Seven oh seven to fifty five ker C Detalk Station. Brian Thomas, welcoming back to the fifty five KRC Morning Show. Dave Williams from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, looking out for where government spending our money, usually in the worst possible places and not minding the financial shop. Find them online at Protecting Taxpayers dot org. Welcome back, Dave Williams. And I'll let you know, like I've been letting my listeners know this morning. Sorry for the repetition for those who
been listening all morning. I'm struggling with some really deep long coughing issues, so I'll try to do my best not to stumble. But if you hear me pause, it's because I'm hitting the cough button. Welcome back, Dave Williams. Always love having you on the show.
Brian, good morning. Sorry to hear you're a little bit under the weather, and listen. I like to talk, so don't worry about uh slack.
I always enjoy all conversations. David. Let us start off with something that to me is, if not the most important, got to be in the top two most important things, shutting down and reeling in government spending. And I was really excited about it. I think Elon Musk is just a neat guy. He is goofy, he's weird, he's got great ideas. He's obviously brilliant, way way way out of the box and is thinking but demonstrably successful, brilliant, multi billionaire.
He knows how to cut government and looks like he's going to have at least some sort of role, perhaps a prominent role in doing that in the Trump administration. Now, if you're a betting man, Dave, is it going to happen?
Wow? So much to unpack the Yeah, Elon Musk really is a fascinating guy, right, Tesla SpaceX. I mean, so many things that he has his hands in, and he's the last month or two he's been talking about this Department of Government Efficiency, really going through the federal government looking for a raceful spending, redundant spending, duplicative, you name it. And this really, you know, scratches the itch for me when we talk about doing an audit of the federal government,
and that's what he's talking about, is an audit. I remember back in the eighties we had the Grace Commission, and this was a really comprehensive look at the federal government. I mean, it was a long time ago, but it really set the tone for auditing the government. And I think, you know what, forty years later, now we can do the same thing, but we have an advantage. Forty years later.
It's technology. We have ways of going inside the government now, and I'm hoping and looking and finding a government waste a lot easier than we did in the nineteen eighties. And that's why I'm excited now, Brian, I'm not so excited if you look at the history of Republicans when it comes to spending.
Amen, Trump right there, go ahead, I'm gonna I'm calling out Trump right now. It's one of the biggest criticisms I had. I said, he has never been a deficit hawk. The government spending went up under his administration. Our deficit went up what five trillion under the Trump administration?
It did you know, and look at before COVID. You know, the Democrats would have done nothing different during COVID. They would have spent trillions upon trillions of dollars. But let's look at what happened before COVID. When Trump was president, we had a deficit of two point two trillion dollars that's concerning. That's very concerning. So now he's coming back in January, we're gonna have a House and a Senate
that's going to be controlled, right Republicans. This is their opportunity to do something, some meaningful reform, whether a speaker Mike Johnson or another speaker who comes in. It's time, and it's I mean, it's pastime, as does me. Honest, I mean we're talking. You know, interest on the debt is eight hundred to nine hundred billion dollars. That's interest, Brian, That's that's multiple government agencies put together, spending wise, and
that's why this needs to be addressed immediately. But Speaker Johnson has an opportunity to do this. And again, you know Trump has been talking about this. If you're gonna walk, you know, if you're going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk in. But again, their track record isn't great.
No, it's not because politicians have a difficult time saying no. I mean they're worried about the next election even though the first one. Then the ink isn't even dry on Trump winning the other day, and you know they're already thinking about two years from now and running again, and to cut means you know, boiling it down to its bottom line, pissing some people off. You're gonna have to eradicate jobs in government, Dave, you been following this. The
biggest growth in jobs has been government jobs. It's been nothing but expansion of government over decades, and it just got worse over the past three hours, four years.
I'm glad you brought that up because these job numbers where they say we've added three hundred thousand jobs, a lot of them have been government jobs mean taxpayer funded jobs, and a lot of people don't know that and they think that, you know, it's really an illusion of these jobs gains have been an illusion because they're really not. When the government's adding that means you're subtracting from taxpayers. So, you know, the economy is still it's the economy is struggling.
You know. The administration one to put a happy face on it, and you know, they reduced interest rates and did a lot of other things, but we're still in a very weak and tenuous economy.
Well, and let's look at the nature of government jobs. Unlike the private sector, government jobs live thrive and survive on taking money from us out here trying to be productive and support a basically a consumer consumption driven economy. Government jobs don't create money. They merely confiscate money and spend it on an administration and overhead and office space and you know, fiddling around and issuing edicts and mandates
that further restrain our economic activity. It's just it is a you know, it isn't a recipe for making money. It's taking money out. Isn't that really the final analysis how it boils down, Dave?
It really isn't. You know. The best example I can give you is the United States Postal Service versus the private sector when it comes to seasonal hiring. So everyone's ramping up for Christmas and the holidays, you know, deliver packages, deliver mail. Well, what the Postal Service does is they have seasonal hiring like the private sector, but you have the option of becoming full time after Christmas and after the holidays, because the unions have negotiated this with the
Postal Service. Now, if you work for the private sector, if it's UPS or Fedexio, no, we're just hiring you until January and we are going to let you go because it's seasonal. Hence the seasonal the Postal Service almost guarantees that if you want a full time job after your seasonal employment, you can have it. So there you have the difference between the private sector and the public sector. And when it comes to stupidity and really bad hiring decisions and you know, economic decisions.
Yeah, and it's a wonder And I just I step back and I stare at the US Postal Service. How many years in a row have they lost billions of dollars? This has been going on for as long as ey as you have been have been talking, if not much longer.
Yeah, I had a lot more hair when they were making money. You know. It's they've lost what one hundred and more than one hundred billion dollars over the last fifteen years. I mean, this is an entity that has a monopoly on first class mail and they're blowing it. I mean, I would love to have a monopoly in any sort of business, and I guarantee you if I had a monopoly, I'd be making money hand over fist.
But for some reason, the Postal Service, and we know a lot of the reasons that the Postal Service just can't do it.
Yeah, I hate this on them, and I know that the post guy, that person that delivers my mail is not the one that's to blame. It's the model, it's the system, and it's the refusal of those in charge to well crack down on it for reasons that escape me. Protecting taxpayers dot orgs where you find Dave and the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. Stick around, Dave. We're going to talk about answering the question is the future looking brighter? Doing a little tea Lea Forado with Dave at seven twenty
if afty five KCD talk station. Happy Friday to you. Somebody's got to look out for our money, and someone is protecting taxpayers dot org. Dave william and the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. Dave's joined the program as he does about once a month. And here's an interesting question. Is the future looking brighter? Interesting sort of loaded question, Dave. I guess it depends on which direction we're looking.
I think the future is looking brighter. Two examples, tax reform. We have the tax cuts that are going to expire at the end of twenty twenty five next year. This was Trump's signature piece of legislation, right, I mean, this gave the economy a shot in the arm. That it desperately need. At the end of twenty seventeen and beginning of twenty eighteen, companies sent out thousand dollars bonuses to people. It really was a great time. You know, obviously a
year or so before COVID hit. But we have an opportunity to extend the tax cuts to remain competitive around the world, but to make sure that people's taxes are still relatively low. Listen, there's a lot of work to do. I'm not going to lie, but if these tax cuts expired would be awful for the economy. We had the trifecta. Now we have the House, the Senate, and the White House. There is no excuse not to extend the tax cuts.
So that's where I'm really really excited about. And there's a commitment, i think, from everyone in the Republican Party to do that. There are differences in the Republican Party some issues, but not when it comes to tax cuts. Energy. Wow, this is going to be fascinating. Is he going to restart the Keystone Xcel pipeline in January? That was Biden's first thing that he did was shut it down when he came into office. I would love for Trump for that to be one of the first things that he does.
It is there still time to do that? That thing's been flipped on and off more times than I care to even remember over the past what eight ten years. I mean, I've lost track on that day.
There absolutely is. And what's frustrating is if they if Biden wouldn't have done this, that thing would be pumping eight hundred thousand poles of oil into this country a day. I mean, that's where we would be, and obviously gas prices would be lower, but there'd be a lot more jobs in that part of the country. And these are good paying jobs, Brian, you know, one hundred thousand dollars jobs. So it just it's all good for the economy when we have more oil exploration and more oil coming into
this country. And really it's the green energy mandates, you know, just getting rid of these mandates. Listen, if you want to drive an electric vehicle, go for it. I don't care, just don't use my money to do it. You know, we're building all of what we're trying to build these charger stations all across the country. I think three or four have been built. But my bigger question is, Brian can you imagine if they were taxpayer money building gas stations,
people would lose their minds. Yeah, rightly, so, I mean rightly so listen, our money shouldn't be used to build gas stations or charging stations. This is corporate welfare. This should not be happening. So but again, I am very optimistic about energy. Come next year, and you know what we could see, will there be more nuclear plants? Where
we see nuclear plants being built. We have tech companies that are now moving to nuclear and trying to open nuclear plants because their data centers take so much energy that they don't want to be a draw on the grid. I mean, this is what the private sector is doing. Is Trump and is Congress? Are they going to move forward with this and say okay, it's time that we move more towards nuclear.
Well, I have a strong gut reaction to that, and the answer is yes. But note Dave that these tech companies, the Googles, the Alphabet whatevers say they're gonna get these modular reactors, and no one in the Biden Harris administration reacts with the hell, no, you're not going to do that three mile while and they actually kind of embraced it.
They didn't. They didn't say no. So if you're big and powerful enough that you have enough money, I suppose to donate money to campaigns and spend a billion dollars starting to get Kamala Harris leged. And you're the one that's going to get a nuclear power plant. But the neighborhood next to the giant AI facility, sorry, sucks to be you. You're gonna have to live off a windmill.
You know. You're absolutely right is that it can't be just for these companies. There has to be a larger deployment of this because it's gonna bring down our energy costs, and that's what kills small business. You talk to any small business, you know, it's the energy costs when you have a spike and electricity cost that kills small business, especially restaurants and the ones that use a lot of electricity.
So I agree with you one hundred percent. You can't just favorite the you know, have favoritism towards the big guys. It has to be spread all around the country.
And again reminding folks that these modular reactors one size literally fits all. You get the plan, you know how to do it. It's like putting legos together. Got one right here, We're gonna put one over there, and it's gonna be the same design, same principles. They're small, uh, And it's just we don't have to build giant cooling towers and have them next to massive water sources like the old days. That's amazing what technology can do to bring us around
cheap energy. But Dave, I keep going back to the fact the green folks, the globalists of the world do not want us to have inexpensive energy because we're too damned and successful with that and we're too damn consumptive for their perceptive of perception of life.
Well, and they're kind of backed into a corner because nuclear is a renewable energy, yeah, carbon free, it's really the carbon free though. It really puts them in a real awkward position, which I love that nuclear energy really is the you know, the answer to a lot of our energy needs at this point.
No doubt about it, and something that RFK Junior may have something to do with more with Dave Williams coming up next, what is the Pharmacy, Audit and Transparency Act seven thirty one and fifty five kerc DE talk Station, Brian Thomas a Dave Williams from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. All right, we answered the question or anticipated about Trump reeling in government spending. Please do your guy, let that happen.
The future does appear to be looking brighter, at least in so far as one thing energy policy across the board. Energy policy is in our future, I think quite quite promising along those lines. And moving over to something and I said, Elon Musk or rather RFK Junior may have something to do with it. What is the Pharmacy Audit and Transparency Act, Dave.
Boy, This is a little bit complicated, but let's see if we can get to this. And you know right now the Department of in Human Services the FDA, a lot of improvement is needed, especially in pricing of drugs. And you have these pharmacy benefit managers who act as middlemen between pharmacies and insurance companies. And it's really listen, whenever a middleman is involved in anything, someone's taking something off the top here.
Oh yeah, it's like pharmacy benefit managers.
Yeah. And what they're doing is they're negotiating between the insurers and the pharmacies. So they say, okay, pharmacy, we're gonna give you X amount for a drug. But then they go to the insurers and they ask more. So the pharmacy benefit managers are making money just being a middleman and negotiating prices between insurance companies and UH and pharmacies.
And you know, you look in Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, a lot of pharmacies are going out of business because of the low reimbursements that they're getting for for the drugs.
Is there really truly a need for that middleman, Dave.
No, absolutely not. You know, this was created a number of years ago of pharmacy benefit managers and they're not benefeeing anybody. I mean, it's it's you know, healthcare. There's no such thing as the free market in healthcare.
Right.
You go to the hospital, you have no idea what that procedure costs. And you know, I heard the commercial you had, you know, a couple of minutes ago. Yeah, I mean it shows you that we need reform in the healthcare system. You break an arm, how much does that cost? How much are you being charged? How much does that actually cost? We never know, And that's why you need to look at this top to bottom, including the costs of drugs and these pharmacy benefit managers.
Yeah, I've been hearing about pharmacy benefit managers now for years and years, and I just I really don't understand. We go back to modern technology. Maybe there was a time back a while back, before you know, we communicated with emails and had artificial intelligence and could do things sort of very quickly and easily from a communications standpoint. We're not in those days anymore. We've got all this technology.
It should be very easy for an insurance company to work directly with the manufacturers to negotiate a price it's best for their insurance, and everyone can be happy and satisfied with it. But throwing that extra slice of bureaucracy in, I mean just by saying that, you know it comes at a significant cost.
Well, and look at the cause of the problems to food and Drug administration. It takes twelve years at about two billion dollars to bring a drug to market.
And unless it's unless it's a cod mRNA vaccine, which which with complete immunity from any liability associated with the dangers, then they'll they'll put that through in about five seconds.
Yeah, talk about operation Warps it for sure. Yeah, so again, healthcare is a mess, and listen, I don't know if one administration can unravel all the intricacies of the nonsense that's happening. But you have to start somewhere, and you know this is a This is a great place to start with pharmacy benefit managers.
Agreed, Dave Williams. Again, get them online. It's protecting Taxpayers dot org Taxpayer Protection Alliance. Until we talk again, keep up the great work you're doing, Dave. I always appreciate our conversations, and I know my listeners do as well.
Brian, feel better and have a great weekend.
Yeah, you do the same, man, appreciate that very much. It's seven thirty five right now, I fifty five K city talk station. Phone lines are open. We got some time for the top of the art news to engage in conversations, so feel free to give me your ring five one, three, seven, four nine fifty five hundred eight hundred eighty two three taco with pound five fifty if you have an a T and T phone,