 2: Biden wouldn't have done this, that thing would be pumping
Speaker 2: eight hundred thousand poles of oil into this country a day.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's where we would be, and obviously gas
Speaker 2: prices would be lower, but there'd be a lot more
Speaker 2: jobs in that part of the country. And these are
Speaker 2: good paying jobs, Brian, you know, one hundred thousand dollars jobs.
Speaker 2: So it just it's all good for the economy when
Speaker 2: we have more oil exploration and more oil coming into
Speaker 2: this country. And really it's the green energy mandates, you know,
Speaker 2: just getting rid of these mandates. Listen, if you want
Speaker 2: to drive an electric vehicle, go for it. I don't care,
Speaker 2: just don't use my money to do it. You know,
Speaker 2: we're building all of what we're trying to build these
Speaker 2: charger stations all across the country. I think three or
Speaker 2: four have been built. But my bigger question is, Brian
Speaker 2: can you imagine if they were taxpayer money building gas stations,
Speaker 2: people would lose their minds. Yeah, rightly, so, I mean
Speaker 2: rightly so listen, our money shouldn't be used to build
Speaker 2: gas stations or charging stations. This is corporate welfare. This
Speaker 2: should not be happening. So but again, I am very
Speaker 2: optimistic about energy. Come next year, and you know what
Speaker 2: we could see, will there be more nuclear plants? Where
Speaker 2: we see nuclear plants being built. We have tech companies
Speaker 2: that are now moving to nuclear and trying to open
Speaker 2: nuclear plants because their data centers take so much energy
Speaker 2: that they don't want to be a draw on the grid.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is what the private sector is doing.
Speaker 2: Is Trump and is Congress? Are they going to move
Speaker 2: forward with this and say okay, it's time that we
Speaker 2: move more towards nuclear.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a strong gut reaction to that, and
Speaker 1: the answer is yes. But note Dave that these tech companies,
Speaker 1: the Googles, the Alphabet whatevers say they're gonna get these
Speaker 1: modular reactors, and no one in the Biden Harris administration
Speaker 1: reacts with the hell, no, you're not going to do
Speaker 1: that three mile while and they actually kind of embraced it.
Speaker 1: They didn't. They didn't say no. So if you're big
Speaker 1: and powerful enough that you have enough money, I suppose
Speaker 1: to donate money to campaigns and spend a billion dollars
Speaker 1: starting to get Kamala Harris leged. And you're the one
Speaker 1: that's going to get a nuclear power plant. But the
Speaker 1: neighborhood next to the giant AI facility, sorry, sucks to
Speaker 1: be you. You're gonna have to live off a windmill.
Speaker 2: You know. You're absolutely right is that it can't be
Speaker 2: just for these companies. There has to be a larger
Speaker 2: deployment of this because it's gonna bring down our energy costs,
Speaker 2: and that's what kills small business. You talk to any
Speaker 2: small business, you know, it's the energy costs when you
Speaker 2: have a spike and electricity cost that kills small business,
Speaker 2: especially restaurants and the ones that use a lot of electricity.
Speaker 2: So I agree with you one hundred percent. You can't
Speaker 2: just favorite the you know, have favoritism towards the big guys.
Speaker 2: It has to be spread all around the country.
Speaker 1: And again reminding folks that these modular reactors one size
Speaker 1: literally fits all. You get the plan, you know how
Speaker 1: to do it. It's like putting legos together. Got one right here,
Speaker 1: We're gonna put one over there, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the same design, same principles. They're small, uh, And it's
Speaker 1: just we don't have to build giant cooling towers and
Speaker 1: have them next to massive water sources like the old days.
Speaker 1: That's amazing what technology can do to bring us around
Speaker 1: cheap energy. But Dave, I keep going back to the
Speaker 1: fact the green folks, the globalists of the world do
Speaker 1: not want us to have inexpensive energy because we're too
Speaker 1: damned and successful with that and we're too damn consumptive
Speaker 1: for their perceptive of perception of life.
Speaker 2: Well, and they're kind of backed into a corner because
Speaker 2: nuclear is a renewable energy, yeah, carbon free, it's really
Speaker 2: the carbon free though. It really puts them in a
Speaker 2: real awkward position, which I love that nuclear energy really
Speaker 2: is the you know, the answer to a lot of
Speaker 2: our energy needs at this point.
Speaker 1: No doubt about it, and something that RFK Junior may
Speaker 1: have something to do with more with Dave Williams coming
Speaker 1: up next, what is the Pharmacy, Audit and Transparency Act
Speaker 1: seven thirty one and fifty five kerc DE talk Station,
Speaker 1: Brian Thomas a Dave Williams from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance.
Speaker 1: All right, we answered the question or anticipated about Trump
Speaker 1: reeling in government spending. Please do your guy, let that happen.
Speaker 1: The future does appear to be looking brighter, at least
Speaker 1: in so far as one thing energy policy across the board.
Speaker 1: Energy policy is in our future, I think quite quite
Speaker 1: promising along those lines. And moving over to something and
Speaker 1: I said, Elon Musk or rather RFK Junior may have
Speaker 1: something to do with it. What is the Pharmacy Audit
Speaker 1: and Transparency Act, Dave.
Speaker 2: Boy, This is a little bit complicated, but let's see
Speaker 2: if we can get to this. And you know right
Speaker 2: now the Department of in Human Services the FDA, a
Speaker 2: lot of improvement is needed, especially in pricing of drugs.
Speaker 2: And you have these pharmacy benefit managers who act as
Speaker 2: middlemen between pharmacies and insurance companies. And it's really listen,
Speaker 2: whenever a middleman is involved in anything, someone's taking something
Speaker 2: off the top here.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's like pharmacy benefit managers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And what they're doing is they're negotiating between the
Speaker 2: insurers and the pharmacies. So they say, okay, pharmacy, we're
Speaker 2: gonna give you X amount for a drug. But then
Speaker 2: they go to the insurers and they ask more. So
Speaker 2: the pharmacy benefit managers are making money just being a
Speaker 2: middleman and negotiating prices between insurance companies and UH and pharmacies.
Speaker 2: And you know, you look in Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: a lot of pharmacies are going out of business because
Speaker 2: of the low reimbursements that they're getting for for the drugs.
Speaker 1: Is there really truly a need for that middleman, Dave.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. You know, this was created a number
Speaker 2: of years ago of pharmacy benefit managers and they're not
Speaker 2: benefeeing anybody. I mean, it's it's you know, healthcare. There's
Speaker 2: no such thing as the free market in healthcare.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You go to the hospital, you have no idea what
Speaker 2: that procedure costs. And you know, I heard the commercial
Speaker 2: you had, you know, a couple of minutes ago. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it shows you that we need reform in
Speaker 2: the healthcare system. You break an arm, how much does
Speaker 2: that cost? How much are you being charged? How much
Speaker 2: does that actually cost? We never know, And that's why
Speaker 2: you need to look at this top to bottom, including
Speaker 2: the costs of drugs and these pharmacy benefit managers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been hearing about pharmacy benefit managers now for
Speaker 1: years and years, and I just I really don't understand.
Speaker 1: We go back to modern technology. Maybe there was a
Speaker 1: time back a while back, before you know, we communicated
Speaker 1: with emails and had artificial intelligence and could do things
Speaker 1: sort of very quickly and easily from a communications standpoint.
Speaker 1: We're not in those days anymore. We've got all this technology.
Speaker 1: It should be very easy for an insurance company to
Speaker 1: work directly with the manufacturers to negotiate a price it's
Speaker 1: best for their insurance, and everyone can be happy and
Speaker 1: satisfied with it. But throwing that extra slice of bureaucracy in,
Speaker 1: I mean just by saying that, you know it comes
Speaker 1: at a significant cost.
Speaker 2: Well, and look at the cause of the problems to
Speaker 2: food and Drug administration. It takes twelve years at about
Speaker 2: two billion dollars to bring a drug to market.
Speaker 1: And unless it's unless it's a cod mRNA vaccine, which
Speaker 1: which with complete immunity from any liability associated with the dangers,
Speaker 1: then they'll they'll put that through in about five seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talk about operation Warps it for sure. Yeah, so again,
Speaker 2: healthcare is a mess, and listen, I don't know if
Speaker 2: one administration can unravel all the intricacies of the nonsense
Speaker 2: that's happening. But you have to start somewhere, and you
Speaker 2: know this is a This is a great place to
Speaker 2: start with pharmacy benefit managers.
Speaker 1: Agreed, Dave Williams. Again, get them online. It's protecting Taxpayers
Speaker 1: dot org Taxpayer Protection Alliance. Until we talk again, keep
Speaker 1: up the great work you're doing, Dave. I always appreciate
Speaker 1: our conversations, and I know my listeners do as well.
Speaker 2: Brian, feel better and have a great weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you do the same, man, appreciate that very much.
Speaker 1: It's seven thirty five right now, I fifty five K
Speaker 1: city talk station. Phone lines are open. We got some
Speaker 1: time for the top of the art news to engage
Speaker 1: in conversations, so feel free to give me your ring
Speaker 1: five one, three, seven, four nine fifty five hundred eight
Speaker 1: hundred eighty two three taco with pound five fifty if
Speaker 1: you have an a T and T phone,