The Exchanges

Q So how much money does this take to get done? This is like anything else you need money. So, so it's like, what was it like?

A Bare bones. Bare bones. We've been working on bare bones, but literally for like a, if we could raise a few million dollars in each state, it's like a half a million dollar type effort, right? Just to get some coordination, some messaging, get people to understand what the process is, what their role is, how this fundamentally works. A lot of the discussions that we're having, uh, you know, you go around, spend time with each of the legislature. You're talking like half a million dollars in a few states, and boom, we're there. You're talking 10, 10, fifteen million dollars, you, you have a balanced budget amendment in this country, so it's, it's very low money for a huge return. It's hard. I'm not saying this is easy, um, not just to pass it, but to do it, but guess what? These folks were elected to do hard stuff. That's what the Senate and congressmen and government, we are elected to do tough things, and, and I think it's okay to kind of have the same constraints on the federal government as we have on states. We've shown it successful there. There's no reason it can't be done, and for kind of short money, what I think, you know, in this world of politics, where Senate races cost a hundred fifty million dollars, this is a, like, 10% of that.

AI assessment note: “You're talking 10, 10, fifteen million dollars, you, you have a balanced budget amendment”

Q The incentives are messed up. So as you're working on all these problems and working together with people, uh, you, you, you, you managed to keep the balance, the budget balanced in general?

A Yeah, so, um, very much so. So I was very proud of it. We had surpluses every single year I was there. We balanced the budget. We cut the few taxes we have, like business taxes and things like that. We were always able to cut it. The reason that, you know, we're going to get into talking about the balanced budget amendment on a national level, but the reason I'm, I'm optimistic and I get excited about kind of forcing Washington to You know, treat our money more responsibly is because states do it, and they do it really well. There's models of success there. So anytime someone says, it can't be done, you're wasting your time. No, no, no. States all across the country, I think, 49 of them have their own balanced budget amendments. Even California. I said this to some, I won't say who, but some very prominent Republican friends of ours in Washington DC once. I said, look, California has a balanced budget amendment. Now, the liberals out there will Tax people and create fees and barriers, and it's just all about the money. The way they manage to that balanced budget is horrible.

AI assessment note: “We had surpluses every single year I was there. We balanced the budget.”

Q what did that look like? Were there things where you just said, gosh, we just have a bunch of administrative, uh, Spend in this area and we just can't afford it. And so it made it easier to cut it back. Like what are the types of things you could cut? Cause obviously there's always things to spend money on. Like, like how would you have those conversations about cutting?

A Sure. So the best way to cut is to cut with a, I call it a, an off ramp, not a cliff, right? You don't want to take a program and say, well, I can't afford it. So it's gone tomorrow. No, we can't afford it. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna ratchet it down over the next three or four years. And, um, you know, because it's inefficient, it's a lot of money going to a smaller population. You can, Move that population for whatever the need is into another program. You get rid of duplicative efforts. A little bit of what Doge was doing, right? I always say, you know, New Hampshire was doing Doge before Doge was cool, and then Doge wasn't cool anymore, apparently, in Washington, but I loved what Doge was doing for a long time there. It was the absolute right approach. It just, it didn't, um, they didn't have enough political wind in their sails to keep it going as strong as it should be, but it's, it's, it's off-ramping things, so you slow programs down. You say, okay, next year we'll cut it by 20%, the next year by 40%, the next year by 60%, We'll move these populations over. There's ways to do it. The problem that too, too often people see is, ah, we have a fiscal problem, so kill the program. You kill a program if it's really not doing anything. You slow a program down and graduate it to different, um, uh, delivery systems that might be more effective or, ah, you know, or just…

AI assessment note: “the best way to cut is to cut with a, I call it a, an off ramp”

Q You have a very bipartisan legislature there, so you had to persuade Democrats to join you and Reigning in the budget, expanding school choice, but how do you work with them?

A Yeah. So the, the heart of New Hampshire, the biggest difference is that it's locally controlled. So I don't have sales tax. I don't have income tax. Um, we don't have inheritance tax or any of that stuff. Uh, we do have a property tax. And the reason this is important is that that means not the governor or the legislature, but you as a citizen show up every year at your town meeting or at your city council, and you decide exactly how all your personal taxes are spent. So what does that mean? People get very involved. People are very educated. It's really why we have the first in the nation primary. This leads to a lot of people getting involved. And what that means is we look at the candidate. We look at what's really behind the candidate. We don't just vote on party lines. So that local control thing makes us a very purplish, independent minded state. Right now there's maybe 32% Republicans, 28, 29% Democrats. Everyone else is undeclared and they can participate on either side of the aisle. And they do because we have the highest voter turnout in the country.

AI assessment note: “the biggest difference is that it's locally controlled.”