Sen. Rand Paul - Tariffs, DOGE, and the Dept of Education

Episode Transcript

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a happy Thursday to you.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Fast forward an hour.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
We're gonna hear from my Heart mediavia next Bert, Jay
Ratliffe and head over at fifty five KRC dot com.
Joe's already posted the conversation I had just now with
Ken Blackwell. We had a special edition of the Big
Picture with Jack alan In earlier on tariffs and he
reminded us that today is the anniversary of the Sailor
Park Tornado that was April third, nineteen seventy four.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Amember like it was yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
And thanks to Jess Obert from Peyton's Lemonade Stand getting
us up to speed because it is fast approaching, great
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(01:42):
get some great exposure on that. And with that, I
want to thank specifically Fisher Homes. After hearing my conversation
with Jess over they reached out to Peyton's Lemonade Stand.
They are now an official sponsor, So God bless the
Principles at Peyton Holmes for making that decision, and that's
why I am giving you a shout out today. Let
us turn to Senator rand Paul. Always a distinct pleasure

(02:04):
to have you on the program. Senator Paul, Welcome back.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Good morning, Brian, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Got a lot to go through. Just got on the
phone with Ken Blackwell.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
We also talked about the Department of Government efficiency and
Elon Musk And I don't know. I can't make heads
or tails out of these leftists attacking cars that they
once worshiped in the name of climate change, but that's
what's going on. But they're trying to defend the indefensible,
I mean, and also bringing to light and I wanted
your reaction on this, the failure of our people, the

(02:32):
folks in government, those behind the scenes working with the
IRS social Security Department of minding tax dollars. How easy
is or how difficult a chore is it to get
people off active Social Security number lists when they obviously
do not exist, are dead.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
You know, I don't think after you've been dead one
hundred years you ought to be removed. They think we
could all agree, you know, if you've been dead over
one hundred years, maybe you shouldn't get any more social
security now. Some of it is probably a glitch, and
the way they have stuff recorded it makes a bit
different whether you're on the rolls, whether they're collecting it.
But for goodness sakes, can we not clean up the
damn social security roles? The dead people don't get checks.

(03:10):
You know, this isn't a brand new problem. During the
middle of COVID, we noticed that there were reports coming
back of dead people getting COVID funds, you know, getting
these PPP loans for their business and stuff. This was
a real scam and I think it was a thousand
dead people got over like a billion dollars or something crazy.

(03:31):
And so I went to the floor and we passed
legislation to try to clean this up. But it's amazing,
how you know, the system just is so slow. So
when I tried to clean it up so dead people
wouldn't receive checks, there were people complaining, and they said, oh, well,
we'll do it in three years, but first we have
to merge this system with that system, and it's going
to take three years. And I said, that's ridiculous. Let's

(03:53):
do it now, do it tomorrow. And so I appreciate
Elon Musk and President Trump frankly just raising Ellen saying
we're not going to do it anymore.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, And you know, but that the reaction is to
scream that he is somehow a fascist. I mean I
always commented that they need to read the definition of
fascism because by cleaning up fraud, waste, and abuse and
reducing the size and scope of government reduces the amount
of control they have over our individual lives, and control
is exactly what fascism is, dictating the terms of conditions

(04:24):
over how the means of production operates. I mean, they're
definitionly morons.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
I think they basically expose themselves though. I mean, if
you're setting cars on fire, you're a terrorist basically, and
we're going to go to prison for a long time.
I mean, people need to realize you burn up a
car dealership, you burn up a eighty thousand dollars car,
a sixty thousand dollars car, you're going to jail for
a long period of time. And so, but the thing

(04:51):
is is they expose themselves. For example, you know when
Elon Musk points out and I've pointed this out as well,
that we're spending two million dollars on sex change operations
in Guatemala, three million dollars on girl centric climate change
in Brazil. Nobody's for that. When you ask people at
home in Kentucky, any part of Kentucky, do you want

(05:12):
to send two million bucks to Guatemala to help them
do something obscene to their children? People are absolutely enraged
by this. But the Democrats haven't figured this out yet.
The Democrats are not for cutting one penny of foreign aid. Unfortunately,
there are many Republicans that aren't for cutting four and
a too. I put forward an amendment about a week

(05:33):
ago to basically take what Elon Musk and Doze has
found in wasting four and eight about sixteen billion, and
eliminate it. And I got twenty seven Republicans, but I
got twenty six Republicans of vode to keep spending the
foreign aid. So this is where we're stuck. Is that
you know, there are some decent Republicans. There are no

(05:54):
Democrats that will cut one penny in foreign aid. That's
just the truth, and people can look it up, but
it's the truth. On the Republican side, it's only a
little over half on a good day that I can
get to vote to cut this waste. We're gonna have
the same thing come up this week. The Republicans are
putting forward a budget. It'll be only Republicans that vote
for it, but they're going to ask for five trillion

(06:14):
dollar increase in the dead scale. And so I'm going
to tell them, look, of course, unless you balance your
budget immediately, you have to keep borrowing money. I'll let
you borrow five hundred billion, which is crazy, but that's
three months worth of borrowing, and in three months we'll
come back and we'll assess whether or not you're doing
what you promised. See, they're making these promises that they

(06:36):
will cut spending and they'll behave and they'll be better people,
and they won't be the typical big spenders that Republican
leadership has been. And I say, look, trust, but verify.
I'll give you three months worth of borrowing and then
we'll see what happens. But it'll be interesting to see
how my amendment does because there's a possibility that people
across the hour might even vote for it. Design So

(06:58):
I'm going to try to red from five trillion dollars
in ball rang, which is about two years worth so
we're going to borrow two and a half trillion each
year for the next two years during supposedly conservative Republican rule.
But I'm going to try to change it to five
hundred billion. But it'll be quite an interesting vote to
see how Republicans vote on my Amma.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
It certainly will, and I think quite often the Republicans
and certain Republicans, we could all come up with a
list of names. Are the ones that continue and perpetuate
this endless spending. We've dug ourselves into thirty six trillion
in debt, twenty trillion dollars a year to pay our
credit card interest rate. This cannot continue. And the elephant
in the room, Senator Paul, and I'm sure you know this,
so security, Medicare, and Medicaid, those are the biggest expenditures

(07:41):
we've got. Those systems are collapsing under the weight of themselves.
Something is going to have to do. It be done,
and no one says they are willing to, you know,
put their elected a job on the line to actually
save us from ourselves.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
Yeah, and this is when you look at the spending.
We spend seven trillion that we bring in five trillion.
The seven trillion that we spend is largely comprised as
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and huge stamps. So if you
take those four items off of the table and you
say we're not going to look at these at all,
you don't have that much spending left, really, and so

(08:20):
we've got a real problem. But we have to look
at all spending. And so one of the proposals I've
had is not actually to cut people immediately off Medicaid,
but to simply say to the states, you know what,
you got to share half of the burden. That's what
it used to be. States paid half of medicaid, federal
government paid the other half. But when Obamacare happened in
twenty ten, we added about fifteen million people to medicaid,

(08:43):
but we said, hey, it'll be free. The federal government
will pay ninety percent and the states will have to
pay ten percent. So this isn't This is one of
those fixes that is eminently reasonable and not even that draconian.
We don't cut anyone off. We just say to all
the states, you now have to pay fifty percent of
these new people people, And that saves about five hundred
billion for the federal government. Now, state government would have

(09:04):
to pick up the tab. But the difference is the
state governments don't have a printing press, they don't have
a federal reserve, and so they might have to make
more responsible decisions, and they might say, hmm, if you're
able bodied, you have no physical helments, you're not on
any medications, why aren't you working?

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Exactly?

Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know, why don't you get a job with insurance?
And there are plenty of jobs out there, I mean
that have insurance. It's amazing the jobs are out there
if you will work. You know, they're not easy jobs.
But you can actually stack boxes in northern Kentucky and
do the arranging of the shipping and help with shipping
with Amazon for like twenty four dollars an hour. So

(09:42):
I mean there are jobs out there for the waiting.
I'm not saying it's easy, but you know, life's not easy.
Get up there and work. There are many good jobs
out there. There are many good jobs with insurance out there.
But we can't keep doing what we're doing. There's just
there's too many people in the wagon, not enough people
pulling the wagon.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Isn't that the true? So it also forced states to
take greater stock and fraud, waste, and abuse. I know
we have a real problem with fraud here in the
state of Ohio with Medicaid billions of dollars, is what
I've been told. So you can take some measures to
curb the cash outlays without impacting anyone, really, Senator Paul
pivoting over briefly to the Department of Education, I know
got a lot of teachers unions wigged over, wigged out

(10:21):
over the idea of pairing it back and ultimately perhaps
eliminating which require an active Congress. But our lives are
not better because the existence of the Apartment of Education.
Just looking at the nation's failing schools and the inability
of many children to even be able to read or
write at grade level. Block grants of the states, rather
than going through the Department of Education and giving the
freedom to the local school boards and school districts to

(10:43):
determine the future of their children. That's a better path,
is it not.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
You know, getting rid of the Department of Education in
Washington is the most pro teacher policy probably ever presented
in the last several decades. The teachers I talked to
chase at the Department of Education. It gives them federal
man days. It tells them the to do federal testing.
They spend a lot of their time teaching the kids
according to the testing, and the kids aren't necessarily getting
more proficient at reading or math because we've been forcing

(11:10):
them to take these federal tests for the last you know,
forty years or so. So I think we should promote
this as pro teacher. Also, it's you know, sixty eighty
ninety billion, it's a huge pot of money. That money's
not going into teacher salary. You know that you've got
bureaucrats in Washington doing DEI diversity equity conclusion, some bureaucrats

(11:31):
and in Washington consumed with race when we should be
getting away from race and talking about people's individuals, not
as you know, what ethnic group they're from. But we
have people making four hundred thousand dollars as bureaucrats in
the DEI bureaucracy. That money could be spent more on
education or frankly, teacher salaries. So there's a lot of

(11:53):
ways that teachers I think should look at getting rid
of federal control and sending it back to the States
as a good thing not only for students, but for
teachers and Frankly, you're exactly right. Over the last forty years,
our scores have gone down. I mean, really, science proficiency
is under ten percent. Reading proficiency about a third of

(12:13):
the kids can read at grade level. I mean, it's
not an overwhelming success.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
It is not.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
And finally, let's pivot over to tariffs for part coming today.
Senator Paul, I know you're not a fan, and you
had a quote yesterday you were speaking with the Hill
on the Hills rising tariffs are attacked and if you
tax trader, you tax anything, you get less of it.
And I agree with that point, and I know we're
going to suffer a little bit in terms of increased prices.
But when you see China, for example, head in place
and has had in place a sixty seven percent tariff

(12:40):
on goods imported from the US, and you can go
across the board and look at some of these outrageous tariff.
Of course, the people that live there get fewer American
products as the price out of the market, and that
exists in a multitude of countries that now have at
least some tariff on them. I mean, if one thing
this has been eye opening on it's that well, we're
being mistreated in the global sense.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, I think the mistake in analyzing this is thinking
that the United States buy stuff from China or the
United States buy stuff from Canada. Individuals buy stuff from
other individuals, and they happen to reside in other places.
Trade deficits between countries really don't mean much. So, for example,
over the last seventy years, we've had a trade deficit

(13:26):
with Canada. It's not a big one. It's actually they
buy a lot of stuff from US. In fact, Canada
buys more from US than China plus Japan plus England
plus France. So Canada buys more than four countries combined,
four big countries combined. And putting tariffs on that that
just makes our products more expensive. But there is The

(13:47):
thing is is, let's say that you make one hundred
thousand dollars a year and I make five million dollars
a year. Who do you think has a bigger trade
deficit with Amazon, or with a grocery store or with
you know, luxury goods. Well, the person who makes more
will always have a bigger trade destict because they buy
more stuff and they don't make anything themselves. A rich

(14:08):
person doesn't necessarily make anything. So every individual has a
bigger trade deficit if they are rich. So the United
States is rich, we will always have a trade deficit
with Canada because we're rich. It's like five million people
in some reindeer living up there, you know, And so
we always will have a trade deficit with Canada. But
doesn't mean we've gotten poorer over seventy years. We've gotten

(14:29):
richer over seventy years, and so the Canadians. But if
you put a tariff on potash, which is you know,
goes into fertilizer, what's going to happen to our farmers
is they're going to pay more for fertilizer. And what
happens that people eat the stuff our farmers make is
going to cost more. So it's a mistake to get
caught up in this country versus that country when every

(14:50):
individual trade, if it's voluntary, is a good one. If
I'm a farmer and I buy my fertilizer from Canada,
it's a voluntary trade and I buy it from them
at a certain price, but it isn't something I'm not
getting ripped off. Nobody who makes a trade has ever
ripped off, because when you make a trade, you agree
voluntarily to give up your money for something you want.

(15:11):
The person trading with you gives up something they made
for your money. So a trade is never bad, and
a trade is never injurious to any of the parties
of the trade if it's done voluntarily. If you look
at the last seventy years and you look at the
curve of international trade, international trade has grown exponentially over
the last seventy years. But if you look at GDP

(15:33):
per person across the world, it has grown exponentially. Also,
every day one hundred thousand people escape poverty. We the
middle class is not being hauled out. The middle class
has actually gone to the upper class in the last
seventy years. If you look at household income, those who
make fifty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars, there's slightly
less than there was seventy years ago. But if you

(15:56):
look at the lower class, there's also slightly less. So
where did these people go. There's less people in the
under fifty thousand dollars category, there's less people in the
fifty to one hundred thousand dollars. Guess what, There's three
times as many people in over one hundred thousand dollars category.
And this is including inflation. If in long term historical trends,
trade and wealth are proportional. You know, the more trade,

(16:19):
the more wealth we've gotten. And then wealth is more
apparent in the poor countries because they started out poor.
But we are all getting richer. And if we want
American manufacturing, the best way to do it's lower their
taxes and less than their regulations. We have the smartest,
most capable workers in the world. We still make many
things here, but you know, we don't make shoes. We

(16:40):
don't make some of those things. But you know, if
the tariff history day is a fifty percent tariff on Vietnam,
so para nikes instead of costing one hundred and twenty
dollars are going to cost one hundred and eighty dollars
or or whatever the price is going to be. I
don't think that makes us any richer. I think that's
just going to make us poor. We're not going to
make shoes here tomorrow. You know, you think in five

(17:01):
years of fifty percent tariff on Vietnam or all of
a sudden, you gonna make shoes here. No, we's every American
is going to pay more for shoes, which means we're
all going to be poor.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Well, and I agree, But the correlary to that is
Vietnam charges a ninety percent tariff on on goods important
from the United States, which means the Vietnamese aren't going
to be able to afford products that we make. There
won't be any demand for them because of the insane terror.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
Or I mean, if you put a ninety percent tariff
on American goods, you're an idiot and it makes you poorer.
So because they're idiots and it makes them poor and
they can't buy our stuff, doesn't mean we still shouldn't
want to have less expensive things in our country. See,
it gets into this fairness argument between countries. And the
thing is is, you know people say, well, they've got
a terraff so they must be must be a better place. Well,

(17:45):
hell no, ours, our country is a much better place
than Vietnam. I wouldn't move to Vietnam, and still being
Vietnam would move to Vietnam, they wouldn't be want to
move over here. So having a ninety percent tariff, you know,
that's what we're trying to go towards because we think
it's on fair and this unfairst argument doesn't really make
sense because it doesn't make me want to move to
cant to Vietnam that has ninety percent tariffs.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Right.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
Actually, I think I would think, well, gosh, if I
moved to Vietnam, everything's gonna be very expensive if they
have ninety percent tariffs, I wouldn't want to move. That's
why I want to stay here. So when countries do
that to us, it doesn't make us poorer. It just
makes them. It makes them poor, but it doesn't necessarily
affect us. We are still killing it. I mean, we
are the dominant economic engine of the world despite what

(18:31):
others do, and some get you know, sometimes things do improve.
You know, us in Israel, we have no tariffs. We're
basically a free trade zone between US and Israel since
nineteen eighty five. So I don't begrudge President Trump if
he wants to try to tell them go lower, and
will go lower. But just slapping these things on, you know,

(18:51):
fifty percent tariff on Vietnam is the crazy thing. You know,
we fought the war, we got through the war, and
you have many veterans that go back now and we
actually have better relations with Vietnam now. But fifty percent tariff.
It is not a good way to keep good relations.
It's a good way to sour things.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Thoughtful analy says, as always by Senator Ran Paul. Can't
thank you enough for the willingness to come on the
program and share your thoughts and reason with us. Senator Paul,
You're always welcome here. Keep up the great work, and
I look forward to having you on real soon. Thanks Ryan,
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