What’s Buried in the Bill (feat. Rep. Greg Landsman)

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Speaker 6 Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlove.
Last week, the House narrowly passed the budget reconciliation package, Trump's quote-unquote big beautiful bill.

Speaker 6 It's over 1,100 pages of legislation, and though Senate Republicans have indicated that they're going to make some changes, it's still worth wrapping our heads around what's in the House pass version and why.

Speaker 6 Today, I'm joined by Congressman Greg Landsman of Ohio. He won election to Congress in 2022 when he flipped his district from Republican control for only the second time since 1995.

Speaker 6 Representative Landsman, thank you so much for joining us today. It's nice to meet you.

Speaker 4 Good to meet you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 6 It's my pleasure. As a liberal that works in conservative media, there are certain people that I like to have in my back pocket.
Like when they say AOC, I say Pat Ryan or like Greg Landsman.

Speaker 6 So it's nice to meet you as a sane anchor. Not that she's insane, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 She and I serve on Energy and Commerce together, together, and I think we're we're a decent

Speaker 4 crew, right? Like she's she's more progressive on many things than me, but she's she's got obviously an incredible amount of talent when it comes to communications. Huge.

Speaker 4 And her ability to make arguments and to,

Speaker 4 I think, break through, which is a huge part of what Democrats have to figure out, is how to get attention and to break through. And there's a lot to learn from her.

Speaker 4 Though, you know, I've said this to her, there's, I think, a lot to learn from us too, which is I represent part of the country where you have an equal number of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.

Speaker 4 And so it's, it's a pretty pragmatic middle-of-the-road district. And I, I think I have a pretty good sense of where voters are on most issues and the language they use.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I think people like us working together is a good thing.

Speaker 6 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's undoubtedly a good thing, A, for the vibes, but B, for the electoral outcomes. And it

Speaker 6 always bothers me, I guess, that

Speaker 6 we get pitted into these buckets so much that people can't get past that to see how much actually unifies us and then what you can learn from the other side.

Speaker 6 And at this moment, when we have lost the communications battle so egregiously to the right, it's clear that AOC and Bernie are doing something right and folks are focusing on that.

Speaker 6 But there's still like this downplaying of effectiveness, I guess, because of past positions. You know, well, she said to fund the police.
I said, yeah, I know that she said that.

Speaker 6 She doesn't say it so much anymore, but we're not talking about what her presidential platform will look like.

Speaker 6 We're talking about what can we learn from folks within our party and how can we support each other.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's right. I mean,

Speaker 4 ultimately you want to. build and you have to build the broadest possible coalition.

Speaker 4 And that takes a lot of intentionality and work.

Speaker 4 And it's, it's organizing and it's the way in which you communicate and it's it's how you build teams but you know it's a big part of what has to happen moving forward in my opinion we you know as democrats we have to sort of come clean with with voters in terms of where things weren't what we said uh or others in our party said and uh rebuild some trust because there's there's uh there's an issue there right like even though trump is underwater so are democrats and so there's some work to do there ultimately there's got to be this national effort to organize the broadest possible coalition.

Speaker 4 And, you know, you can wait for a candidate to emerge that really has that ability to build that coalition, or you can start to lay the groundwork. Now, I'm a,

Speaker 4 let's lay the groundwork now, and build that huge coalition and do it by laying out, in part, a really compelling, you know, set of fixes or policies similar to what the Republicans did in 1994 with the Contract for America, just one.

Speaker 4 You know, and I've taken a stab at this and laid it out and shared it with folks, including AOC, to say, like, look, this is, you know, where I think we build the broadest possible coalition.

Speaker 4 And, you know, ultimately, I think that's what you're going to see over the course of the next couple of months is a more unified national effort where we're not just fighting the chaos and corruption and cruelty of Trump, but there's also a larger, really compelling vision.

Speaker 6 What are the key planks of that vision?

Speaker 4 So, for me, there are three. One is fixing the economy, and that's one where Democrats have to come clean.

Speaker 4 This is where AOC and I are close and that are aligned. I know that the economy has been fundamentally broken for decades, and that's something that she and Bernie and others have been talking about.

Speaker 4 It's what I've been talking about in my very purple district, and it's what Pat talks about.

Speaker 4 I mean, Pat, Ryan, and I, you know, this is where we sync up and all agree that, you know, the economy's been structurally broken.

Speaker 4 And the idea that there were Democrats telling people it was okay and look at GDP and look at unemployment and all this other stuff. It's like, no, look at people's bank accounts.
I mean, it's grim.

Speaker 4 People are struggling to pay all their bills. And the concentration of wealth is just, you know, it's so egregious and so harmful.
And so you got to fix the tax code. You got to fix the economy.

Speaker 4 You got to get rid of price gouging. You got to take on corporate consolidation, all that stuff.
Number two

Speaker 4 is, you know, reforms to government and politics. And, you know, just like fixing the economy,

Speaker 4 we have to be the anti-establishment reformer crew again and say, look, you know, we had, you know, power in 2021 and 2020, the presidency, the House and the Senate, and the Senate didn't pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Speaker 4 We didn't, you know, the House passed a bill to end partisan gerrymandering and to end voter suppression and dark money and get money out of politics, but the Senate didn't.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Democrats have to own that. And then the last piece, and this is where there's going to be some disagreement within the party, and that's okay.
I just, you know, hopefully I went out.

Speaker 4 It's good for you.

Speaker 4 Is that

Speaker 4 it's public safety, national security. I mean, and

Speaker 4 part of public safety is

Speaker 4 border security and immigration reform, which we were the leaders on for so long. And then way too many in our party were like, oh, you know, it's not that important.
It's like, it's hugely important.

Speaker 4 You know, the last time we had meaningful gun reform where we tackled gun violence is we paired it with hiring more cops. That's that's how the crime bill got done.

Speaker 4 Now, I'm not suggesting you do the crime bill again, but you do say like we're going to we're going to hire more police officers because communities all over the country need cops.

Speaker 4 And we need, you know, the kind of common sense gun reform that's going to lead to, you know, safer communities. And from a national security standpoint, we need a strong defense.

Speaker 4 And so there are many of us in our party that are pretty hawkish. And it's not because we want war.
It's the exact opposite.

Speaker 4 It's an old Roman saying,

Speaker 4 if you want peace, prepare for war. That's all.
And so in any event, those to me are the three big things. Fix the economy, fix politics and government.
and keep everyone safe.

Speaker 6 I love that you could actually answer that question directly because there are a lot of Democrats that are talking a big game about having a plan.

Speaker 6 And then I say, okay, well, what's the the bumper sticker? Just like lay it on me, right?

Speaker 6 I want to know what our new no tax on tips is going to be because voters have, who aren't paying attention to the daily grind of this, have a very small attention span for what's going on.

Speaker 6 And they're going to remember the things that stick out. So a three-point plan is great.
And I wanted to double tap on your point about crime and public safety. I live in New York City.

Speaker 6 We are on our way to having Mayor Andrew Cuomo, I think, directly as a result of the conversation that you were just having about people not feeling safe and the quality of life in a major American city, a crown jewel of the world, being below where it is.

Speaker 6 And people at this moment, and my friends have been telling me that this is resonating, that they're looking for a competent gangster.

Speaker 6 And in a lot of ways, though, I debate the competency of Trump, but that's kind of like the bucket that he fell in, right?

Speaker 6 Where it's just like, I don't like all this stuff about him, but if he's actually going to to be able to get stuff done and I'm going to be safer as a result, if that's a good thing, you're nodding your head.

Speaker 6 So competent gangster, you're into that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I will.

Speaker 6 I mean, not into it.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I'm nodding my head because I understand where that comes from. I think people want a toughness.

Speaker 4 Things are broken. And when things are broken, you want somebody who can come in and fix it.
That's where we are.

Speaker 4 And if there is a bumper sticker, you know, that I'd be okay with, we're going to be the ones that fix it. We'll fix this.
And

Speaker 4 you need to have a toughness to you and to your team and to the people you pull together because it is complex and it is messy and it's going to require a, I would say a toughness and a level of strength and determination and action that says, you know, that gives people the confidence that you're going to break through and get it fixed.

Speaker 4 And I, that to me is where,

Speaker 4 you know, I would use different language, but I'm not, I'm from Ohio.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you don't have to talk like that.

Speaker 4 I don't, you know, like I'm in New York. I'm not in New York, but I get it.
Like, I, I, I, I, I feel it. I want somebody who I know is going to go into a room and say,

Speaker 4 hey, guys, we have to, we have to fucking fix this. And so I don't care, you know, uh,

Speaker 4 exactly how we do it, but no one's leaving this fucking room until we fix it. That's, to me, the energy the country needs.

Speaker 6 Was that the energy that won you a purple purple district?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, like I was at City Hall for five years and I was known as somebody who just got shit done.

Speaker 4 Like I just, I, I, I, I can put people in a room and hold them in that room until they, you know,

Speaker 4 people who don't agree on something. So like we did a ton of eviction prevention work, a ton of it.
And it has kept tens of thousands of children and families in their homes.

Speaker 4 We got the landlords and the tenant advocates in a room. And for months, we were like, you know, look, we're going to keep meeting until we can iron out fixes.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I think, you know, people find that compelling. It made a big difference.
And, you know, more and more children and families are still in their homes because of it.

Speaker 4 And our eviction numbers are better than most places. We did it with preschool.
We had a vision to say, like, every kid in this city needs quality preschool, two years of quality preschool.

Speaker 4 We wanted to be the first city in the country to do it. So we brought everyone together, the teachers union

Speaker 4 and other folks in labor with the business community and the schools. And we passed a ballot measure.
It took us years, but we passed a ballot measure.

Speaker 4 And since I was the only city in the country that provides two years of quality preschool, the list goes on for me in terms of accomplishments based on being a person who cares deeply and who's willing to go in and throw punches until something gets done.

Speaker 6 I love that. And the two years of preschool, since I have preschool-aged kids, sounds mighty good to me because we don't have that here.

Speaker 6 Before we get to the specifics of the reconciliation bill, you already mentioned the Energy and Commerce Committee, which you sit on. And you guys pulled an all-nighter.

Speaker 6 I mentioned it on the podcast as kind of an inspirational moment in active democracy. Not only that people can stay up 26 hours in a row, but that you guys were so well coordinated.

Speaker 6 You had so many special guests to show the real implications of this bill, focused mostly on the Medicaid cuts.

Speaker 6 But can you kind of take us through what you guys did, what you hope to accomplish, and if you think any hearts and minds were changed as a result?

Speaker 4 So, yeah,

Speaker 4 let me start at the end. I do think

Speaker 4 that there were people on the other side of the aisle that are more conflicted than they were. And I don't know how this is going to end.

Speaker 4 We don't know because it's now in the Senate and it may come back differently. In fact, it will likely come back differently.

Speaker 4 And I do think the 26 hours straight of hammering in a very compelling way, you know, didn't change their votes in that, you know, first instance. But over time,

Speaker 4 you know, I still think it's a question. Now, what we did was we started organizing meeting early.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Frank Pallone chairs that committee and he and his staff have been incredible about getting us in a room, working through what we expected to be the policy, and then what we knew would be, or talk through what we thought would be the most compelling arguments to make.

Speaker 4 And that that was something we worked on for weeks, if not months, together as a committee. And

Speaker 4 then, you know,

Speaker 4 we get an opportunity, we're in the minority, to use the power that we do have, which is to procedurally hold them in a room for 26 straight hours, offering amendment after amendment after amendment after amendment.

Speaker 4 And they weren't joke amendments. They weren't messaging amendments.
They were real amendments.

Speaker 4 You know, for example, one of my amendments was to get get rid of this new fee that they're going to charge low-income families to get certain procedures, most procedures.

Speaker 4 And there's no argument for it other than they're trying to generate more money for tax cuts, and they need the numbers of people who are using Medicaid to go down.

Speaker 4 And so they're finding all of these ways to, you know, kick people off or as one one member on the other side said, clean up their roles.

Speaker 4 So in any event,

Speaker 4 they were all very compelling amendments

Speaker 4 and they voted against every single one of them.

Speaker 4 But the people who sat in the room, I mean, they came up to me afterwards and they would say, like, that was really compelling or you made a really good argument or one

Speaker 4 who I do believe is struggling with this. I think a lot of them are struggling with this.
This is not what, as I said, Mike's sort of closing arguments. This is not the assignment they wanted.

Speaker 4 If they had been told, hey, guys, we want to do tax cuts and provide tax relief for working people, the middle class, farmers, and small businesses. That's it.

Speaker 4 We don't, you know, we want to clean up fraud, waste, and abuse. So work with the Democrats and follow the GAO reports, which lay out all the fraud, waste, and abuse.

Speaker 4 But we don't want to add any more to the deficit. And, you know, we're not going to take anyone's health care or food.
They would have passed that easily with us. I mean, easily.

Speaker 4 You know, it's a teeny set of changes to the tax code that would only affect the wealthiest people in America. That's it.
They wouldn't even notice it.

Speaker 4 And there would be no deficit spending. No one loses their health care.
No one loses their food assistance. And you get rid of all this waste, fraud, and abuse, saving a ton of money.

Speaker 4 But it's based on what the GAO and the professionals say,

Speaker 4 as opposed to a bunch of fake claims about abuse in order to pay for tax cuts. So in any event,

Speaker 4 it was a lot of prep. It was a lot of us knowing what they were going to do.
This is the part of this fight, this big fight that we were prepared for.

Speaker 4 I mean, I don't, we weren't prepared for, you know,

Speaker 4 Trump saying he's going to invade Greenland or that, you know, that was a powerful thing.

Speaker 6 How could you know for that?

Speaker 4 How could we have known? There are other things. I don't, I don't think we were prepared for this level of corruption.
It's insane how much he's doing to line his own pockets.

Speaker 4 I mean, he's raking in billions or the cruelty. But we all read Project 2025.
We knew this was going to happen.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, you're so right. The cruelty is the point, right? No, no truer words from the last almost decade, right? Since he came down the golden escalator.

Speaker 4 Although I would say, like, for him,

Speaker 4 for Trump,

Speaker 4 the point is making money. He wants to make as much money as he possibly can.
That is his goal.

Speaker 4 That's his North Star.

Speaker 4 And in order to make... as much money as he can, he has to have power.
And that's why he

Speaker 4 cares about power and

Speaker 4 winning this election and then using power to

Speaker 4 with the tariffs so that people have to come to him and get exemptions. But to get exemptions, you got to pay him money,

Speaker 4 power in terms of the dinner over the weekend where all these people showed up

Speaker 4 and gave I don't know how much money, but it's hundreds of millions, tens of millions he made

Speaker 4 for him.

Speaker 6 I think it's $394 million

Speaker 4 roughly speaking. Okay, almost a half a billion dollars for one dinner that goes to him.

Speaker 6 Where most people didn't even get the access that they thought that they were going to get.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 On top of it.

Speaker 4 Now, in order to get the money, he needs the power. In order to get the power, he needs attention.
And that's what he does. And sometimes cruelty is what gets him attention.

Speaker 4 And I think the cruelty is serves the need for attention, which helps him with power, which ultimately serves his, you know, his most important goal, which is, which is to make money.

Speaker 4 And he's been doing this his entire life. My hope is that at the end of this, it'll all sort of fall apart the way every one of his businesses has, where a bunch of people sue.

Speaker 4 And usually it was bankers for him. Now I think you just have everyday people who've been ripped off who are going to sue.

Speaker 4 I just, I think that

Speaker 4 understanding Trump through that lens is really important. He is

Speaker 4 a true grifter and willing to be as corrupt as humanly possible. Like no one's ever been more corrupt.

Speaker 4 And he doesn't care because he's going to walk away with billions and billions and billions of dollars.

Speaker 6 Not a lot in there that I would argue with.

Speaker 6 As

Speaker 6 a liberal that lives in a conservative media environment, I have found it incredibly frustrating how little resonance that argument

Speaker 6 has with conservatives. I don't know as much about the audience.

Speaker 6 and we have a lot of Democrats that watch the five and independents, but this case that they're making, and Mike Johnson has been making it too, that what Trump does that's corrupt doesn't matter because it's in the open is astounding to me on a number of levels.

Speaker 6 But I think more concerning is that it's actually representative of how a large swath of Americans feel.

Speaker 6 And that goes to this point that there is such a low level of trust or faith in people who are our elected representatives that they would just much rather be stabbed in the front than in the back.

Speaker 6 And unfortunately, even though I don't give a ton of credence to the massive cover-up story that Jake Tabern and Alex Thompson have been selling with original sin, certainly there's a lot of truth to the fact that Joe Biden couldn't have done this job for another four years, but

Speaker 6 they think that we're the backstabbers and that they're the front stabbers. And you see this in the way that they are selling the reconciliation bill as well.

Speaker 6 Mike Johnson, these are work requirements. I mean, his own state has hundreds of thousands of people that are on Medicaid, who, if this went through, would be thrown off.

Speaker 6 And he's kind of shrugging at it. He says, it doesn't matter.
It's all fakes who do this. I mean, the entire premise of what Elon Musk did was false fraud.
So, what do the Democrats do about that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, this is, I, it's a really good question.

Speaker 4 The, the answer is: you, you, you have to make sure that it's clear that it's coming at an expense to you. And

Speaker 4 ultimately, people know that.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 the fact that he

Speaker 4 he had he used the White House over the weekend to have some dinner where a bunch of people gave $300, $400 million

Speaker 4 to him.

Speaker 4 That's corrupt. You're not allowed to use the office for your own personal financial gain.

Speaker 4 Same with the plane, this bribe plane from Cutter and the Trump coin. I get why people would be like, Yeah, but like, does that really affect me? It seems like it's another world, and I don't really

Speaker 4 understand that world. And maybe I give them the benefit of the doubt.
But they do also understand that

Speaker 4 what they're trying to do is further build on this broken economy where they are shifting wealth away from us by cutting health care and food assistance and other investments and people in our communities in order to pay for another round of tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporate investors.

Speaker 4 That's outrageous. And that's where people do draw the line.
Fine. You want to have, you want to, if some rich person wants to have dinner with Donald Trump, okay.
You know,

Speaker 4 I mean, obviously.

Speaker 6 That's going on all the time, right? That that's going on all the time. That's the way the world works.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 they are in this budget.

Speaker 4 And with these cuts, the indiscriminate firing of people, the, you know, over 100,000 federal employees being indiscriminately let go, what it's doing to services, what they're doing to the Social Security Administration, how that is screwing over seniors, how this budget, that is stabbing them in the front.

Speaker 4 And that is a level of corruption that people have struggled to paint Trump or congressional Republicans with.

Speaker 4 But one of the reasons why I won in 2022 against, you know, an incumbent who had been there for 30 years, or I joked that he'd been in Congress for hundreds of years, it was that he was the quintessential swamp animal or creature that he was swimming, I mean, drowning in corporate PAC money.

Speaker 4 And I I don't take corporate PAC money. And this guy, he takes all this corporate PAC money from gun manufacturers.
And so he's not going to do anything

Speaker 4 that would make sense, even with police. Even when police say, well, could you at least do red flag laws or could you do this or could you do that?

Speaker 4 No, no, no, because he gets all this money from the gun manufacturers who make billions of dollars. Is he going to cap the cost of insulin for children, which was my first bill?

Speaker 4 First bill, my first term, first bill this term. Like,

Speaker 4 we're going to keep at it until we cap the cost for insulin for everyone. No, because he is swimming in corporate PAC money from the pharmaceutical companies.

Speaker 4 That's what built this, you know, terrible, ridiculous budget bill is corporate PAC money. And they're the ones who are getting the benefits.
That is stabbing

Speaker 4 you in the front. And the American people will hate this.
And they do. They hate this bill.
It's a terrible bill.

Speaker 6 Right. And you have some strange bedfellows on this.
I rarely say good things about Josh Hawley, but he's being totally objective about the cuts.

Speaker 4 He's an actual economic populist. And the party said that they were going to go in that direction.
Trump said they were going to go in that direction. This will be a betrayal.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think people will see the terrorists as a betrayal. I think people will see

Speaker 4 because that's the kind of corruption. right?

Speaker 4 I'm going to try to control

Speaker 4 the global trade

Speaker 4 situation so people have to come to me and pay me for exemptions. That's different than a dinner party.
Now all of a sudden my prices are higher because you want to make money,

Speaker 4 shaking countries and

Speaker 4 companies down. That I don't like.
You know what I mean? Like I get it. And the corporate PAC staff, these folks are swimming in corporate PAC money.

Speaker 4 I mean, this is where,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 there's a crew of us, a growing number of us, you know, sort of newer members that that don't take corporate pack money we don't take our corporate pack money because we know at the end of the day this is what the american people hate the most is the idea that somehow

Speaker 4 we represent 750 000 people yet we would go they go they go to washington and then you know

Speaker 6 you know take take the the the money from these folks and start voting with them and not us but we're to go back to our first discussion about uh you and aoc

Speaker 6 or the different sides of the party kind of coming together, that is one of the unifying public opinions

Speaker 6 out there that there shouldn't be corporate PAC money. And it's only a new trend.
I've only spoken to a few representatives who are moderates like yourself.

Speaker 6 Someone who's a member of the New Democrat Coalition that says that you don't take corporate PAC money and has managed to actually win your election.

Speaker 6 Because I do understand the concern over saying I'm not going to take it, but you don't have an email list like Bernie Sanders, right? Or an AOC and how it takes money to win these elections.

Speaker 4 I travel a lot. I mean, I go around, you know, because I do living rooms and, you know,

Speaker 4 you find a way. But yeah, I mean, I, I think it was not only good for me, but it was key to, you know, beating this, this, you know, multi-term.

Speaker 4 You know, he'd been there again, 26 years, almost three decades.

Speaker 4 He had taken more corporate PAC money than just about anyone else in the house. And I ran, if you go watch my ads, I don't take corporate PAC money.
I said it in multiple ads. I say it over and over

Speaker 4 as a way of ensuring or making sure people know that I will always be with them and no one else.

Speaker 4 And I think the party needs to head in that direction. That's where Obama was.
I mean, that's where we were.

Speaker 4 And so, yeah, I think that Trump is without a doubt the most corrupt president in American history.

Speaker 4 Just the

Speaker 4 sheer volume of cash that the guy is depositing into his own bank account. But

Speaker 4 the big

Speaker 4 issue in terms of corruption is the kind that messes with people's lives.

Speaker 4 And that is the role that money, big money plays in getting these politicians to vote for the big money guys as opposed to voting for

Speaker 4 the people that you represent. And I think Josh Hawley, I don't know if Josh Holly takes corporate pack money or not, but

Speaker 4 for him to say very clearly and emphatically,

Speaker 4 you know, taking away health care from, you know, 10 to 14 million people,

Speaker 4 anyone, to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy is terrible policy. And I think he said political suicide.
And he's right.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And very intentional to write that op-ed in the New York Times of all places to come to the liberal dark side for it.
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Speaker 6 So the policy matters, the pledge to only be there to represent the folks from your district or the average American is important, but the messenger, him or herself, is also important.

Speaker 6 And I can't help but notice that you are not 75. I looked it up.
You're 48 years old.

Speaker 6 You look great. Thank you.
And

Speaker 6 that's one of the big discussions that we're having within the Democratic Party right now about age. And we've lost, I think, three members have passed away, unfortunately, since

Speaker 6 Congress started. So in the last four and a half months.
And I've seen the lists of the representatives, the oldest representatives. I think it will be Nancy Pelosi at 85

Speaker 6 when the next election cycle comes around.

Speaker 6 Where do you stand? Scott would want me to ask, are you for age limits? But

Speaker 6 I'm going to ask that and then also just say more broadly, how can we get

Speaker 6 people in our party who have done so much for us and

Speaker 6 push legislation forward, push culture forward, push the party forward to be cognizant of Father Time, who comes for all of us whenever he pleases, frankly. Or she.

Speaker 4 Maybe she's, is a she, but yeah, I mean, I, I'm for term limits. It's going to be hard to get done

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 Congress is never going to do it. You know, I'm

Speaker 4 one of

Speaker 4 not that many people that support term limits, but do so publicly. I just think that it's good.
And, you know, if you want to take a break, term limits doesn't mean that you can't come back. Right.

Speaker 4 Like, cause I

Speaker 4 served,

Speaker 4 this is where I think age is the, maybe the wrong way to look at this. I mean, Nancy, in some ways, is one of the most still

Speaker 4 compelling. And, like, you know, like, she's just,

Speaker 4 she's more on her game than, you know,

Speaker 4 some of the more younger member.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and she would be the first to remind you. And she did it all in heels.

Speaker 4 I mean, I worked for Nancy. That was my first job.
And I had a hard time at 22 years old keeping up with her. I mean, I genuinely, and I still,

Speaker 4 I'm still like,

Speaker 4 she buzzes around the floor the way I do. And I, and, and I find myself sitting down and sort of taking a minute sooner than she does.

Speaker 4 But so I think, I think it's time, you know, where you, you know, and and I think term limits forces people to take a break. Uh, so, you know, the idea is 18 years for the Supreme Court.

Speaker 4 That seems to make a lot of sense to me. It doesn't preclude you from coming back.
So, anyways, the reason why I'm a little skeptical of age is that, and this is a unique thing.

Speaker 4 So, hopefully, Scott scott will you know give me some grace here but the when i got to city hall i think everyone needs good mentors my mentor was a guy named david or is a guy named david man he was a former member of congress mayor and then he wanted to come back

Speaker 4 And he was at City Hall and he and I ran the budget together and I learned so much from him. And I thought that was a hugely important thing that he came back.

Speaker 4 You know, he helped us get through some really complicated years and some really complicated budgets. So I think it's,

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 4 tend to believe that, yes,

Speaker 4 you know, elections should be more competitive. I want to end partisan gerrymandering so that we have more competitive elections.
I want to get money out of politics.

Speaker 4 And I think that there should be term limits so that people, you know, take a break. And if they want to come back, they can come back.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, it gives voters also the chance to evaluate them as they are versus,

Speaker 6 I mean, incumbency is the most powerful force that you can have in running an election anyway, but at least people kind of get a blank slate-ish to look at you again, the 70-year-old version versus the 50-year-old version that they sent to Washington.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I do think it's

Speaker 4 ideas and energy and

Speaker 4 a worldview and trustworthiness that matters most, right? As opposed to age. That's all.
And there are people who are younger who have lost their way,

Speaker 4 in my opinion.

Speaker 6 Totally. I'm sure that we have it on our side, but

Speaker 6 I think that some of the younger representatives on the right are the most maniacal that they are. And a lot of that is correlated, frankly, to growing up on the internet and how red-pilled they are.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 if you can't meme it, it didn't happen. And that's concerning on another level.

Speaker 4 One argument I'd make, I think I'm going to make it here and we'll see how it plays out, is that maybe we need some 90s kids.

Speaker 4 Now, I say that obviously as a 90s kid, but in the 90s, if you grew up in the 90s like me, you didn't have the internet. So you appreciate a world without the internet.

Speaker 4 I didn't, you know, like I think I got my first email address. That's what it was, an email address.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 When I got to college in 1996.

Speaker 4 And you didn't really use it.

Speaker 4 You know, it wasn't like something when we were in college there was no cell phones so we still had to you had to memorize everybody's four digit you know uh number for their their room

Speaker 4 yeah

Speaker 4 but we also that was the last time we balanced the budget this is the last time we fixed the tax code we so we saw we grew up we saw a group of leaders work in a very bipartisan way to fix stuff They didn't always get it right.

Speaker 4 Don't get me wrong. But they did work together together to do all kinds of really important things.
It was the last time we got close to a peace agreement.

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, Clinton was there in the Rose Garden with Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and

Speaker 4 the PLO leader Arafat. And, you know, they got as close to a peace deal as

Speaker 4 anyone.

Speaker 4 But again, on the budget stuff, it was the last time we balanced the budget. We fixed the tax code.
We ran a surplus. We ran a surplus for years.

Speaker 4 It was the largest economic expansion in American history.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we passed meaningful gun reform paired with hiring police officers. So I do think there's a,

Speaker 4 is this a moment

Speaker 4 for a 90s kid, at least to be sort of, you know, helping us get to a place where we fixed the economy. You know, government is running way more efficient.

Speaker 4 I mean, we, if you grew up in the 90s, you were all about making it work better,

Speaker 4 you know, finding the

Speaker 4 fraud and the inefficiencies. You know, we were serious about immigration reform.
There's, you know, like all of these issues that are coming up. We did make some meaningful progress in the 90s.

Speaker 4 And there's, I think, some lessons to be learned. But those of us who were raised in that time period, I think have a moment.
This is a moment for us to step up and say,

Speaker 4 here's the path forward.

Speaker 6 On a whole host of levels, I agree with that.

Speaker 6 I mean, everyone reading the anxious generation, wanting their kids not to have cell phones, it's clear that you're going to be a lot healthier if you're not attached to your phone all the time.

Speaker 6 And the value of knowing even your recent history, the amount of people that have very strong opinions on what's going on between Israel and Hamas and Gaza.

Speaker 6 And then Bill Clinton was giving a speech recently where he talked about that summit and the peace agreement that was in front of Arafat and said, you were going to get more more than you could have ever hoped for if he had just signed on the dotted line there.

Speaker 6 No, when I'm talking like this, I'm an elder millennial. I'm a 1984 baby.

Speaker 6 And I feel like sometimes I sound like Margaret Thatcher or something, the way that I'm talking about what happened under Clinton. I said, doge, Al Gore, he dozed.
But this is how you doge properly.

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 4 Yes. It was like, I mean, one of the things I did before I left City Hall was establish an office of good government

Speaker 4 because this is you've got to be constantly improving. You have to make it better every day.

Speaker 4 Every day, you got to make it better and easier for people to use because you want people to use it and to get the help they need so they can be successful, so they can participate in an economy and they're contributing in a way where our economy is growing.

Speaker 4 That's what you want.

Speaker 4 And that's, yeah, that's what we did. And we can get back to it.

Speaker 4 And I think there is something to the fact that like, for those of us who grew up in the 90s and I mean, we literally, you know, our parents kicked us out of the house during the summer.

Speaker 4 My kids started their summer break Thursday

Speaker 4 and it's rainy today and they're like, what are we going to do?

Speaker 4 And they're just, you know, when I was leaving, they were trying to come up with a plan, but they don't really have many options and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 I said to Sarah, my wife, on the way out, I mean, you could do what we. My parents did or your parent, which is like lock, just kick them, we got locked out.

Speaker 6 Just go outside.

Speaker 4 And I remember coming back to the house and being like, I wonder if she's kept the door locked, my mom. And I would, I would, and it was locked.
And I was like, well, I guess I got to go play.

Speaker 4 Or, you know, I said, I literally said to my son today, I was like, go in the creek. It's been raining.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, like, get, we used to make these little boats out of stuff we found and like have races. And he was like, what, what are you talking about? I was like, eh, never mind.

Speaker 6 Look it up somewhere. I want to ask you at the end of the interview, I always do this.
What's one issue that makes you rage and one thing you think we should all calm down about?

Speaker 4 The tax code. It's so frustrating to me.
I mean, you got all these people working their tails off. And right now, the tax code favors wealth, not hard work.

Speaker 4 And so what needs to happen moving forward to fix what's fundamentally broken about the economy and the world in which we're living or the country is you got to fix the tax code so that it rewards hard work, not wealth.

Speaker 4 And then,

Speaker 4 what do I need to calm down about?

Speaker 6 I don't know. Or all of us.
Just nothing.

Speaker 6 Hey, hold on. If you're a perma rage, I can't.

Speaker 4 What do I get too worked up about?

Speaker 4 It could be sports. I mean, I do, yeah, since it's sports related, I get way too worked up about the Bengals.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I'm getting nods here.
Like, I.

Speaker 6 Your whole

Speaker 6 nose that you get too worked out.

Speaker 4 You know, me being a 90s kid. In 1989, the Bengals went to the Super Bowl, and it became my identity.

Speaker 4 There's a picture of me in the local paper because I grew up in Butler County. And, you know, we had a little teeny local paper.

Speaker 4 That's also where J.D. Vance grew up, by the way.
But very different experiences, or at least after. We would probably have very similar experiences.
Doesn't matter. Not the point of the story.

Speaker 4 Point of the story is in 1989, Bengals go to the Super Bowl becomes my entire identity. I'm on the front page of our paper with a bunch of other kids from sixth grade, right?

Speaker 4 Because I was in sixth grade at the time and we're all in Bengals gear.

Speaker 4 And that, I like cut it out and I framed it and I was so excited. But then they go to the world, they go to the Super Bowl and they lose in the last minute.
And

Speaker 4 it is the most unhealthy relationship I have. And no matter what I do to try to manage my emotions and to try to stay calm,

Speaker 4 everything about it makes me worked up. And to the point where I can't go to the stadium anymore.

Speaker 4 I had to watch the last Super Bowl in 2020 33 because my son wouldn't watch with me because usually I watch with him and I fold laundry or I make beds.

Speaker 4 I have to be doing something other than, you know, watch the game. Otherwise, I'm like too emotionally.
Like I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack.

Speaker 4 They, I, I went to go see a, you know, watch at a friend's house. They put me in a room with a sound machine and a dog so that I could sit there and pet the dog to get through the game.

Speaker 4 And the door stayed shut.

Speaker 4 And it was still very difficult.

Speaker 6 That's a lot. I hope that you have sought help

Speaker 6 for that.

Speaker 4 I have healthy relationships in my life.

Speaker 4 That is the most unhealthy thing that I have. And I can't, it's not fixable.
And it is what it is.

Speaker 6 Well, acceptance is an important stage in all of this.

Speaker 6 Congressman Lansman, thank you so much for your time. It was great to meet you.
You too. Thanks.

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