Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, It's Brian Thomas here with Senator John Houston. Welcome
back to the program. John, It's always a pleasure having
you on. Boy. There's a flurry of activity going to
coming out of Washington, DC. Very impressed by what the
Trump administration has been able to accomplish, and personally happy
to see the Big Beautiful Bill get passed. I mean,
I was hoping, and I think my listeners were hoping
for more cuts, recognizing some of the work that Doge
(00:21):
had done. We expected, you know, a much larger slice
of the government to be cut out. But a lot
of great was accomplished in the Big Beautiful Bill, most
notably the tax increase or the tax cuts have been
made permanent, and that, despite what the Democrats keep saying,
that is a benefit to a huge swath of Americans
and of course Ohioans.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, small businesses, manufacturers, all of them benefit by knowing
what the rules are. They know they can plan, they
can plan a capital investment knowing that they're going to
be able to deduct the cost of that in this
year's taxes, which means they have predictability, and then they
can hire people, they can grow. This kind of stuff
is very important, but it's also important for middle class
(01:05):
working families. And I want to dig into that. No
tax on tips, no tax on overtime, you know, bigger
deduction for Social Security recipients, a child tax credit for
working families, not one that's rebatable to people that don't work,
but for people who actually work. All of that fantastic
(01:26):
stuff for working families in Ohio.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And so they just recently found out, you know, everyone
on the left side of the ledgers screaming about how
everyone's going to die because they're going to have their
Medicaid taken away from them. I just saw an article
on the Wall Street Journal I talked about earlier in
the program yesterday, and fourteen billion dollars in fraud waste abuse,
most notably people signed up in multiple states. It didn't
take them that long to apply modern computer technology to
(01:51):
cross reference to these people and find out that they're
registered in multiple states double dipping. That was an easy fix.
How come it took so long to come up with
that one.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, Frankly, one of the problems is is the federal
government pays the bill and the states administered, so many
states have no incentive to actually go track this down,
and we did that with SNAP saying, hey, if you're
gonna have a fraud and abuse, then the states that
have it, you're going to pay a little bit more
of the cost of doing these programs. That's certainly the
case with Medicaid. You have people who are ineligible, who
(02:24):
are on there, people who are registered in multiple states.
And what does that matter? Because you have insurance companies
Medicaid manage care companies that pay states pay premiums. The
federal government pays premiums in both states. So that's a
huge cost of covering multiple people even though they should
only be or multiple states, even though showed me in
(02:44):
one state that stuff matters. It adds up to billions
of dollars. And nobody was doing it before, and that's
a big difference. It's like, you can identify these things,
but what are we doing about it? Were doing something
about it in this bill. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
One thing we all have learned of late there is
no follow through to find out what happens after the
money goes out the door in Washington. Does it actually
accomplish anything? All these non governmental organizations with their hands
in the cookie jar of the taxpayer money, we don't
I mean, like the Doge identified projects. We don't know
if even the Sesame Street program in Iraq or whatever
was even done. The money did go towards something that
(03:21):
was labeled as that, but nobody follows up and tracks
the taxpayer dollars. So I think it's a refreshing thing
that the Trump administration is doing along those lines, at
least trying to make sure the money's doing something and
accomplishing something on behalf of the American taxpayer. Now, one
of the problems, well.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
There was a there was a let me just say
something on that. There's a big message sent. We stayed
up till two thirty in the morning doing the recisions
package to take back literally nine billion dollars in spending,
not a huge amount. You would think that would be easy. Finally,
cutting things like Sesame Street and Iraq and transgender surgeries
in Guatemala. We cut those packages. And the message to
(03:55):
the bureaucracy is this, Brian, don't do stupid things and
you'll be fine, But if you do stupid things, we
are actually willing to cut your budgets. So that was
a big message. It was sent.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
That amazing concept John EUSt did. Now I saw Donald
Trump sign the Halt Fentanyl Act into law. I wanted
to pivot over to that. I think we and Ohio
have a problem with fentanyl like all the other states.
And of course I think the main problem is the
Chinese Communist Party and sending all the precursor elements out
into the world to be turned into fentanyl. Whether or
not Trump accomplishes, getting that shutdown would go a long
(04:28):
way to stopping the fentanyl problem. But how is the
Halt Fentanyl Act going to help us here in Ohio.
It's going to give.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Law enforcement more tools to go after people. A lot
of times they would hide these ingredients under you know,
technicalities in the law. This just cleans it up, gives
law enforcement more power to go after the bad actors.
But it's also important in the trade fight with China.
(04:55):
There's a premium in there on a tariff, a twenty
percent additional tariff until China takes care of these is
shoes around fentanyl. So they're going to, you know, if
they're going to keep turning a blind eye to the
problems that they're creating in this country and the sort
of the modern day opium opium more, Uh, we're going
to have to continue to push back on them and
(05:15):
giving law enforcement more tools with Halt, fent and al
and all. They think that it's a terrible tragedy that
comes with it. It's also the human trafficking and all
that from drug addicted people that ends up happening, from
the gangs and the people coming across the border illegally.
It's just a whole mess that was created by the
Biden administration that we're still trying to sort out. And
this is just one more tool for law enforcement, those
(05:36):
men and women who go out there every day and
put their lives on the line to protect us.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Senni Houston pivoting over to the cafe standards something in
trouble administration wants to get rid of. I think it's
a pointless thing to have laws of supply and demand
should be in effective. If I want to drive a
car that gets eight miles to the gallon and I don't,
I should be able to buy one. But these cafe
standards create artificial miles per gallon that are forcing manufacturers
to old electric vehicles that apparently the population does not want.
(06:03):
They're losing money, they're hemorrhaging the tax credits, are disappearing,
so there's fewer there's lessons centive to buy an electric vehicle.
Can't we just scrap the whole process and let the
market forces dig dictate what we drive and what are
miles per gallop happened to be.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Well, we're in the process of scrapping a lot of that. Yes,
on cafe standards. That also, we repealed the California ev
mandate that seventeen other states had joined. If you remember,
they were going to say all cars in California in
seventeen other states had to be electric vehicles by twenty
thirty five. Think about that, every new car had to
(06:39):
be an electric vehicle by twenty thirty five. And we
repealed that Biden era regulation that allowed them to do
that that kind of stuff. I mean, frankly, we saved
them from themselves. Yeah, there's no way that the people
of those states would have rebelled if you were going
to force them to have to buy electric cars. But
(07:00):
common sense and a Republican majority prevailed in that one,
and we repealed it. But all of those things skew
the markets. Companies go out and make investments not on
what the consumer wants, but what the government regulations say
they must do, and that skews the whole landscape, and
eventually you ping pong it around because it's it's one
(07:22):
administration gets in, they set rules. The next one comes in,
they set a different set of rules. Just clean the slate.
Let the car companies respond to the consumers. Technology will
drive better environmental and outcomes and emission achievements.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Good ideas. Great ideas do not require force or tax incentives. John,
that's my point.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
On that, and that is right, and every day we
get new lessons about that.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Hey, real, briefly, I know we're out of time. Just
one final question, where are you on the Epstein files?
I hate to go over that diversion paying no attention
to the man behind the curtain kind of thing. But
are you in favor of releasing this? I think most
of my listening audience like, just let it out, get
over with and uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Well yeah, we can do this. Look turnover all you can.
Don't turn over anything that would undermine a potential prosecution
if there is somebody who deserves to be prosecuted, yes,
and also protect the victims. We don't want victims' names
out there. They didn't do anything wrong. If you recall
in the Prince Andrew case, the woman who who got
(08:22):
outed in this Epstein saga, she committed suicide. We want
to protect the victims, but everything else, get it out
there and get this let's move on by by being transparent.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Amen to that, and Senator Houston, you know, I think
they would go a long way to solving this so
called crisis. If the Justice Department say, we do have
ongoing criminal investigations, which is why we can't release the information.
I think that would satisfy a lot of people and
at least put the whole issue to bed.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, and then and then prosecute someone.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Amen.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
You can't imagine that only those two, you know, the
Epstein and the Epstein girlfriend, were the ones, the only
ones involved committing a crime here. You'd have to think
that there's someone else too that deserves to be prosecuted.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I think that's a safe conclusion. Senator Hughes that it
has been a real pleasure. Thank you for the time
you spent with my listeners to me this morning. I
truly appreciate. Keep up the great work.
Hi, It's Brian Thomas here with Senator John Houston. Welcome
back to the program. John, It's always a pleasure having
you on. Boy. There's a flurry of activity going to
coming out of Washington, DC. Very impressed by what the
Trump administration has been able to accomplish, and personally happy
to see the Big Beautiful Bill get passed. I mean,
I was hoping, and I think my listeners were hoping
for more cuts, recognizing some of the work that Doge
(00:21):
had done. We expected, you know, a much larger slice
of the government to be cut out. But a lot
of great was accomplished in the Big Beautiful Bill, most
notably the tax increase or the tax cuts have been
made permanent, and that, despite what the Democrats keep saying,
that is a benefit to a huge swath of Americans
and of course Ohioans.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, small businesses, manufacturers, all of them benefit by knowing
what the rules are. They know they can plan, they
can plan a capital investment knowing that they're going to
be able to deduct the cost of that in this
year's taxes, which means they have predictability, and then they
can hire people, they can grow. This kind of stuff
is very important, but it's also important for middle class
(01:05):
working families. And I want to dig into that. No
tax on tips, no tax on overtime, you know, bigger
deduction for Social Security recipients, a child tax credit for
working families, not one that's rebatable to people that don't work,
but for people who actually work. All of that fantastic
(01:26):
stuff for working families in Ohio.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And so they just recently found out, you know, everyone
on the left side of the ledgers screaming about how
everyone's going to die because they're going to have their
Medicaid taken away from them. I just saw an article
on the Wall Street Journal I talked about earlier in
the program yesterday, and fourteen billion dollars in fraud waste abuse,
most notably people signed up in multiple states. It didn't
take them that long to apply modern computer technology to
(01:51):
cross reference to these people and find out that they're
registered in multiple states double dipping. That was an easy fix.
How come it took so long to come up with
that one.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, Frankly, one of the problems is is the federal
government pays the bill and the states administered, so many
states have no incentive to actually go track this down,
and we did that with SNAP saying, hey, if you're
gonna have a fraud and abuse, then the states that
have it, you're going to pay a little bit more
of the cost of doing these programs. That's certainly the
case with Medicaid. You have people who are ineligible, who
(02:24):
are on there, people who are registered in multiple states.
And what does that matter? Because you have insurance companies
Medicaid manage care companies that pay states pay premiums. The
federal government pays premiums in both states. So that's a
huge cost of covering multiple people even though they should
only be or multiple states, even though showed me in
(02:44):
one state that stuff matters. It adds up to billions
of dollars. And nobody was doing it before, and that's
a big difference. It's like, you can identify these things,
but what are we doing about it? Were doing something
about it in this bill. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
One thing we all have learned of late there is
no follow through to find out what happens after the
money goes out the door in Washington. Does it actually
accomplish anything? All these non governmental organizations with their hands
in the cookie jar of the taxpayer money, we don't
I mean, like the Doge identified projects. We don't know
if even the Sesame Street program in Iraq or whatever
was even done. The money did go towards something that
(03:21):
was labeled as that, but nobody follows up and tracks
the taxpayer dollars. So I think it's a refreshing thing
that the Trump administration is doing along those lines, at
least trying to make sure the money's doing something and
accomplishing something on behalf of the American taxpayer. Now, one
of the problems, well.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
There was a there was a let me just say
something on that. There's a big message sent. We stayed
up till two thirty in the morning doing the recisions
package to take back literally nine billion dollars in spending,
not a huge amount. You would think that would be easy. Finally,
cutting things like Sesame Street and Iraq and transgender surgeries
in Guatemala. We cut those packages. And the message to
(03:55):
the bureaucracy is this, Brian, don't do stupid things and
you'll be fine, But if you do stupid things, we
are actually willing to cut your budgets. So that was
a big message. It was sent.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
That amazing concept John EUSt did. Now I saw Donald
Trump sign the Halt Fentanyl Act into law. I wanted
to pivot over to that. I think we and Ohio
have a problem with fentanyl like all the other states.
And of course I think the main problem is the
Chinese Communist Party and sending all the precursor elements out
into the world to be turned into fentanyl. Whether or
not Trump accomplishes, getting that shutdown would go a long
(04:28):
way to stopping the fentanyl problem. But how is the
Halt Fentanyl Act going to help us here in Ohio.
It's going to give.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Law enforcement more tools to go after people. A lot
of times they would hide these ingredients under you know,
technicalities in the law. This just cleans it up, gives
law enforcement more power to go after the bad actors.
But it's also important in the trade fight with China.
(04:55):
There's a premium in there on a tariff, a twenty
percent additional tariff until China takes care of these is
shoes around fentanyl. So they're going to, you know, if
they're going to keep turning a blind eye to the
problems that they're creating in this country and the sort
of the modern day opium opium more, Uh, we're going
to have to continue to push back on them and
(05:15):
giving law enforcement more tools with Halt, fent and al
and all. They think that it's a terrible tragedy that
comes with it. It's also the human trafficking and all
that from drug addicted people that ends up happening, from
the gangs and the people coming across the border illegally.
It's just a whole mess that was created by the
Biden administration that we're still trying to sort out. And
this is just one more tool for law enforcement, those
(05:36):
men and women who go out there every day and
put their lives on the line to protect us.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Senni Houston pivoting over to the cafe standards something in
trouble administration wants to get rid of. I think it's
a pointless thing to have laws of supply and demand
should be in effective. If I want to drive a
car that gets eight miles to the gallon and I don't,
I should be able to buy one. But these cafe
standards create artificial miles per gallon that are forcing manufacturers
to old electric vehicles that apparently the population does not want.
(06:03):
They're losing money, they're hemorrhaging the tax credits, are disappearing,
so there's fewer there's lessons centive to buy an electric vehicle.
Can't we just scrap the whole process and let the
market forces dig dictate what we drive and what are
miles per gallop happened to be.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Well, we're in the process of scrapping a lot of that. Yes,
on cafe standards. That also, we repealed the California ev
mandate that seventeen other states had joined. If you remember,
they were going to say all cars in California in
seventeen other states had to be electric vehicles by twenty
thirty five. Think about that, every new car had to
(06:39):
be an electric vehicle by twenty thirty five. And we
repealed that Biden era regulation that allowed them to do
that that kind of stuff. I mean, frankly, we saved
them from themselves. Yeah, there's no way that the people
of those states would have rebelled if you were going
to force them to have to buy electric cars. But
(07:00):
common sense and a Republican majority prevailed in that one,
and we repealed it. But all of those things skew
the markets. Companies go out and make investments not on
what the consumer wants, but what the government regulations say
they must do, and that skews the whole landscape, and
eventually you ping pong it around because it's it's one
(07:22):
administration gets in, they set rules. The next one comes in,
they set a different set of rules. Just clean the slate.
Let the car companies respond to the consumers. Technology will
drive better environmental and outcomes and emission achievements.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Good ideas. Great ideas do not require force or tax incentives. John,
that's my point.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
On that, and that is right, and every day we
get new lessons about that.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Hey, real, briefly, I know we're out of time. Just
one final question, where are you on the Epstein files?
I hate to go over that diversion paying no attention
to the man behind the curtain kind of thing. But
are you in favor of releasing this? I think most
of my listening audience like, just let it out, get
over with and uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Well yeah, we can do this. Look turnover all you can.
Don't turn over anything that would undermine a potential prosecution
if there is somebody who deserves to be prosecuted, yes,
and also protect the victims. We don't want victims' names
out there. They didn't do anything wrong. If you recall
in the Prince Andrew case, the woman who who got
(08:22):
outed in this Epstein saga, she committed suicide. We want
to protect the victims, but everything else, get it out
there and get this let's move on by by being transparent.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Amen to that, and Senator Houston, you know, I think
they would go a long way to solving this so
called crisis. If the Justice Department say, we do have
ongoing criminal investigations, which is why we can't release the information.
I think that would satisfy a lot of people and
at least put the whole issue to bed.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, and then and then prosecute someone.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Amen.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
You can't imagine that only those two, you know, the
Epstein and the Epstein girlfriend, were the ones, the only
ones involved committing a crime here. You'd have to think
that there's someone else too that deserves to be prosecuted.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I think that's a safe conclusion. Senator Hughes that it
has been a real pleasure. Thank you for the time
you spent with my listeners to me this morning. I
truly appreciate. Keep up the great work.
Brian Thomas News
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