Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Many talk few have to act in one of them.
Speaker 3: As the Governor of Connecticut and Medlamont joins us right
Speaker 3: now in our studios this morning.
Speaker 2: You're wounded.
Speaker 3: For those of you on radio, He's got the sling
Speaker 3: going in that you're on a trade mission to India.
Speaker 3: How is President Trump helping Connecticut with your trade relations
Speaker 3: with India?
Speaker 1: India was nervous as heck about President Trump. That said,
Speaker 1: we went to Eastern India, which is by far the
Speaker 1: most innovative and entrepreneurial part. We did a trade mission there,
Speaker 1: met with a forty or fifty companies, some of which
Speaker 1: you're thinking about getting a foothold in the United States.
Speaker 1: I had to spell Connecticut forum, but now they know, well,
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 2: To spell Connecticut for me as well. Governor Laman Bloomenthal
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: On this yesterday. You take electricity from Canada. If doug
Speaker 3: Ford of Ontario or Quebec Hydro, if they pull the plug,
Speaker 3: what's it mean for Bridgeport.
Speaker 1: We have some very high electric prices throughout New England,
Speaker 1: including Connecticut, and we bring down a lot of hydro
Speaker 1: from Canada. So you put ten percent on there that
Speaker 1: would add about seventy five million. You put twenty percent
Speaker 1: on there, that'd be one hundred and fifty million additional
Speaker 1: fees paid for by our rate payers.
Speaker 4: Not a great idea, So, Governor, as you've probably seen
Speaker 4: here in the financial markets, which Tom and I and
Speaker 4: deal with every day, a lot of uncertainty in the
Speaker 4: marketplace as it relates to economic policy of this new administration.
Speaker 4: We're seeing that in lower stock prices and weaker dollar.
Speaker 4: How did you see it from Connecticut? How did you
Speaker 4: and your constituency look at this current environment.
Speaker 1: I come out of the business world. The business world
Speaker 1: hates uncertainty. If you know, when I took over Connecticut,
Speaker 1: we were going from boom to bust a bust and
Speaker 1: raising taxes. And we've had six straight balanced budgets trying
Speaker 1: to give people a certainty or unemployment rate is way
Speaker 1: down and job growth is up. But it's just the
Speaker 1: opposite in Washington, DC right now all that uncertainty starting
Speaker 1: with tariffs, are looking at deficits, a lot of businesses
Speaker 1: that I think I'm going to hold off right now
Speaker 1: before I make that investment. That's not good.
Speaker 4: So in Connecticut, what are the chief issues that you
Speaker 4: guys are dealing with from an economic perspective these days.
Speaker 1: Look, we're going to we're looking at our seventh and
Speaker 1: eighth balanced budget. Unless they cut medicaid by a billion dollars,
Speaker 1: you cut medicaid by a billion dollars, our budget has
Speaker 1: turned upside down. And that's true of forty nine other states.
Speaker 4: What are you hearing from the federal government about some
Speaker 4: of those big ticket items.
Speaker 1: I don't think they know right now. I was down there.
Speaker 1: I met with folks, the secretaries that just come into office.
Speaker 1: They're coming up and they're modeling. But everything runs through
Speaker 1: the White House.
Speaker 3: For those of you across the nation in your commute today,
Speaker 3: a Democrat, the governor of Connecticut is with us, Ned
Speaker 3: lamont Is. He goes through the tiptoes through all this
Speaker 3: different policy changes we're seeing. I'm going to cut to
Speaker 3: the chase. You got to vote of confidence from the people.
Speaker 3: You get forty nine percent of the vote and one
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, I'm going to call it barely.
Speaker 2: You improved dramatically.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty two with fifty seven percent of the vote.
Speaker 3: What do you say, really, the polarity of the nation
Speaker 3: on right and left. But what do you say to
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party is they addressed from a left liberal
Speaker 3: point the reality of a centrist Lamont and others as well.
Speaker 1: A centrist Lamont probably is going to disagree with the
Speaker 1: Trump administration on a majority of things. But start with
Speaker 1: areas where we can find some agreement, where we can
Speaker 1: work together. For me, that starts with energy. The high
Speaker 1: price of electricity. You know, the possibility that we could
Speaker 1: bring in natural gas or expand nuclear in our region
Speaker 1: would be transformative. A place where I've been meeting with
Speaker 1: the Secretary is down to Washington. Something we can get
Speaker 1: done together.
Speaker 3: Well, let me let me you know, we're at a
Speaker 3: piece of chalk on our hand at Harvard years ago,
Speaker 3: Nev Lamont. Did the Republicans win the election, Tod Trump
Speaker 3: win or did the Democrats lose the election because they
Speaker 3: were too far left?
Speaker 1: I think Trump won. He won because it was a
Speaker 1: change election. I look around the world, nobody wanted more
Speaker 1: of the same, and I think a little bit Kamala
Speaker 1: got stuck with the Biden legacy, couldn't differentiate herself from there.
Speaker 1: And believe me, Donald Trump represented change.
Speaker 4: When you think about the Democratic Party today, a lot
Speaker 4: of folks are saying, where's the leadership? Because it seems
Speaker 4: like President Trump and his administration taking all the oxygen
Speaker 4: out of the room. Where is the democratic response, Where's
Speaker 4: the democratic policy? Where's the democratic leadership?
Speaker 1: Who do you think is the leader? Does a democratic
Speaker 1: party have a leader these days? Well, when we're not
Speaker 1: in power, you tend to have a lot of different leaders.
Speaker 1: I'd start with the governors. The governors are not making
Speaker 1: everything a battle about Donald Trump. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to medicaid, we're going to hit hard. We're going to
Speaker 1: work with Republican governors to say, you know, unensuring these
Speaker 1: poor people is just going to drive a wedgend or
Speaker 1: hospitals as well, make a difference, find areas of specific
Speaker 1: interest and focus on that, you know, rather than just
Speaker 1: make everything about Trump.
Speaker 4: Congestion pricing. We've got a congestion pricing corresponding right here
Speaker 4: is trying.
Speaker 1: To get me in trouble.
Speaker 4: Yes, New Jersey has a particular view of congestion pricing
Speaker 4: against it. How does the folks in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: I just think you have to pay your bills, and
Speaker 1: New York City's got to pay their bills. You've got
Speaker 1: a pretty anniquated subway system. Does anybody have a better
Speaker 1: idea of how to pay for things? It's so easy
Speaker 1: to say no, and right now there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people say no. So I'm a little sympathetic that
Speaker 1: Kat the ohlklown.
Speaker 3: You represent an advantaged America with the heritage of JP
Speaker 3: Morgan and all that you've.
Speaker 2: Done in your life.
Speaker 3: How does America find the center again? We are whatever
Speaker 3: anybody's politics on this show, we can all admit it's
Speaker 3: a fractured America.
Speaker 2: How do we find the center?
Speaker 3: Back to your family and he's key four years ago
Speaker 3: and others, how do we get back to the center?
Speaker 2: Governor Lamont, I.
Speaker 1: Think we found in Connecticut Republicans and Democrats find places
Speaker 1: we can agree. Let's say we did the biggest tax
Speaker 1: cut ever last year, but it was middle class people
Speaker 1: and beyond it was not for rich people. That was
Speaker 1: an area where Republicans and Democrats could get together a
Speaker 1: five hundred million dollars tax cut. What we're doing in
Speaker 1: terms of making sure that we educate people for the
Speaker 1: jobs that are out there right now, there's a disconnect.
Speaker 1: I'm finding pretty good balance between Republicans and Democrats there. Look,
Speaker 1: there's a certain incentive to say no, that's what the
Speaker 1: nature of the opposition party is. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: good for Democrats at the national level, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's good for Republicans at our state level.
Speaker 4: Foreign policy, it's another area that is front and center
Speaker 4: for better or worse for the United States, both in
Speaker 4: the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Just start with Ukraine.
Speaker 4: There seems to be I guess, a willingness to find
Speaker 4: some solution over there, and that's question how you get there?
Speaker 4: And President Trump has a certain focus here. How would
Speaker 4: you approach what's happening in Ukraine trying to find some
Speaker 4: type of piece there.
Speaker 1: Not the way Donald Trump is doing it. Look, he
Speaker 1: wrote the Art of the Deal. You go in, you
Speaker 1: negotiate from a position to strength. Instead, Pete Hesa just
Speaker 1: pulled the rug out from under Zelenski put in place
Speaker 1: a whole list of concessions, a sense that we're not
Speaker 1: going to be there to back them. I think that's
Speaker 1: a terrible way to do it. And our allies around
Speaker 1: the world are watching how we treat Ukrain. I heard
Speaker 1: that when I was in India as well. I'm glad
Speaker 1: they're sitting down I think they're negotiating. I think that's
Speaker 1: long overdue, but negotiate from a position of strength.
Speaker 3: Well, I look, Governor Laban at Connecticut, and I think
Speaker 3: there's so many stereotypes out there, and folks, you can
Speaker 3: come up with your own stereotype. It probably starts with
Speaker 3: a Hinkley picnic voter at Graham Banks. Yeah, but the
Speaker 3: reality is Connecticut's got an incredible polarity, including sixteen seventeen
Speaker 3: percent foreign born migrants. You know, whatever those numbers are.
Speaker 3: The last time we talked, you said you're managing it.
Speaker 3: It's not the crisis of New York State and what
Speaker 3: Mayor Adams is facing. But give us an update, and
Speaker 3: our Connecticut is tackling this polarizing issue.
Speaker 1: Connecticut is a diverse state. We represent the diversity of
Speaker 1: the United States of America. When I go to India,
Speaker 1: I have to say, Look, the stereotype of Connecticut is
Speaker 1: a bunch of Fairfield County guys in these boats you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Is not the reality. Our biggest percentage of
Speaker 1: international students are Indian born students, and that we welcome that.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great strength for our state, and
Speaker 1: I think it is a great strength for our country,
Speaker 1: and I think we're getting away from that.
Speaker 4: You come from business, you have a business background. President
Speaker 4: Trump today is addressing the business roundtable. What do you
Speaker 4: think the message should be from Trump to the business
Speaker 4: leaders and from the business leaders to President Trump.
Speaker 1: I think from the business leaders to President Trump, you're
Speaker 1: seeing the incredible anxiety and uncertainty reflected in a collapse
Speaker 1: stock market and a rising unemployment rates. Look, I agree
Speaker 1: with you in terms of wanting to do big things,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to do them overnight with a chainsaw.
Speaker 1: Give us a direction of where you want to go,
Speaker 1: and we can invest accordingly. I hope the President listens
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated with a Supreme Court decision the other day
Speaker 3: with Amy Cony Barritt going over.
Speaker 2: There seems to be a primal.
Speaker 3: Scream of the judiciary solving legislative problems. You're part of
Speaker 3: that as an executive in Connecticut, but also almost like
Speaker 3: a legislature to Washington.
Speaker 2: Is a.
Speaker 3: Governor is a legislature just giving up the ghost in Washington?
Speaker 3: I mean, does Congress even part of the debate anymore?
Speaker 1: I'm sort of glad to see the judiciary standing up
Speaker 1: to some of the intrusions from the Trump administration. You
Speaker 1: know that said they haven't passed a darn thing down
Speaker 1: in Congress. In the life too.
Speaker 2: Exactly, that's.
Speaker 1: Maybe the judiciary is stepping in there. But I think
Speaker 1: the judiciary right now is the guardrails protecting our democracy.
Speaker 3: One of the great themes here and it's the theme
Speaker 3: of your life, is we've expanded our federal mandate away
Speaker 3: from states like a Connecticut. I mean, there's a swing
Speaker 3: back here where we've said enough on a titlements.
Speaker 2: When you see.
Speaker 3: The policy from your advisors, we're going to pull back
Speaker 3: from agriculture, We're going to pull back from Congress. We're
Speaker 3: going to pull back FAA and all the rest of
Speaker 3: the DOSE stuff and all the rest. It's a primal
Speaker 3: scream of a smaller Washington.
Speaker 2: Is that feasible right now?
Speaker 1: It's popular because it sounds like Dose is getting rid
Speaker 1: of a bunch of bureaucrats or you know, just leaning
Speaker 1: on their shovels. But every day in our state level,
Speaker 1: you're seeing how it's hitting people, starting with healthcare. I
Speaker 1: think that pushback is going to get louder and louder,
Speaker 1: and den Lebama.
Speaker 3: With US the governor of Connecticut. We continue our conversation.
Speaker 3: We welcome all of you. Governor Lamon's people came in,
Speaker 3: they said, Tom, please do data checks here. We understand
Speaker 3: the market's blown up. Futures up twenty five now negative three. Again,
Speaker 3: the VIS comes out over twenty eight. That's a key statistic,
Speaker 3: twenty eight point zero five on the VIS yields we're lower,
Speaker 3: they're now higher. There's some real correlated churn to the
Speaker 3: tape right now. Oil sixty six eighty seven a barrel.
Speaker 3: The dollar weaker this morning, yen churning. I'm gonna call
Speaker 3: it the euro well over a one oh nine, showing
Speaker 3: some of the currency dynamics. Paul with a governor of Connecticut.
Speaker 4: Governor, you and the state of Connecticut, as you mentioned,
Speaker 4: have been able to balance your budget. We're coming up
Speaker 4: to some budget discussions then in Washington, DC. What is
Speaker 4: your advice to folks in Congress about these upcoming negotiations
Speaker 4: and trying to balance the budget and trying to push
Speaker 4: that part of the policy through.
Speaker 1: Governors are so frustrated with Washington. We all have to
Speaker 1: balance our budget down in Washington, and it's an afterthoughtstand
Speaker 1: that deficits are not politically that charged an issue, But
Speaker 1: you got to do the right thing. You don't have
Speaker 1: to solve it overnight, but you've got to directionally start
Speaker 1: showing that you're getting your budget under control. I don't
Speaker 1: see that happening in Washington.
Speaker 4: Are you surprised there's not more political pressure to do that?
Speaker 4: Because I think the message I've taken is that unless
Speaker 4: people force Washington to do that, either to lower expenses,
Speaker 4: raise revenue, whatever they have to do. Unless there's political pressure,
Speaker 4: there's no really no incentive to do anything.
Speaker 1: Look here at Bloomberg, we care about that deeply. We
Speaker 1: know if you don't have an honestly balanced budget, a
Speaker 1: bad things happen in the future. I've paid down our
Speaker 1: debt by over ten billion dollars. People don't care that much.
Speaker 1: You know, they have real needs every day. How can
Speaker 1: you not taken care of that?
Speaker 4: So how do you think about that? I mean, is
Speaker 4: this the How do you think if you were to
Speaker 4: balance the US budget? Where would you go expenses, revenue both?
Speaker 4: How would you think about it?
Speaker 1: Don't I think I'd have the biggest tax cut in
Speaker 1: history for the wealthiest folks. I think that sends the
Speaker 1: wrong signal. It takes us in the wrong direction. I
Speaker 1: think I would be going after efficiency, not the way
Speaker 1: Doze is doing, but in a serious way. And you
Speaker 1: can't disregard entitlements.
Speaker 2: I got two questions left. They're both really really important.
Speaker 3: One with immense respect to your family, the heritage of
Speaker 3: the Lamont family.
Speaker 2: On all of Wall Street. Is this a new gilded age?
Speaker 3: Have we skewed things so far over to billionaire mania
Speaker 3: that we're really reliving? I mean, Trump has this fixation
Speaker 3: over McKinley and tariffs. Are we reliving McKinley as a society.
Speaker 1: I think we are a little bit. I think inflating
Speaker 1: the money supply and all the deficits have made the
Speaker 1: rich a lot richer, probably the richest they've been since
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 2: I got one final question. It's credit.
Speaker 3: Paul emails in and says it's just simple. Finally Big
Speaker 3: East basketball is back. I mean, I'm looking at Yukon
Speaker 3: Saint John's.
Speaker 2: This could be a bit that is going to.
Speaker 1: Be a great Big East game. You got Yukon is
Speaker 1: playing better and better than men when the women are
Speaker 1: top flight.
Speaker 3: Women are top flight, but in men's basketball, Yukon's won
Speaker 3: four in a row.
Speaker 2: Are they saving it for Saint John's here?
Speaker 1: Hey, look we're two time national champions. Yeah, we know
Speaker 1: what we're doing.
Speaker 2: Okay, John Tucker, would you like to do this? His
Speaker 2: own congestions you to know this is more important. Do
Speaker 2: you know why they call it a nutmeg state?
Speaker 1: No, it's based on a scam they used to the
Speaker 1: Yankee peddlers used to sell fake nutmeg to unsuspecting travelers
Speaker 1: in Connecticut. That right, I rephrase that a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're a great trading state. We take advantage of our advantages.
Speaker 3: Final question, I noticed, finally, after finally, after four hundred years,
Speaker 3: we get new Amtrak trains. Everybody blames Connecticut for the
Speaker 3: worst wires.
Speaker 2: We fixed it. You know, forget about the tunnels. We
Speaker 2: fixed it in New York to Washington.
Speaker 3: Give us an update on your unspeakable relationship with Amtrak
Speaker 3: to give us better, cheaper train service.
Speaker 1: I will tell you we're gonna be able to speed
Speaker 1: up a track dramatically over the next five years. We
Speaker 1: got significant resources from the Biden administration. We are a
Speaker 1: choke point. We got a lot of little towns, a
Speaker 1: lot of stops along the way, a lot of twist
Speaker 1: and turns around. Missus o'gillicutti's home. We're going to speed
Speaker 1: that up.
Speaker 2: Is the President going to cut your submarine effort?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. It's the strategic piece of our triad.
Speaker 1: They're still undecipherable, folks.
Speaker 2: For those that don't know it.
Speaker 3: You take the train up and you're there and there's
Speaker 3: like a submarine over in a window. Explain to people
Speaker 3: what's going on. It's your submarine base in Connecticut. It's
Speaker 3: top top, top secret. They don't even know if they
Speaker 3: leave or go because they leave underwater. But explain the
Speaker 3: commitment of Connecticut to our United States Navy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, electric boat part of General Dynamics, makes most of
Speaker 1: our submarines here and down in Virginia. It's the last
Speaker 1: piece of our triad that is still undetectable. So it's
Speaker 1: really important in terms of our strategic deterrence. If you
Speaker 1: think the Soviets are coming in from the North Sea,
Speaker 1: you know they're going to come right by New England.
Speaker 1: It's very important what we got there in the Groton,
Speaker 1: New London areas.
Speaker 3: Governor, thank you for joining Bloomberg today, Grant, I appreciate
Speaker 3: it I'm still a mount of the state of Connecticut.