Midterm Losses, Affordability, and the GOP Message Gap

Bob Neugebauer Welcome once again to the Idaho Pulse. This is your host, Tea Party, Bob. And today we have a special guest who’s a former assistant policy guru to Congressman Fulcher. And he’s going to give us his take on what is really happening in our nation’s capital after this disastrous election for the Republicans. So without further ado, let me introduce our guest today, Steve Ackerman, to the Idaho Post. And good afternoon, Steve. nice to talk to you again. So what do you have to say for yourself with all the things that have happened down in Washington over the past week?

Steve Ackerman Well, it’s always it’s always good chatting with you, Bob. It’s always good to, to get on with you and and thank you. And thank you for, for the invitation, to be on Idaho radio and, to offer, offer some thoughts and hopefully, offer some things that are helpful to folks. so I guess I’ll take it. I’ll take it kind of in two. I’ll take it as two pieces. One. obviously as you mentioned, um it was a definite shift. Um I, I certainly thought that the house would go over, you know, from the Republicans to the Democrats. I thought it would be maybe, maybe twenty five at the outset. I kind of had twenty. but it, you know, it’s been more than double. It’s, it’s more than forty now. there’s still a few to, to wrap up, but basically more than forty, which is paralleling, what former President Obama said was the shellacking after the Affordable Care Act. And I’ll come back to why I referenced that, but also the two thousand and six, right, that a lot of people reference, where, you know, in the latter part of Bush’s, George W Bush’s second term, but even the ninety four Republican revolution. so it’s got, it’s got similarities to all three. But the big one is what followed the Affordable Care Act, and that leads to the second. The second major piece here, and that comes down to messaging. you know, when you look at the shift, if you if you look at the Democrats, especially in the Senate, also someone in the House, but more in the Senate, which as, as your listeners are going to recall, you know, jump to fifty four. I, I thought probably go to about fifty two. I thought they would get the majority, maybe be one or two past, Vice President Vance being able to do the tiebreaker. but, they got to fifty four and it’s possible they get to fifty five. I don’t think they’ll get Mississippi at the end of the day, although I looked at the the stats about an hour ago and Callum is still ahead. He’s only ahead by zero point two percent. Um that would be a big jump, a big shift. but I don’t think you’ll get that, but I do think Alaska could go to Pell tola. and she’s got a margin that’s bigger than the other, that second Dan Sullivan in there. so I think that could go so we could be looking at a fifty five forty five Senate instead of fifty four forty six. So, be that as it may, the second point and why I brought up reconciliation, sorry, why, why I brought up the Affordable Care Act. So one of the things about the Affordable Care Act, that people forget is it, it had a lot more in it than just the tax credits and the subsidies for health insurance. Right. The health exchange was a big issue in Idaho. You and I are in the middle of it. We participated in that debate, on it. And, obviously, you know, my state senator at the time, Fulcher, he was you know, he had concerns over that health exchange. We were seeking a free market alternative, kind of all those those old arguments. But the Affordable Care Act bill had more than that in it. It had it had the tax imposed on people if they did not buy health insurance. It had essential health benefits, which said, you can’t just go buy health insurance, you must buy certain health insurance. It had certain requirements and it had a number of other things put in on insurance companies. you know, on, on all the players in the insurance industry. And they’re kind of a mix of positives and negatives out of that, out of that bill. The, the problem was it was difficult to message because there were too many parts to it. In fact, President Obama made a reference once. He kind of made it as a joke. But he said, you know, he goes, I’ve listened to people who say they don’t like the Affordable Care Act. They don’t like Obamacare. However, they like the exchange, so I guess it’s okay. Well, what he was referring to is there are so many parts to it, it is difficult to message. And if you look at the twenty twenty five reconciliation bill, which later got called The Big Beautiful Bill, it had so many parts to it. There were things that people liked, but there were also things people had concerns with. And the bottom line is this. If you have too many parts to something, it’s really hard to message. And so people would say, look, I, I like the no tax on overtime. I like the no tax on on which Congressman Fulcher was one of them that pushed that. We pushed that. I don’t like the tax on tips. I don’t like the tax on Social Security. You know, so I, I want tax reduction and I want the extension of the twenty eighteen taxes. tax cuts that Republicans had largely put in. I want those extended and those did get extended. But then you had other things in there. You had money for the Coast Guard, money for Ice. You had defense spending in there. These are all things that should go through normal appropriations, and they’re really not related. you did have some Medicaid fraud issues, which are you could, one could argue, okay, that’s related. But then there were other requirements put on it. In other words, there’s so many parts to the bill, it’s difficult to message. And if you listen to the senators who won out of Kansas, out of Iowa, out of Texas, out of South Carolina, and even to some extent out of Michigan, although Abdullah Al Sayed, he’s further left. But if you listen to the bulk of them, Ohio, those Midwestern, what I call the Midwestern moment, those senators all would say the same thing. They’d say, look, there are parts of that reconciliation bill I like, but parts I don’t like. Here’s what I know. We can’t afford anything. In other words, the Democrats. That one had a very clear message. Affordability. They could point to the reconciliation bill. And when Republicans would come back on it, they weren’t sure what to talk about. They tried talking about fraud, and then they tried saying, wait a minute, we’re trying to save money for people. Look. Good argument. But but then they shift and they go. But it also does reduce taxes. And oh, by the way, Ice is going to be able to get money that they need, you know, in case we have another shutdown. I mean, it was kind of one argument after another and the voter is trying to figure out where do I hang my hat? Like, what is the message of that reconciliation bill, like the Affordable Care Act? So many parts to it. You try to message what works. The president tried to message on the tax issue, which was an easy thing for people to understand. Same as the Affordable Care Act. You what you tell people is you say, look, we’re going to help make it cheaper to get insurance. See, that’s an easy message. But when you have all these other pieces, it’s difficult. So why did the shift occur? One big reason is Republicans did not have a clear message. Democrats did. And when you say affordability, you can easily draw the line to say, oh, by the way, the tariffs, which studies I’ve read, eighty seven percent of which are paid by the importing company, the US company. That’s a lot. and the war on Iran. Now again, you know, how far are these how much these go, how far they go. Okay. That can be argued. But the bottom line is affordability is, is that one key theme. And the interesting thing is going to be whether the Democrats can kind of pull together and hold a more moderate message. Or do they get, do the moderates get kind of pulled to the left? But at the end of the day, you know, there are other issues regarding the candidates. But that was a big one. The a big one that connects with policy and that is having something that you can message having a clear approach. We talked about it internally in Congress. We, we, we were talking when we talked about the reconciliation bill. One of the things we talked about is this thing is a mammoth bill covering a lot of areas. And, you know, and I remember clearly saying, I don’t know how we’re going to be like, how are Republicans going to talk about this? Because there’s so many parts to it. you know, it even had stuff in connected to the farm bill, which has been needing to get passed because it, it ran out in twenty three. So I’ll just stop it there. But basically that, that need for a clear message, really caught the Republicans off off guard. They were not prepared for it.

Bob Neugebauer So what you’re saying is that the sausage they were making was a little too big for the skin. They tried to put it in.

Steve Ackerman Yeah. They tried to make a meal. Right. Not just a sausage. They, they actually tried to make the full meal. but then what do you talk about in the meal? Do

Bob Neugebauer Well.

Steve Ackerman you talk about the nutritious value of the meal? Do you talk about how the meal is going to fill your stomach? Like what? What’s the message of the meal? And

Bob Neugebauer I

Steve Ackerman that was

Bob Neugebauer think

Steve Ackerman part

Bob Neugebauer you

Steve Ackerman of

Bob Neugebauer have.

Steve Ackerman the problem.

Bob Neugebauer You have to message, what you’re going to serve with the meal.

Steve Ackerman I

Bob Neugebauer Okay.

Steve Ackerman mean, you gotta have an argument, right?

Bob Neugebauer Yeah.

Steve Ackerman You know,

Bob Neugebauer And

Steve Ackerman again.

Bob Neugebauer they, they had none. They didn’t have an argument from, from my standpoint, okay.

Steve Ackerman Yeah. They

Bob Neugebauer They

Steve Ackerman really

Bob Neugebauer had

Steve Ackerman didn’t.

Bob Neugebauer they had a great bill. It was very complicated. I agree. By the same token, it had to be done if you wanted to cut the taxes to the point that satisfied most everybody without hurting the little guy. And the little guy is the one who has been getting crushed for years. There’s no question about that.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer Not just with, government. income taxes, but also with taxes, locally within the states because everything’s been going up. I mean, I see that here myself, everything from

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer property taxes personal taxes, sales taxes. so while I think that was a great bill, and I think the fact that they got it through, was amazing. They never knew how to go out there and put the signs up and say, hey, look what we did. And they couldn’t talk about it because I never heard them talking a lot about it because there were so many parts to it. and, and that’s where, that’s where we came down to the point where, what do they say? Well, we are going to add two trillion dollars to the debt.

Steve Ackerman Yep.

Bob Neugebauer And as you add two trillion dollars to the debt, we passed the forty trillion dollars mark.

Steve Ackerman Yep.

Bob Neugebauer And that opened the big door for the Democrats, who have been literally spending money like some crazy wife who’s pissed off at her husband and it’s trying to get even. But

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer their message was not what I would call a great message. It was that they went and said, well, the Republicans don’t have a message. I haven’t heard one. Yes, they lowered taxes, but they raised the national debt. and look at all

Steve Ackerman Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer the things in between that they’ve done. we need to rectify this. And

Steve Ackerman Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer when I say rectify, I always think of the back end of things. All they want to do is to, get back in so they can create the same operation they had prior to Trump getting elected for the second time. At least that’s my opinion. I don’t see them going. They’re not going to do anything to cut taxes. They’re not going to do anything to rectify the problems that we have in this country. They will do little or nothing to stop fraud and prevent it from happening in the future. I think we all have had a bellyful of democratic legislation, and I think we’ve all, at least I have for many, many elections. Going back to the first time I voted, which was back in the nineteen sixties. So I don’t see where they have anything better to sell. It’s just that the people were listening and were pissed off at our president because everything was getting expensive. Biden raised the inflation rate by twenty one and a half percent and Trump piling seven percent. On top of that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Steve Ackerman Yeah, I, I think, I think the question, the question is, I think I, agree with you that, that, that the American, that this was largely an election on the president and the administration’s policies and, and Congress being under the Republicans both houses. you know, to the extent they went along with it, I, I, definitely, I, I think you hit it on the head. It’s, it’s more, it is more a question of how is the current like, what is the current status quo as opposed to what new can we get? You know, it really is, it is much more of, of the current status quo. That is what midterms are there in a sense. They’re temperature checks. and so I think they play, I think they play a vital role there, right? Because they give the president, right, whoever’s the president is, they give the president two years to figure out, okay, what should I do now? Right? Should I do what I do? And, and, you know, President Trump right at the end, what did he say? He said things like, Well, if your health insurance is too expensive, maybe I’ll just come up with some money and send you some money. Right. Put put a put Republicans back in and we’ll. He didn’t say it, but we’ll reverse the cuts we did on subsidies and tax credits. So he started backpedaling. Right. and since the election, you know, he’s backpedaled on things like aid for Israel. Now is it serious? We’ll see. but he’s backpedaled. and and he’s made changes. I’ll give you this five thousand dollars. Right. The famous five thousand dollars. So. So he saw affordability was a problem. again, he had no anchor. And, you know, Obama to a certain extent, but Trump more are presidents that really need clear messaging presented to them because they can both go off the rails. Trump goes off the rails a little faster and moves in more directions. He jumps on more tracks, if you will, than Obama did, but Obama did too. But again, this comes back to the message. I don’t want to I’m not putting a finger pointing on on president’s what I’m saying. It comes down to the message. They’ve got to have a clear message to anchor. the interesting thing, your point about the taxes is interesting because, you know, under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and this gets into the budget under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was put in in seventeen, right? That one did not make permanent the lower tax rates for individuals and small businesses. And as you point out, the little guy, you know, they’re often very small businesses that file as individuals. You know, if you look at their brackets, they all went down two, three, maybe four percent in each bracket versus ten to fifteen percent corporate and corporate was a permanent tax reduction, which according to CBO, the way Congress has told. The members have told CBO to score. They like to point at CBO, but CBO is following the rules that Congress passes. the Congressional Budget Office that scores these bills. In other words, money coming in, money going out. are we going to have a surplus or a deficit? so CBO basically said, look, you know, if you cut corporate tax rates by a lot, you’re going to you’re not going to have the money coming in. Now, there are arguments over, but you’re going to generate economic activity. I get it right. You and I have talked about this. you’ve actually you’ve actually laid out quite a bit kind of over different times where we’ve talked, where you’ve made, articulated some very strong arguments there. And they’re very, they’re clearly valid, right? They’re numbers that show that. However, CBO has to follow the rules given. And when they when they cut, they cut the amount of revenue coming in and that can generate a surplus or generate deficit. So CBO basically said, you’re going to lose a lot of revenue when you cut those corporate taxes. So boy, you want to cut for individuals and small businesses. I don’t know. And so Congress back then in seventeen said, okay, we can’t make those permanent. They have to phase out in twenty twenty five. if we don’t do anything. So this reconciliation bill did make them permanent for individuals and small businesses. But that’s not a tax cut because if you’re a small business in January of twenty twenty five starting up, you have tax rates presented to you that have already been cut. So your, your way of looking at the price, of your taxes is where they are. So to you, it’s only that you potentially have a tax increase. So they were holding everything. So there’s not going to be that much generated because this stuff has been in place for seven years. So all the people who are going to get big tax rebates have already done it. you know, this is basic economics marginal thinking, right? All the all the big discounts go first and then kind of the, the ones that aren’t as great. So these businesses come into play. and we, you know, we made them permanent. We did the right thing. They should have been permanent in twenty seventeen. Not for, and the, and the corporate should not have been as big a cut because they do not generate the jobs, to justify it. the small businesses generate more jobs. Fifty five percent of jobs are small businesses, not corporations. So we did make them permanent. But then that leaves that deficit point sitting out there. So where do you cut? Okay, you can do things in fraud. you can do things to try to shift some of the responsibility of Medicaid, some pieces back to the states. You could do things with snap, you could do some different things, but you, you also, You also have to be careful that if you are bumping people off insurance, health insurance to try to save more money, they’re still going to go to the doctor. And so you have to be careful. You could incur other costs. And so part of the problem was throwing that in there. And then I would argue the big problem added to this, once you’ve tried to figure that out, you we did we did. One other thing that I would argue was completely out, out of hand. We shouldn’t have I should not have gotten the seventy five billion dollars it got out of this bill. It should have gotten it with the DHS appropriations bill, one of the twelve bills Congress passes every year. The Defense Department should have not gotten money out of this out of this bill that should have been reserved for the NDAA and the defense appropriations. Coast guard gets a reauthorization. They’re on their own track. In other words, these are these are twelve twelve planned appropriations that Congress is supposed to do every year. And we don’t always do it, sometimes have a shutdown, I get it, but that is Congress’s responsibility to do it. And the white House is supposed to work with them. And given everybody’s in the same party, there should have been a little better of that because those extra costs were added in there and that bumped up the spending. And I’m not going to say that Republicans are the only one to do it. Democrats did this kind of stuff, too. Again, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, was passed as a reconciliation bill because they knew they couldn’t get a bipartisan sixty vote threshold in the Senate. They, you know, the filibuster rule is there. You have to get sixty votes, meaning you have to get, you know, you gotta if you’re Republican controlled, you got to get moderate Democrats, maybe a bit more left. If you’re Democrat controlled, you got to get moderate Republicans, maybe a bit more. Right. But that was part of the problem in both those bills. And again, we had too many things in there, to try to kind of make it all work, but give everybody something. Well, when you give everybody something, you end up with a meal that is so big and diverse, it’s hard to characterize that meal. And we did increase debt, which, you know, I mean, you you’ve talked about this from the financial market standpoint. and we increased it by a good amount.

Bob Neugebauer So while they served as a smorgasborg, which is the only way I can look at it, a little bit of something for everybody. I think the more important, thing to look at is the fact that we have fifteen to twenty trillion dollars being reinvested in this country in manufacturing and new businesses. And I don’t think anybody is looking at that because it’s not quite visible yet. And as I keep saying on the radio probably every morning, we are in the beginning of a huge economic boom. If they allow it to happen, because at the present moment, as you see the changes take place in Congress, I see them coming up with more rules and regulations. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to get them through because the president still has the veto power. But, I don’t think a lot of people in this country, in particular, those that were in that nineteen to thirty, male group that switched their votes. And the same thing goes for the Hispanic vote. They don’t see that, and they will not see that for a while. And everybody’s also worried about AI. Of course it’s going to take jobs. Well, let me tell you two things. The economy was kicking off. and it was going to be an eventual touchdown. I could see that very clearly. as a, as a historian and as somebody who study economics, what I didn’t see was it getting to the bottom or lower rung of the income ladder or to those people who are just plain pissed off that everything was unaffordable. Now, while seven percent of it was Trump’s fault because of the tariffs and some of the other things he did, the primary responsibility still laid on the Democrats. But nobody’s going to remember that because people nowadays only hear soundbites and they only look at what’s happening today. They don’t care what happened last year or the last four years. That’s passé for them. people nowadays are very different than how I think. I look in longer terms about what’s going to happen. And until you can convince people that you’re on the right road and you’re on or you’re on the right track, they’re going to resist because they don’t see anything in it for them. And if it is in it for them, it’s way down the line. And I agree with them. This is the beginning. We see manufacturing plants going up all over steel plants, concrete plants, auto plants, manufacturing drug plants. But they don’t see that and they probably won’t see that, which is going to create a lot more jobs also. Take a look at the jobs numbers for the last month, one hundred and sixty seven thousand, three

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer times what anybody thought it was going to be. That’s the beginning of an economic boom and

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer nobody’s looking at it that way. I get this aggravation all the time from people on the radio saying, you’re full of it, Bob. You really don’t know what you’re talking about. But they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. All they do is see the train coming at them.

Steve Ackerman Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I agree with you on the manufacturing. I think, I think more of it is, I think more of it is growing here. I, I think it’s kind of sector by sector, you know, AI, AI is, AI is a, is definitely an uncertain animal right now. although AI is a big part of, I mean, from the, from the stock market, AI is a big part of the drive, right? A big driver of the growth, of, of, of the market. You know, the market rising, but I do think you’re right. I agree with you that manufacturing overall has started to kind of come back and, and has started to grow. I, I, I, partly, I, I, my only pause is part of the problem is there is a lot of government inducement flying around and you have to be careful because then the question is, if the government starts pulling back, would that still be, you know, would it be as strong as it would? Right. I mean, fundamentally, the US is a is a great location to to be. There’s no question. training programs to, to skill up people have definitely gotten better, than they have when it comes to workforce development. And I think your point about the jobs, because I, I, the last two were revised upward, adding more jobs. So I think that’s clearly showing something. I do worry a little bit about the involvement, about government involvement in the sense that like, how much are they kind of priming that like people are going in partly because the government is going in. So I want to be careful how far to go there. But I think overall I think I think you’re hitting on it. I would agree with you. I think I think we are seeing more of that. Um U.S. policy has got to be clear what it wants out of this though. You know, I mean, if the US wants to make the argument to the world that we’re the best place to locate. Pick your pick your type of manufacturing, that’s fine. If we’re trying to locate it here because we don’t want to be anywhere else in the world, like we’re trying to move towards self-sufficiency. that’s not a recipe for long term growth. That’s a recipe for growth today because of policies, but not long term, because I think fundamentally the US is a great site for manufacturing. I look I’d argue it’s a great site for agriculture. There’s a lot I mean, we’re just in a great part of the world and we’re an advanced economy. There’s a lot of investment money. There’s a lot of indicators that make the US good in a lot of things. Right. Um that other countries don’t necessarily have, whether it be natural advantages, geographic, whatever. I mean, for, if for no other reason, right? It’s really hard to get manufacturing started in countries where you have a lot of fighting going on around you. I mean,

Bob Neugebauer Well

Steve Ackerman you

Bob Neugebauer and

Steve Ackerman know, it’s, you

Bob Neugebauer that.

Steve Ackerman know, Americans ought to sit back for a second and say, what’s the biggest problem we have? We have Canada on the north, and we have Mexico on the south. Now, Mexico doesn’t bring up problems. Yes. Do we need border security? Trump clearly zeroed in on that. He was right to zero in on it. Exactly. But that problem, even that problem, that’s nowhere near what they deal with in South Korea. With North Korea, it’s nowhere near what they deal with in most of the Middle East. You know, it’s not like it’s not like we have missiles come flying in that Israel has to deal with. And so, you know, you put up a plant that cannot be physically lifted and moved. You got to be really you have to be assured that where you’re going to go is probably not going to get hit. so, you know, we, we, we just have a lot of advantages that other countries don’t have that I think, I think they feed right into what you’re saying is in the long run, we can do well. My only caveat is I worry about where government tries to go because of the potential disconnect with the market. Does the government know enough to get involved? And I, I, I worry about the commitment of taxpayer dollars and kind of where we go there. And this is bipartisan. and I do think I, I, I, I’ll, I’ll just stop here. I do think your point about the rules, which, you know, that get imposed, whether it be related to environmental or other rules, right? They make it difficult permitting all the different things that make it tough. The lesson for Democrats is you need to listen to your moderate Democrats. Again, those Senate Democrats, a lot of them are very moderate. And they’re they have a voice because it’s not like just one Democrat. You know, they’re not fifty one to forty nine. They’re fifty four, maybe fifty five. I mean, if Pell Tola wins in Alaska, she’s moderate. She is not going to push to overregulate the oil industry out of Alaska. She’s going to say, wait a minute. I’m not going to accept that. I don’t you know, and if you listen to those Democrats in the Midwest, they were very clear. They were like, if this big, beautiful bill only included the tax provisions I’d have voted for it is did border security need to happen? Of course it did. You know, they they were like, do we need to deal with fraud? Yes. We let that we let that get out of control. I mean, you heard that over and over from them. The question is going to be, are they going to be the voice to allow for the permitting like they have with nuclear, geothermal, hydro, you know, a lot of. And are they going to be willing to do it with oil now? Talarico Talarico out of Texas will. He will tell you Texas is an oil state. I am not going to let Chuck Schumer or anybody dry. You know, no way. I’m not going to let that happen. you know, I mean, he’s one voice, but he could he could join with his Midwestern friends and he could say, you know, as they said in the campaign, they all would say it. They’d say, the radical Democrats on the coast know we need we need moderate moves. We need reforms, not, you know. So I think your point is a good one. If if I would just say the role of the government. But then second, if their voice is heard, then I think a lot of this can keep going.

Bob Neugebauer Well.

Steve Ackerman it’s not going to be exactly the same. The Republicans are going to have to give on things because they lost. The American people did not approve of, of, of Trump’s policies. I mean, the approval levels were right there. And frankly, his problem, he didn’t pay attention. He just ignored

Bob Neugebauer Okay,

Steve Ackerman it.

Bob Neugebauer I.

Steve Ackerman He said to people, your gas is going to go up by a little bit. He said, a little bit. I mean. Six twenty five for diesel. I mean, that, you know, the impact on food, the impact on that, you

Bob Neugebauer Well,

Steve Ackerman know,

Bob Neugebauer Steve, Steve, we both

Steve Ackerman it’s

Bob Neugebauer understand.

Steve Ackerman a disconnect.

Bob Neugebauer Okay. You raise the price of, petroleum and it affects everything in our lives because that’s what we live on. That’s what America runs on. But I wanted to mention this, and I wanted to take you back. Let’s go back twenty, twenty five years. We have lost seventy thousand manufacturing plants in this country going back that far. And it was globalization that caused that. It was the fact that somebody could go to Ireland, create the same product, ship it here, and it would cost a lot less. They would make a lot more money. Just like China or Taiwan or Vietnam. Any of those places go to Bangladesh. I don’t care where you go. India. Cheapest labor around. This is what destroyed the infrastructure that Trump is trying to rebuild. And I give him a lot of credit for trying to do this because he saw what happened. He saw the light. And I don’t think, that Clinton or Bush one or Bush two, really helped us very much when it came to the economy. And I’m not sure whether it was for the fact that they didn’t understand it or they were too dumb to understand it. So whichever one it was, it doesn’t matter. We he put us in a they put us in a pickle where we were in a service economy. Well, if you don’t make anything. You can’t sell anything. And if you can’t sell anything, it’s not going to help you in any way, shape or form economically. So I look at it from the viewpoint is that his shift was not just a shift with the taxes. It was a shift to rebuild the economic structure of this country. And he was doing that, number one through tariffs to make everybody negotiate. Understandable. Yes. It raised prices. By the same token, we now have agreements with countries that have been screwing us for. I can’t tell you how long. I mean, look at what Canada itself, the tariffs they imposed on us compared to what we imposed on them were just outrageous. And

Steve Ackerman MM.

Bob Neugebauer no. But yes, I know what they do with timber. I know what they do with with milk products. I mean I see what they do even with the auto products.

Steve Ackerman Yeah. But even but but but but dairy. Dairy, which I would argue is Canada’s kind of toughest dairy, I would argue is Canada’s toughest category. Right? In other words, if if you make the argument where is Canada toughest on the United States when it comes to trade agreements, it’s on dairy. But even on dairy, where they do have percentages that can get really high, over one hundred percent, they have what’s called a tariff rate quota in there. In other words,

Bob Neugebauer Yes, I understand

Steve Ackerman you.

Bob Neugebauer that.

Steve Ackerman Right. And and I’m not sure the audience know that. So if the audience doesn’t know, like it’s kind of like you pay, you pay one price until you start buying a certain amount. Then once you buy a certain amount or more, the price goes way up. Well, Canada that that threshold, Canada kept that pretty high to avoid triggering the much higher percentage. Why not? Because they love the United States. A lot of Americans don’t understand free trade because they somehow think trade is charity. The only way you have to remember one thing about trade, the only reason, the only reason anybody trades, the only reason is because it’s cheaper than doing it themselves. Most people every day. Why do they buy a car instead of making it themselves? Sounds like a ridiculous example, but it’s not. Why do they buy a refrigerator instead of making it themselves? By the time they got that thing made, they would lose so much of their own labor time. They basically could earn a lot more money and buy the fridge with the dollar. So make dollars, buy the fridge, and then move on. Don’t. Don’t dedicate two years of your life trying to manufacture your own refrigerator. It sounds ridiculous to people, but that’s how strong trade is trade allows people to save a lot of money. If you want an economy to grow, you want to import. Imports

Bob Neugebauer Ah!

Steve Ackerman are not a bad thing.

Bob Neugebauer There’s

Steve Ackerman Here’s

Bob Neugebauer one.

Steve Ackerman why. Because imports are cheaper. If they’re cheaper, if they’re more expensive, you don’t do it. You do it yourself. That’s why people specialize in doing certain things. They do. They do where they’re most talented. Why? Because that’s where they can get the most out of their dollar, their hour or whatever. So the problem, the problem is not not so much that these other countries were undermining us. It’s as we move to a service sector and as globalization was happening, which you hit it on the head. Globalization is a real big phenomenon that I think you’re right. I mean, I think it goes all the way back through until the eighties. You know, I would

Bob Neugebauer Yeah.

Steve Ackerman say the nineties and all through the I, but I think you hit on the head. A lot of these administrations didn’t really. They saw it going on, but they didn’t do anything about it. I think the, I think the big problem with globalization is the lack of upskilling and allowing people to have an easy and cheap option to, to get a new education, to retrain, to do what they need to do, to be prepared to be a worker in this new economy. You know, for, for, and I’ll give you a real quick example. Coding and software at one point, and this is maybe ten years ago, the United States wrote seventy percent of the world’s software, seventy percent. Guess what writing software is manufacturing. It doesn’t look like manufacturing. It doesn’t look like an old you know, I mean, I worked on a punch press as a kid in a machine shop. It doesn’t look like any of that. It doesn’t look like a steel making facility. But if you were making code on a laptop, writing a software program, you are actually making something. The problem is we classify it as a service, but you’re still creating something. You are making a software application. It’s a new style. You know it. It’s not a dirty work workplace. You know, it’s a different kind of style, but it is manufacturing. The question is, do we have training and education programs that are affordable, right, to get people there? And if you don’t, then we hit the exact problem you, you, you raise. And that is when globalization comes in, there is nobody ready to take it on. So what do they do? They go to other places because part of the part of the challenge with these other locations, they might be cheaper, but you have to worry about things. China was cheaper for a long time and China still is cheaper. But China will steal your technology, you know.

Bob Neugebauer Not only

Steve Ackerman So

Bob Neugebauer that, they’re

Steve Ackerman so

Bob Neugebauer going

Steve Ackerman you

Bob Neugebauer to

Steve Ackerman know,

Bob Neugebauer make

Steve Ackerman that’s

Bob Neugebauer products

Steve Ackerman a

Bob Neugebauer that

Steve Ackerman cost,

Bob Neugebauer don’t

Steve Ackerman right?

Bob Neugebauer last. Oh it

Steve Ackerman The.

Bob Neugebauer is. There’s no question about it. And and my point here was we had de-industrialized. And yes, you’re right, we were producing in terms of coding and software and things like that. And we were yes, the giants in the industry at that time. But we forgot how this country was born and how it grew. And we forgot how to do the basic things like heightened lug nuts, or put a starter in an engine or learn how to make tires. And everybody wanted to be a genius and go into computing or some other field. So what happened? We lost our industry, seventy thousand manufacturing plants closed. And all I see, all I saw for quite some time was opportunities. Everybody going to college so they could learn liberalization and learn how to do underwater basket weaving for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. And my point is, yes, Trump has made mistakes, but I do believe that the one mistake he did not make was to try and bring back that industrialization to this country, because that’s something we’re going to need. And I go along with the fact that we have a lot of immigrants and illegal immigrants in this country. Do I want to give them all amnesty? No. But do I want to see them all working? Yes. Because they pay taxes. They

Steve Ackerman Right?

Bob Neugebauer will help us when it comes to Social Security, when it comes to Medicare, when it comes to

Steve Ackerman Right.

Bob Neugebauer all of these problems by night, by twenty fifty, they expect that the United States will have forty nine percent of their workforce as immigrants. And that’s those are real numbers. Those that’s not baloney.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer This is

Steve Ackerman Right.

Bob Neugebauer what the projections are. So what Trump is doing, I think is along the right lines. He just never knew how to message it the right way. He. Beloved. I know him from New York. I worked with him in New York. I know what he’s like. And a tiger never changes his stripes and he’s not going to change his. So yes, the Democrats won. I think he put us on the right road. Whether we stay on that road or it winds up being the road to perdition, I’m not quite sure yet. And only the next six months to a year is going to tell us if Democrats really care about the country, they’ll try and make things better. They will investigate, they won’t pontificate, they won’t go after him and try to impeach him. But I, I, I don’t believe they know how to do that, unfortunately.

Steve Ackerman Well, I think it’s an internal fight. and, you know, hopefully, hopefully the more moderate, you know, again, the, a lot of the Midwestern, but even the moderate who won in the more purple districts, you know, a moderate Democrat beat a moderate Republican, or, you know, some of the different ones, you know, hopefully, you know, hopefully they will, you know, keep on that affordability focus. you know, I, I did, I did note that several of them have, have, you know, they’ve had a lot of hesitation over, you know, questions about impeachment. and I think a good kind of Washington, and really kind of political compromise is, you know, you’re, you’re kind of hard left. They definitely want to go after the president, but you’re more moderate or saying, look, you know, maybe the way Hegseth is run, you know, the Defense Department, Department of War, maybe the way he’s run that, we have questions there. And so maybe he becomes a sacrificial lamb or maybe, you know, RFK Jr becomes a sacrificial lamb. And again, not, not getting in the merits of it, but they’re, they’re one they’re a notch below the president. Right. And so maybe the compromise from the moderates is, look, we will do some investigating on some on two things. One, some of the cabinet secretaries who even some of the Republican senators who outgoing said, hey, this is what I was promised. This is what I was told. You know, the commitment they violated that the moderates can use that. Right? So you might see a couple sacrificial lambs and it happens. I mean, I mean, Rubio is probably going to leave pretty quick, pretty quickly because he wants to run for twenty twenty eight and he’s going to run out of there knowing Vance is stuck for two years. Right. Vance can’t Vance can’t leave. And Vance is comment about the Iran war. I mean that was positioning for twenty twenty eight. That was him saying see I really never liked it. Okay. Well that’s fine. You know, when you’re in administration, you’re in administration. So you can’t, you know, just like being in Congress, you, you know, I mean, I was in an office, I was on one side r d right? I was on the other side so I I, I hear a lot of people say, I can’t believe the Republicans did whatever or the Republicans did this. What were they, you know, did they think about the messaging? You know, I can’t say, look, I wasn’t there. I, I was there. And so you, you are to a certain extent tied no matter what occurred internally. So Vance is going to have a difficult time here, for now, but he could he could bounce back. I’m not writing him off by any stretch. Rubio could could blow it. You know, all kinds of things could happen. Right exit could leave and then make that account, you know, be a campaign guy. I think Vance was saying it because he figures, heck, Seth is going to run. So he said it to put the blame on Seth. And that way, if Seth does get impeached or does get investigated and Trump drops him, Vance can say, great, that’s one out of the way. I just have to worry about Rubio, right? And then you’re going to have Chris Christie and some of these, you know, you know, you know the drill. These others are going

Bob Neugebauer Oh,

Steve Ackerman to

Bob Neugebauer yeah.

Steve Ackerman come back in. But but I would just say that that that to go back to your point, I’m sorry, I went on a tangent there As long as that manufacturing to go back to that, as long as that manufacturing drives toward where things are going, where technology is going, so long as it’s not a throwback, you know, that’s going to be critical because we don’t want to have workers have a job in a company that’s surviving by subsidy. You know,

Bob Neugebauer Oh, I don’t

Steve Ackerman that’s

Bob Neugebauer disagree.

Steve Ackerman no,

Bob Neugebauer I

Steve Ackerman I know you

Bob Neugebauer agree

Steve Ackerman don’t.

Bob Neugebauer one

Steve Ackerman I

Bob Neugebauer hundred

Steve Ackerman know you

Bob Neugebauer percent.

Steve Ackerman don’t. I’m just putting a. Yeah. No, I know you don’t. I’m just kind of putting a fine point, but I, I agree with your point that we need to think about manufacturing and kind of think about a more diverse economy. I mean, if you’re a service economy and all you are is a consumer, you know, that’s great if you’re a really big consumer, but then like you point out, it does have its limitations. You know, if people aren’t trained, a new technology could come in and you don’t have these workers that have been trained to kind of be able to just write and be able to shift to that. So there are, you know, you, you do need a balance here. And I, I think you’re right. I think Trump was hitting on the need for that. I just, I just wanted to stay with that newer technology, you know, and kind of grow with the technology, which I know you’re, you know.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I, you know, I look at my grandchildren, okay.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer They all went to college. They all graduated with bachelor’s degrees or better. they all have good jobs. do they know how to do anything but what they do? And are they going to be replaced at some point in time by what we’re looking at in the future, which is AI.

Steve Ackerman Yeah,

Bob Neugebauer Now

Steve Ackerman yeah.

Bob Neugebauer one’s an accountant, one’s a PA. Well, actually two are PA. one is basically works for the, the city prison. Okay. He’s probably one of the safer ones. But

Steve Ackerman Right?

Bob Neugebauer that may even change. My point here is that we have had this enormous group of people going back to the sixties that have received a college education, and like I said, most of it was in underwater basket weaving, and they paid very high prices for that. these are the people who are sitting home. Forty percent of these people are living with their parents,

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer and that is a problem.

Steve Ackerman Yep.

Bob Neugebauer They don’t have anything to do. And what

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer they are going to need to do is to learn how to do something else, because what they taught them in college is not going to help them to survive on a day to day or week to week basis, which means that as far as I’m concerned, Trump is right with what he’s doing. What you have to do is to get the rest of America to understand that and agree to participate. And it’s hard to get somebody who is between nineteen and thirty years old to say to themselves, why did I spend four years in college? So I can go to work for a drug company and learn how to manufacture pills, or go to work for a auto company and learn how to tighten lug nuts or run a robotics machine. They can’t do that. It’s not

Steve Ackerman Yeah,

Bob Neugebauer within their psyche.

Steve Ackerman yeah.

Bob Neugebauer I know that I see it happening every day. I think what

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer we’re doing is if if things get better, my bet is that we’re going to look at two years of hell on ice skates with everybody falling over each other on the ice and nobody getting anything done. That’s of a serious nature because, of course, of the veto power. There will be impeachments. There will be all kinds of things the Democrats cannot resist. It’s impossible for them to resist, especially

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer with the DSA group that’s in there now.

Steve Ackerman Well yeah but you know, but but, but that goes, but that goes back to that point about the moderates versus the hard left. the DSA folks are there. They got they got one senator, they got Abdul Assad who basically signed off on it. but even he

Bob Neugebauer Oh,

Steve Ackerman started

Bob Neugebauer you you

Steve Ackerman moderating.

Bob Neugebauer forget. You forget Bernie Sanders.

Steve Ackerman Well, yeah, but Bernie Sanders, I mean, look, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders is great to get on on the air and he gets all that air time. And Elizabeth Warren and, you know, there are three or four of them who who get that. And they, they fly into Michigan. They do all their they do all their thing. But who won? I mean, he did win, but he won. Abdul El-Sayed one for two reasons. He won because first, Mike Rogers was a lousy candidate. you know, Mike Rogers tried to tried to win the Senate seat before and he lost to Peters. I mean, he didn’t do well. you know, or, sorry, but but he didn’t do well. Now Peterson Slotkin were both there. They’re both very solid. Very solid, very moderate members. They’re not, you know, they’re they’re, they’re they don’t they don’t jump into all the DSA stuff. They don’t jump into all the. They are not radical by any stretch. Michigan’s not radical. and Rogers couldn’t win. So he comes back again. And his campaign really I number one he had Trump coming in there and and and Trump was saying a lot of things again, that were not connected to any kind of core message. I’m not critical of what Trump said. You know, everyone’s going to jump on the Islam issue. I’m not going there. What I’m saying is that that wasn’t what people were talking about. And Abdul Sayeed, my, my thought I, I didn’t necessarily think he was going to win. I, I, I actually thought Rogers would squeak it out. That was one I missed. That was a prediction I missed and I missed it. Not because of the Islam issue. but it’s because when, when reporters would ask Abdul Al Sayed, his answer was always the same. He’d say, that’s all the stuff you’re worried about. You guys care about all that. I’m not going to waste my time on that. Well, you know, sometimes when you’re a candidate, voters ask things that you may not think are very important but is important to the voter. And I thought that that kind of bit of arrogance, I thought that bit of, you know, I thought that was going to rub wrong ways with him. You know, there are problems with the Jewish Democrats. There are problems with Black Democrats. So but he did a good enough amount of outreach and Rogers had enough problems. And frankly, you know, Trump was an anchor. you know, he was not helpful. Again, lack of message. and kind of the guy who’s creating problems for us to afford things. And yet, you know, so I would argue at the end of day. So he he even got it. But the point is going to come down your your point comes down to moderates versus the harder left. If Jeffries one and only had, say, a ten seat majority, the hard left in the house could really drive him. He’s got forty members. He’s got such a cushion with moderates, he can slow down. He doesn’t have to go rabbit on investigations. He doesn’t have to go there. And Schumer doesn’t. Schumer cannot afford it because those people very squarely, Adam Hamilton is my last example. Adam Hamilton said to Schumer. He came back to DC and he ran into Schumer. They they were talking. And Schumer said, what is the hardest thing you’re dealing with? What’s your biggest obstacle? He said, you. He goes, what? He goes, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Senator, but when your name comes up, it’s a negative in Kansas. I’m. I’m from Kansas. We’re we’re you know, I I’m sorry. We’re from Kansas. And he was very, very pointed about that that that issue. He would not commit to voting for him. You know, they were like over and over again. Are you going to vote for him? He said, I like Elissa Slotkin. I like Tim Kaine. I’m I’m I’m not going to commit. No, I, I, you know, it’s got to be good for Kansas or I’m a hard no. And he told him that. So I do think in the Senate you are going to see these moderates if they hold together. That’s you know, I don’t know if they can. But if they hold together, they could really slow a lot of things down. And is Jeffrey smart enough? I would just say that I think Kevin McCarthy made a really important point. And that is Jeffrey’s is coming into this without a plan. And McCarthy had a plan. Newt Gingrich had a plan ninety four. and Newt Gingrich was like, we’re going to vote on these ten things. Whatever happens, we commit to voting on them. We’re going to give them a clean vote and, you know, not play games about it. and they did. Boehner, even to a certain extent, he had, he had a plan. Right. but Jeffrey’s doesn’t have a plan. And I don’t know, I, you know, it’s a lot, it’s a lot to wrestle. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it from the inside. It is very difficult to wrestle these members. They are reflecting a very diverse and divided country in a lot of different ways, some of which you brought up the little guy versus, you know, I mean, a lot of different ways these things cut. So, you know, can Jeffrey’s manage that? That’s going to be a real challenge. I don’t know, I don’t know, but I would say you gotta have a plan. The one thing he’s got in his favor is that he has a lot of moderates that came in on the dem side. Will they hold back that kind of hard left DSA? It’s a good question. I think in the Senate there’s going to be more success.

Bob Neugebauer See, I think the breed that we are dealing with, has so long, been of the ilk that they don’t know how to, be moderate in

Steve Ackerman Yeah,

Bob Neugebauer many cases

Steve Ackerman yeah.

Bob Neugebauer when the radicals are doing their war debts. I look at this from a different perspective and a much wider perspective as it comes to the population of this country. And currently, forty three percent of the population are aged nineteen to forty five. They are the new electorate of this country, and they are of a very different ilk than the baby boomers. And I found that out in this last election, as I bet on the wrong side. But there I go, learning a lesson again.

Steve Ackerman Right. We

Bob Neugebauer the

Steve Ackerman all do.

Bob Neugebauer and yeah. And these are the same people, all right, who are trying to find a right place where they can work. A good place where they can work. They can’t afford to buy a house because the prices are too high. They

Steve Ackerman Right.

Bob Neugebauer have a problem buying food and the food cost is too high. And all these problems came together, right, to cause this huge blockade for Trump. And there was no way he could get his, his people or himself to talk their way out of it because it was not only him with the bad message or no message, it was everybody in the Republican Party, and especially somebody like John Thune who sat there and had, I don’t know, six chances to pass the save. Saves act and couldn’t get it through. And why they put him back as the minority leader, I will never fathom because this man, he’s a goat in a herd of sheep. He’s still old school. Bush. I mean, if you know anything about his history, the bushes are the ones who gave him his power and put him in office. They were backing him one hundred percent. And believe me, that’s where this man’s head is. And it’s not going to change anytime soon. But like I said, I’m looking at this on a much broader spectrum. Those people between nineteen and forty five, they’re mind changers. You give them the right reason, they’ll change their mind right back and go in the opposite direction. If they see it, it’s going to be beneficial for them. They thought this was going to be beneficial for them. I believe it’s going to be very detrimental to them because things are not going to get better. Things will continue to get worse because I don’t think the Democrats know how to get an economy going. I have never seen that happen except for for Clinton. He’s the last one I saw who actually had an economy that was working. And that’s because he worked with the with the Republicans and he worked, with Congress. But I do not see that happening here. And unfortunately, they’ve only got two years. In my opinion, in the next election, twenty eight, we’re going to have another Republican president. We might change the Congress. We’re not going to change the Senate, I don’t think. But it will move back a little further toward this side, because I have an opinion that I’ve lived with for many, many years. I have never seen the Democrats in my lifetime, except maybe for Clinton to do anything that they said they were going to do and follow through.

Steve Ackerman Yeah, I think I think Clinton is a good example because it’s an example of the moderates. Clinton, you know, Clinton argued right third way. you know, I mean, he had, you know, the era of big government is over. This is Clinton, right. And, and, and, you know, you know, al Gore did cut the size of government. I think the, I think, I think you are hitting on it that people are willing people of that age in those age brackets. Number one, more of them voted than typically, right, eighteen to twenty five in particular, right. That’s typically a very low turnout. They never show up, but they a lot more of them showed up. Even even I, and I don’t know this for sure, but I would argue that they probably bounced back and showed up even versus Obama when Obama first ran. And he, he got a good amount of young people. I don’t know if more showed up this time. Young people that eighteen to twenty five versus Obama. I’d love to I’d love to look at that and see. I just haven’t had a chance to do it. But I would I would I would bet that it’s competitive. I bet they were kind of right up there, if not even more, and especially in Obama’s second round, because he didn’t do as well in the second round, he got re-election, but he didn’t do as well. But, as his first time. But I think you’re right to to point to Clinton because Clinton is a moderate. he is somebody that’s very functional, you know, and, and against, against Republicans. at the time, they found a way to, to, to kind of deal. Right. that is going to be the needed thing to happen is both sides. Look, I mean, Republicans in the House are going to get if they, if they if they don’t show any way to deal, there’s going to get rolled. You know, this is what happened. you know, I mean, my seven years, that’s what I saw. It was back and forth. There were bipartisan things we did. And I’m very happy of the bipartisan things we did, because there was some really good bipartisan stuff that actually helped people in policy broadband, bipartisan, nuclear energy, bipartisan. Geothermal, bipartisan. You know, even trying to now we had to deal with hydro to hold that back. but there are a number of things that we did. you know, even some getting into some of the mining got a little tricky, but we were able to do some things on a bipartisan basis, including even in healthcare, you know, capping some costs. that was bipartisan. so there are several things that were done, surprise medical billing. There were some things that were done that were very bipartisan. you know, kind of despite, right. I think at the end of the day, it does come back to the, to the argument about the moderates and R are the Republican moderates, are they going to be willing to work with, you know, more the Democratic moderates? And can they kind of show that the center can really drive? If so, then things can get done. but the other piece of this is the Republican Party has got to figure out where it’s at. It used to be a party that believed in free trade and the Democrats did not. The Democrats were the ones for environmental labor union reasons, you know, kind of principle plus politics. They didn’t like free trade agreements. Right. They wanted a lot of protections. They wanted a lot of limitations. even Clinton with NAFTA, you know, he supported it, but he supported it after he made changes to it, environmental rules and standards. And then the rules and then, limiting the, limiting some of the, the, the job job displacements, right. Which didn’t go as far as what I think you’re talking about with manufacturing. But the Republicans now are much more protectionist, which is not good for an economy in the long run. protectionist economies never grow in the long run period. They they grow more at home, but the market’s not big enough. It’s just that simple. Um so so the Republicans have to figure out are we going to be chaotic with our tariffs, which they have been, fifty four changes in tariff policy in a year and a half. you know, can we actually get to good deals? A lot of the deals we signed, Japan, EU, these have to get passed by legislatures. They’re they’re not done. They’re claimed, but they’re not done. are Republicans, are they, are they actually the party of limited government? If you look to homeland security, if you look at the Defense Department, I mean, does the growth justify the need? And it’s not just an Ice issue, it’s overall growth in government. That is something Republicans used to not believe in and borrowing. you know, people used to criticize Reagan for his borrowing, but debt to GDP, Reagan was not increasing. He was keeping it under control. You know, he was he was growing the economy by a lot more. So was he borrowing more? Yes, but the economy was growing by a lot more. we are sticking with low taxes. But then the president has said, I’ll grab money from here, grab money from there. You know, I don’t know. how how so? The Republicans have to figure out what they stand for. And I think I’ll just say, at the end of the day, the nineteen to forty five year old voting bloc is kind of tired of the the old two party system. A lot of these people rob Sand in Iowa. You know what he would do every campaign event, he would start with having somebody in the audience stand up and sing America the Beautiful, and everybody would sing it. And then he’d say, how many Republican friends do I have in the room? And bunch of people would raise their hand. He’d say, how many Democratic friends I have in the room? But you raise your hand. How many independents? He goes, let’s clap for each other because you’re all here together. He used to do that every campaign. Stop. He even did it on his victory speech. The first thing he did was he opened with that. Now that’s again, people are like, well, that’s Iowa. He’s like, well, yeah. His argument was, I want balance. I want some Democrats in there in state government with Republicans. And he’s like, and I don’t and, and I watched an interview with him about six months ago at a fair. And he’s sitting there chomping away at some of the some of the food of the fair, you know, good stuff. And, he got asked a question. He’s like, do you want do you want, Kamala Harris to come out here? Joe Biden’s like, pass. Nah, don’t eat him. He’s like, this is Iowa. He goes, I’m worried about how much money we’re spending. I’m worried that the money we’re spending is not being spent effectively.

Bob Neugebauer Well.

Steve Ackerman Now. That’s that’s that’s that’s traditionally a Republican argument.

Bob Neugebauer Sure it

Steve Ackerman But

Bob Neugebauer is.

Steve Ackerman the Republicans these last couple years have been how many times can we raise the debt ceiling? How much can we borrow even though our growth is not where it should be, we keep borrowing. That’s not a you know. So Republicans have to figure out who they are. they’re kind of a lost party right now. and you know, that that’s

Bob Neugebauer Well.

Steve Ackerman going to turn voters off because it’s not clear what you stand for. You

Bob Neugebauer They

Steve Ackerman know,

Bob Neugebauer have

Steve Ackerman you

Bob Neugebauer to

Steve Ackerman you

Bob Neugebauer figure

Steve Ackerman have to

Bob Neugebauer out.

Steve Ackerman stand for something.

Bob Neugebauer They have to figure out how to regain the popularity with this, nineteen to forty five group. Because if they

Steve Ackerman Yeah,

Bob Neugebauer can’t

Steve Ackerman definitely.

Bob Neugebauer do that, they can’t win because these people are not Democrat or Republican. They’re very independent.

Steve Ackerman Right.

Bob Neugebauer And that’s where the country has been flowing more and more. I see that right here in Idaho.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer Don’t think

Steve Ackerman That’s

Bob Neugebauer we

Steve Ackerman right.

Bob Neugebauer have all Republicans and no Democrats here. We

Steve Ackerman Right.

Bob Neugebauer have a huge sector of independents, and

Steve Ackerman Yes.

Bob Neugebauer that’s where everybody has been gravitating, because they don’t like either party. They

Steve Ackerman That’s

Bob Neugebauer really

Steve Ackerman right.

Bob Neugebauer don’t. They, they want somebody who is going to do the best thing for them, and not for their party, or for their politics, or for the people that they literally are part and parcel of a group that’s not doing anything but for themselves. You know, I, I don’t care if a politician bloviating and talks about how great he is, as long as I’m seeing the results and it’s going into my pocket and I can buy groceries with it, and I can educate my children, and maybe I can buy a house someday.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer But that hasn’t been happening for quite some time, I think. And I, I believe that’s where Trump was heading, but he had a four year gap in there that literally took the wind totally out of his sails. And for four years, he had to defend himself against legalism that should never have happened. And coming back and trying to restart that engine, he didn’t have all the octane he needed to go at full speed, and he really had to cut back and do what he could with what he had. Because if you look at the Republican Party itself, it’s diametrically split into two or three different factions. Actually, I would say even for factions, and

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer none of them want to work together because everybody’s got their own agenda. And when you have your own agenda, you can’t have everybody in the club voting the same way. And they don’t.

Steve Ackerman Well, it does make it difficult. And I think I, I but, you know, the Republican Party used to be a big tent party.

Bob Neugebauer Yep.

Steve Ackerman you know, Susan Collins in Maine is, is a perfect example of kind of the more left side of the Republican Party. Right. I mean, she was there. I mean, the Republicans, Republicans were in Rhode Island. Republicans were in, you know, Republicans in New York. I mean, Republicans, you know, they they now they’re still bits and pieces. But she was kind of the last big, big one to be there. of being a very independent, you know, being a very independent Republican. More what we used to call a liberal Republican, who tended to be pro-choice, tended to be a little, a little easier on the cuts over social programs. But what they try to do is they tried to say, let’s reform the program a little bit. Let’s try to manage the program better. Let’s try to be more effective with the money. Let’s put some more requirements in. but at the same time, let’s, let’s help people on welfare to get to a training program. So let’s, instead of spending it all on welfare, let’s take some of it, spend it on training so that in the long run, if somebody gets on welfare. They’ve got like an easy place to go to leave it and then take off right. And not and then be able to contribute. But, but that has shifted to just cut it, just cut it straight, cut it. And the problem then becomes for those other people out there, I’m not saying one is right, one is wrong. What I’m saying is if one side gets sharper, you go to your for four parts. If they all dig in, then they aren’t working together and it’s no longer a big tent party. Now the question is going to be whether the Democrats can be big tent because the Democrats are going to have to. They’re going to have to push for lower tariffs. Historically, they’ve not always been there. You know, they have they have not wanted to go there. they’ve wanted to protect protect the worker and there and, you know, and again, an imposing environmental rules. So for them, it’s going to be harder. but they’re going to have to get there because that is a big. Those tariffs are a big part of affordability. They’re also going to have to be much more open or stay open. Right. Not just the Midwest, but overall to more oil and gas along with your solar and wind and nuclear and geo and hydro. I mean, all the above hydrogen, right? All the above has got to be a true all the above. Now, you know, Biden, Biden went in certain direction like he, he wanted certain, you know, energy types, but not others. Republicans have kind of done the same thing. So the moderate answer is going to be kind of have it be something across the board and truly across the board and let the market make the determination. oil’s always going to have a role, I think. I don’t think anyone should think it wouldn’t, it’s always going to have a role. and, and, and it should, because it’s, it’s got a lot of efficiency and so much of our infrastructure is already geared to working with it. So there’s a lot of, you know, oil can be oil. Oil can work really well. And there’s no reason why it shouldn’t continue to work. but it is going to take Democrats kind of being more willing to accept that. and that’s again, where I think the moderate voice, if they hold together, they can keep that Republicans are going to have to, they’re going to have to be a little more open to accepting a broader range, kind of more of the libertarian, some of the other that may or may not want government in places where they’re good to put government. You know, Republicans have adopted DHS pretty wholesale. And well, I can recall, you know, some years back in Idaho where if you said Department of Homeland Security, you know, that that was pretty much a bad word. and yet they’ve been embraced pretty, pretty well. And, you know, that that’s a question, of how far, you know, I mean, ice ice has definitely done some good stuff, but boy, ice is ah, they’ve also done some bad stuff. Rounded up American citizens taking a long time to let them out of custody. you know, that, that those kind of moves are not those aren’t conducive to that more liberty minded, you know, limited government, view. So again, it’s not purely on the Republicans, but that they’re going to have to get back to, you know, they’re going to have to get back to those principles, but also be a more of a big tent party. So.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I just kind of like to finish it off with this comment.

Steve Ackerman You bet.

Bob Neugebauer I believe this next two years is going to be a food fight, like it is in the cafeteria of high school, and that nobody’s going to want to listen to anybody. And unfortunately, that’s going to leave us in a position that nobody really wants to be in. But we’ve been there before And we’re going to continue to be there again because of the diversity that we have. And it’s growing in this country. The diversity is growing. But what I will say is that as the workers of this country change, and as the baby boomers become less important in terms of elections, I think you will eventually, I look at the baby boomers as a very knowledgeable, long term, steadfast group. I look at the nineteen to forty five as opportunists, and they don’t understand, number one, how economics works because they’ve never actually had to study it or deal with it, nor do a lot of them understand what this country is all about, what our forefathers originally wanted us to be like, because they’ve never been taught that in school. And when I look at the education system in whole as a whole, I can see from the nineteen sixties through to the nineteen eighties, where Bezmenov was correct in saying that it takes three generations to change a country. We’re in the third generation. I’m seeing it happen before my very eyes because there are different thought processes. It’s not the same old, same old, because of the stalwarts of people like me who are now in their eighties, who would love to see us go back to some of the old times, but it’s not going to happen. So I just kind of worry about what’s going to happen over the next five to six years. I see a problem coming with the debt. I see a problem coming, with Social Security and with Medicare. They are going to have a problem unless we allow a lot of these immigrants to stay even without amnesty, but to become the workers. Because if the factories are being built and the Americans aren’t replacing themselves fast enough, which they’re not. I mean, we haven’t been doing that for years. You know, when you kill sixty six million babies, that puts a pretty big dent in your population structure for years to come.

Steve Ackerman Certainly.

Bob Neugebauer so I see that change taking place. America is going to become much more of a, a melting pot and,

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer and, and a melting pot that will probably work better than what we currently have had or what we will have over the next five to six years, because there are changes coming. I’m just hoping they’re all for the better.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer like I said, we’ve been on the precipice of change for quite some time. I think, I think you’re right in a lot of what you say about what’s going on in Washington. I hope they can fix it. I’m not sure they are capable of doing that. the fact that you’re not going to be there is not going to help them, because someplace there has to be a voice of reason. And we have very few of those people left, as far as I’m concerned. either they have become passé and nobody listens to them, or they are of an ilk that, want to see change but don’t know how to make it happen.

Steve Ackerman Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer educationally, I think we’re at an impasse because everybody wants to be a leader, and very few people want to be the workers of the world.

Steve Ackerman Yeah. Education’s a lot of it. Yeah. I, I, yeah, education is definitely a lot of it. You’re right. And it does look, it does it does take it does take groups working together. It does take members working together. you know, I know, I know when I know when Russ first came in, he he remarked how on kind of the initial on a lot of the initial, orientations, which are going on right now, they go on before Thanksgiving, and they have two waves of them, but on a lot of the initial orientations, you know, several things are just all Republican members, all Democratic members not together. And, you know, I, I, I look at that kind of thing. And, and I remember he and I talked about that a couple times. He’s like, you know, I mean, I mean, he has a constituency that he has to worry about. Every member does. Right. And the constituency makes the argument. You, you know, you’ve been in the middle of it and you’ve seen, you know, you’ve you’ve worked with these people, you’ve seen these people and you and I all the way back to Tea Party days, etc.. Right. so we’ve been in that we, we’ve heard what people have to say, right. And you’ve continued, and I’ve done it as much as I can, right as when they come to DC. Me getting back to Idaho, you know, that’s what you do, right? But that that’s always a worry. some people doesn’t and that’s, that’s the worry is people that don’t worry about it. But, but the point is there is a lot that can get done together. you know, broadband work where members would say, okay, I, I wish local government would have a bit more of a say on this, but I agree with what you’re trying to do or logging, you know, you, there are just so many issues where you can find people that cross those party lines, you know, where wireless is going, you know, 4G to 5G to six G, all those issues. You and I have talked about it. Same concerns on both sides, same issues, China’s role in getting access to, you know, I mean, that semiconductor issue that’s popping up with Nvidia, look, that’s going to be bipartisan in a lot of ways, right? I mean, Trump is catching up to it. But, you know, it was like a mix of enforcement agencies, federal, state, local, the role of tribes, you know, and, and what they have to deal with. so there are just so many issues that, that, that cut bipartisan, there’s just a lot of things we did bipartisan, you know, and, and, and he and I would talk, he’d say, you know, we, he said, can you imagine this other issue with that member? I don’t agree with them at all. Another issue. And he’s not going to give in on that. And they’re not going to give in. But on something else, they can make an argument. you know, trying to trying to limit the federal federal land footprint, right? You know, you know, you know, you live right there. and the role of federal agencies over land. Well, there are some things we were able to do to pull together. you know, I mean, Trump did some things. We said, whoa, whoa, Biden did you know he did that. And we were like, wait a minute, you know. And and so, but you work together. so, you know, you find some Western Democrats who they, they get what happens. You know, you find anybody in Nevada. They know what’s going on with the federal land. you know, and, and go down the line so long and long and short, there’s a lot of places where they can, but I, I hope they can, I, I think you’re right. It’s going to take education. I hope they can.

Bob Neugebauer Thank you very much, Steve, for joining us

Steve Ackerman Thank

Bob Neugebauer today.

Steve Ackerman you.

Bob Neugebauer It’s been a distinct pleasure, as usual.

Steve Ackerman You two.

Bob Neugebauer And

Steve Ackerman Thank

Bob Neugebauer I do

Steve Ackerman you.

Bob Neugebauer miss you a lot. So make sure you get back here and say hello.

Steve Ackerman Yes.

Bob Neugebauer We’ll break some bread together. And, maybe we can just go down there and visit the legislature and, give them a hard time for a day or two.

Steve Ackerman I am I’m happy to jump on board and I, I appreciate the invitation, I really do. It’s been an honor. It’s been an honor.

Bob Neugebauer Thank you again for joining us on the Idaho Pulse, Steve. And

Steve Ackerman You

Bob Neugebauer you have

Steve Ackerman bet.

Bob Neugebauer yourself a great day.

Steve Ackerman You, too. And, Mike, great being here. Take care.