Speaker 1: Whoever looks out for the taxpayer? Ever? That's my question.
Speaker 1: Does anybody ever represent the taxpayer in any discussion? I
Speaker 1: was thinking about it so earlier. We're talking with one
Speaker 1: of our experts, Market Korean, on immigration and talking about
Speaker 1: you know, the social welfare state and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Then we were just talking with Craig gott
Speaker 1: Walls about Obamacare and healthcare and subsidies and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, and you know, nobody's ever looking out
Speaker 1: for the taxpayer. And then I just got this email
Speaker 1: from my local school. Just got this free meals program
Speaker 1: extended exclamation point, and it says, we have great news
Speaker 1: to share. The US to part of Agriculture recently extended
Speaker 1: it's free universal Meals program for kids eighteen and under
Speaker 1: throughout the summer, so kids can now get one free
Speaker 1: breakfast and one free lunch per child per day. And
Speaker 1: it's always presented with exclamation points, and just isn't this fantastic?
Speaker 1: And does anybody ever represent the taxpayer? Who might be saying,
Speaker 1: like I'm in, what are these freaking meals costing me?
Speaker 1: Why aren't these parents buying their kids their own food?
Speaker 1: How many of these meals get eaten versus thrown in
Speaker 1: the trash. God dang it, nobody ever represents that side
Speaker 1: of the discussion that drives me crazy. Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: the money, that's right. Thank you Michael bringing us into
Speaker 1: this discussion and others joining us as long Hea Chen
Speaker 1: candidate for California State Controller. He needs to control this.
Speaker 1: David and Diane Stephy, fellow in American Public Policy Studies
Speaker 1: at the Hoover Institution and the Director of Domestic Policy
Speaker 1: Studies at Stanford lan He welcome to the Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Getty Show. Hey Jack, great to be with you. I
Speaker 1: just don't like all the exclamation points anybody. So somebody times,
Speaker 1: somebody talks about spending taxpayer money, it's never ever, ever
Speaker 1: from the other side your comments. Yeah, yeah, well you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that explains in part why you've seen
Speaker 1: such a growth in I mean, if you look back
Speaker 1: over the last I don't know, two years, a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't realize we've put six trillion dollars of
Speaker 1: spending into the economy in the U S. Six trillion dollars,
Speaker 1: And at no point along the way did somebody stop
Speaker 1: and say, well, is that really going to be the
Speaker 1: best idea. What are the implications of it? Now, some
Speaker 1: of that spending, you can argue happened. You know, we're
Speaker 1: in the midst of COVID, and you know we needed
Speaker 1: to buy ppe and all this other stuff. Find so
Speaker 1: maybe you give them a pass for the first trillions.
Speaker 1: But then the next five trillion came along, and what
Speaker 1: and what happened? Well, predictably, now everything costs more. I
Speaker 1: saw a graphic that on the fourth of July, all
Speaker 1: of the things we needed for picnics, right, hot dogs,
Speaker 1: catch up, let us condiments. The price on all of
Speaker 1: those things has escalated by in some cases over the
Speaker 1: course of the last eighteen months. And and so the
Speaker 1: problem with all of this sort of free money kind
Speaker 1: of mentality that we have is that you're right, nobody
Speaker 1: ever stops and says, well, what's the cost of it?
Speaker 1: And by the way, who's keeping accountability to make sure
Speaker 1: that the money that's being spent is actually going to
Speaker 1: where it's going. You know, the school lunch thing you
Speaker 1: mentioned is really interesting because there was an expose by
Speaker 1: a great reporter named Susan Crapstree who writes for Real
Speaker 1: Clear Politics, and she had had an expose about I
Speaker 1: don't know, six months ago where she found that what
Speaker 1: was happening with these free lunch funds was that they
Speaker 1: were actually going into wealthy school districts, school districts where
Speaker 1: the media income was an excess of like two a year.
Speaker 1: I got interrupted, so the school. I just got this
Speaker 1: email from my school. House sold behind me, crappy old
Speaker 1: house square feet right next to the school sold for
Speaker 1: a million point one to the other day. And they're
Speaker 1: giving out free lunches a hundred feet from that house
Speaker 1: that I'm paying for. What the hell is that? Well?
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, if the goal of the
Speaker 1: pro graham was to target kids who really needed the lunches,
Speaker 1: I think everyone would say, yeah, let but there's but
Speaker 1: there's no But there's nobody keeping watch. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why, you know, I mean, people
Speaker 1: are always like, well, what the heck does the state
Speaker 1: controller do well? The reality is this is the job
Speaker 1: of the state controller is to be the watchdog to
Speaker 1: make sure that when we see emails like this, we
Speaker 1: follow up and investigate and say, hey, what's actually going
Speaker 1: on in that school district. Are the kids who really
Speaker 1: need the food getting it? Or is it going to
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people who, frankly, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: given given their income situation, probably can afford to buy
Speaker 1: their kids lunch, and can we better you can we
Speaker 1: better use those resources somewhere else to solve real problems like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, homelessness, the crime that we see on
Speaker 1: our streets, all of the challenges that we have in
Speaker 1: our state with infrastructure, Can we address those? And and nobody,
Speaker 1: to your point at the beginning of our of our
Speaker 1: segment here, nobody is paying attention to what the tax
Speaker 1: payers need and want. And this is the problem we
Speaker 1: have with state governments. The problem we have with the
Speaker 1: federal government is that there's nobody they're keeping watching and
Speaker 1: that that attitude and mentality has to change. Is that
Speaker 1: something you would be doing if you end up being
Speaker 1: California's state controller. Absolutely, the controller has the ability to
Speaker 1: look into spending at the state level or any any
Speaker 1: local jurisdiction that uses state money. So school districts are
Speaker 1: a perfect example. We have had zero accountability around spending
Speaker 1: in our public schools. I just want people to realize
Speaker 1: how much money has gone into the public schools from
Speaker 1: the federal government now if that money had gone to
Speaker 1: help classrooms be safer for kids, or making sure that
Speaker 1: teachers get paid what we want them to get paid.
Speaker 1: If those were the things that we were spending money on,
Speaker 1: I think everyone would say, Okay, we can accept that money.
Speaker 1: The problem is I and I hear these stories from
Speaker 1: school district board members across our state. There is so
Speaker 1: much federal money coming in they don't know how to
Speaker 1: spend it. I'm sure, I guarantee you that's happening out
Speaker 1: of all the six you're just talking about it. If
Speaker 1: they don't spend it, the money goes away. So they said,
Speaker 1: we're going to spend it on stuff. We've gotta buy stuff.
Speaker 1: But nobody is saying, hey, are you spending the money
Speaker 1: in a way that is consistent with what the law
Speaker 1: demands and requires. Is it consistent with what's going to
Speaker 1: be best for our kids and our teachers, and our
Speaker 1: parents and our families. Nobody's asking that question. And that's
Speaker 1: why the State Controller's office is important. That's why I
Speaker 1: want to do it. And by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: it is a watchdog function, and so you can't trust
Speaker 1: people in the Sacramento insider Cabal to to do the job.
Speaker 1: They're just not gonna do it. All they're gonna do
Speaker 1: is make sure their friends are happy and they're satisfying
Speaker 1: all of the other politicians around Sacramento. And that's why
Speaker 1: we've got to get an outsider in there. And that's
Speaker 1: the kind of background I bring to the job. Um yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I like that idea of state controller being a more
Speaker 1: emphasized office. You know, I don't know if every state
Speaker 1: has the same role or they have different names in
Speaker 1: different places, but god damn it, I I hope society
Speaker 1: gets to a place someday where we attention. We get
Speaker 1: our paycheck. You see the number at the top, that's
Speaker 1: what you made this month. And then you see this
Speaker 1: number what you're actually getting to keep? All that other money,
Speaker 1: Where did it go? What did it get spent on?
Speaker 1: Why don't more people care about that? Well? It is interesting, right.
Speaker 1: We we have a financial literacy issue in our country
Speaker 1: where we need to help people understand exactly where their
Speaker 1: money is going and what it's being used for. You know,
Speaker 1: my son's eleven. Uh, he's taken to biking around with
Speaker 1: his friends. It's the summer, of course, that's what they do,
Speaker 1: and you know they end up every once in a
Speaker 1: while at Basket Robbins. Great, they end up at Basket Robbins.
Speaker 1: They buy a scoop of ice cream and my son
Speaker 1: comes back and he says, I don't get it the
Speaker 1: scoop of ice cream and said, you know, it was
Speaker 1: two dollars, but they asked me for you know, two dollars,
Speaker 1: and well, yes, then that's something called sales tax. And
Speaker 1: he said, well, why don't they tell you about this?
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, yeah they do, it's on the receipt.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I suppose we could do a
Speaker 1: better job of telling people they got a pay scales tax.
Speaker 1: But his basic point is like, well, if I if
Speaker 1: I knew it would cost the extra twenty five cents
Speaker 1: that I would have budgeted accordingly, you know, I may
Speaker 1: be wondering where that cents goes. And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you think it goes that? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: great question, great question. I'm actually not sure where it goes.
Speaker 1: But somebody needs to figure that out. And and this
Speaker 1: is the this is the thing for people across our
Speaker 1: state and across our country. It's like, you know, the
Speaker 1: the issue we have is that there's no accountability for
Speaker 1: where this money is going. I think people would feel
Speaker 1: a lot better if if we actually knew where the
Speaker 1: money was going, and we felt comfortable saying, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: determine whether this is a good use of spending or not. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have that. UM. I don't know
Speaker 1: that there's any mouthfeasance going on here. But there's a
Speaker 1: couple of schools where I've seen them do I like,
Speaker 1: when I'm playing at the part of my kids do
Speaker 1: some paving jobs around the school that I think, why
Speaker 1: are you doing that? I don't see what the problem was,
Speaker 1: or I feel like they're just trying to spend some
Speaker 1: of that money that's got to be happening various places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is. And and you know the problem
Speaker 1: is there are a lot of places around the state
Speaker 1: where we probably could use actual you know, paving of
Speaker 1: the roads or pay and and and and you know
Speaker 1: the problem and the challenge again comes back to all
Speaker 1: of this money has flooded into California and they can't
Speaker 1: spend it fast enough. You know, people wonder why we
Speaker 1: had twenty billion dollars in fraud in our unemployment insurance system.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've heard about this wrapper that
Speaker 1: got arrested. He basically was flaunting how he defrauded taxpayers
Speaker 1: in California. The focus of his rap was basically how
Speaker 1: he was making a living off of off of defrauding
Speaker 1: people through the unemployment insurance system. And the reason this
Speaker 1: happens is because the proper controls aren't in place. Nobody
Speaker 1: is stopping and saying, hey, does it make sense for
Speaker 1: you to give benefits to everybody, even if maybe they're
Speaker 1: not qualified? And and nobody saw fit to ask these questions,
Speaker 1: and so twenty billion dollars later, I want folks to
Speaker 1: realize we had a three set increase in the gas
Speaker 1: tax on July one here in Californias. Okay, for the
Speaker 1: amount of money these fraudsters took from us, they could
Speaker 1: have paid. We could have paid for thirty eight year. Wow,
Speaker 1: thirty eight years. And and and by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing to see here. You have to do some nothing
Speaker 1: to see the Democratic leadership in the state of California.
Speaker 1: Nothing to see here. Move right along. Let's oh, don't
Speaker 1: don't go away. Phone here. Okay, you're back. Uh sorry,
Speaker 1: we lost you there just briefly. And I understand exactly
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Uh, nobody's paying any attention to that. Hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask you a question before you go. By
Speaker 1: the way of if you vote in California, vote for
Speaker 1: Long Eachen for California State Controller. I mean he's being
Speaker 1: he's being endorsed by people that never endorsed Republicans, because
Speaker 1: we need that. I got a question for you. So
Speaker 1: polling came out this week. We've got the lowest numbers
Speaker 1: ever for UH. Belief in the institution of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: Congress is at seven percent, the belief in the presidency
Speaker 1: wrong track is now almost How big a problem is
Speaker 1: this for a country to have those numbers. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a problem when institutional people's belief in institutions get
Speaker 1: gets eroded like it's been eroded. And the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is interesting. You know, it used to have approval ratings
Speaker 1: that were north of seventy or eight. But like everything else,
Speaker 1: everything else has become polarized, you know, whether it's the
Speaker 1: presidency or Congress. Uh, it's become polarized. And I think
Speaker 1: it's a big problem for American democracy because one of
Speaker 1: the things that our democracy relies on is faith and
Speaker 1: trust in institutions, and it's very difficult to have that
Speaker 1: when everything has been so polarized. And unfortunately, I wish
Speaker 1: I could say that I saw better days ahead, but
Speaker 1: the problem is everything is polarized. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: care what it is, even stuff outside of politics, you know,
Speaker 1: social media and pop culture. Everything has become polarized. So
Speaker 1: I do worry about that. I mean, it's tational. Like
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, it is their responsibility to interpret the law,
Speaker 1: to uphold the rule of law, to to call other
Speaker 1: branches of government out when they cross the line, and
Speaker 1: they serve that function legitimately. And I think part of
Speaker 1: the challenges that people look at it and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't really buy that institution stuff anymore
Speaker 1: because I don't agree with them. And you know, the
Speaker 1: Constitution doesn't say that you believe in institutions when you
Speaker 1: agree with them. The Constitution says, here the institutions, here's
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to do. And and we have a
Speaker 1: system of government that's worked for as long as worked
Speaker 1: because we believe in institutions. And so I do worry
Speaker 1: about it, Jack, I worry about where we're headed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too, and I I got to believe that
Speaker 1: those numbers don't get reversed very easily. I mean, that
Speaker 1: would take years and years to rebuild that sort of
Speaker 1: faith in those institutions, which you know, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if it's impossible. But anyway, long hy
Speaker 1: Chen candidate for California State Controller, and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other stuff. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks Jack
Speaker 1: rich With you aren't