Speaker 1: Hi, It's Brian Thomas here with Senator John Houston. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the program. John, It's always a pleasure having
Speaker 1: you on. Boy. There's a flurry of activity going to
Speaker 1: coming out of Washington, DC. Very impressed by what the
Speaker 1: Trump administration has been able to accomplish, and personally happy
Speaker 1: to see the Big Beautiful Bill get passed. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was hoping, and I think my listeners were hoping
Speaker 1: for more cuts, recognizing some of the work that Doge
Speaker 1: had done. We expected, you know, a much larger slice
Speaker 1: of the government to be cut out. But a lot
Speaker 1: of great was accomplished in the Big Beautiful Bill, most
Speaker 1: notably the tax increase or the tax cuts have been
Speaker 1: made permanent, and that, despite what the Democrats keep saying,
Speaker 1: that is a benefit to a huge swath of Americans
Speaker 1: and of course Ohioans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, small businesses, manufacturers, all of them benefit by knowing
Speaker 2: what the rules are. They know they can plan, they
Speaker 2: can plan a capital investment knowing that they're going to
Speaker 2: be able to deduct the cost of that in this
Speaker 2: year's taxes, which means they have predictability, and then they
Speaker 2: can hire people, they can grow. This kind of stuff
Speaker 2: is very important, but it's also important for middle class
Speaker 2: working families. And I want to dig into that. No
Speaker 2: tax on tips, no tax on overtime, you know, bigger
Speaker 2: deduction for Social Security recipients, a child tax credit for
Speaker 2: working families, not one that's rebatable to people that don't work,
Speaker 2: but for people who actually work. All of that fantastic
Speaker 2: stuff for working families in Ohio.
Speaker 1: And so they just recently found out, you know, everyone
Speaker 1: on the left side of the ledgers screaming about how
Speaker 1: everyone's going to die because they're going to have their
Speaker 1: Medicaid taken away from them. I just saw an article
Speaker 1: on the Wall Street Journal I talked about earlier in
Speaker 1: the program yesterday, and fourteen billion dollars in fraud waste abuse,
Speaker 1: most notably people signed up in multiple states. It didn't
Speaker 1: take them that long to apply modern computer technology to
Speaker 1: cross reference to these people and find out that they're
Speaker 1: registered in multiple states double dipping. That was an easy fix.
Speaker 1: How come it took so long to come up with
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 2: Well, Frankly, one of the problems is is the federal
Speaker 2: government pays the bill and the states administered, so many
Speaker 2: states have no incentive to actually go track this down,
Speaker 2: and we did that with SNAP saying, hey, if you're
Speaker 2: gonna have a fraud and abuse, then the states that
Speaker 2: have it, you're going to pay a little bit more
Speaker 2: of the cost of doing these programs. That's certainly the
Speaker 2: case with Medicaid. You have people who are ineligible, who
Speaker 2: are on there, people who are registered in multiple states.
Speaker 2: And what does that matter? Because you have insurance companies
Speaker 2: Medicaid manage care companies that pay states pay premiums. The
Speaker 2: federal government pays premiums in both states. So that's a
Speaker 2: huge cost of covering multiple people even though they should
Speaker 2: only be or multiple states, even though showed me in
Speaker 2: one state that stuff matters. It adds up to billions
Speaker 2: of dollars. And nobody was doing it before, and that's
Speaker 2: a big difference. It's like, you can identify these things,
Speaker 2: but what are we doing about it? Were doing something
Speaker 2: about it in this bill. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing we all have learned of late there is
Speaker 1: no follow through to find out what happens after the
Speaker 1: money goes out the door in Washington. Does it actually
Speaker 1: accomplish anything? All these non governmental organizations with their hands
Speaker 1: in the cookie jar of the taxpayer money, we don't
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Doge identified projects. We don't know
Speaker 1: if even the Sesame Street program in Iraq or whatever
Speaker 1: was even done. The money did go towards something that
Speaker 1: was labeled as that, but nobody follows up and tracks
Speaker 1: the taxpayer dollars. So I think it's a refreshing thing
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration is doing along those lines, at
Speaker 1: least trying to make sure the money's doing something and
Speaker 1: accomplishing something on behalf of the American taxpayer. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the problems, well.
Speaker 2: There was a there was a let me just say
Speaker 2: something on that. There's a big message sent. We stayed
Speaker 2: up till two thirty in the morning doing the recisions
Speaker 2: package to take back literally nine billion dollars in spending,
Speaker 2: not a huge amount. You would think that would be easy. Finally,
Speaker 2: cutting things like Sesame Street and Iraq and transgender surgeries
Speaker 2: in Guatemala. We cut those packages. And the message to
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy is this, Brian, don't do stupid things and
Speaker 2: you'll be fine, But if you do stupid things, we
Speaker 2: are actually willing to cut your budgets. So that was
Speaker 2: a big message. It was sent.
Speaker 1: That amazing concept John EUSt did. Now I saw Donald
Speaker 1: Trump sign the Halt Fentanyl Act into law. I wanted
Speaker 1: to pivot over to that. I think we and Ohio
Speaker 1: have a problem with fentanyl like all the other states.
Speaker 1: And of course I think the main problem is the
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party and sending all the precursor elements out
Speaker 1: into the world to be turned into fentanyl. Whether or
Speaker 1: not Trump accomplishes, getting that shutdown would go a long
Speaker 1: way to stopping the fentanyl problem. But how is the
Speaker 1: Halt Fentanyl Act going to help us here in Ohio.
Speaker 1: It's going to give.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement more tools to go after people. A lot
Speaker 2: of times they would hide these ingredients under you know,
Speaker 2: technicalities in the law. This just cleans it up, gives
Speaker 2: law enforcement more power to go after the bad actors.
Speaker 2: But it's also important in the trade fight with China.
Speaker 2: There's a premium in there on a tariff, a twenty
Speaker 2: percent additional tariff until China takes care of these is
Speaker 2: shoes around fentanyl. So they're going to, you know, if
Speaker 2: they're going to keep turning a blind eye to the
Speaker 2: problems that they're creating in this country and the sort
Speaker 2: of the modern day opium opium more, Uh, we're going
Speaker 2: to have to continue to push back on them and
Speaker 2: giving law enforcement more tools with Halt, fent and al
Speaker 2: and all. They think that it's a terrible tragedy that
Speaker 2: comes with it. It's also the human trafficking and all
Speaker 2: that from drug addicted people that ends up happening, from
Speaker 2: the gangs and the people coming across the border illegally.
Speaker 2: It's just a whole mess that was created by the
Speaker 2: Biden administration that we're still trying to sort out. And
Speaker 2: this is just one more tool for law enforcement, those
Speaker 2: men and women who go out there every day and
Speaker 2: put their lives on the line to protect us.
Speaker 1: Senni Houston pivoting over to the cafe standards something in
Speaker 1: trouble administration wants to get rid of. I think it's
Speaker 1: a pointless thing to have laws of supply and demand
Speaker 1: should be in effective. If I want to drive a
Speaker 1: car that gets eight miles to the gallon and I don't,
Speaker 1: I should be able to buy one. But these cafe
Speaker 1: standards create artificial miles per gallon that are forcing manufacturers
Speaker 1: to old electric vehicles that apparently the population does not want.
Speaker 1: They're losing money, they're hemorrhaging the tax credits, are disappearing,
Speaker 1: so there's fewer there's lessons centive to buy an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: Can't we just scrap the whole process and let the
Speaker 1: market forces dig dictate what we drive and what are
Speaker 1: miles per gallop happened to be.
Speaker 2: Well, we're in the process of scrapping a lot of that. Yes,
Speaker 2: on cafe standards. That also, we repealed the California ev
Speaker 2: mandate that seventeen other states had joined. If you remember,
Speaker 2: they were going to say all cars in California in
Speaker 2: seventeen other states had to be electric vehicles by twenty
Speaker 2: thirty five. Think about that, every new car had to
Speaker 2: be an electric vehicle by twenty thirty five. And we
Speaker 2: repealed that Biden era regulation that allowed them to do
Speaker 2: that that kind of stuff. I mean, frankly, we saved
Speaker 2: them from themselves. Yeah, there's no way that the people
Speaker 2: of those states would have rebelled if you were going
Speaker 2: to force them to have to buy electric cars. But
Speaker 2: common sense and a Republican majority prevailed in that one,
Speaker 2: and we repealed it. But all of those things skew
Speaker 2: the markets. Companies go out and make investments not on
Speaker 2: what the consumer wants, but what the government regulations say
Speaker 2: they must do, and that skews the whole landscape, and
Speaker 2: eventually you ping pong it around because it's it's one
Speaker 2: administration gets in, they set rules. The next one comes in,
Speaker 2: they set a different set of rules. Just clean the slate.
Speaker 2: Let the car companies respond to the consumers. Technology will
Speaker 2: drive better environmental and outcomes and emission achievements.
Speaker 1: Good ideas. Great ideas do not require force or tax incentives. John,
Speaker 1: that's my point.
Speaker 2: On that, and that is right, and every day we
Speaker 2: get new lessons about that.
Speaker 1: Hey, real, briefly, I know we're out of time. Just
Speaker 1: one final question, where are you on the Epstein files?
Speaker 1: I hate to go over that diversion paying no attention
Speaker 1: to the man behind the curtain kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: are you in favor of releasing this? I think most
Speaker 1: of my listening audience like, just let it out, get
Speaker 1: over with and uh yeah.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, we can do this. Look turnover all you can.
Speaker 2: Don't turn over anything that would undermine a potential prosecution
Speaker 2: if there is somebody who deserves to be prosecuted, yes,
Speaker 2: and also protect the victims. We don't want victims' names
Speaker 2: out there. They didn't do anything wrong. If you recall
Speaker 2: in the Prince Andrew case, the woman who who got
Speaker 2: outed in this Epstein saga, she committed suicide. We want
Speaker 2: to protect the victims, but everything else, get it out
Speaker 2: there and get this let's move on by by being transparent.
Speaker 1: Amen to that, and Senator Houston, you know, I think
Speaker 1: they would go a long way to solving this so
Speaker 1: called crisis. If the Justice Department say, we do have
Speaker 1: ongoing criminal investigations, which is why we can't release the information.
Speaker 1: I think that would satisfy a lot of people and
Speaker 1: at least put the whole issue to bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then and then prosecute someone.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 2: You can't imagine that only those two, you know, the
Speaker 2: Epstein and the Epstein girlfriend, were the ones, the only
Speaker 2: ones involved committing a crime here. You'd have to think
Speaker 2: that there's someone else too that deserves to be prosecuted.
Speaker 1: I think that's a safe conclusion. Senator Hughes that it
Speaker 1: has been a real pleasure. Thank you for the time
Speaker 1: you spent with my listeners to me this morning. I
Speaker 1: truly appreciate. Keep up the great work.