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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,

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Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of

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Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.

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Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade

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Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent

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Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,

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Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.

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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show.

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Speaker 3: We're excited to be joined now by Lindsay Burke. She

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Speaker 3: is the director at the Center for Education Policy at

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Speaker 3: the Heritage Foundation and also wrote the chapter in Heritage's

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Speaker 3: Mandate for Leadership, also known now as Project twenty twenty

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Speaker 3: five on education policy. This is a very timely conversation

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Speaker 3: given recent developments of the last twenty four hours about

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Speaker 3: how DOGE is starting to turn its attention to the

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Speaker 3: Department of Education. So, Lindsay, first of all, thank you

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Speaker 3: so much for being here.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me Emily.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, no, we appreciate it. I think you and I

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Speaker 3: come from a very different place than Ryan does on

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Speaker 3: this and the question about the question about just like

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Speaker 3: what's going to happen to the Department of education is

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Speaker 3: obviously a sensitive one for parents around the country who

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Speaker 3: are worried about a shutdown affecting them. So lindsay, I

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Speaker 3: think maybe a good place to start is, actually if

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Speaker 3: you could walk us through your take on why people

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Speaker 3: why parents with kids, and you know, schools that are

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Speaker 3: almost entirely unless they're at Hillsdale funded by the federal

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Speaker 3: government in some park, should not be afraid from your

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Speaker 3: perspective of Doge kind of tackling the Department of Education.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, first we should make a distinction between K

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Speaker 4: twelve and higher ED. So in the K twelve space,

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Speaker 4: federal funding is less than ten percent of all school

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Speaker 4: funding across the country, and it's worth noting. And so

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Speaker 4: this is different than high red right where you get

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Speaker 4: student loans, it's holly federally funded. Ninety three percent of

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Speaker 4: all loans are originated in serviced by the federal government.

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Speaker 4: So two separate things. But in K twelve education, it's

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Speaker 4: a very important Remember the Department of Education does not

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Speaker 4: run a single school, it does not pay a single

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Speaker 4: teacher salary, it does not educate a single child in America.

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Speaker 4: And so I would swage parents' concerns and I would

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Speaker 4: make the case to most parents, you will be better

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Speaker 4: off when your local teacher, your local school principal is

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Speaker 4: not having to worry about federal mandates handed down from

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Speaker 4: the Department of Ed. And for taxpayers too, who I

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Speaker 4: think are so often left out of the conversation. For them,

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Speaker 4: it has meant their money is taken sent to Washington,

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Speaker 4: filtered through this ineffective bureaucracy, and then sixty five cents

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Speaker 4: on every dollar is sent back to local classrooms, and

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Speaker 4: somehow that's supposed to improve educational outcomes or lead to

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Speaker 4: academic excellence, and it clearly hasn't. So that's where I

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Speaker 4: would start, just to swage any concerns parents might have.

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Speaker 4: And the other quick thing I would say is just

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Speaker 4: because the Department of Education is eliminated and we'll see

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Speaker 4: what ultimately happens, doesn't mean that programs in spending go away.

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Speaker 4: Most of the proposals that are out there, including ours,

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Speaker 4: would move many of the programs that are actually effective

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Speaker 4: or appropriate to other federal agencies. So you look at

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Speaker 4: something like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funding under

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Speaker 4: idea that would move over to HHS. Data collection, things

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Speaker 4: like the National Assessment for educational progress. Send it over

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Speaker 4: the Commerce Department, let the Census Bureau handle that student loans,

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Speaker 4: move them to Treasury. So this idea that eliminating the

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Speaker 4: physical structure of the Department of Education will somehow have

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Speaker 4: negative benefits on education, I think it's quite the opposite.

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Speaker 5: So the twenty twenty five proposal seem pretty heavy on

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Speaker 5: block grants, like we'll take right now to take the

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Speaker 5: disabilities provision that you talked about, so you would move

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Speaker 5: the you would move that over TOS. But the key

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Speaker 5: thing there to me seems to be that you would

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Speaker 5: also just block rerant it. And for people who don't know,

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Speaker 5: blockrant just means all right, we used to fund you know,

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Speaker 5: under these requirements. The states had to you know, submit

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Speaker 5: this kind of paperwork and meet these requirements to get

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Speaker 5: this money. Now we're just going to add up the

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Speaker 5: amount of money, send it all out, and you know

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Speaker 5: that means they'll get more money because you know it's

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Speaker 5: not going to get filtered through that bureaucracy that you

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Speaker 5: talk about. But imagine you're a parent who has a

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Speaker 5: child in school here who benefits from one of these

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Speaker 5: IEPs or something. It's already as you know, a war

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Speaker 5: that parents have to go through with their schools to

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Speaker 5: get these IEPs. Because you get an IEP, it's going

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Speaker 5: to cost a little bit extra money. So the school

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Speaker 5: districts are generally doing everything they can to say, well,

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Speaker 5: your kid actually doesn't qualify for this, and just to

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Speaker 5: make it so difficult for parents that they just eventually

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Speaker 5: give up and only the most dedicate ones get through.

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Speaker 5: So if you no longer and that so it's a war,

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Speaker 5: despite the fact that you have the federal government kind

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Speaker 5: of looking over their shoulder and saying, you know, you

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Speaker 5: need to do this if you're going to get this money.

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Speaker 5: If you if the federal government just walks away and

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Speaker 5: just hands the money to the schools, given the school's

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Speaker 5: impulse already, why wouldn't the school just reject everybody's IEP,

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Speaker 5: keep the money, cut property taxes, and then use the

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Speaker 5: money to just fund their general operations. And there are

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Speaker 5: a couple other block grants remind you can remind me

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Speaker 5: you know this better way titles. Why wouldn't they just

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Speaker 5: do the same thing, And just now the federal government

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Speaker 5: is just that money isn't supporting these projects, it's just

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Speaker 5: supporting the school. And then the school cuts, taxes.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, the city, so a couple of things. So your

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Speaker 4: example with IDA is a really important one because I

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Speaker 4: think those are the parents absolutely right, who have had

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Speaker 4: the most contentious, unfortunately relationship getting the services that they

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Speaker 4: are entitled to under federal and.

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Speaker 5: Something like fifteen million parents have gotten through the thicket

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Speaker 5: for fifty million kids.

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Speaker 4: Right right, right, And so what we want to do

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Speaker 4: is provide them with the tools to actually fight that

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Speaker 4: war effectively and not be reliant on a process where

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Speaker 4: too often they end up in litigation trying to get

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Speaker 4: the services they are entitled to under federal law. And

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Speaker 4: so what do those tools look like? Once we block

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Speaker 4: rent that funding to the states, so it doesn't go

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Speaker 4: directly to schools, right, So a state could receive the

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Speaker 4: block rent. At that point, a state could decide that

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Speaker 4: parents can have access to their dollars, so states could

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Speaker 4: make those IDA dollars portable and if a family wanted,

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Speaker 4: they could take their kid's share of IDA dollars. And honestly,

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Speaker 4: at the per pupil level, it's not that much. And

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Speaker 4: the overall scheme of what we spend per pupil, we're

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Speaker 4: talking about maybe two thousand dollars a year. But if

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Speaker 4: a parent doesn't feel that their school is providing services

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Speaker 4: appropriately to them, they could tap into that money and

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Speaker 4: they could pay for private services and providers, schools, service providers,

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Speaker 4: whatever it might be that they feel better meets the

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Speaker 4: needs of their children. The other thing I would.

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Speaker 5: Add, would that pay for private school or are you

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Speaker 5: talking about two thousand a year or something?

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Speaker 4: Right? So services, so probably additional services. Right, It's not

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Speaker 4: going to pay for tuition at a private school. However,

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Speaker 4: if you're in a state that has a school choice

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Speaker 4: program already, and we're now to the point where over

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Speaker 4: half of them do, and most of them are education

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Speaker 4: savings accounts, and most of them started off for kids

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Speaker 4: with special needs. In fact, if you're in one of

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Speaker 4: those states, you could easily envision a family getting an

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Speaker 4: ESA and rolling in private school and then under this proposal,

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Speaker 4: also being able to tap in to their funding under

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Speaker 4: IDA and topping off that amount to get additional services.

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Speaker 4: So you could certainly envision that situation. And we're to

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Speaker 4: the point, by the way, quick non secutor, if Texas

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Speaker 4: gets school choice this year, which finally it looks like

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Speaker 4: they're going to do, we're going to be at the

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Speaker 4: point where over half of all kids across they have

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Speaker 4: access to private school choice. So this is happening, but

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Speaker 4: on IDA specifically at the federal level, I would add

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Speaker 4: that the law that is supposed to protect these children,

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Speaker 4: that doesn't go away, right, And that law, the Individuals

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Speaker 4: with Disabilities Education Acts predated by the Education for All

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Speaker 4: Handicapped Children Acts in seventy five, that predated the creation

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Speaker 4: of the Federal Department of Education, as did so many

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Speaker 4: of these laws. Right. So this idea that access or

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Speaker 4: protections for kids with special needs or low income children

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Speaker 4: go away, all of those protections came well before Carter

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Speaker 4: acquiesced to the Teachers' union in order to get their

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Speaker 4: support to be elected president and created a federal Department

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Speaker 4: of ED. So none of that goes away.

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Speaker 5: Just from a news perspective, what can you tell us?

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Speaker 5: What do you know about what the Trump officials were

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Speaker 5: doing at ED yesterday and the sixth floor that gen

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Speaker 5: Vender we had a gen bender between from hot post

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Speaker 5: up there. Other people are saying that, you know, eighty

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Speaker 5: nine contracts were cut totaling something like nine hundred million dollars.

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Speaker 5: What do you know about what's been cut so far,

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Speaker 5: and what insight do you have into what further cuts

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Speaker 5: or are coming.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so I don't have insight into what the administration

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Speaker 4: is doing or thinking yet. I think we're all just

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Speaker 4: waiting to see what a potential executive order might include.

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Speaker 4: And look, I mean.

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Speaker 5: Is they're not working with you. I mean you wrote

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Speaker 5: the blueprint, right.

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Speaker 4: Look, we put out for years, in fact, for almost

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Speaker 4: I've been a Heritage seventeen years now, so for almost

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Speaker 4: two decades we've been writing about the need to wind

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Speaker 4: down the department. And our writing on that predated the

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Speaker 4: chapter that you all reference there. And so you know,

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Speaker 4: we have a map for exactly what you would do

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Speaker 4: with every single program. We have a three part test

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Speaker 4: which programs you would keep? Are they ineffective or they

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Speaker 4: do plicative or are they inappropriate at the federal level.

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Speaker 4: If they check any of those boxes, they're gone. The

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Speaker 4: handful of programs that remain map out more appropriate receiving

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Speaker 4: agencies to manage those programs, and so all of that's

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Speaker 4: out there. I'm very excited to see an administration finally

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Speaker 4: willing to try to correct Carter's mistake and wind down

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Speaker 4: this bureaucracy. I mean look at the recent NATE outcomes, right,

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Speaker 4: they were awful. Kids have lost just if you look

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Speaker 4: at fourth grade reading, kids have lost almost a year's

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Speaker 4: worth of learning, almost a grade level worth of learning,

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Speaker 4: just over the past decade. And I mean the recent

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Speaker 4: outcomes were really just heartbreaking for so many families. And

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Speaker 4: this has been a trend that has continued since nineteen

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Speaker 4: sixty five. Right, And we talk about the Department, but

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Speaker 4: really it was the War on Poverty, right, it was

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Speaker 4: Lyndon Johnson. It was nineteen sixty five when we first

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Speaker 4: see the federal government get involved in pre K and K,

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Speaker 4: twelve D and higher education. There have been no improvements

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Speaker 4: as a result of that involvement. You look at the

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Speaker 4: gap between low income children and more affluent kids, it's

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Speaker 4: four grade levels worth of learning for It's exactly the

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Speaker 4: same today as it was in nineteen sixty five. We

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Speaker 4: have just not moved the needle and improved academic outcomes

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Speaker 4: to speak of. And so, yeah, we're all very excited

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Speaker 4: to see the administration make some of these important cuts.

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Speaker 4: And as far as you know what contracts and programs

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Speaker 4: we will see, we know that there is a lot

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Speaker 4: of uh, you know, DEI adjacent stuff that has infused

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Speaker 4: the department over the past few years. So hopefully that's

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Speaker 4: first on the chopping.

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Speaker 5: Block before we move to higher ed. Here, I wanted

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Speaker 5: to just get your take on this. Here's the here

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Speaker 5: are the collapsing scores. I think that you were just

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Speaker 5: referring to which you know also show an increase you

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Speaker 5: know from you know, and you have other ones that

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Speaker 5: go show an increase before it. I feel like, you know,

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Speaker 5: correlation is not causation. I look at the the timing

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Speaker 5: of some of these these collapses, and I see the

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Speaker 5: rise of kind of cell phones and social medias, screens.

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Speaker 5: But let me go a little bit further, so long

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Speaker 5: like when you look at these long term trensis. So

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Speaker 5: this is from your your project twenty twenty five document here,

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Speaker 5: you know, pretty flat, you know, flat and rising for

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Speaker 5: thirteen year old reading, rising for nine year old reading,

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Speaker 5: you know, going back to nineteen seventy one, you know,

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Speaker 5: rising for math, uh for thirteen year olds and nine

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Speaker 5: year olds though you know, falling a bit, you know

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Speaker 5: around the pandemic. Pandemic and screens. I think a combination

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Speaker 5: of those two you know, two things. So why like,

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Speaker 5: what do you what do you think accounts for the

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Speaker 5: the increase, like if you look if you look at

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Speaker 5: those numbers, like well, like I said, correlation is not causation.

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Speaker 5: But you know, Department of Education came around and scores

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Speaker 5: went up for decades. Screens came in and scores went down.

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Speaker 5: So and then the pandemic, you know, absolute catastrophe for

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Speaker 5: for schooling. So is you know, as is on one winding,

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Speaker 5: this going to like reverse that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So what we didn't include and we should have

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Speaker 4: are the twelfth grade results. If you look at the

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Speaker 4: twelfth grade results, they are flat flat and reading flat

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Speaker 4: and math. And so even though we see if some

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Speaker 4: increase in reading a math for thirteen year olds and

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Speaker 4: nine year olds, that doesn't persist throughout high school. And

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Speaker 4: so we're just not seeing those gains throughout the years.

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Speaker 4: The longer kids spends in school, the less the gains are,

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Speaker 4: the less the gains are there over time, And so

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Speaker 4: I should have included that too. Look in terms of

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Speaker 4: the department, again, I would certainly not peg the department

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Speaker 4: to any of those increases. And if you look at

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Speaker 4: the charts where you see those slight increases, that again

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Speaker 4: don't persist over time have they do correlate more with

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Speaker 4: One could argue some of the accountability measures that and

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Speaker 4: I'm no fan of No Child Left Behind, but that

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Speaker 4: were included in NCLB, And I mentioned that because there

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Speaker 4: was a concerted effort at that point to care about

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Speaker 4: reading outcomes the way that the federal government wrote NCLB,

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Speaker 4: the sanctions that were put into place did not work

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Speaker 4: well at all for states. But we did see a

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Speaker 4: focus at that time on reading by third grade. You

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Speaker 4: look at Florida at that time period, right, you had

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Speaker 4: Jeb Bush there who would continue to beat the drum

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Speaker 4: about you know, if a kid from kindergarten to third

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Speaker 4: grade is learning to read from third grade on, they're

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Speaker 4: reading to learn right, and if they don't get that right,

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Speaker 4: they're going to have a very hard time throughout the

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Speaker 4: rest of their academic experience. And so there was a

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Speaker 4: real focus and so I think that that focus on

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Speaker 4: reading may account for some of those early gains, but

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Speaker 4: again they didn't persist. And I am also heartened to

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Speaker 4: see that we have a renewed focus on phonics based instruction.

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Speaker 4: Now that's something that is long overdue. We had the

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Speaker 4: shift toward whole language, which we know, really failed honestly

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Speaker 4: generations of children in learning to read, and so that's

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Speaker 4: been great to see a renewed focus on phonics based instruction.

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Speaker 4: So hopefully that will the benefit of reading in the

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Speaker 4: next few years. But yeah, I mean the pandemic declines,

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Speaker 4: and I say pandemic declines, these were teacher union into

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Speaker 4: school closures that kept kids locked out of schools right

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Speaker 4: far after, far after we knew it was safe for

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Speaker 4: schools to reopen. And so those significant declines lay squarely

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Speaker 4: at the feet of the teachers union's heads, and you know,

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Speaker 4: that's kind of stick with these kids for decades to come. Unfortunately.

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Speaker 3: Well, I wanted to ask one question, Lindsay, sort of

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Speaker 3: from a conservative perspective, it's kind of different for me

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Speaker 3: to imagine if this was a Rond De Santis administration

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Speaker 3: versus Trump administration with Elon Musk coming in. People like

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Speaker 3: you really have spent years carefully crafting detailed plans, like

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Speaker 3: granular level plans as to how to, you know, put

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Speaker 3: the Department of Education on an off ramp essentially, with

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Speaker 3: all kinds of ideas as to how gaps that would

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Speaker 3: happen if the centralized federal department is shut down, will

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Speaker 3: be filled. And I'm curious if it worries you at

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Speaker 3: all the way that dog has approached other departments, you know,

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Speaker 3: without debating what should have happened to usaid even just

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Speaker 3: the way that it was, it was sort of like

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Speaker 3: an ad hoc. Oh, we're finding something here gone like

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Speaker 3: the melea afuera approach to government. Right, So does any

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Speaker 3: of that concern you that you have this carefully crafted,

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Speaker 3: ideologically sound plan from a conservative perspective and you kind

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Speaker 3: of have the wrecking ball coming for different departments?

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Speaker 4: Now, No, it doesn't. Honestly, we need a wrecking ball ed.

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Speaker 4: And we're in the i would say enviable position that

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Speaker 4: families across the country understand through experience and just intuitively

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Speaker 4: that the Department of Ed has failed them over the years.

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Speaker 4: We don't have to make the case like I go

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Speaker 4: and give talks all the time and the biggest applause

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Speaker 4: line is always closed down the Department of ED. I

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Speaker 4: mean it is, So we're you're in a good position there.

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Speaker 4: I think there's a fairly high level of understanding among

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Speaker 4: the public at large about how little the investment is

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Speaker 4: at the federal level. In K twelve, a relative to

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Speaker 4: the red tape and regulations that the agency hands down.

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Speaker 4: So you know, I think with us AID there was

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Speaker 4: just less I think understanding about what the agency does

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Speaker 4: among the general population. And so I think we're we're

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Speaker 4: on pretty solid ground there.

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Speaker 5: So what would funding levels look like in your ideal world?

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Speaker 5: You know, as we look at the world now, it's

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Speaker 5: it's so hard for teachers to live near their schools,

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Speaker 5: for instance, or to just live a live a dignified life,

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Speaker 5: which makes it then harder to attract kind of the

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Speaker 5: best people into the field. So what does it look

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Speaker 5: like in your world where you've gotten rid of the

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Speaker 5: Department of Education?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, look, I agree, right, I mean for teachers. So

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Speaker 4: over the decades, the union's made a decision that they

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Speaker 4: wanted more teachers rather than and I say teachers, they

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Speaker 4: wanted more education employees. Right, So that I should add

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Speaker 4: the teacher to non teacher ratio right now is one

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Speaker 4: to one. If you look at your typical school district,

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Speaker 4: for every teacher in a classroom, there's an administrative counterpart.

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Speaker 4: So the unions made a decision over the years to

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Speaker 4: prioritize increasing staff. Because of course that accrued to the

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Speaker 4: benefit of their bottom line. Right, more dues pay members

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Speaker 4: rather than taking ever increasing state, local, and federal spending

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Speaker 4: and putting that into higher teacher salaries. So that was

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Speaker 4: a conscious decision that was made on the part of

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Speaker 4: special interest groups. We should pay teachers more, those who

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Speaker 4: deserve to be paid more. Right, we should reward teachers

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Speaker 4: based on merit, right, not just on the amount of

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Speaker 4: time that they've spent in the classroom. But that will

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Speaker 4: require some changes. Right, it's going to require us to

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Speaker 4: no longer have this staff surge that we have had

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Speaker 4: over really since the nineteen sixties. To put a damper

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Speaker 4: on that, we've had one hundred percent increase in the

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Speaker 4: number of students in schools since the nineteen seventies, but

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Speaker 4: a seven hundred percent increase in the number of administrators,

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Speaker 4: just to put a finer point on it. So we

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Speaker 4: need to stop that staffing surge. But we also need

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Speaker 4: to be willing to say modestly increase class size a

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Speaker 4: little bit. Right. We know that at some point there's

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Speaker 4: a diminishing return on reducing class size, and it is

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Speaker 4: low nationally, it's fifteen to one, Right, So you could

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Speaker 4: modestly increase class size and then you could pretty significantly

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Speaker 4: increase teacher pay for those teachers who increase student learning. Right,

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Speaker 4: if you get more than a year or a year's

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Speaker 4: worth of learning over time, you deserve to be rewarded

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Speaker 4: for that.

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Speaker 5: How do we get to that fifteen to one number?

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Speaker 5: I don't know.

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Speaker 4: So that's a National Center for Education.

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Speaker 5: I'm not doubting that that's a stat But like what

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Speaker 5: happened such that most I bet most people watching this

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Speaker 5: are gonna be like, huh, there's twenty kids in my

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Speaker 5: kids class.

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Speaker 4: And I should say that's high school high school numbers.

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Speaker 4: So if you look your elementary and second or your

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Speaker 4: elementary numbers are they are slightly higher, but for your

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Speaker 4: typical high school fifteen to one. So interesting to your question,

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Speaker 4: which I don't think I answered, about what is the

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Speaker 4: appropriate spending level? And are you thinking for pupil are

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Speaker 4: you thinking at the federal level what was either spend

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Speaker 4: either what.

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Speaker 5: I mean, what matters most really is what gets down

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Speaker 5: to the school.

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Speaker 4: Exactly, Yeah, one hundred percent agree. So at the federal level,

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Speaker 4: if you look at the plan that we've worked on

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Speaker 4: for two decades now, what we have recommended is that

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Speaker 4: you eliminate all of the competitive grant funding that the

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Speaker 4: Feds manage. It is completely ineffective. It has not moved

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Speaker 4: the needle at all in terms of student learning outcomes.

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Speaker 4: That's a lot of programs. It's not a lot of spending,

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Speaker 4: to be honest, It's maybe not a lot, maybe three

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Speaker 4: billion dollars of the department's budget. So that would go

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Speaker 4: away immediately, and there are certainly other areas where you

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Speaker 4: could cut as well. But those large formula grant programs,

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Speaker 4: which is where most of the funding is, those are

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Speaker 4: the programs that would just go to other receiving agencies.

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Speaker 4: So again, you actually probably wouldn't see that large over

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Speaker 4: reduction in existing federal spending, but you would see some,

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Speaker 4: and you should see some. As far as what the

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Speaker 4: ideal per pupil spending level is, just to give the

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Speaker 4: listeners an idea, we spend about eighteen thousand dollars per

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Speaker 4: pupil per year now nationally. So that's combined local, state,

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Speaker 4: and federal revenue, and of course the federal piece is

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Speaker 4: a small share of that. It's about forty five percent

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Speaker 4: federal I'm sorry, forty five percent state, forty five percent local,

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Speaker 4: ten percent federal funding. I would say, we don't know

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Speaker 4: the ideal number because we don't have a market based system, right.

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Speaker 4: We have a system that runs and functions much more

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Speaker 4: like a monopoly than a market. But we can look

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Speaker 4: at the school choice programs that are expanding in the

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Speaker 4: state and get some sense of what it does cost

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Speaker 4: to educate a child. If you look at education savings

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Speaker 4: account options in the states, states like Arizona, they're getting

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Speaker 4: about seven thousand dollars per kid. That's a base per

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Speaker 4: pupil allocation. If you have a kid with special needs,

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Speaker 4: you get a little more money. It's weighted based on disability,

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Speaker 4: and that is working great for families. Families are choosing

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Speaker 4: to enter that program to take that amount of funding

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Speaker 4: and then go find services that work for them rather

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Speaker 4: than staying in the district system where they're spending twice

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Speaker 4: that much and they're not getting a quality education. So

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Speaker 4: it's hard to say exactly what it should be, but

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Speaker 4: the evidence strongly suggests we don't need to spend eighteen

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Speaker 4: thousand dollars per child per year.

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Speaker 5: Is this a vicious cycle? Like are the public schools

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Speaker 5: that are seeing all of these kids leave and go

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Speaker 5: to these private schools funded by the school choice are

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Speaker 5: they quickly collapsing And.

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Speaker 4: We haven't seen any clothes yet, honestly, and we should, right,

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Speaker 4: I mean schools that are trapping kids cycles and like

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Speaker 4: you know, generations of kids in these ineffective institutions should

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Speaker 4: be around, right, No kids should be trapped in a

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Speaker 4: school that is failing them. We're not seeing schools closed yet,

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Speaker 4: but we do see the kids who are leased well

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Speaker 4: served by these schools having an escape patch out of them.

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Speaker 4: And that tends to be the case with even if

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Speaker 4: you look at states with universal choice programs or really

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Speaker 4: large choice options. You know, you look at Florida, you

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Speaker 4: look at Arizona. It is still an escape valve for

436
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,959
Speaker 4: these kids. So we haven't seen schools shutting down, you know. Well,

437
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:30,280
Speaker 4: I think two things are going to put more pressure

438
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:33,879
Speaker 4: on public schools than any school choice option. One is

439
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 4: just the demographic collapse that's coming, right, I mean that

440
00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:42,800
Speaker 4: that will put a lot of pressure on public schools

441
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:46,879
Speaker 4: in the future to either consolidate or downsize. They're just

442
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 4: not going to have kids in seats because of the

443
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:52,440
Speaker 4: fertility crisis, not because of school choice. And then the

444
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,280
Speaker 4: other thing is if if the argument of those on

445
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:57,719
Speaker 4: the left against choice was well, it's going to harm

446
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 4: public schools, right, we should be are focused on funding

447
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 4: children and not institutions. But if that were the case,

448
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:07,439
Speaker 4: why allow public school choice at all? Why allow families

449
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 4: to even buy a house in another neighborhood? Right, Like,

450
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,720
Speaker 4: anytime you exercise public school choice, that money leaves an

451
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 4: assigned school and goes to another school, same with charters.

452
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 2: Right.

453
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 4: So this idea that private school choice is either going

454
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:23,840
Speaker 4: to lead to the end of public education as we

455
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 4: know it or that it already has isn't found in

456
00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 4: And I always come back to the Freedman argument, right

457
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:33,359
Speaker 4: that we, yes, we will publicly finance K twelve education,

458
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:37,399
Speaker 4: but the public financing does not require government delivery of services.

459
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 4: So fund the kid, separate that out, allow the family

460
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 4: to choose what works for them.

461
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:44,480
Speaker 5: We're running out of time to talk about high ED.

462
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 5: I was going to say it was sure a lot

463
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 5: of our viewers are deeply concerned about, Like, so what's yeah,

464
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:54,159
Speaker 5: what kind of wrecking ball are you guys bringing to

465
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 5: the university system.

466
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 4: Hopefully the biggest one of all, Right, Like, I mean

467
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:02,639
Speaker 4: it needs higher ED. Wow, I mean it's more than

468
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 4: a pr problem at this point, right, I mean Higher

469
00:25:05,200 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 4: ED has entrenched systemic issues that will only be solved

470
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:11,920
Speaker 4: when we cut off the open spigot, a federal aid

471
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 4: that has been dumped on these universities from federal helicopters.

472
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,480
Speaker 4: To quote Richard Vetter, he's an economist at the University

473
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 4: of Ohio for decades. Now, if you look at the

474
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 4: outcome of federal spending on Higher ED, and again it

475
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 4: all goes back to Lennon Johnson, Right, it all goes

476
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:30,160
Speaker 4: back to nineteen sixty five. Prior to that, we did

477
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,600
Speaker 4: not have widely available student loans and grants originated by

478
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 4: the feds. Right, we had the GI Bill, but that

479
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 4: was targeted, it was an earned benefit. Right. But once

480
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 4: we got the Feds involved in sixty five, then we

481
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 4: just see this inflation intuition prices over the decades, and

482
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 4: it had gotten so bad by the eighties. And I

483
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:52,760
Speaker 4: think everybody knows this at this point. But in nineteen

484
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 4: eighty seven, Bill Bennett, who was Ronald Reagan's ed secretary,

485
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 4: he wrote a famous op ed and it was the

486
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 4: New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, but it

487
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 4: was called R Greedy Colleges and he said continued spending

488
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:07,360
Speaker 4: at the federal level will lead colleges to increase prices,

489
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 4: sure enough, and that was called the Bennett hypothesis. It

490
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:12,520
Speaker 4: became true, right, I mean, we know that that's the case.

491
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 4: And even if you look at the Federal Reserve Bank

492
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 4: of New York, they did a study a few years

493
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 4: ago or they found that for every additional dollar and

494
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 4: subsidized student loans, universities increased tuition sixty cents. So they're

495
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 4: capturing much of that federal largest that's going there. But

496
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:30,919
Speaker 4: it has really enabled universities to not Mind's shop the

497
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 4: way that they should, right, I mean, it is it

498
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 4: has allowed this proliferation of dei Commissariat to just i think,

499
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:43,960
Speaker 4: really drain resources from Higher ED and not create a

500
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 4: better learning environment for students. It's enabled this facility's arms

501
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 4: race where you get the climbing walls and the lazy rivers, right,

502
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:56,960
Speaker 4: I mean, it has really just been detrimental to Higher

503
00:26:57,119 --> 00:26:59,919
Speaker 4: ED the prices increasing for students. And then you know,

504
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 4: we've had this policy over the decades of just trying

505
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 4: to subsidize increases in cost which haven't worked at all.

506
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 4: And so hopefully the wrecking ball includes eliminating the PLUS

507
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 4: loan program. Right, So this is all of the federal

508
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 4: lending for grad students and for parents of undergrads. Right.

509
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 4: So you've got the main direct loan program that goes

510
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,159
Speaker 4: to undergrad students and grad students. But then once you

511
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 4: exhaust that, you can plus up right, you can get

512
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 4: additional funding from the federal taxpayer subsidized by the federal

513
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 4: taxpayer for grad school, or parents can borrow even more

514
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 4: for their undergrads. And so if you ever hear these

515
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 4: horror stories of people entering retirement with student loan debt

516
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 4: that largely falls at the feet of the parent plus

517
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 4: program where they borrowed for their kids undergrad experience, the

518
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:48,879
Speaker 4: parents did. And so we need to cut off that

519
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 4: open spigot of federal aid and restore to the private

520
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 4: lending market responsibility for offering student loans and grants.

521
00:27:57,440 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 5: And is the goal then that fewer kids go to college?

522
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:00,879
Speaker 1: No?

523
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 4: I mean the goal is people for whom college is

524
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 4: the right decision have access to that and can go,

525
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 4: and that those students who take out a loan repay

526
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 4: that loan. And this is the problem, right, we have.

527
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 5: They get access if they don't like, let's say so

528
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:16,679
Speaker 5: just lay it out like, yes, you want to go,

529
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 5: you don't, can't afford it. Schools are now ungodly expensive.

530
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:24,679
Speaker 4: How do you go? Yeah? Well, so back to what

531
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 4: I said a second ago, our proposal doesn't eliminate the

532
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 4: direct loan program, which is the basic loan program's fifty

533
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 4: five thousand aggregate right now. I believe it's on.

534
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 5: That order, which is which is good for about like

535
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 5: one year in college.

536
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know whether that's the case, right, I

537
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 4: mean you look at some of your state schools. That's

538
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 4: not the case. And everybody forgets, by the way, Ryan,

539
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 4: that you can also work while you're in school, right,

540
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 4: I mean this is.

541
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 5: I did work study, I made right hour, there was

542
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 5: a management minimum wage went up, I got attention while

543
00:28:58,000 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 5: I was there.

544
00:28:59,280 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 4: Exactly.

545
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 5: That was beer money. Though, like college, it is not

546
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties anymore.

547
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 4: But look, you you can also do that. But so

548
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:12,640
Speaker 4: the the direct loan program stays in place. So we're

549
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 4: talking about loans for grad students. We're talking about that

550
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 4: additional parent plus one. But if you eliminate some of

551
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 4: the federal large ss, you're going to see them. There

552
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 4: is still a private lending market right, So it's not

553
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 4: just the federal granted it's seven percent of the market,

554
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 4: but you can still get a loan through the private

555
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 4: sector as well. And look, we need to have a

556
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 4: lending program in place that actually does take into account

557
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 4: your ability to repay in the future, because what we

558
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 4: have now is just open access to federal tax payer dollars.

559
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 4: I call them federal tax pay dollars because they're subsidized

560
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 4: and because we're forgiving them on the back end in

561
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 4: large part. And so you know, we have not encouraged

562
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 4: students to really take a hard look at the school

563
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 4: they're attending, the education they're getting, what the ROI will

564
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 4: be on the back end. I mean, forty four percent

565
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 4: of mass degrees have a negative ROI, right, And so

566
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 4: we have enabled this profligacy on the part of higher

567
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 4: ed institutions, but also have created a situation in which

568
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 4: students aren't well served at all. And yeah, we might

569
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 4: have too many people going to college right now. There

570
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 4: are people who would probably be better served not going

571
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 4: that route, doing apprenticeship programs, doing career and technical LD options.

572
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 4: But the federal government has put the thumb on the

573
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 4: scale in favor of traditional higher ed and has said

574
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 4: this is your only path to climbing the ladder of

575
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:34,959
Speaker 4: upward economic mobility in America, and that is an unfortunate

576
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 4: falsehood that has not served students well at all.

577
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 3: So if you keep those loan programs in place, or

578
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 3: the one that we were just discussing, how quickly reasonably

579
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 3: would tuition prices be expected to go down and there

580
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,440
Speaker 3: would be a market correction because it seems to me

581
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 3: there might be a gap period where college is still

582
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 3: ungodly expensive.

583
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, and definitely, yeah, there is there will probably be

584
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 4: a gap. But there are other things can do concurrent

585
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 4: with the loan program to help prices decrease. One of

586
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 4: those which has gotten some attention over the past few

587
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 4: days is indirect cost, which is sort of like arcane

588
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 4: little policy idea, but basically capping the overhead cost that

589
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 4: universities can charge federal taxpayers for research grants. INIH, this

590
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 4: was floating around a few days ago where INNIH said

591
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 4: we're now going to cap at fifteen percent your amount

592
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 4: of indirect costs. I mean, there are universities out there

593
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:30,160
Speaker 4: right now that are charging the taxpayer sixty cents on

594
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 4: the dollar for their research grant overhead. I mean, it's unbelievable.

595
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 4: And so again, this is a part of the federal

596
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 4: large s that has been handed down for decades now

597
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 4: that has enabled universities to continually increase prices. Knowing that

598
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 4: there's more federal money coming on the back end. They

599
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:53,680
Speaker 4: need some spending restraint imposed upon them. And this is

600
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 4: the only way we're ultimately going to see prices brought

601
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,960
Speaker 4: down is to reform to the loan programs, reforms to

602
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 4: some of these other grant options that are out there.

603
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 5: I mean, isn't research though, one of the most overhead

604
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 5: intensive things you could possibly have, and aren't there, but

605
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 5: they're what they required to say, like here, here are

606
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 5: the actual specific overhead costs that are connected to there's

607
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 5: very research.

608
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 4: What a university does. They'll say, here's the indirect rate

609
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 4: that we charge. They might say, we'll accept a grant

610
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 4: from I don't know, fill in the blank, Google, and

611
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 4: you know, we'll accept a five percent overhead rate from Google,

612
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:31,560
Speaker 4: but we're going to charge the federal taxpayer sixty cents

613
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 4: for research grants. So we know that what they're charging

614
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 4: the federal taxpayer is higher than what they necessarily need

615
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 4: and So one of the most interesting proposals, and this

616
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 4: is my colleague Jay Green at Heritage has put this

617
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 4: proposal out but basically putting some market discipline in the

618
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 4: indirect rate, where you say, to a university at the

619
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 4: federal level, you cannot charge the federal government an indirect

620
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 4: rate that exceeds what you're willing to accept from a

621
00:32:56,600 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 4: private funder, and so it just sort of resets and yeah, look,

622
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 4: of course universities have some fixed costs. Of course, research

623
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 4: has some fixed costs, but they will argue all of

624
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 4: their costs are fixed, right, and that's certainly not the case.

625
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 4: They'll use this to fund infrastructure where they have names

626
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 4: on buildings, right of donors who have privately provided significant funding. Right,

627
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 4: you have all of the title for programs, all of

628
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 4: the student loan and grant options that are out there,

629
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 4: other direct grants from the federal government. You've got private foundations, philanthropy.

630
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 4: Universities are swimming in money. This idea that putting a

631
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:34,960
Speaker 4: little discipline on their overhead rate that they're charging the

632
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 4: taxpayers somehow going to have this detrimental effect on research

633
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 4: totally unfounded.

634
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 5: I just worry that, So why not invest in technical schools,

635
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 5: trade schools in addition to colleges and universities. I worry

636
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 5: that in the seventies and eighties and nineties we decided

637
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:00,880
Speaker 5: to as a policy destroy our manufacturing base. And the

638
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 5: thing that is keeping us afloat is our college and

639
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 5: university system in the United States. Like that, it's a

640
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:09,879
Speaker 5: thing that makes us globally competitive, and it makes people

641
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 5: want to live here for like the you know, the

642
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:14,920
Speaker 5: most talented people in the world want to come here. Like,

643
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 5: we're going to gut that too, and then it's just

644
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:24,759
Speaker 5: going to be, you know, a wasteland, Like like what

645
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 5: do we have at that point?

646
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hear you on that, But I think we

647
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 4: are a little naive and believing that the quality of

648
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 4: high ed is equally distributed among institutions. It is not.

649
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 4: We have a lot a lot of underperforming colleges and

650
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 4: universities in this country. There are great like the schools

651
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 4: that we're probably thinking of the great schools, right. You've

652
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 4: got some great state schools that are out there, the

653
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:51,919
Speaker 4: flagship universities. You have some great smaller private Great Books

654
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:55,319
Speaker 4: schools and other faith based schools that are doing really well.

655
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 4: But you've got a lot of middling schools across the country. Right,

656
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,360
Speaker 4: there are four thousand or so colleges across the country.

657
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 4: You know, a non trivial number of those schools are

658
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 4: having students leave, right And by the way, they're spending

659
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 4: six years on average to get a four year degree.

660
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 4: They're leaving with debt. Some of them leave and don't

661
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,040
Speaker 4: even get the paper credential that they were promised. And

662
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 4: that's the worst situation that they can be in. And

663
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 4: we know it's ineffective because employers report that constantly that

664
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:26,719
Speaker 4: students who leave college are not prepared to enter the workforce.

665
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 4: And so is there a better way to serve the

666
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 4: needs of those students. Can we do war to give

667
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 4: them flexibility with those existing federal funds to pursue career

668
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 4: and technical ed Right, So, at the end of the day,

669
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 4: our position is simply, you want to give students flexibility

670
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 4: if we're going to fund this at the federal level

671
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 4: with the type of post secondary education they pursue. Right,

672
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 4: maybe they do go into a trade where they are

673
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 4: leaving with no debt and making a good living right

674
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 4: out of the gate. But right now we're saying to everybody,

675
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 4: you've got to go to a four year brick and mortar,

676
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 4: and by the way, majority of them are not going

677
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 4: to serve you very well in the long run.

678
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 3: Lindsay, we could keep going on this, but we really

679
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 3: appreciate your time and you willing us to talk through

680
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 3: some of these difficult questions that will definitely be on

681
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:18,279
Speaker 3: people's minds in the days and weeks ahead. Thank you,

682
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:19,359
Speaker 3: We appreciate it.

683
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 4: Likewise, thanks for having me.

684
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:27,439
Speaker 3: We're joined now by sorob Amari's actually my colleague at

685
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 3: Unheard and wrote a very very interesting piece this week

686
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,320
Speaker 3: that crystal Flag for us we wanted to talk about.

687
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 3: The headline is Elon Musk is a danger to trump

688
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 3: Ism and we should mention before we dive in that.

689
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:43,719
Speaker 3: SOB and I also have a new newsletter that you

690
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 3: can sign up for over at onheard dot com. It's

691
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:49,239
Speaker 3: called Area forty seven. It's kind of inside scoop from

692
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:52,919
Speaker 3: Trump World with a very unheardy lens. We're having fun

693
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:54,920
Speaker 3: over there, So go ahead and sign up, and Sarab,

694
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 3: thank you for being here.

695
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:59,399
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, guys, it's so good to join

696
00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 1: you on yet another platform.

697
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 3: Heavily great to have you. Can you walk through the

698
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 3: argument that you lay out in this article, especially through

699
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:12,239
Speaker 3: the lens of somebody who is on the right and

700
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 3: is looking at what's just happened over the course of

701
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 3: the first three weeks of the Trump presidency, and there's

702
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 3: a lot, you know, probably to be critical of that

703
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:23,760
Speaker 3: people are dancing around or glossing over that you actually

704
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 3: lay out here openly. Yeah.

705
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,320
Speaker 1: So I start with the case of the Consumer Financial

706
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:35,439
Speaker 1: Protection Bureau or a CFPB, not a friendly acronym, and

707
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:39,720
Speaker 1: I tell the story of Rohi Chopra, who was President

708
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 1: Biden's now housted or outgoing director of the CFPB. He

709
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 1: did some numerous reforms that I think were pro main street,

710
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:51,800
Speaker 1: helping ordinary Americans who have very little bargaining power against

711
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: banks and now big tech companies that increasingly act like

712
00:37:55,600 --> 00:37:59,319
Speaker 1: financial institutions. One of the things that he proposed just

713
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: in his final days in office was a rule against

714
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:06,799
Speaker 1: d banking. This is basically that your financial institution can

715
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:09,799
Speaker 1: drop you as a customer based on your views or

716
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: what you know, what you use your account to fundraise for,

717
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: or what you've said online. And this was remarkable because

718
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: it was kind of politically conciliatory. It's not just good policy.

719
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: But in a way you have here someone from the

720
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 1: progressive wing of the Democratic Party taking on a practice

721
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 1: that mostly has been used against right wing activists like

722
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:35,800
Speaker 1: PayPal d banked and evangelical fundraising site that was raising

723
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 1: money for January sixth defendants Canadian truckers who protested the

724
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 1: COVID mandates, where d banked at the beheads of the

725
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 1: Canadian government. In Britain, Nigel Faraj faced d banking for

726
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: a while from his financial institution, which is called Coots. Anyway,

727
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:55,319
Speaker 1: it was something that the right was exercised about, and

728
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: he just very with a very swift rule that says,

729
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 1: you know, customers cannot be dropped based on their exercise

730
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: of free speech. Would have put a stop to it. Now,

731
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: that's not the only thing the cfpv did. It did

732
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:09,439
Speaker 1: lots of good things. But you know, Musk had said

733
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 1: that the CFPP must die, and sure enough he did it.

734
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: Not just Musk, by the way. Mark Zuckerberg also went

735
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 1: on Joe Rogan's show complaining about why he's getting oversight

736
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:25,880
Speaker 1: from the CFPB. Well, it's because they track their Facebook

737
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,200
Speaker 1: users financial transactions and that they surveiled people, and so

738
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: they're acting more and more like a financial institution. As

739
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: Chopra himself told me, it's not that we are encroaching

740
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 1: into big tech. It's a big big tech is encroaching

741
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:40,759
Speaker 1: into the financial system.

742
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

743
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:44,240
Speaker 5: And Mark Andresen too went on rogan to complain about CFPB,

744
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:47,440
Speaker 5: talk about how it was de banking people and the

745
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:51,359
Speaker 5: d banking. I think a point is a great entry

746
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 5: into this, into your piece and to the whole conversation

747
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 5: because privately, Andresen and the others, I don't think actually

748
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 5: would be satisfied by what Chopra did at CPB with

749
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 5: the with with his de banking role, because it said

750
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 5: you cannot debank people for ideological reasons. But of course

751
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 5: you can still dbank people for being drug traffickers or

752
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:20,400
Speaker 5: for you know working you know, working with cartels, working

753
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 5: with sanctioned organizations. Like there's a you know, it's called

754
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:27,719
Speaker 5: know your customer, and it's one of the things that

755
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 5: Silicon Valley, some elements of Silicon Valley have been so

756
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 5: hostile to this idea that you have as a financial

757
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 5: institution some responsibility to know who your customer is and

758
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 5: and whether or not they are just you know, you know,

759
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:44,839
Speaker 5: you're whether you're dealing with al Chapo. They hate that.

760
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 5: They think that that's an encroachment on their freedom to

761
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 5: you know, to do bitcoin commerce or whatever. And so

762
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 5: when Andresen talks about that them having so many founders

763
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,839
Speaker 5: who were debanked, he's doing doing this kind of two

764
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:05,359
Speaker 5: step where he's trying to make Rogan's audience think that

765
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 5: these Silicon Valley tech founders were debanked because they supported

766
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:13,120
Speaker 5: Trump or because they said something critical of like George

767
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:15,920
Speaker 5: Floyd or Black Lives Matter or something, when in fact,

768
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 5: if you look at each case, it's like, oh, like

769
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:23,799
Speaker 5: they were you know, they were moving crypto for a

770
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 5: cartel and so the bank was like, we're freezing this.

771
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 5: And so for Choper to come in and deal with

772
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 5: the actual problem that people had is interesting because it

773
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 5: shows that he's a he's kind of responsive to the

774
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 5: genuine public concern, but the public concern is not the

775
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 5: actual oligarch concern. They're just kind of using that. So

776
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:50,359
Speaker 5: I guess, so answer the answer the charge that you've

777
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 5: gotten online of and I get this too on the

778
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 5: left or on the right of naivete that what did

779
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 5: you expect? It's a bunch of oligarchs who got Trump

780
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 5: into office, you actually believe they were going to do this.

781
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I get very irritated by that because I

782
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: wrote a number of pieces in the lead up to

783
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,399
Speaker 1: the election as saying, as someone on the populist wing

784
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 1: of the right or the pro worker conservative, we have

785
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,759
Speaker 1: different names for people like me, conservative, social democrat. I'm

786
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: very concerned about Elon's influence. I wrote a piece for

787
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: The New Statesman whether before the election where the headline

788
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:31,240
Speaker 1: was Trump will have to choose populism or Elon Musk.

789
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 1: So it's not I always saw that, and I know

790
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 1: the administration is torn between these competing impulses. But what

791
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: I will say is, like the degree to which Elon

792
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: has has been empowered Elon and that kind of coterie

793
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: of the so called techno libertarian right, it is a

794
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: little bit disturbing, especially what I see as self dealing.

795
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:53,319
Speaker 3: Right.

796
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 1: So Elon wants to create an app out of X

797
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: that is not just the social media company, but a

798
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:01,480
Speaker 1: kind of everything app like they have in China with

799
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: we Chat. So it's just it's your payment system. It

800
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of things. And CFPD would have

801
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: brought scrutiny to bear on what he was doing on

802
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 1: the financial side of it, and he says kill it,

803
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:17,879
Speaker 1: and it is done. That's very disturbing. Another one which

804
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the piece is what's happening in the

805
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: National Labor Relations Board. So President Trump came in and

806
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:29,239
Speaker 1: he dismissed the general counsel of the CF of the NLRB.

807
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: That's quite expected because President Biden did the same thing

808
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: to trump One's general counsel. But then he also dismissed

809
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: without cause or notice, is required by both statutory law

810
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: and Supreme Court. President one of the members, gwyn Wilcox,

811
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:50,760
Speaker 1: who can only be dismissed for malfeasance or neglect causes

812
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,360
Speaker 1: like that, and there's no indication that she's done anything

813
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:56,760
Speaker 1: like that, and also with notice, and she didn't receive notice.

814
00:43:56,800 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: Now what that does is basically the nl RB needs

815
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 1: under Supreme Court, president needs a quorum in order to

816
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 1: actually uphold labor law, to enforce the Wagner Act or

817
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 1: the National Labor Relations Act. Now this happens against the

818
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: backdrop in which Elon Musk and one other of the

819
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: oligarchs who stood on the stage at the swearing in,

820
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: namely Jeff Bisos of Amazon, have launched a lawsuit to

821
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 1: declare the National Labor Relations Act unconstitutional altogether. Now that's

822
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: a drastic legal argument, and it's questionable whether even with

823
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: a super conservative Supreme Court, they're going to be able

824
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 1: to kill the National Labor Relations Act, which is the

825
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: fundamental labor law in this country. But you know, is

826
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:43,920
Speaker 1: there a better alternative, Yes, basically to cripple the agency,

827
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:46,360
Speaker 1: which is what happens when you remove its quorum. You know,

828
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,239
Speaker 1: local and LRB offices can still investigate and so on,

829
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: but when it comes to an actual labor dispute where

830
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 1: the Board as a whole has to apol collective bargaining,

831
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 1: it can't do that. And what I've heard is that

832
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: they intend to keep things that way, essentially crippling the agency.

833
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:08,000
Speaker 3: So one thing that I've heard from people in Trump world,

834
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:10,359
Speaker 3: or this argument from people who are sympathetic to Musk

835
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 3: and Doge, is that this is basically a generational opportunity

836
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 3: to deal with the problem of waste, fraud and abuse

837
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:18,440
Speaker 3: in the government, which I think probably all of us

838
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 3: agree is significant. You know, there's kind of it's sort

839
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 3: of an inevitability, of course, and whether they're able to

840
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 3: make a big dent in it without touching things like

841
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 3: Medicare and Social Security, you basically can't. You can take

842
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 3: you could eliminate the pentagon and still probably not put

843
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:36,400
Speaker 3: not probably you couldn't put a dent really in the

844
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,839
Speaker 3: debt and the deficit. So on the one hand, there's

845
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:43,399
Speaker 3: this genuinely important question of streamlining the federal government, making

846
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 3: it more efficient and helping people in ways that are

847
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 3: kind of populist in some cases, not all cases, but

848
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:53,879
Speaker 3: in some cases kind of populist. On the other hand,

849
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 3: there's you know, the idea that this is all being

850
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 3: done by a literal oligarchic is close as you can

851
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 3: get in the American system to an actual oligarch So

852
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:07,359
Speaker 3: how do you think about the balance between this worthy goal,

853
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 3: noble goal of cutting down on large s and actually,

854
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:16,480
Speaker 3: you know, making the spending of tax para money more efficient,

855
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 3: and on the other hand, having it sort of done

856
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 3: by someone who at least has the potential to be

857
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:25,280
Speaker 3: a corporate raid for his own cause.

858
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a great question. We have to separate

859
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:35,399
Speaker 1: mentally separate different things here. The first is that if

860
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 1: you want social reform that empowers working, working people and consumers,

861
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily tantamount to supporting everything that's associated with

862
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: big government, you know, like just a bloated administrative apparatus

863
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:51,960
Speaker 1: can actually be as conservatives though as well, but it

864
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 1: can be pretty oppressive to ordinary people, and it can

865
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 1: be gained by incumbents to their own advantage. So it's telling,

866
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: for example that in Mexico President am Loo, as he's

867
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: popularly known, very left wing president, he actually slashed the

868
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,399
Speaker 1: size of government and he cut off all sorts of

869
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: like magazines and NGOs and stuff that survived at the

870
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,200
Speaker 1: only because the Mexican taxpayer was subsidizing them. And the

871
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:20,840
Speaker 1: Mexican kind of progressives, think about the Mexican equivalent of

872
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Left, were really really angry with Amlo the

873
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 1: whole time he was in power. They hated him in

874
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: part because he had cut them off from the public dole.

875
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time he did things that

876
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: empowers ordinary people relative to employers, relative to capital, so

877
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: like raising the minimum wage, making it easier to organize

878
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: workplaces and so on. So it's not just like if

879
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:48,960
Speaker 1: you're in favor, if you're consider yourself pro worker or

880
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: pro labor or pro consumer, you should just want bigness

881
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: in government for its own sake in every direction. But

882
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: two things have to happen for this kind of reform.

883
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:01,240
Speaker 1: One is it can't be so self dealing. It can't

884
00:48:01,280 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 1: the guy who has an obvious, you know, imminent material

885
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 1: interest in deleting quote unquote some agency should not be

886
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 1: the one wielding that kind of scalpel. It's not even

887
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:15,839
Speaker 1: a scalpel, unfortunately, it's like an axe. It's a different thing.

888
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: And the second thing I'd say is there are two

889
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 1: different kinds of administrative agency. One is one that like, uh,

890
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:27,759
Speaker 1: you know, it's just you know, directly overseeing society, and

891
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 1: I think those can be quite oppressive. However, agencies that

892
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: came out of the New Deal, there's more, many more

893
00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 1: of them, you know, all the various like trade commissions,

894
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: you know, et cetera, the New Deal era, I mean

895
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 1: a new Deal, uh, the the U, and then I

896
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: think I think of the CFB. The same way is

897
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: more they're playing umpire. They're playing umpire between different social forces.

898
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 1: So the state is mediating between labor, capital, consumers, you know,

899
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: state back electricity co ops, et cetera, et cetera. Those

900
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 1: are not big government. What they're doing is just straining

901
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:04,920
Speaker 1: the power of a few market giants and allowing, you know,

902
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 1: encouraging the other side of the market to count exert

903
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:11,720
Speaker 1: what used to be called countervailing power by the new dealers.

904
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:14,520
Speaker 1: That's the difference, you know, like and I think of

905
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 1: Social Security, by the way, and in the same vein

906
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: social Security is not a big government program. It's not

907
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 1: coming from the taxpayer, and FDR deliberately set it up

908
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:27,920
Speaker 1: that way. In the going back to the nineteenth century

909
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 1: and even the early eighteenth century, workers had set up

910
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 1: these basically mutual organizations of mutual aid where if one

911
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:38,480
Speaker 1: of them fell ill, the rest of them had contributed

912
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 1: and they could take care of that person's family or

913
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: if he died the widow. What the Social Security program

914
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:48,279
Speaker 1: did was take and just codify that and formalize it

915
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:52,239
Speaker 1: into a system. But because it's not funded by the taxpayer,

916
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 1: it's impossible to quote unquote reform or very difficult. We'll

917
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: see if Elon tries to go there. So I agree

918
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 1: that like big government for its own in every direction,

919
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 1: sure challenge that it's it can be, it can be oppressive.

920
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:07,520
Speaker 1: But when the state plays umpire and tries to level

921
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 1: the economic playing field between different social forces. I think

922
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be touched.

923
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 5: But I'm just kind of curious, by the way, just

924
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 5: in general, what makes people like you conservative social democrat

925
00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 5: not just a social democrat, like what's the.

926
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,439
Speaker 1: Well that becomes a more philosophical question. So I think

927
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: social democracy, and we should say social and Christian democracy.

928
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 1: They're kind of like twin traditions in the US. The

929
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: closest equipment we have is the New Deal tradition is

930
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:40,520
Speaker 1: conservative right it. In other words, I'm not safety. I'm

931
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 1: not like a right wing guy who then occasionally says

932
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:45,880
Speaker 1: stuff to get like a pad in the ahead out

933
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 1: of the head from like the New York Times or whatever.

934
00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:52,400
Speaker 1: It's because as a as a person who wants to

935
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 1: see a social order that is not completely disruptive to workers' lives,

936
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: that conduces to family formation, things like that. Well, capitalism

937
00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:05,799
Speaker 1: is a profoundly revolutionary force. It's very good at doing

938
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: things efficiently and so on. We all know it's benefit.

939
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:12,280
Speaker 1: But it can also be pretty disruptive. So as a conservative,

940
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: I want to restrain that to try to bring it under.

941
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:19,440
Speaker 1: If we're going to have disruption, let's have it. Subject

942
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:24,720
Speaker 1: to political contestation rather than just having you know, the few,

943
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: the very very powerful direct the nature of.

944
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 5: So it's like a it's like a twist on the

945
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:32,919
Speaker 5: Buckley line where you know you're you're standing the tide

946
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 5: of capitalism and yelling, yelling stuff.

947
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. So one one let's very quick

948
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: point is also that like the New Dealers the social

949
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: democrats of old, they were trying to prevent revolution, right

950
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:50,840
Speaker 1: like the The idea was to stabilize the system in

951
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: order to not have you know, authoritarian leftism or authoritarian

952
00:51:55,120 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: rightism come up. It was a conservative impulse and I

953
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,759
Speaker 1: think the peopleeople who call themselves democratic socialists would be

954
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:06,759
Speaker 1: offended to hear that, but they're the fundamental impulse here.

955
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: Is not that we don't want totally classless society. Very

956
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 1: few people do, only like really hardcore tankies. It's about restraining,

957
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: keeping it under some political control, keeping it, you know,

958
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: making the market safe for society is a good way

959
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:22,760
Speaker 1: to put it.

960
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:26,600
Speaker 3: So such a I think important piece. So thank you

961
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:29,320
Speaker 3: for coming here to discuss some of this as it happens,

962
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 3: changes by the hour seemingly, and we appreciate your time.

963
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 1: Thank you both and it's good to join my colleague

964
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: on a different show.

965
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 5: All right, Emily, very nice to have your colleague on

966
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 5: interesting show. Today. We didn't we didn't get a chance

967
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 5: to talk about the new inflation numbers that just came

968
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 5: out showing a rise in inflation three percent. It's a

969
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:51,839
Speaker 5: real blow to Trump, also a blow to your four

970
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:55,800
Speaker 5: oh one k. The stock market is diving on this news.

971
00:52:56,040 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 5: It's probably going to push Trump to calm down a

972
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 5: little bit on the on the the trade trade war,

973
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:05,360
Speaker 5: you know, uh, And it's going to be interesting to see.

974
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:07,560
Speaker 5: I think he's just going to go into the Bureau

975
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 5: of Labor Statistics and into the bowels of the Commerce

976
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:13,880
Speaker 5: Department and tell him to stop giving him ugly numbers

977
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 5: that like, I think that's going to be Musk's task,

978
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:21,200
Speaker 5: give me better numbers. But in the me in the meantime,

979
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 5: I think it'll put a little bit of the brakes

980
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 5: on the on the trade war.

981
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:25,719
Speaker 3: And you know, that is one of those things where

982
00:53:25,719 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 3: it's tough because like there actually are some tweaks that

983
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 3: probably need to be made over at BOLS. But then

984
00:53:30,440 --> 00:53:32,360
Speaker 3: you so like maybe there's a good end, there's a

985
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 3: good outcome, but you just can't trust the process, so

986
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 3: somebody to keep an eye on, for sure. Trump notoriously

987
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:44,520
Speaker 3: cares very much about the markets on his watch, but

988
00:53:44,560 --> 00:53:48,000
Speaker 3: also notoriously as a hardened ideologue on the question of tariffs.

989
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:51,360
Speaker 3: So an interesting clash here for sure. Thank you so

990
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:55,240
Speaker 3: much everybody for tuning in to today's edition of Counterpoints.

991
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 3: We will be back here next Wednesday with more. We

992
00:53:58,200 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 3: know this is a longer show, so we appreciate it

993
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:00,839
Speaker 3: one sticking with us.

994
00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we'll do a little Friday thing for you

995
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 5: just to keep you updated. And we'll see that