Congressman Craig Goldman (2:29)

Yeah, I'm a bigger fan of her mother than you as well.

Ron Simmons (2:31)

Yeah, that's a good one too. Well, Craig and I Served in the Texas house together. So we have known each other for, I guess over a decade now.

Congressman Craig Goldman (2:38)

Over 13 years.

Ron Simmons (2:40)

Yeah. And we actually both got sworn in the Same Day in 2013. And he sat on the house floor, one desk in front of me. And I generally had to vote for him because he was out wandering around talking to other people, but. No, but, Craig, we're really glad to have you. Now, you're a fifth generation Texan, is that right?

Congressman Craig Goldman (2:59)

I am. My great, great, great grandfather moved here in the 1800s from Canada. He actually was a Russian immigrant to Canada. And he led the team of oxen on the trolleys around Montreal.

Ron Simmons (3:11)

Wow.

Congressman Craig Goldman (3:12)

And then ended up coming to Fort Worth. He answered a call for workers to come build the original TNP railroad.

Ron Simmons (3:20)

Wow.

Congressman Craig Goldman (3:20)

Fort Worth, El Paso.

Ron Simmons (3:22)

Yeah.

Congressman Craig Goldman (3:22)

And he led the team of oxen who carried all the materials to. To lay all the. I mean, all the railroad ties and everything. So what we don't know, and I'm dying to find out, and I don't know if I'll ever figure it out, is how do you answer an ad? Was it an ad? How do you know? In Montreal, Canada.

Ron Simmons (3:39)

Yeah.

Congressman Craig Goldman (3:39)

About the job opportunity in Fort Worth, Texas.

Ron Simmons (3:42)

Yeah. Wow. That is. And y' all been here ever since?

Congressman Craig Goldman (3:44)

I've been here ever since, yeah. The generations to follow. They're all buried John Peter Smith, everyone may know the hospital John Peter Smith. Well, that actually was an actual person. And John Peter Smith donated land. It's right across the street from John Peter Smith Hospital. Donated land in the Jewish community of Fort Worth for their first cemetery. So all my relatives from that great, great great grandfather are buried in that original Jewish cemetery in Fort Worth.

Ron Simmons (4:14)

That is fascinating. Yeah. That's really pretty cool. And your district is part of Tarrant county, which is where Fort Worth is, is that correct?

Congressman Craig Goldman (4:22)

Right. I have the western part of Tarrant county and then the northern part of Parker County.

Ron Simmons (4:25)

Okay. And that's kind of in. For those of you that don't live in Texas, that's kind of in the north central area of Texas. And how many people would you represent?

Congressman Craig Goldman (4:33)

We represent close to 750,000.

Ron Simmons (4:35)

About 750,000.

Congressman Craig Goldman (4:36)

But you tell that to a Texas state senator and they're like, that's peanuts.

Ron Simmons (4:39)

That's right.

Congressman Craig Goldman (4:40)

They represent close to a million. And then in the next census will represent over a million people. Imagine that.

Ron Simmons (4:46)

Wow, that is fascinating. Well, Craig was one of the very effective legislators in Texas, and he was elected to Congress in 2024 last year. Yeah. So how's it going Your first, first couple of years.

Congressman Craig Goldman (4:58)

It's going good. It's going good. You know, it's first about, you know, setting up your office. And just like we did 13 years ago as freshmen is, is figuring everything out, how to pass a bill, how the whole place works. We of course got to know how the Texas legislature worked. But, you know, being a freshman up in Congress, you don't know how that works. So a lot of it is the same. That's the good news. So I didn't have to, you know, wear my, I guess, training wheels all that long. So. But it is a learning process. But it's been great. The most interesting thing people ask me all the time, you know, is it just the swamp up there? Is it crazy? We all know 5 to 10 members of Congress because of our phones right. On social media, but there are hundreds of people who go there every single day, in my opinion, for the right reasons, to represent their districts, to fight for America, to fight for the good. And you know, I'd like to say right now, I mean, we're at a great time in American. And not the shutdown, but we're in a great time in American history of having control the Republicans, having control of the House, the Senate and the White House and like we did this summer and passing one big beautiful bill, doing good things for America.

Ron Simmons (6:10)

Yeah, well, that's outstanding. You know, interesting when they go up there, they get selected to be on committees and the speaker in the House and some of the rules people, they make the decision, the leadership makes the decision. And Craig has been put on the Energy and Commerce Committee. And I did a little research yesterday. Over 60% of all of the federal spending goes through that committee. So that's a pretty powerful committee. I'm sure you're one of, you know how many is on there? 20 something people on there?

Congressman Craig Goldman (6:41)

Oh, no, there's way more than that total. Republicans and democrats. There's over 50 of them on there.

Ron Simmons (6:46)

50 on the committee. Yeah.

Congressman Craig Goldman (6:47)

But it's the first time in over 20 years a freshman got put on energy.

Ron Simmons (6:50)

Well, that's quite the honor.

Congressman Craig Goldman (6:52)

It's a great honor. There's three of us on there. Gabe Evans from Colorado, Julie Fedorche from North Dakota and myself. I of course, had the background of being the energy chair in the Texas state House. That helped me. But you still have to go and state your case to a lot of members who sit on the steering committee of why you deserve or should sit on that committee.

Ron Simmons (7:11)

Foreign.

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Ron Simmons (8:47)

You're the perfect person then to talk about the first subject today, and that's the government shutdown. Obviously, even those of us that don't work for the government, it affects all of us. As you know, I've got a son that works for the government that's the U.S. attorney in the Western District. So it's affected him. It affects a lot of people, and a lot of us, you know, we don't totally understand it. So kind of walk through why. Why was there even a shutdown to start with?

Congressman Craig Goldman (9:14)

Yeah, good question. So let's go back to this summer, like I said, in passing the one big, beautiful bill that was priority number one and credit to Speaker Johnson and Leader Thune and President Trump for getting that done. And what that was transformative legislation. Normally there's one or two committees that have input. There were 11 committees and some of the old timers told me, you know, this is historic. We've never had 11 committees have input on one bill.

Ron Simmons (9:42)

Wow.

Congressman Craig Goldman (9:43)

And it strictly was President Trump's agenda. And Speaker Johnson had been going down to Mar a Lago and laying this out with President Trump long before either of them got elected. All last year, while Speaker Johnson was traveling around helping to elect Republicans, he was also going to Mar a Lago to continue that relationship. And they knew they were going to win. I mean, there was no guarantee.

Ron Simmons (10:06)

Right.

Congressman Craig Goldman (10:06)

But they, they had it in their heart. They knew they were going to win. And look, Speaker Johnson is an extremely religious person. He says there's divine power here. I'm telling you, it's going to happen. It's really, to hear Speaker Johnson tell the story really is special. So they laid all this groundwork out knowing that they were going to win. And then once they did, we knew from day one, it's all about the one big beautiful bill. It's all about transforming how government operates. And through our committee, getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, you may see Democrats saying, oh, they're taking people off Medicaid. No, we're taking, we took people off who don't deserve to be on Medicaid. Able bodied Americans who are sitting at home receiving Medicaid, that shouldn't. And so, and then illegals who are receiving Medicaid out in California, that shouldn't. So that's one thing our committee focused on. But having input of 11 committees, the speaker saying, look, give us the very best, if we can make cuts, where shall we make the cut? So getting that pass was priority. Now the priority is getting the budget done and we're just behind. And keep in mind, while the Senate was passing the one big beautiful bill, look what they have to go through. They have nominations of ambassadors, the President's cabinet, I mean, hundreds of under secretaries in all the cabinets have to be approved by the Senate. So they had to go through the nominations as well as all that. So right after a president gets elected, it's a lot of work, mainly on the Senate. So they're behind putting the budget together. So where we got is the budget was coming due right. In fall and we needed to have a new budget. Keep in mind, we're still working on the Biden budget, right, from last year, Right?

Ron Simmons (11:50)

Yeah. Okay.

Congressman Craig Goldman (11:50)

And so that's just we had passed all the appropriations, have passed out of the Appropriations Committee, all the different bills. I think there's 12 bills were, have made it to the House floor, but the Senate hadn't passed all theirs. So we just need more time. So all we said was, so A continuing resolution September 19th gave us more time to put together the budget. So actually, I mean, this may be why the Democrats are fighting it, because we remain on the Biden budget. They passed the last two years during this continuing resolution. Normally in the past also continue resolutions, you can have add ons. Whoever's in charge can say, oh, let's add this and this and this. So that's why you hear the speaker calling, it was a clean resolution.

Ron Simmons (12:34)

Pork, Right?

Congressman Craig Goldman (12:35)

More pork. Exactly. And so it was a clean continuing resolution. The very bill that they passed, we passed in March. The very bill that Chuck Schumer said, we've got to do this. We cannot shut down the government. We got to pay our troops. We got to pay our TSA agents, our air traffic controllers, our staffs.

Ron Simmons (12:53)

That's what they're holding up now.

Congressman Craig Goldman (12:54)

And so when we pass that September 19th, not a peep. Every Democrat voted against it, by the way, for no reason whatsoever other than they disagree.

Ron Simmons (13:05)

They'd already voted for it at one time.

Congressman Craig Goldman (13:06)

Correct. That's the ironic people make sure you.

Ron Simmons (13:09)

Understand that is that these Democrats had already voted for the exact same spending bill.

Congressman Craig Goldman (13:15)

Exactly.

Ron Simmons (13:15)

And now they've all voted against it.

Congressman Craig Goldman (13:17)

If it wasn't a clean one. Like I said, they had every right.

Ron Simmons (13:20)

To say, we're not doing that.

Congressman Craig Goldman (13:22)

Right, exactly. But it was clean. And all it said was, let's continue with the discussions of putting together the budget.

Ron Simmons (13:29)

So the argument has been, well, we want to have these enhance Obamacare subsidies that we put together in Covid right now. Was that an argument y' all had on the floor?

Congressman Craig Goldman (13:40)

And hear that, Ron, do you even hear that argument from the Democrats when we took the vote 9-19-19? Totally manufactured by Chuck Schumer and the Democrat. It's. So Chuck Schumer took this vote back in March, okay. And they raised, you know, he got a lot of negative feedback over it. And so there's no. There's no secret that AOC is looking at primary him in a couple years. And so apparently he didn't want to hear from him again. And so he didn't want that negative feedback. And so he forced his caucus, the Democrats in the Senate, to vote against it. And this is where we are. And they're going to take the 15th vote today, 15 votes on passing a clean continuing resolution just to keep the government open so we can continue to negotiate putting together the budget for this year. Now, they manufactured this oh, but the Obama tax credits expire in December. And keep in mind, we took this vote in September.

Ron Simmons (14:37)

Yeah.

Congressman Craig Goldman (14:38)

So December from September is a lifetime in Congress.

Ron Simmons (14:42)

Yeah.

Congressman Craig Goldman (14:42)

So, and keep in mind, we're talking about Obama tax credits. Obamacare tax credits. So those go through our committee. All those health bills go through Energy and Commerce. We didn't have time to even discuss it before they shut down the government. So reopen the government. Have it go through our committee. Have all the members discuss it. Exactly.

Ron Simmons (15:01)

And it's not even the original credits. They want the enhanced credit.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:06)

That's so.

Ron Simmons (15:07)

Which is. I want to tell people that's it's up to 400% of the poverty level, which for a family of four, it's for like $160,000. You could make and still get a credit. It's just. It's just crazy.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:19)

A fellow member put it perfectly the other day. Okay, we have Obamacare. Right. Which not one Republican voted for.

Ron Simmons (15:25)

Right.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:25)

So we have Obamacare thrust upon us. It's not working.

Ron Simmons (15:28)

It was going to save us a bunch of money.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:30)

Craig, what happened was going to save Americans a bunch of money. It's not working. So what they do. Five years ago, Democrats, again, not Republican, voted for tax credits on Obamacare to last five years.

Ron Simmons (15:41)

Right. That's all we'll need.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:43)

They could have made him never. They could have made him permanent. They were in charge. But even Democrats said, hold on, let's just make it for five years.

Ron Simmons (15:50)

Right.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:50)

So now their five years is up, and now they want to extend them. Some, not even all Democrats, want to extend them. And what does that tell you? If they need to extend these.

Ron Simmons (15:59)

It's not working.

Congressman Craig Goldman (15:59)

They're admitting it's not working.

Ron Simmons (16:01)

It is not working. So tell me what's going on now. We're going to be. When this comes out, we'll be at day 43 or 44 of the shutdown. So tell us what's going on. Give us a little bit of behind the scenes.

Congressman Craig Goldman (16:13)

Yeah, behind the scenes. Well, I just came. Speaker Johnson was nice enough to have me at one of his press conferences. He's been holding daily press conferences repeating the same line. We are willing to negotiate. We're willing to talk to the Democrats. We're willing to do all that once government is reopened. So the Republicans in the House voted to keep the government open. The Republicans in the Senate have continued now 15 times to either reopen the keep the government open or reopen it. And the Democrats consistently vote against it because I say when they want to talk about Extending these Obama tax credits. It's manufactured. It doesn't make any sense.

Ron Simmons (16:53)

Right.

Congressman Craig Goldman (16:53)

I appreciate Speaker Johnson holding the line. I think a super majority of Republicans and are in the House agree with him. That looks reopen the government. We have nothing to negotiate. Speaker Johnson has nothing to negotiate. Yeah, because we voted against them. Right. We, we voted to keep the government open and we hold the majority. It's the senate that needs 60 votes. That's what some people don't understand. We had the majority rule in the house. They need 60 votes in the Senate. So they do need five or six Democrats to come across.

Ron Simmons (17:25)

Are you hearing anything about whether or not they'll get rid of the 60 vote on this issue? This particular issue?

Congressman Craig Goldman (17:31)

So I know President Trump asked him to look at that and has talked about being in favor of that. It just would never pass the Senate. The Senate.

Ron Simmons (17:38)

The challenge is, is that gun kicks as hard as it shoots is an old saying. Because it could come back around. And we stopped a bunch of bad stuff in the past from Obama and from Biden.

Congressman Craig Goldman (17:48)

As, as some people have said that if the Democrats, and when the Democrats, I mean look at history does repeat itself.

Ron Simmons (17:55)

History has a long arc.

Congressman Craig Goldman (17:56)

That's exactly right. So that one day the Democrats will take control of the Senate again. Hopefully not in our lifet but one day they will. And then what could happen? A lot, a lot of bad things if you take away that 60 vote threshold.

Ron Simmons (18:08)

So do you think that, and I'm sure there's talks going on behind the scenes. There always seems to be. Do you think we're going to, I mean, before Thanksgiving, do you see anything happening?

Congressman Craig Goldman (18:19)

Look, like I said, I appreciate Speaker Johnson so much because he's holding the line. And again, we have, we have weekly conference calls and almost everybody in our conference is in agreement that we voted to keep the government open. There's nothing for us to negotiate. So everything's happening over in the Senate. You know, the good news for us is we're in our districts. We are able to, you know, rather than a normal week where I'm in D.C. i've been in my district. I've been able to meet constituents. I've been able to go to club meetings. I've been able to go to lunches and breakfasts and dinners that normally I wouldn't be able to make. So we've made the most of it by being able to be in the district and travel around and meet with constituents.

Ron Simmons (18:56)

Yeah. And let me, let me. One of the things that some people get confused on too, is that the Constitution requires that the Senate and the House get paid. That's not a statute, like a law. It's in the Constitution. However, some senators and some congressmen have said, hey, during this time, just hold my. Don't pay me during this time. Is that true?

Congressman Craig Goldman (19:20)

I submitted a letter. I submitted a letter. So I didn't get paid on the first like normally. So, yeah, I think a lot of members of Congress have asked and I.

Ron Simmons (19:27)

Think that's the right thing during this time because other people don't even have a choice of that. Right.

Congressman Craig Goldman (19:31)

There's supposedly legislation already written when we get back to remove our salaries. For that to be a vote when we get back, I certainly would vote for it. Sure. When others aren't getting paid, you know, we certainly shouldn't get paid.

Ron Simmons (19:43)

And, well, most of these people, though, when they come back, they'll get their back pay.

Congressman Craig Goldman (19:47)

Everyone, when we open reopen the government, everyone will get their back and they'll.

Ron Simmons (19:51)

Kind of get that all at one time, probably get caught up and then they'll get back on the regular.

Congressman Craig Goldman (19:55)

Exactly.

Ron Simmons (19:55)

Regular schedule.

Congressman Craig Goldman (19:56)

Exactly.

Ron Simmons (19:56)

Right. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming in and being a part of this. You know, Craig is a very close friend of mine and he's doing a great job in D.C. and Craig, tell people if they want to kind of follow what you're doing in your office, how can they best kind of keep up with you and, you know, maybe send you questions?

Congressman Craig Goldman (20:13)

Yeah, right. Well, you can sign up for my newsletter. You can go to my website, my government website, craiggoldman.gov and go, you know, I have it newsletter we send out. We don't send it out daily or monthly just as there's news. I don't flood people's inboxes because I personally don't like that when someone just floods my inbox with. Just because you can. So when there's news and you know, that's the best way to do it. All right.

Ron Simmons (20:36)

Well, thanks for being here. Thanks.

Congressman Craig Goldman (20:37)

I appreciate it.

Ron Simmons (20:39)

Take care.

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Ron Simmons (21:58)

Really appreciated Congressman Goldman being on and I hope you enjoyed that as well. Let's move on from the government shutdown into the recent elections. And I know that concerned a lot of people on the conservative side and we're gonna go through that. Then I'm gonna tell you why it's gonna be okay. All right. I just wanna make sure everybody understands it's gonna be okay. But it was interesting that in the Virginia governor race, the Democrat won by 10 points. In the New Jersey race won by 13 points. And in New York City, Mandani got 50% out of three major candidates that were on the ballot. So let's go one by one on these and kind of talk about them. First of all, Virginia is a blue state. I know that if you were like me on election night 2024, when we saw the first Virginia results come in, we thought, okay, we got a chance to win that state back. And it ended up not being in the Republican category. But Trump did get within 6 percentage points. And that's probably the closest that anybody's gotten since, I don't know, President Bush probably got closer to that, may have even won it. I don't remember. I should have looked, looked at, looked that up. But interesting that the reason behind the Virginia change and Governor Yonkin did a good job and win some. Sears did a good job. Okay, they both did a good job. But there's hundreds of, of thousands of federal employees that live in Virginia and most federal employees are liberal. That's what's happened over the years. The, you know, the Democrats, when they've been in power, have glutted the federal government with people that were loyal to them and that, you know, that's what happened. It was hard to overcome all Those people that live in Virginia, right around D.C. and I think Winsome Sears did a good job. As she said, she's not going anywhere. But let me tell you what that shows, okay? And this is a very, very important point. We have gone through redistricting. You've heard, you know, this Prop 50 in California passed. So they're going to be able to change some of their districts, probably make them more blue. Texas did some redistricting and what have you, and the complaints out of the minority community, and primarily been the black community, although Hispanics sometimes have made this argument as well, is that, look, we need to be able to elect someone to elected office that looks like us. And therefore, if. If you don't, if you try to separate, you know, to, I guess, you know, separate us so that we don't have very many of the minority in a particular district, we can't. We can't elect somebody that looks like us. I'll tell you what, that is 100% hogwash. Virginia has a very high population of minority voters, a high population of black voters. They had the absolute opportunity to elect a black woman, a black woman to be their governor. Not only would it have been the first female governor in history for Virginia, it would have been the first black female governor. And so don't come tell me that we want to elect someone that looks like us. That is hogwash. You want to elect someone. Listen to me, liberals. You want to elect someone that believes in the same policies you believe in, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just don't lie about it, because that's what you've been doing. And don't try to make that case in court that we need to elect someone that looks like us. You want to elect someone that votes like you. And Winsome Sears was not going to do that because she understands the American dream. She came here as an immigrant out of Jamaica with her dad and nothing. Their family didn't have anything. She worked her way up and she lived the American dream. What more could someone that comes from maybe a disadvantaged community want than to have that representing them? But no, because she didn't believe in killing babies right up to the ninth month, because she didn't believe in giving away free stuff to everybody. You said that she's not good enough for you. You wanted to vote with. For this white lady, which is fine to do that. I don't care. All right, but don't say it. Don't tell me that you want somebody that looks like you. You want somebody that votes like you. And that's all there is to it. And that's what happened in Virginia. That's the best case I could ever make for that. I don't want to ever hear that of any of my friends on the other side again, that, oh, you're discriminating. No, we're not discriminating against you at all. Not at all. Because we are discriminating against, because of your policies, but not because of, you know, your color of your skin or your ethnicity or anything like that. That it's because your policies stink and they're bad for America. And I'm hoping that more and more people will understand that. Now, now that I've gotten off that tirade, it is interesting that 48% of the people that voted in Virginia said the economy was their number one issue. And of those people that said economy was their number one issue, 62% of those voted for the Democrat candidate. And so, and it probably has a lot to do with the government shutdown. A lot of those people haven't been getting paid in the last few weeks. And that's why this was orchestrated by Chuck Schumer. And again, the last episode that I recorded here, we showed the congresswoman that was kind of saying the quiet part out loud that, hey, the families, that essentially is paraphrasing, but the families suffering gives us leverage and they absolutely use that leverage to gain the votes. So, anyway, let's move on to New Jersey. New Jersey, 13 points different again, Trump got within six points of that in 2024. That's why we had so much hope and we had a good candidate. But the number one issue, this is so crazy. The number one issue that voters said was the cost of electricity in New Jersey, which is some of the highest cost in the country. Now, now, if that was their number one issue, and New Jersey has been run by governors, I mean, by Democrats governors and Democrat legislature for the last 30 years. If that was their number one issue, why did they elect someone that is going to continue the same thing? I don't get that. But of the people that said that, 65%, 60% of them, you know, or 60 something percent of them voted for the Democrat candidate. So it's just, it's crazy. I don't understand. So what it tells you, what it really tells you is that identity politics is still at play. And the machine, the Democrat machine in New Jersey is very strong. I get that. No question about it. And so that is what happened. And again, they offer free stuff to people, and people like free stuff. And that's one of the problems in our society is everybody wants something for nothing. So that's what happened in New Jersey. You know, we'll see how it goes. I was disappointed in that. I wasn't so much surprised that we lost. I was disappointed in the margin that we lost by. But I'm telling you, there's a silver lining in this. And if you'll stay with me, I'm going to tell you about it. Okay? Don't turn off that dial because there's a silver lining all this.

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Ron Simmons (30:53)

Now let's get to New York City. New York City. Here's what you have to take out of that. Yes, Mandani. That's how you say his name. I think so. Mandani. Yeah, man. Donnie ended up with 50% of the vote. But you know what that also means? 50% of the people voted against him. So half the people voted against him. He got less of majority than the people in Virginia, New Jersey got the governor's got. And so half the people said, you're not the person. In fact, 41% of the people went for an independent candidate in former governor Cuomo. Now I didn't like him either because if you remember when the New York State assembly passed a bill several years ago that allowed abortions right up to the time of birth. You know, the governor touted that. In fact, they lit up New York City with everything pink, you know, celebrating the killing of babies. And so I wasn't a Governor Cuomo fan at all. In fact, it was such. The choices in that weren't good. There was a Republican candidate in there, but he never had a chance. I guess Cuomo would have been the lesser of two evils. But. But I don't think that's going to work out to our advantage. It would have. As much as Mandani is, I bet you this is the case. Stay tuned. Now, here's something to be interested in. The people that were born in New York, people that were born in New York City basically lived there all their life. 55% of them voted for Cuomo, but 40% of the electric under age 45, that's. That 40% of the entire electorate is under age 45. And 65% of them voted for Mandani. That is, I mean, that's kind of the. That's what happened right there. And I think that New York is going to be in for a rude awakening. I think President Trump thinks so, too. Let's listen to what President Trump had to say about it.

Donald Trump (32:54)

You know, I'm so torn because I would like to see the new mayor do well, because I love New York. I really love New York. When I left New York for Washington, and New York was doing really well, but there were some bad signs. The bad sign was a guy named de Blasio. So the signs of de Blasio, that was the beginning, and it was bad. This one we're going to look. For a thousand years, communism has not worked. It just. Communism or the concept of communism has not worked. I tend to doubt it's going to work this time. Did you see his victory speech? Literally?

Ron Simmons (33:29)

Yeah.

Donald Trump (33:29)

I thought it was a very angry speech. Certainly angry toward me. And I think he should be very nice to me. You know, I'm the one that sort of has to approve a lot of things coming to him. So he's off to a bad start.

Ron Simmons (33:40)

I'd forgotten about de Blasio. Man, what a disaster he was. Thank goodness he was out of my memory. But that's true. Communism doesn't work. Socialism hasn't worked. I mean, do we not need to look just back at Russia? The whole thing fell apart. I mean, come on, parents, if you're not telling your kids about that, you need to educate them about that, right? They may not remember what happened during that time and how it fell apart. Make sure you're teaching your kids history, real history. Now, let me tell you why I think there's a silver lining in all of this, all right? Because here's what happened is we elected, or those places, Virginia, New Jersey, some other places, New York City and some others elected probably the furthest left candidates they could have elected. Excuse me. And that means that what in their mind, they're thinking they have a mandate to govern as far left as possible. So you're gonna see even more woke policies being put into place or trying to be put into place. You're gonna see an upping of the rhetoric on the trans. On all of those types of things. And in my opinion, that is going to help us in 2026, because it's just gonna more and more expose the radicalness that's taken over the Democrat Party. And I guarantee you, the people that are most worried today are moderate Democrats. And there's a few out there left. Okay? There's. There's still some out there. There's not many, but there's a few out there. And so I believe that assuming that the economy does well, we get past all this tariff stuff, that what these elections will do for us is it will help people realize just how crazy some of these policies are that these new elected officials are gonna put in. And what that also should do is it should tell people like you and me, the grassroots, that we need to be paying attention, that we don't need to relax. We have to make sure it's time for us to gear up again, folks. Okay, we're coming up. We're almost at the end of this year. I want you to enjoy your holidays and enjoy time with your family and what have you. But when we turn that calendar, we have got to get really engaged in the political process of getting the people that we believe have the right policies elected. We got to get them through some primaries first, and then we got to make sure next November that we get them through the elections, because we need to keep the House and the Senate. There's no question about that. And we need to do that at the state levels as well, not just at the federal level. So we got to get back up and get to work. And the other thing that we need to do is we need to stop our infighting, okay? It just drives me crazy. I mean, the Democrats are doing it, and I know it's driving some of them crazy, but we do it on the Republican side, too. Why can't we be like Ronald Reagan and say, look, if you're 80% with me, you are with me, and if you need to negotiate the other 20%, we'll do that. But we have such a purity test. If you're not 100% with me, then you must be some crazy liberal, or if you're not 100% with me, you must be some, you know, crazy, you know, in the far, far right. So let's make, let's quit our infighting. That's happened so much, it happens here in Texas all the time, is that when you have a party that's in the majority, they feel like they don't have to fight the opposition party anymore, so they just look to fight on the internal side. And that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard because it ends up making the majority party become the minority party. And we don't want that to happen. So let's focus on what we agree on. All right? We can discuss what we don't agree on and civilly debate it, but let's focus on what we agree on. And when it comes to election time, let's put our disagreements behind us and get behind the candidates that our primary voters have chosen and get them elected. That's very, very important. I also would say, and Congressman Goldman, earlier in the our session today talked about it, and that is, we need to expose the fallacy of Obamacare. You remember President Obama and all the Democrats saying how this is going to save health care costs, is going to keep the cost of, you know, the rising cost of health care down. That has been one of the biggest lies ever portrayed by our government. Costs have gone straight up. And if you buy your own health care, like I've had to do for our family, since we're not part of a big company, it has gone straight through the roof. And the reason that the Democrats want these enhanced subsidies to continue is because they know that they're going to get a huge backlash for selling this bill of goods to the American people. It has not saved us money. Now, we can, we can go in there and fix the system, the Republicans can. But it's going to require, you know, a whole lot less government control of the system because it just does not work. And at the end of the day, it also brings down the quality of care, the more government controls it. And we've experienced that in our families. You've probably had that in your families, where people have been on the government part of the healthcare, and it's just, you know, just not as good a lot of doctors aren't taking Medicaid anymore. Okay. Because of the reimbursement rates and things like that. So the Republicans need to expose the fallacy of Obamacare. And then the other thing we really need to do, and I call on President Trump to do this, is we gotta get past the tariff issues. All right? I personally understand why we're doing it, and I think reciprocal tariffs make a lot of sense. If they're gonna do it to us, then their goods need to be tariff the same way. But we need to get past that and get settled on wherever we're gonna end up. Let's get sett. I know the Supreme Court's talking about what powers the president has on that. I'm not exactly sure how that's going to come out. There's some belief that there's skepticism by the Supreme Court on that, but I'm not sure that's the case. When I read the Constitution and the legislation that's put that in the past gives the president pretty broad powers, but we'll see what the Supreme Court says. But I want you to know that it's really been the first year, or first, I guess 11 months of President Trump's presidency has been pretty darn good. And I know it seems like it's been longer than that, but it's been pretty good just, just during the first year. And we just celebrated a year of his election last week. So listen to what President Trump has to say about his. Pretty much his first year in office.

Donald Trump (40:22)

Really hard to believe, but just think of it. One year ago, we were still in the middle of a presidential campaign. Can you believe that? It seems like 10 years have passed since that time. Since we've done so much, we have really done a lot. It's, frankly, a very different world. America is back, and America is respected, perhaps like never before. Our economy is roaring, our border is secure, and our country is poised for greatness. We are doing better than anyone ever thought possible. And no president has ever come even close to doing what we've done in nine months. Thank you very much.

Ron Simmons (40:59)

That is such a true statement. I was talking to my son the other day about this. Is that, like him or not, President Trump will be one of the most consequential presidents in history so far. Now, again, I didn't say, you may say one of the worst. Other people may say some of the best. Let's put that to the side. It will be consequential because this, this man is taking the presidency like nobody else before him. And of Course, being a conservative and believing some of the things that I believe I'm liking most of what he does. But even if you don't like him, you have to admit it's been pretty consequential and probably change the presidency forever. We'll see in the next one.

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Ron Simmons (42:46)

Now let's go to the fun part. I love doing this. And these are questions that come in from you, the audience that you respond to, requests by Ally on Instagram. And I don't have very many that I'm going to be able to go over today. But again, you can email me those@ronsimmons.com and again, if I haven't responded to your email yet, please email me again. Cause it just got lost in the shuffle a little bit and I apologize for that. All right, the first question is my husband refuses to advance his career to provide because it's not his passion. So I think what I'm hearing you is whatever work he's doing is not his passion. Right. I think that's what you're saying. And if that's the case, I say to that that your passion above your work should be providing for your family. I talk about this in my book Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon in that I had a very good career in wealth management company. I enjoyed that. But that wasn't a passion for me. I didn't grow up thinking, man, I can't wait to grow up and get out of college and be a wealth manager. That wasn't an issue for Me, but what I did have a passion about is making sure that I lifted my family out of financial mediocrity. That was really important to me. And therefore the means that I got there was less important than the ultimate goal. And I would say to you, lady, I feel sorry for you in a way, but I think that you and your husband have to sit down and have some serious straightforward talks. I get it. I want him to have a. It would be great if everybody could be in a situation, situation like Ali Beth, where she actually doing what she does is her passion. And the fact that she can make a living doing that is really a bonus. On top of that, she would be doing it anyway in some form or fashion because communicating is her thing. But most of us don't get to do that. Most of us end up doing a job that we're qualified to do and are good at, but we may not have a deep set passion for that. What I would advise you to do, and your husband, is sit down, have a talk about that and say, what's the most important thing here? And hopefully the most important thing is providing for your family. And if that's the most important thing, then find the career that allows you to do that the best. And if you've got a passion outside of that, find a way to feed that passion outside of what you're doing to provide for your family. All right? Don't make your family suffer because your passion doesn't pay you enough money. That definitely shouldn't do that. Second thing is, and I love this one, this says we own our own home. We're 38 and 42 years old. We don't have a mortgage on the house and we don't have any debt, which, that is fantastic. I mean, that's. You're one of the 1,100th of 1% of the people in the country. So first of all, congratulations, great job. And then your question is that you have about $160,000 in the bank. What do you do with that? Well, again, I don't in general is all I can tell you, because I don't have all the fine information that I would need to make a good recommendation on that. And I'm not wanting to give you investment specific advice, but generally what I tell people is you need to make sure that you keep 90 days worth of your living expenses in a money market type account that you can get to immediately. The other money, if you don't need to use it within the next year or two, then you want to invest that In a longer term strategy, I think the best strategy to do that in is a broad based US equity either mutual fund or exchange traded fund called an ETF, like a S&P 500 ETF. I think that gives you the broad base and over the long run, over pretty much any 10 year period since 1929 when they started keeping these records, that has been the best return that you could get would be that type of diversification. So I would do something like that. I wouldn't get into. If you wanna, if you've got something that you're really interested in, like maybe you like to, you know, you wanna buy a rent house or something like that, okay, you can do that. All right. But that really takes a lot of your time and effort as well. Investing in an S&P 500 index fund doesn't require much of your time. You just let that sit and ride that out. That's what I would do if it was me. The next question is, I live with my parents, I'm 23 years old, live in Texas, thank goodness. I'm a nurse and I'm saving for a house. Well, first of all, thanks to your parents for allowing you to do that. Hopefully you're not having to pay them much rent, although I assume that you're helping them a little bit for groceries and things like that. So you should be able to save most of your money. First of all, don't go spend it on a hike, you know, a huge expensive car pay. All right, so yeah, you should be able to save 50% of your take home pay. Set that aside for your mortgage. I would put that in a money market account. Don't put that in as something that takes on any risk because you've got a specific thing you're saving for in probably a specific period of time. That's what I would do if I was you. And then how do we steward retirement culture? Well, that's a really good question. And you know, I think what they're asking is what does retirement really look like? And a lot of you listening to this are way away from that, but some of you aren't. We run into a lot of Ali's listeners that are closer to my age and what have you. And I think what you have to do is you have to realize is that there's nothing biblical about retirement now. I think there is something very good about you feeding back into your community and into your family and being in a position where you don't have to go to work 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week allows you to do that. But what I would say is that you need to make sure that you're doing something that still has significance and that's different from being successful. You can be successful financially, but do you have significance? And significance is where you're feeding back into someone else so that they can be something greater or do something greater than what they would have done without you being a part of that. Whether that's, you know, and for Lisa and I, it's the simple things. Like when Allie's out speaking and her husband goes with her. Maybe it's Lisa and I helping with the kids. Or like last night Allie had a talk and her husband couldn't go so I went with her. Or maybe it's Lisa's down helping with our oldest son's kids this week because her, he and his wife had to go to D.C. for some meetings that he had. It's whatever that is that that puts you adding significance to others. But don't be just where, okay, I'm retired now. I don't do anything. Do not get into that. And you can't play golf every day. And I love golf. In fact, when I leave here today, I'm going to play golf with my son in law which is going to be great fun. But I have to have other things that are significant. And if you wait till you retire to think about those things, it's hard to catch up. You need to be planning those things while you're still working. What do I want to be engaged in that I will think is significant and will add value to the people that I'm around? That's what I would say on that one.

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Ron Simmons (51:15)

What can I do now to have a solid relationship with my future adult children? Well, while you want to have a very good relationship when your kids are little, with them, God didn't put you here to be their friend when they're little, all right? And it's a balancing act. Cause you don't wanna be overbearing either. And I certainly have been guilty of that in the past. But if you just wanna be your buddy to your little kids, then they're not gonna have the same respect for you when they're an adult. What you need to do is when your kids are young, that you need to certainly love on them, care for them, but never cross the boundary between parent and child. Don't become child to child or parent to parent, because if they see you that way, they will not have the same respect for you when they also become an adult. Because when they become an adult, then they still want to have that parent child relationship, all right? And certainly it's different. There's no question about it. You are treating them differently. And while I consider myself very close to my, my adult children, I still think they look at me as their dad and not their buddy. And they probably will have different types of conversations with their buddies than they do with me. Although we have a lot of fun conversations, we certainly can talk about adult things that we couldn't talk about when they were little. But that relationship needs to stay that way. What I would say to you also is squelch the fire in your children. You know, Allie and our two sons were totally different. And our sons were very easygoing, a lot like their mom. Allie was a little bit more like me, a little bit more outgoing, a little bit more challenging. And my wife was really, really good at, even though it was against her nature, because she wasn't that way. Allowing Allie to be who she was with still being the mom, though, I mean, she had to pull the mom card many, many times. And then also Lisa impressing upon me my need to not treat Allie the same way I treated the boys, because it was just a totally different scenario. And so while I had to be strict sometimes, I hope that I'd never put out to where it would just totally squelch her. Right. And it would have a long term scarring effect on our relationship. It hasn't. Our relationship, as you know, has been, as you guys know, is great, but it's really because of some things that her mom taught me and taught her during that time. So I would just say, remember the parent child relationship, but don't squelch who they are. Okay, last thing. Last question is, how do you raise an alley? Well, talked about that a little bit on the last one. But I think, first of all, God creates us all. Creates us individually in his image, in his perfect plan, in our imperfect selves. And I think what you do when you have a child that has that outgoing spirit and has that ability to probably do some things that you couldn't even think about doing when you were her age, is you have to make sure that you never tell them that there's something they can't do. Lisa and I, with all of our kids, would always say, you know what? It's possible. It's possible. Let's figure out, what do we gotta do and then help them take the next uncomfortable step. We talk about that in the book as well, is how do we help them take the next uncomfortable step if we just impose upon them the limits that we had on them, like, okay, well, we never could have ever spoken before thousands of people before then that would automatically get her thinking, well, if they didn't do it, they're my parents. Certainly I can't do it. We just never did that. So you got to leave open every possibility. Even though some of them seem crazy and certainly some of them will be like, there's no way we could ever afford that. Okay, you cannot squelch that. If that's your child's gifting and that's something that they believe they're called to do, then it's our job to help them do that as much as possible. And they're gonna stumble along the way, and it's our job to be right there. Once they've fallen, help them dust their self off and get moving again. And that's the role that we play. So, anyway, I hope that helps. The last thing as we wrap up today is what is the. You know, every time I do these, I have a final deal called Wisdom from the Wagon. And. And it refers back to my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon. And I guess if what I'm thinking about is I hear a lot when I get questions from Allie's audience, I hear a lot about things that are going on in their young lives. And there are things that, although we're in a different time, there are things that Lisa and I experience as well. But let me just tell you something. And I've never used this term when I was a young married, but I've heard Allie use it. My other kids use it. And that adulting, adulting. I Will just tell you that was hard work. It is hard work. If you thought becoming an adult, it was just gonna be. Everything was gonna be rosy. That's not the way it is. It's hard work. And I'll tell you this, too, and this isn't that exciting, but it doesn't get any easier. You know, I'm 65 years old, and I have complications. When I say complications, complexities is the right term. Complexities in my life that I never dreamed of. Now, they're good things, right? I got three children, six grandchildren. And so things get more complex as you get older and as your family changes and as your family grows and what have you. But that's okay. Now, I have a lot of experience I can draw on that I didn't have when I was 30 years old or 40 years old or 25 years old. So it helps me to have that experience. But you have to begin now, when your kids are little and when you're younger, to make those hard choices so that as you get older and your kids grow and your family dynamic changes, that you will have been through that. If you just try to take the easy way out on every scenario, you're gonna end up not where you wanna be in the long run. Okay? And life is a journey, I guess there's really never an end until the Lord calls us home. But it's so much better. I'm so thankful that we had to make some tough choices when we were younger. You know, we had to decide that we wanted our kids to go to public private school. And no matter what that cost us, we were gonna figure that out. And believe me, we didn't have a lot of money. I was gonna let my kids pick the college of their choice that they felt the best with. And I was gonna do whatever I had to do to make sure they could do that. And, you know, they could have both gone. The two that went to college could have both gone to in state Texas schools, had a great education, and it would have been a lot less expensive, but that's not where they felt like they should be. And both of them made the right choices. All right? And, you know, it cost us a lot of money, but it was the right thing to do. But we made those hard choices. We had to give up some other things for that to happen. You know, with Daniel, with our son that has autism and epilepsy, there's a lot of choices that we've had to make that we could have taken the easy way. Like we've seen people do but we make the hard choices. If you make the hard choices now, okay, when your family's young, it'll be much better for you in the long run. I promise you that. Thanks for listening.

Congressman Craig Goldman (59:08)

Always.

Ron Simmons (59:08)

Thanks for supporting Allie. Please continue to pray for her and for all that she has going on this fall and her family. And I know that she feels those. So thank you very much. We'll see you next time.

Sponsor/Announcer (59:26)

It.