January 14, 2025 • 18 mins
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE IN TRUMP'S NEXT TERM? The Steamboat Institute's Hadley Heath Manning joins me to talk about this column about her wishes for economic policy in Trump's next term. I think this is the biggest wild card for me about the upcoming administration and I hope Hadley is right. Find out more about the Steamboat Institute by clicking here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hadley's Manning was going to join me. She is the
executive vice president of the Steamboat Institute, one of my
favorite little policy think tanks. They espouse free markets. They
take big debates to college campuses in order to expose
college students to the ideas of free market economics and
free market solutions to our policy issues. And Hadley wrote
(00:22):
a column that was in Today's Denver Gazette about what
the next term of Donald Trump's presidency is going to
look like economically.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hadley, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, Mandy, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So let's I have a few concerns about the Donald
Trump economic policies, but I want to let you kind
of give an overview of what you think we're looking
at for the next four years.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Sure well, I think first of all, some of the
areas that have gotten the most attention in the media
and our political discourse are places where maybe Trump doesn't
totally align with the rest of his party, whether it's
about tariffs or questions about caps on credit card interest rates,
examples like that. But I wrote my column because I
wanted to focus on areas where I think were most
(01:10):
likely to see change, and I looked back at Donald
Trump's first term and I identified two areas where he
has a really good track record, Mandy. One is on
tax reform. We're going to revisit that subject in Congress
this year. Another is on regulations, and at the time
in Trump's first term, he favored a plan to reduce
regulations ten to one, so to get rid of ten
(01:32):
regulations for every new regulation that was promulgated. He didn't
quite get there. He wasn't successful at that ten to
one ratio. But do you know what it was. He
got rid of two and a half regulations for everyone
that he promulgated, and regulation significantly slowed during his first term.
So those are two areas where I think we have
reason for optimism. I think there's shared focus, shared principles
between Congressional Republicans and President Trump. And one other area
(01:55):
where I'm optimistic, although I can't say that Trump has
a good record on this, and that is government spending.
I mean, there's really not a president in recent memory
who has a good record on spending. But the focus
on the Department of Government Efficiency DOGE and the DOGE Caucus,
I think those are also an area where we can
see reason for optimism, and so I wrote a column
(02:16):
about what we can expect in those three areas well.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
When we went through this in twenty sixteen, when a
lot of my listeners were supporting Donald Trump, he was
not my first choice. And my thing was he's not
talking about spending at all. And I had people call
the show and say he's gonna slash spending, and I'm like,
but he's not even talking about it, so why would
you think that? And I was right and they were wrong.
But now we are seeing massive inflation. It's kind of
(02:41):
like our chickens have finally come home to roosts because
this level of spending started in earnest in two thousand
and eight. Let's be real. This is not just the
Biden administration. This is accumulation of the expansion of government
spending that has been significant. But I'm more hopeful this
time for the reasons that you just said, and because
our mutual friends Steve Moore is on the Economic Advisory Panel,
(03:05):
and Steve has another thing on the Committee to Unleashed
Prosperity today that the Biden administration is going to leave
us with a one point six trillion dollar deficit this year.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Hardly, you know as well as I do. That is unsustainable.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And do you see the political will in DC to
get this done? Because nobody wants to tell their people
I'm not bringing home the bacon.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
That's right. Political will is a reflection of pressure from
the people. So as much as I like to blame
politicians for this problem, I also think we, the American people,
have some responsibility here. You know, a majority of Americans
believe that the government is inefficient, it's wasteful, it's doing
too much. When you pull people on that question, is
the government doing too much or too little? Most Americans
will say, yeah, it's doing too much. However, when you
(03:53):
ask specifically about things like entitlements, education, healthcare, infrastructure. When
you start to get into the specifics, that's when more
America can say, oh, I think we're spending too little
in those areas. Don't cut education, don't cut healthcare, you know.
And so that's the game that's about to be played.
That's the challenge that government reformers and spending cutters have
always faced. We have to talk about ways, I think
(04:14):
to slow the rate of growth. My goodness, that's not
even a spending cut, that's just reducing the growth of government.
And this is all tied up in a conversation that
I think, unfortunately used to be used to be getting
a lot more focused at the national level, and that's
the question of the national debt. Right and at the
Steamboat Institute, we host a lot of debates on college campuses.
This spring, we're going to host a debate on the
(04:35):
national debt as part of our Campus Liberty Tour because
we think we need to bring this question, this issue
back into the national conversation. This is a tax on
future taxpayers. This is a tax on our kids. If
we can't pay for the spending we're doing today, our
kids and our grandkids, we're paying for it tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Let's talk about tariffs for a second, because I am
not as concerned about the potential for tariffs as some
others because in my mind, this it feels like a
negotiating tactic that Donald Trump is using to sort of,
you know, set the bar sky high of what we're
demanding or what we're going to do in order to
negotiate back down to either a better trade deal or
(05:14):
a better responsibility when it comes to protecting intellectual property
or some of those other things. What are your thoughts
on the tariff talk.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I mean, I agree with you, Mandy. Free trade is
both an economic issue and it's a foreign policy issue.
You know, it has to do with how we relate
to other countries and other nations around the world. So
in terms of free trade as a purely economic issue, yes,
I believe in free trade, just like I believe in
free markets. I mean, a tariff is a tax, and
we believe in limited taxation at the Steamboat Institute. It's
(05:43):
one of our five core principles. However, when we're talking
about tariffs, we're talking about the international scene. We know
that tariffs are a tool and the toolkit that any
president has that an administration has to threaten, basically to
our adversaries or to any country that we do trade with,
to try to put pressure on them to behave in
ways that we deem best. Whether it has to do
(06:04):
with human rights, or whether it has to do with
what's beneficial to American national interests or our intellectual property,
those are all very legitimate concerns, and those are all
very legitimate reasons to talk about tariffs. Obviously, any diplomacy
moves or trade moves are preferable to hard force that
we might use against our enemies or against our adversaries
(06:25):
in other parts of the world. So yes, I mean
the question is always it depends. It depends on the
size and scope of the tariff, the cost of the
American consumer, and what we're getting in exchange for this pressure.
Is the pressure being effective? Those are all questions we
have to ask. It's not so simple as our tariffs
good or bad. Are we in favor of tariffs or not?
It always, you know, it always opens a lot more
questions than gives answers.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
So let me ask this question about manufacturing specifically as
it retains to tariffs, because he's essentially said, look, we're
going to live to these tears. We're going to bring
back manufacturing to the United States of America. The problem
with that is that our standard of living is much
higher than it is in China or Mexico or any
of these other countries where businesses have chosen to offshore
(07:06):
because the.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Cost of doing business is so much lower.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Is that kind of a fantasy land a little bit
to say that we are going to become a manufacturing
powerhouse again. And secondly, does what are the national security
implications if we don't make anything in this country.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Well, we were asking that question a lot during the
COVID pandemic as it related to some core key medicine.
Is in your ingredients for medicines that we might need.
So yeah, I think when Trump talks about manufacturing and
when he talks about tariffs, I think he is talking
at two different levels. You know, we're here talking about
the public policy implications of this. We're talking about what
(07:46):
would it mean for our economy if we moved this
money from here to there, or if we tax this
thing and we spent more on this thing. But there's
another level I think that Trump is speaking on when
he talks about manufacturing, and that is he is talking
directly to a lot of American voters who feel like
their entire way of life has changed, that their entire
(08:07):
community has been left behind by globalization or by developments
in the economy that were completely outside of their control.
That they weren't prepared to deal with the creative destruction,
they weren't prepared to deal with the retooling of American workers.
They weren't, and nobody has given them, you know, a
second thought. It seems like, you know, both parties. The
elites and both parties have been perfectly content to just
(08:28):
not talk about whole segments of American society. I grew
up in western North Carolina. Textiles were huge in the
small town that I grew up in, and now the
town is full of empty mills, you know, and there's
a lot of questions about what is the economic future
of places like that. Trump's paid attention to it, and
simply by talking about it, he's essentially saying, I see
the plight of American workers who are not working in
(08:50):
the service industry. They're not working from home like I
do with my little laptop, and you know, doing a
white collar job like that. So in that sense, I
think that the questions about can we bring manufact bring
back are important, but we can also ask other questions,
like what do we do with American workers who maybe
don't have the skills to simply be retooled or retasked.
(09:10):
We can't make them all into coders, you know, we
can't give them all a computer job, but we can
work on building up apprenticeships in this country, who can
work on better educational pathways for people who aren't going
to a four year college or university, and those are
things that are related to the question of manufacturing, but
not as specifically as we can we completely rebuild from
scratch the manufacturing industry. I think you're right, that's not
(09:32):
something that we can do with a simple policy change.
But we should be talking about other policies to address
this concern.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You know, I lived in Kentucky for three years and
coal country in eastern Kentucky, which was already in a
lot of those places already in grinding poverty.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
But they put a lot of.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Coal miners out of work with promises of retraining, and
we're going to and nothing happened. I mean, just nothing happens.
So now you have people with too much time on
their hands, and now you a massive drug problem.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
The destruction of.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Those communities has been so complete that it feels like
the only way for those people to survive is to
leave their communities.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And these are people deeply rooted, and so to.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Your point, I guess talking about this is great, but
I'm interested to see what that actually translates to in
this next administration.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Are there anything you know who knows a lot about
this is Vice President Elect Vance. He knows a lot
about this because that's exactly the part of the country
that he comes from as well, and that's exactly what
his book Hillbilly Elg is about. And so I have
a high level of confidence that this will this issue
will be a priority for him.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I hope.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So is there anything that you I mean, we just
kind of talked about tariffs, but is there anything else
that you've seen in terms of economic policy that you
are concerned about?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
You know, I'm my column that published in the Denver
Zibits about optimism about economic policy. So I've probably got
more things that I could identify that I'm hopeful about.
I mean, there's I'm very hopeful about taxes. I hope
we'll see an extension of the income tax cuts and
a further reduction in the corporate tax cut. I guess
to answer your question specifically, Mandy, I mean I was
disappointed in Trump's first term with regard to healthcare policy
(11:15):
and entitlements. I mean, if we're going to talk about
the national debt, we can't avoid talking about medicare and
social security. It's not a popular thing to talk about.
It's been called the third rail of American politics. But
there are ways that we can reform those programs to
make them more fiscally solvent. Trump, however, he said that
he just won't touch those he won't tell you know,
And I think that that's a bad policy decision. I
(11:36):
think it unfortunately sort of aligns Republicans and Democrats on
this issue, so that we're guaranteeing future insolvency, we're guaranteeing
unfunded liabilities in those programs. The more responsible thing to do,
a more physically responsible thing to do, would be to
try to work to guarantee that those those programs can
continue to keep their promises to future generations, because otherwise
(11:57):
we'll see, you know, unfortunately across the board benefit reductions
because they can't pay their bills.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I would love to see Donald Trump because he's essentially
a one term guy. We already know he cannot serve
another term. So I'd like to see some bravery on
that issue. But it's not just the President that would
need to be brave. It would need to be a
lot of members of Congress that would need to be
brave to talk about raising the retirement age or some
of the other things that can be done that would
be wildly unpopular. And I always think of you know
(12:25):
whenever we see other countries. And Greece is a perfect
example of this. They were trying to raise the retirement
age in Greece and I want to say, from like
fifty seven to fifty nine or some crazy low number,
and everybody was freaking out. That's exactly what would happen here,
even if we said, look, we're going to index it
for people in thirty years, right in thirty years, you're
(12:45):
going to have to wait another year or whatever. I
just think that people are so they hear social security
changes and they immediately think, there goes my retirement. So
we have to get somebody that can communicate that. And
I got to tell you, I think jd Vance is
the guy to communicate why this has to happen. He's
so good at talking about policy. I'm hoping that they
use him a lot more as vice president to go
(13:08):
out and have the policy conversations about the stuff that
we're talking about here, because I think he would do
a great job and make it understandable to people who
would otherwise be fearful.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Well, and he's young. He's a pretty young as far
as politicians go. He has young kids, so I know
he understands this from a very personal level, that the
bills that we don't pay today are just getting passed along,
and that is that short changes the argument. Let me
also emphasize that when we have a high debt to
GDP ratio, that has immediate implications for American consumers. Government
(13:38):
spending is primarily the reason we saw the huge, blown
up levels of inflation that we saw at the end
of the COVID pandemic, because we were just gassing the
economy with so much COVID related spending, and this has
implications for the state of Colorado now too. Now Colorado's
facing a budget shortfall. Guess why, because we got addicted
to the federal money that was just coming out droves
(14:01):
during the COVID pandemic, and now now that that money
is drying up, states are looking at a situation where
they have been writing checks that they're not going to
be able to cash, and so that's going to be
hard for our state. We're not alone. A lot of states,
unfortunately took this federal money and thought they pretended like
it was going to be forever. But it was temporary,
you know, And that's the problem that we're facing now.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Somebody on the text line said, Hey, Mandy, what programs
would you cut? I think I believe that we could
do without the Department of Education. And I mean that
I believe we could do without the Department of Energy.
Neither department has done what their mission statement said when
they were created in the first place. They've just blown
up government bureaucracy. I think you could move any valuable
programs being administered by those into other departments. Are we
(14:47):
going to see that? I mean, what was it that
I can't remember the saying the quote that there's nothing
more permanent than a government program, something along those lines,
I might be paraphrasing.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Is there a chance that we could get that done?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yeah? Reagan said the closest thing to eternity on earth
is a government program, and I agree with him. Okay,
so I got three quick thoughts about how we can
cut spending. Number one, I think any government program should
be should face the burden of proof. And what I
mean by that is in Obamacare, there was a small
piece of it called the Class Act. It was a
(15:21):
long term care insurance program, and as part of the
passage of that, it had to be studied for fiscal soundness.
And proved that it was gonna be fiscally sound before
it could launch, and it never did. And so President
Barack Obama, who signed Obamacare into law three years later,
he was signing a repeal bill for the Class Act
because we recognized that it couldn't pass that burden of proof.
(15:42):
So I think government program should have to demonstrate their
fiscal solvency for the long term. If they can't do that,
then we have to ask questions why. A second thing
that I think we should do is and states have
done this, is apply the Yellow Pages test Yellow test.
So if it's something that private business can do, if
it's something that you find in the Yellow Pages, it's
(16:02):
probably not something the government should do. Otherwise it's duplicating
what private businesses do and it's presenting those businesses with
unfair competition from the government. So the Yellow Pages tests
and the federal government can go a step further and
they can say, is this something that state governments are doing?
If stake governments are doing this, why are we doing this?
Why are there fifty state departments of education and the
federal Department of Education. I know people within the Federal
(16:23):
Department of Education would explain why but I would say
to save money instead of just going in there and
saying we're abolishing the Department of Education, because I think, yeah,
a lot of people on the right would like to
see that happen for a variety of reasons, distrust in
the education system and reducing government spending. I don't think
it's within the Overton window. I don't think it's going
to happen. I don't think we're going to see the
(16:45):
abolishment the abolition of the Department of Education. But we
can block grant those funds. We can significantly block grant
a lot of the programming within the Department of Education
so that states have control over how those dollars are spent,
and so we reduce the bureaucracy in the part. And
we can do that with several other federal departments. Is well.
And the last thing I'll say is sun setting. Let's
take advantage of sunsetting. Government program should face sunsetting. If
(17:08):
my tax cut from twenty seventeen is gonna sunset, then
the spending that my lawmakers are doing with my tax
dollars should also sunset with regularity, so that lawmakers have
to revisit why we're doing programs. I mean, this is
this is the end of the eternity on Earth that
Reagan mentioned. But if we can apply some sunsetting, that
(17:30):
will be a great efficiency improvement.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Hadleyheath Banning is the executive VP of the Steamboat Institute.
You'll be hearing from her more regularly, and of course
you need to go to Steamboat Institute dot org where.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You will see the event. Do you guys have a newsletter?
Do you have a newsletter? Is that a thing you have?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Because I think you need one absolutely?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Where can you sign up.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
For our email communications on Steamboat Institute dot org. Many,
I'll send you a link. You can put it on
your block for us where people can sign up.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That would be fantastic because you need to know about
the Freedom Conference so you can sign up and go
before it sells out. Because it is like one of
my favorite things every single year. It is so good,
so many great minds together in one room. It is outstanding. Hadley,
we'll be talking to you too. Great idea. I love
the idea of sunsetting spending. I think that we should
force politicians to go on record as continuing the level
(18:21):
of spending, but we can't even get them to do
regular budgeting. You know, that's a huge part of the
problem as well, and until we can get back to
regular order.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Be able to do anything significant about spending unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Well, we're not going to give up, and that's part
of our goal at the Steamboat Institute. We never despair.
We always approach these issues with good cheer and hope
for the future because we believe that America is the
greatest nation of the world, the best hope for the world,
and we're going to make sure that it stays that way.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Hadley heath Manning, thank you for your time today.
Hadley's Manning was going to join me. She is the
executive vice president of the Steamboat Institute, one of my
favorite little policy think tanks. They espouse free markets. They
take big debates to college campuses in order to expose
college students to the ideas of free market economics and
free market solutions to our policy issues. And Hadley wrote
(00:22):
a column that was in Today's Denver Gazette about what
the next term of Donald Trump's presidency is going to
look like economically.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hadley, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, Mandy, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So let's I have a few concerns about the Donald
Trump economic policies, but I want to let you kind
of give an overview of what you think we're looking
at for the next four years.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Sure well, I think first of all, some of the
areas that have gotten the most attention in the media
and our political discourse are places where maybe Trump doesn't
totally align with the rest of his party, whether it's
about tariffs or questions about caps on credit card interest rates,
examples like that. But I wrote my column because I
wanted to focus on areas where I think were most
(01:10):
likely to see change, and I looked back at Donald
Trump's first term and I identified two areas where he
has a really good track record, Mandy. One is on
tax reform. We're going to revisit that subject in Congress
this year. Another is on regulations, and at the time
in Trump's first term, he favored a plan to reduce
regulations ten to one, so to get rid of ten
(01:32):
regulations for every new regulation that was promulgated. He didn't
quite get there. He wasn't successful at that ten to
one ratio. But do you know what it was. He
got rid of two and a half regulations for everyone
that he promulgated, and regulation significantly slowed during his first term.
So those are two areas where I think we have
reason for optimism. I think there's shared focus, shared principles
between Congressional Republicans and President Trump. And one other area
(01:55):
where I'm optimistic, although I can't say that Trump has
a good record on this, and that is government spending.
I mean, there's really not a president in recent memory
who has a good record on spending. But the focus
on the Department of Government Efficiency DOGE and the DOGE Caucus,
I think those are also an area where we can
see reason for optimism, and so I wrote a column
(02:16):
about what we can expect in those three areas well.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
When we went through this in twenty sixteen, when a
lot of my listeners were supporting Donald Trump, he was
not my first choice. And my thing was he's not
talking about spending at all. And I had people call
the show and say he's gonna slash spending, and I'm like,
but he's not even talking about it, so why would
you think that? And I was right and they were wrong.
But now we are seeing massive inflation. It's kind of
(02:41):
like our chickens have finally come home to roosts because
this level of spending started in earnest in two thousand
and eight. Let's be real. This is not just the
Biden administration. This is accumulation of the expansion of government
spending that has been significant. But I'm more hopeful this
time for the reasons that you just said, and because
our mutual friends Steve Moore is on the Economic Advisory Panel,
(03:05):
and Steve has another thing on the Committee to Unleashed
Prosperity today that the Biden administration is going to leave
us with a one point six trillion dollar deficit this year.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Hardly, you know as well as I do. That is unsustainable.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And do you see the political will in DC to
get this done? Because nobody wants to tell their people
I'm not bringing home the bacon.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
That's right. Political will is a reflection of pressure from
the people. So as much as I like to blame
politicians for this problem, I also think we, the American people,
have some responsibility here. You know, a majority of Americans
believe that the government is inefficient, it's wasteful, it's doing
too much. When you pull people on that question, is
the government doing too much or too little? Most Americans
will say, yeah, it's doing too much. However, when you
(03:53):
ask specifically about things like entitlements, education, healthcare, infrastructure. When
you start to get into the specifics, that's when more
America can say, oh, I think we're spending too little
in those areas. Don't cut education, don't cut healthcare, you know.
And so that's the game that's about to be played.
That's the challenge that government reformers and spending cutters have
always faced. We have to talk about ways, I think
(04:14):
to slow the rate of growth. My goodness, that's not
even a spending cut, that's just reducing the growth of government.
And this is all tied up in a conversation that
I think, unfortunately used to be used to be getting
a lot more focused at the national level, and that's
the question of the national debt. Right and at the
Steamboat Institute, we host a lot of debates on college campuses.
This spring, we're going to host a debate on the
(04:35):
national debt as part of our Campus Liberty Tour because
we think we need to bring this question, this issue
back into the national conversation. This is a tax on
future taxpayers. This is a tax on our kids. If
we can't pay for the spending we're doing today, our
kids and our grandkids, we're paying for it tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Let's talk about tariffs for a second, because I am
not as concerned about the potential for tariffs as some
others because in my mind, this it feels like a
negotiating tactic that Donald Trump is using to sort of,
you know, set the bar sky high of what we're
demanding or what we're going to do in order to
negotiate back down to either a better trade deal or
(05:14):
a better responsibility when it comes to protecting intellectual property
or some of those other things. What are your thoughts
on the tariff talk.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I mean, I agree with you, Mandy. Free trade is
both an economic issue and it's a foreign policy issue.
You know, it has to do with how we relate
to other countries and other nations around the world. So
in terms of free trade as a purely economic issue, yes,
I believe in free trade, just like I believe in
free markets. I mean, a tariff is a tax, and
we believe in limited taxation at the Steamboat Institute. It's
(05:43):
one of our five core principles. However, when we're talking
about tariffs, we're talking about the international scene. We know
that tariffs are a tool and the toolkit that any
president has that an administration has to threaten, basically to
our adversaries or to any country that we do trade with,
to try to put pressure on them to behave in
ways that we deem best. Whether it has to do
(06:04):
with human rights, or whether it has to do with
what's beneficial to American national interests or our intellectual property,
those are all very legitimate concerns, and those are all
very legitimate reasons to talk about tariffs. Obviously, any diplomacy
moves or trade moves are preferable to hard force that
we might use against our enemies or against our adversaries
(06:25):
in other parts of the world. So yes, I mean
the question is always it depends. It depends on the
size and scope of the tariff, the cost of the
American consumer, and what we're getting in exchange for this pressure.
Is the pressure being effective? Those are all questions we
have to ask. It's not so simple as our tariffs
good or bad. Are we in favor of tariffs or not?
It always, you know, it always opens a lot more
questions than gives answers.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
So let me ask this question about manufacturing specifically as
it retains to tariffs, because he's essentially said, look, we're
going to live to these tears. We're going to bring
back manufacturing to the United States of America. The problem
with that is that our standard of living is much
higher than it is in China or Mexico or any
of these other countries where businesses have chosen to offshore
(07:06):
because the.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Cost of doing business is so much lower.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Is that kind of a fantasy land a little bit
to say that we are going to become a manufacturing
powerhouse again. And secondly, does what are the national security
implications if we don't make anything in this country.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Well, we were asking that question a lot during the
COVID pandemic as it related to some core key medicine.
Is in your ingredients for medicines that we might need.
So yeah, I think when Trump talks about manufacturing and
when he talks about tariffs, I think he is talking
at two different levels. You know, we're here talking about
the public policy implications of this. We're talking about what
(07:46):
would it mean for our economy if we moved this
money from here to there, or if we tax this
thing and we spent more on this thing. But there's
another level I think that Trump is speaking on when
he talks about manufacturing, and that is he is talking
directly to a lot of American voters who feel like
their entire way of life has changed, that their entire
(08:07):
community has been left behind by globalization or by developments
in the economy that were completely outside of their control.
That they weren't prepared to deal with the creative destruction,
they weren't prepared to deal with the retooling of American workers.
They weren't, and nobody has given them, you know, a
second thought. It seems like, you know, both parties. The
elites and both parties have been perfectly content to just
(08:28):
not talk about whole segments of American society. I grew
up in western North Carolina. Textiles were huge in the
small town that I grew up in, and now the
town is full of empty mills, you know, and there's
a lot of questions about what is the economic future
of places like that. Trump's paid attention to it, and
simply by talking about it, he's essentially saying, I see
the plight of American workers who are not working in
(08:50):
the service industry. They're not working from home like I
do with my little laptop, and you know, doing a
white collar job like that. So in that sense, I
think that the questions about can we bring manufact bring
back are important, but we can also ask other questions,
like what do we do with American workers who maybe
don't have the skills to simply be retooled or retasked.
(09:10):
We can't make them all into coders, you know, we
can't give them all a computer job, but we can
work on building up apprenticeships in this country, who can
work on better educational pathways for people who aren't going
to a four year college or university, and those are
things that are related to the question of manufacturing, but
not as specifically as we can we completely rebuild from
scratch the manufacturing industry. I think you're right, that's not
(09:32):
something that we can do with a simple policy change.
But we should be talking about other policies to address
this concern.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You know, I lived in Kentucky for three years and
coal country in eastern Kentucky, which was already in a
lot of those places already in grinding poverty.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
But they put a lot of.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Coal miners out of work with promises of retraining, and
we're going to and nothing happened. I mean, just nothing happens.
So now you have people with too much time on
their hands, and now you a massive drug problem.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
The destruction of.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Those communities has been so complete that it feels like
the only way for those people to survive is to
leave their communities.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And these are people deeply rooted, and so to.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Your point, I guess talking about this is great, but
I'm interested to see what that actually translates to in
this next administration.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Are there anything you know who knows a lot about
this is Vice President Elect Vance. He knows a lot
about this because that's exactly the part of the country
that he comes from as well, and that's exactly what
his book Hillbilly Elg is about. And so I have
a high level of confidence that this will this issue
will be a priority for him.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I hope.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So is there anything that you I mean, we just
kind of talked about tariffs, but is there anything else
that you've seen in terms of economic policy that you
are concerned about?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
You know, I'm my column that published in the Denver
Zibits about optimism about economic policy. So I've probably got
more things that I could identify that I'm hopeful about.
I mean, there's I'm very hopeful about taxes. I hope
we'll see an extension of the income tax cuts and
a further reduction in the corporate tax cut. I guess
to answer your question specifically, Mandy, I mean I was
disappointed in Trump's first term with regard to healthcare policy
(11:15):
and entitlements. I mean, if we're going to talk about
the national debt, we can't avoid talking about medicare and
social security. It's not a popular thing to talk about.
It's been called the third rail of American politics. But
there are ways that we can reform those programs to
make them more fiscally solvent. Trump, however, he said that
he just won't touch those he won't tell you know,
And I think that that's a bad policy decision. I
(11:36):
think it unfortunately sort of aligns Republicans and Democrats on
this issue, so that we're guaranteeing future insolvency, we're guaranteeing
unfunded liabilities in those programs. The more responsible thing to do,
a more physically responsible thing to do, would be to
try to work to guarantee that those those programs can
continue to keep their promises to future generations, because otherwise
(11:57):
we'll see, you know, unfortunately across the board benefit reductions
because they can't pay their bills.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I would love to see Donald Trump because he's essentially
a one term guy. We already know he cannot serve
another term. So I'd like to see some bravery on
that issue. But it's not just the President that would
need to be brave. It would need to be a
lot of members of Congress that would need to be
brave to talk about raising the retirement age or some
of the other things that can be done that would
be wildly unpopular. And I always think of you know
(12:25):
whenever we see other countries. And Greece is a perfect
example of this. They were trying to raise the retirement
age in Greece and I want to say, from like
fifty seven to fifty nine or some crazy low number,
and everybody was freaking out. That's exactly what would happen here,
even if we said, look, we're going to index it
for people in thirty years, right in thirty years, you're
(12:45):
going to have to wait another year or whatever. I
just think that people are so they hear social security
changes and they immediately think, there goes my retirement. So
we have to get somebody that can communicate that. And
I got to tell you, I think jd Vance is
the guy to communicate why this has to happen. He's
so good at talking about policy. I'm hoping that they
use him a lot more as vice president to go
(13:08):
out and have the policy conversations about the stuff that
we're talking about here, because I think he would do
a great job and make it understandable to people who
would otherwise be fearful.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Well, and he's young. He's a pretty young as far
as politicians go. He has young kids, so I know
he understands this from a very personal level, that the
bills that we don't pay today are just getting passed along,
and that is that short changes the argument. Let me
also emphasize that when we have a high debt to
GDP ratio, that has immediate implications for American consumers. Government
(13:38):
spending is primarily the reason we saw the huge, blown
up levels of inflation that we saw at the end
of the COVID pandemic, because we were just gassing the
economy with so much COVID related spending, and this has
implications for the state of Colorado now too. Now Colorado's
facing a budget shortfall. Guess why, because we got addicted
to the federal money that was just coming out droves
(14:01):
during the COVID pandemic, and now now that that money
is drying up, states are looking at a situation where
they have been writing checks that they're not going to
be able to cash, and so that's going to be
hard for our state. We're not alone. A lot of states,
unfortunately took this federal money and thought they pretended like
it was going to be forever. But it was temporary,
you know, And that's the problem that we're facing now.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Somebody on the text line said, Hey, Mandy, what programs
would you cut? I think I believe that we could
do without the Department of Education. And I mean that
I believe we could do without the Department of Energy.
Neither department has done what their mission statement said when
they were created in the first place. They've just blown
up government bureaucracy. I think you could move any valuable
programs being administered by those into other departments. Are we
(14:47):
going to see that? I mean, what was it that
I can't remember the saying the quote that there's nothing
more permanent than a government program, something along those lines,
I might be paraphrasing.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Is there a chance that we could get that done?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yeah? Reagan said the closest thing to eternity on earth
is a government program, and I agree with him. Okay,
so I got three quick thoughts about how we can
cut spending. Number one, I think any government program should
be should face the burden of proof. And what I
mean by that is in Obamacare, there was a small
piece of it called the Class Act. It was a
(15:21):
long term care insurance program, and as part of the
passage of that, it had to be studied for fiscal soundness.
And proved that it was gonna be fiscally sound before
it could launch, and it never did. And so President
Barack Obama, who signed Obamacare into law three years later,
he was signing a repeal bill for the Class Act
because we recognized that it couldn't pass that burden of proof.
(15:42):
So I think government program should have to demonstrate their
fiscal solvency for the long term. If they can't do that,
then we have to ask questions why. A second thing
that I think we should do is and states have
done this, is apply the Yellow Pages test Yellow test.
So if it's something that private business can do, if
it's something that you find in the Yellow Pages, it's
(16:02):
probably not something the government should do. Otherwise it's duplicating
what private businesses do and it's presenting those businesses with
unfair competition from the government. So the Yellow Pages tests
and the federal government can go a step further and
they can say, is this something that state governments are doing?
If stake governments are doing this, why are we doing this?
Why are there fifty state departments of education and the
federal Department of Education. I know people within the Federal
(16:23):
Department of Education would explain why but I would say
to save money instead of just going in there and
saying we're abolishing the Department of Education, because I think, yeah,
a lot of people on the right would like to
see that happen for a variety of reasons, distrust in
the education system and reducing government spending. I don't think
it's within the Overton window. I don't think it's going
to happen. I don't think we're going to see the
(16:45):
abolishment the abolition of the Department of Education. But we
can block grant those funds. We can significantly block grant
a lot of the programming within the Department of Education
so that states have control over how those dollars are spent,
and so we reduce the bureaucracy in the part. And
we can do that with several other federal departments. Is well.
And the last thing I'll say is sun setting. Let's
take advantage of sunsetting. Government program should face sunsetting. If
(17:08):
my tax cut from twenty seventeen is gonna sunset, then
the spending that my lawmakers are doing with my tax
dollars should also sunset with regularity, so that lawmakers have
to revisit why we're doing programs. I mean, this is
this is the end of the eternity on Earth that
Reagan mentioned. But if we can apply some sunsetting, that
(17:30):
will be a great efficiency improvement.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Hadleyheath Banning is the executive VP of the Steamboat Institute.
You'll be hearing from her more regularly, and of course
you need to go to Steamboat Institute dot org where.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You will see the event. Do you guys have a newsletter?
Do you have a newsletter? Is that a thing you have?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Because I think you need one absolutely?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Where can you sign up.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
For our email communications on Steamboat Institute dot org. Many,
I'll send you a link. You can put it on
your block for us where people can sign up.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That would be fantastic because you need to know about
the Freedom Conference so you can sign up and go
before it sells out. Because it is like one of
my favorite things every single year. It is so good,
so many great minds together in one room. It is outstanding. Hadley,
we'll be talking to you too. Great idea. I love
the idea of sunsetting spending. I think that we should
force politicians to go on record as continuing the level
(18:21):
of spending, but we can't even get them to do
regular budgeting. You know, that's a huge part of the
problem as well, and until we can get back to
regular order.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Be able to do anything significant about spending unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Well, we're not going to give up, and that's part
of our goal at the Steamboat Institute. We never despair.
We always approach these issues with good cheer and hope
for the future because we believe that America is the
greatest nation of the world, the best hope for the world,
and we're going to make sure that it stays that way.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Hadley heath Manning, thank you for your time today.
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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