The Ledger
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Rep. Gonzalez: January 6 was an unforgivable assault inspired by Trump
“My view remains that it's an unforgivable assault on the country. And it was led by the former president who was inspired by him. And ultimately my view, which I think is coming out in this January six commission is that he kind of liked it and kind of liked w…”
Rep. Gonzalez: Lawmakers should not invest in crypto while regulating it
“You know, I'm on the committee and I, there's no rule against this, but I don't necessarily think I should be, you know, investing in crypto assets while I'm thinking about regulating them.”
Rep. Gonzalez estimates 90% of Congress members do not understand cryptocurrency
“If you were just in Congress broadly, I would say 90% of members don't understand it at all. They've heard about it, but like they don't know it, right? Maybe their kids use it, grandkids, whatever, but they don't know much about it beyond that.”
Rep. Gonzalez: The World Bank and IMF are largely overrun by China
“Doing things to fix our international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, which had been largely overrun by China.”
Rep. Gonzalez: One-day settlement likely would have prevented Robinhood's trading halt
“The main thing we could have done is passed a bill to shorten the settlement time from two days to one day. That would reduce the risk in the system overall and probably would have prevented what Robin Hood ultimately had to do, which was halt trading.”
College athletics will go fully professional without congressional intervention
“To me, the model is in a place where if Congress doesn't step in and find some sort of way to stabilize this, the whole thing will probably just go professional”
Professionalized college sports will force schools to eliminate non-revenue sports
“In that world, the way most schools would react, I suspect, is they would cut every single sport that doesn't make money, except for the ones they would have to keep for Title IX purposes, and so these athletic departments would shrink dramatically.”
Rep. Gonzalez: Private enterprise cannot underwrite 50-year R&D projects
“No private enterprise can underwrite a fifty-year R&D project. The payoff's not there.”
Rep. Gonzalez: The 2016 shift in Northeast Ohio was fundamentally economic
“And my view was at least what happened in Northeast Ohio was fundamentally an economic story.”
Rep. Gonzalez: Voters are highly knowledgeable on the issues they care about
“One of the things that always bothers me is when people say, well, voters are dumb. I'm like, I haven't met a dumb voter. My voters are really smart. They're smart on a handful of issues that really matter to them, and when you talk to them about those issues,…”
Rep. Gonzalez: Congress is close to legislating on stablecoins
“We're getting to a point as a Congress, which is really nice, where I feel like we're getting close to finally legislating on it, specifically around stable coins. We'll see if we get there, but I think that's sort of the first bite of the apple coming off the…”
Rep. Gonzalez predicts a heavy-handed SEC approach to cryptocurrency regulation
“I suspect that's how Congress will behave. I do fear that the administration will take a more heavy-handed path, mainly because the SEC chair is Pretty hostile at times in its public comments on crypto.”
Serving properly in Congress requires 150 to 200 travel days yearly
“You know, the reality is to do this job correctly and to serve your constituents in the way that I think they deserve to be served, you probably have to be on the road north of a hundred days a year for sure. But you're probably looking at one 50 maybe close t…”
Rep. Gonzalez: Congressional crypto views divide on age, not party affiliation
“Having said that, within those two bands, the bigger break was on demographics. So the more senior a member, the more skeptical they're likely to be. And this makes sense, right? If you look at how crypto is used. And the more junior the member, and mostly by …”
Requiring crypto developers to register as brokers would kill the industry
“There was a thought that basically we were going to label any developer working in crypto a broker, which would kill the industry, you know, if everybody has to register as a broker.”
Rep. Gonzalez: Congress will likely pass fiat-backed stablecoin legislation
“What I think you'll probably see is some sort of law that enshrines a quote payment stable coin. That language has been used in a couple of different bills. A payment stable coin as essentially a fiat backed stable coin.”
Rep. Gonzalez: 50% primary voter turnout would dramatically moderate US politics
“You know, if we could move our primary electorate participation from, like, 20 to 50, I actually think our politics would moderate, and they would improve dramatically, more so than most people realize.”
Recent redistricting reduced toss-up seats and increased congressional district extremism
“We all just got our maps redrawn. And what happened is fewer districts are now toss ups. So there's basically fewer at play and the existing districts are now more extreme.”
US steel production has lower energy intensity than most of the world
“A ton of steel made in the United States is going to be made with less energy intensity than most parts of the world. Not all, but most, and certainly China.”
Decarbonizing the global economy is likely a 50-year thematic tailwind
“There's certainly interesting tailwinds on the climate movement. And how do we decarbonize the economy and do it in a way that's responsible, not just for our people, but for the entire world. It's probably the biggest theme, frankly, that, you know, I think i…”
House members choose their own policy focus areas based on interest
“One of the fun things about being a house member is it's sort of a choose your own adventure. Where you can kind of pick whatever you want to work on and what you think is interesting and relevant to your district.”
Rep. Gonzalez built a custom Salesforce dashboard for his congressional campaign
“I built a custom Salesforce dashboard which I don't think is common for congressional members.”
Rep. Gonzalez raised roughly $600K in his first month campaigning
“And so I think we ended up raising roughly 600,000 in the first month, which was good as a good, you can only raise it in 5000, well, 2700 dollar chunks.”
Rep. Gonzalez tested DeFi with personal funds before donating to charity
“So I took like a little margin, a couple hundred bucks or something, and started playing around in DeFi, and I quickly realized I couldn't do anything with my ETH because the gas fees would destroy it. Did that for like a couple of weeks. And then in my plan, …”
Rep. Gonzalez: Users can easily break crypto tax laws without careful tracking
“If you don't have good tax compliance in crypto, you know, that's another thing I probably realized when I was playing around with it a little bit is like, if you're not careful, you can break tax law pretty easily in, in this space.”
Castro's regime offered Rep. Gonzalez's grandfather a Cuban judgeship
“Once Castro took over, he, not directly, but through one of his lieutenants, offered my grandfather a position to run one of the courts. It's basically like a district court in Cuba. My grandfather turned him down because he kind of saw Castro for who he was, …”