Reining in Federal Overreach: The REINS Act - The Original DOGE | Phil Kerpen, American Commitment

[00:00:00] When a government agency wants to do something that costs a lot of money, has a big impact on the economy, instead of being able to just do it and dare someone to stop them in Congress or in the courts, they should write it out as a proposal and send it up to Congress to be voted on first.

[00:00:14] Imagine that. Congress votes on something before it becomes law.

[00:00:18] Keeping our Republic is on the line, and it requires patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms.

[00:00:27] Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

[00:00:31] She is an author, a filmmaker, and one of Time Magazine's most influential people in the world.

[00:00:37] But the title she is most proud of is mom to her boy-girl twins.

[00:00:42] She has been at the forefront, fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade.

[00:00:48] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show.

[00:00:51] In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment,

[00:00:55] to discuss a brilliant proposal to rein in federal overreach called the RAINS Act.

[00:01:01] We'll discuss its importance, its origins from the Tea Party movement, and how it could shift power from the bureaucracy back to Congress where it belongs.

[00:01:11] Phil Kerpen, thanks so much for being back with me today.

[00:01:14] It's my pleasure.

[00:01:14] So we're going to talk about the RAINS Act and why I think it's DOJEE.

[00:01:20] And let's just jump right in.

[00:01:22] Explain what the RAINS Act is, and then let's explain why we think it is a perfect thing for the Department of Government Efficiency to be looking at.

[00:01:31] And then we'll go into a lot of details about it.

[00:01:33] Yeah, this bill is actually sort of unfinished business from the original Tea Party revolt back in 2010.

[00:01:39] And there was an incredible story behind this bill.

[00:01:42] You remember that summer when everyone was going to the town hall meetings?

[00:01:45] Yes.

[00:01:45] Democrats were ducking for cover.

[00:01:46] Yes.

[00:01:47] Sort of that whole revolt that, you know, that your organization grew out of.

[00:01:51] One of the town hall meetings in a Republican district in northern Kentucky, Jeff Davis was the congressman at the time.

[00:01:57] And one of his constituents who was a retired former local elected official, a guy named Lloyd Rogers, who was a Navy veteran.

[00:02:04] He'd been the local judge, which is kind of like the county executive there in Campbell County, Kentucky.

[00:02:09] He went to a town hall meeting in that summer and everyone was rabble rousing.

[00:02:13] And he brought his U.S. Constitution and he brought his water bill and he walked up to his congressman and he said, Congressman, my constitution says Article 1, Section 1, all legislative power is vested in Congress.

[00:02:25] But my water bill says the EPA doubled my water bill because of their stormwater management rules.

[00:02:31] You know, how did the EPA double my water bill without you voting on it if you're Congress and all legislative power is vested in you?

[00:02:38] So and his congressman didn't really have an answer.

[00:02:41] He kind of said, you're right. We should probably have to vote on something like that.

[00:02:44] That, you know, cost that cost, you know, this was a consent decree.

[00:02:48] I think it cost those three counties in northern Kentucky about a billion dollars, which is why water bills doubled.

[00:02:52] OK, so he said, you're right. We should have to vote on stuff like that.

[00:02:56] And he took that that idea and he had sort of a draft version of like a one paragraph bill.

[00:03:01] Basically, Congress should have to vote on this kind of stuff.

[00:03:04] He went back to his legislative council and they drafted into bill called the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act or RAINS Act.

[00:03:11] They love they always love these acronyms.

[00:03:13] And it basically said when an agency wants to impose costs on people, wants to impose new rules or regulation, guidance, consent, whatever, whatever it is that imposes costs on the economy.

[00:03:25] If it's economically significant above whatever the threshold amount is, the original version of the bill said 100 million dollars.

[00:03:31] It's been through some different iterations.

[00:03:33] But basically, when a government agency wants to do something that costs a lot of money, has a big impact on the economy.

[00:03:39] Instead of being able to just do it and dare someone to stop them in Congress or in the courts, they should write it out as a proposal and send it up to Congress to be voted on first.

[00:03:48] And only if if it gets a majority in the House and Senate and a presidential signature or veto override, that is the actual constitutional process for passing laws.

[00:03:57] Only if that happens, then the regulation should take effect.

[00:04:00] Imagine that Congress votes on something before it becomes law rather than it's an idea.

[00:04:07] It's an idea so obvious that nobody in Washington thought of it.

[00:04:11] It was a retired local official in Campbell County, Kentucky, who took it to his congressman.

[00:04:15] And we've been trying to get it passed for about, I don't know, 10 or 15 years now.

[00:04:19] Yeah, it's been almost 15 years.

[00:04:21] And we thought during the first Trump administration, we might be able to.

[00:04:25] But we we got a great statement of support from President Trump saying he would sign it.

[00:04:30] And this was actually a big question.

[00:04:31] You know, you know, would any president sign something that reduces the power of the agencies that he commands?

[00:04:37] Right. And you could say no president would do that, not even a conservative, because they'd rather keep Congress out of the decision loop.

[00:04:42] And that wasn't true.

[00:04:45] Trump absolutely said this is.

[00:04:47] Yeah, we can fix what's broken by passing something like this.

[00:04:50] And he said that he would sign it.

[00:04:51] But, of course, we were never able to get it past a Democratic filibuster threat.

[00:04:55] In fact, we never even really had a Senate vote.

[00:04:57] So we passed it in the House maybe four or five times, including twice in this current Congress that's wrapping up once by itself and once as part of the first round of debt ceiling.

[00:05:06] And I actually thought that was a really important breakthrough because it's not going to pass by itself.

[00:05:10] If it ever passes, it's going to have to be part of something that they wouldn't dare filibuster that, you know, that they have to vote for for other reasons.

[00:05:17] And you get it through that way.

[00:05:19] But it was one of the many good things in that first version that Kevin McCarthy backed away from.

[00:05:23] And it ended up not passing.

[00:05:26] So the Senate's always been the challenge, has been the difficulty on this.

[00:05:29] And we've had I think the high watermark for House Democrats was about eight.

[00:05:36] I think the most recent vote we got one maybe.

[00:05:38] Jared Golden from Maine.

[00:05:39] So we're actually moving backwards with Democratic support in the House.

[00:05:42] And we've only ever had one Democratic senator co-sponsor the bill.

[00:05:47] And that was Joe Manchin.

[00:05:48] And he's gone.

[00:05:48] And he's gone.

[00:05:49] Right.

[00:05:49] So we still really need to either persuade Democrats in the Senate, attach it to something they can't dare say no to or, you know, in my dream world, make it a political problem for them that they don't want to vote on any of the rules and regulations that govern the economy until, you know, they kind of have the incentive to change their mind.

[00:06:07] Which is where I think Doge actually comes in, because the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to make the government more efficient, more streamlined.

[00:06:21] And I think this is going to be very important because as an outside government advisory committee that has no actual authority because they're not elected, they're not employees.

[00:06:33] And we just talked about the importance of Congress passing laws.

[00:06:36] They're going to make a lot of recommendations.

[00:06:38] But if we want those recommendations to stick beyond Trump's presidency, we've got to have laws for it.

[00:06:46] And this is a way to start unwinding all of these rules that are the effect of law right now in our country.

[00:06:54] Yet they never went through both chambers and they were never signed into law by a president.

[00:06:59] Yeah, I'm pretty sure that both Elon and Vivek have said positive things about the RAINS Act.

[00:07:03] So I do think it definitely appeals to them.

[00:07:05] And I think that it appeals to them for the same reason that it appealed to Jeff Davis at the very beginning when Lloyd Rogers walked up to him with the idea.

[00:07:13] And he came from a private sector manufacturing engineering background.

[00:07:16] And he kind of saw right away, you know, we've got a process problem when all these agencies can promulgate rules and regulations that have the force of law, that have criminal sanctions, have huge economic consequences.

[00:07:27] And our elected officials aren't voting on them.

[00:07:29] And if we could fix that process, look, we know Congress can do dumb stuff.

[00:07:33] So I'm not going to tell you that if this passed, we'd never get a bad regulation again.

[00:07:36] We certainly would.

[00:07:37] We would.

[00:07:38] But we wouldn't get nearly as many.

[00:07:40] Right.

[00:07:40] And we'd be able to look up exactly who voted for them.

[00:07:43] Hold them accountable come election time.

[00:07:45] So it would be a much, much better process.

[00:07:47] And I do think that that certainly appeals to Elon and Vivek.

[00:07:52] And I also think that maybe there is a potential to sell this to the Democrats and maybe get it past the finish line a little bit by saying to them, look, you know.

[00:08:03] If everything gets decided in the executive branch.

[00:08:07] You're not going to like it when you have Trump and people like Vivek and Elon that are because they'll take a hatchet to all of these rules and regulations and they'll cut you guys in Congress out of it.

[00:08:17] And you'll make the pendulum swing even more back and forth.

[00:08:21] And maybe we could agree on some things and move it back into the realm of our elected officials deciding these things.

[00:08:27] And maybe we could bring them to the table that way.

[00:08:29] I think that right now we have a situation where we have a situation where members of Congress don't have to take tough votes.

[00:08:40] They rarely are taking tough votes.

[00:08:42] And they don't want to take those tough votes.

[00:08:45] They don't want to be voting on whether you're going to increase somebody's water bill or whether you're going to change how much water Colorado can use or whatever it might be.

[00:08:56] They'd rather somebody else do that so they're not held accountable for it and people don't run against them.

[00:09:02] And the way that they have – I always say they have abdicated power and they've just kind of handed power over.

[00:09:10] But they haven't just handed power over to the executive branch.

[00:09:13] They've handed power over to unelected bureaucrats, faceless, nameless people who there's no way for anyone to hold them accountable.

[00:09:20] There's no checks and balances in it.

[00:09:22] Yeah, and there's this whole mythology that the agencies and the commissions are the experts and their great expertise will result in better decision-making than a democratic and constitutional process.

[00:09:36] And that's failed pretty spectacularly, I would say.

[00:09:40] And there's even been a huge change in the legal landscape, of course, because this year we got the Chevron Doctrine overturned at the Supreme Court.

[00:09:47] And so there is no more deference to agency expertise on regulatory questions.

[00:09:53] Instead, where there are questions about whether an agency has the authority to do something and whether it's within the law, those are all going to be decided by courts now.

[00:10:01] And that's good on the one hand.

[00:10:03] Better the courts than the bureaucrats deciding for themselves what their power is, which has been a disaster.

[00:10:08] But it's not the real solution.

[00:10:09] The real solution is that our elected officials in Congress should be deciding this because half the judges are still bad, right?

[00:10:16] And so not everything is going to get to the Supreme Court.

[00:10:19] And so a lot of things are going to be decided wrong if the courts are making the decisions about the scope of federal regulatory power.

[00:10:26] But also just from a process standpoint, the right place for these things to be decided is in Congress.

[00:10:31] And you're right.

[00:10:32] You know, it's not – I think sometimes we talk about this and we think about this wrong and we say, oh, no, these agencies stole power from – no, no.

[00:10:41] They very willingly gave it.

[00:10:42] Oh, they gave it away.

[00:10:43] They gave it away.

[00:10:44] They don't – they want to – they want to go on TV.

[00:10:46] They want to be important and be lobbied and have their pin.

[00:10:49] But if it's a really tough call and you're going to cost someone millions of dollars, you want to be able to say, oh, yeah, I passed the law but I didn't think they'd actually implement it like that.

[00:10:57] That was those guys.

[00:10:58] That was someone else.

[00:10:59] They want to be able to avoid blame for the consequences of their lawmaking.

[00:11:03] So they pass broad, vague laws when the details get worked out by someone.

[00:11:06] Also, it's just – it's easier to write a broad, vague law than to develop real subject matter expertise and write something very specific that you'll then defend and accept the consequences for.

[00:11:16] So I think it's the path of least resistance.

[00:11:18] It's – and it allows them to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their lawmaking.

[00:11:25] And so I kind of think it's on us to tell them if you keep doing this, we're going to hold you accountable come election time and that we want to have – we want a federal government that does a lot less and does the things it does a lot better than what we're getting.

[00:11:38] So the bill has changed a little bit from when it was first introduced to what just was introduced in the current Congress and we're recording this in December.

[00:11:50] So there will be a new Congress in just a couple of weeks.

[00:11:53] How has it changed?

[00:11:55] Yeah, it's had a few different House sponsors over the years and it's had a couple of different – actually only two Senate sponsors.

[00:12:04] It originally was Jim DeMint and then he handed it to Rand Paul who's carried it many, many years since then, which makes sense since it was a Kentucky story and it's right up his alley.

[00:12:12] But in the House, it's changed hands a few times and it's currently Kat Kamek from Florida who's the lead sponsor of this.

[00:12:18] And one of the criticisms that we got with the early versions was this is great for having scrutiny on new regulations.

[00:12:26] But what about the 100,000, however many regulations that are already on the books?

[00:12:30] Are we just going to leave those alone?

[00:12:31] How do we deal with those?

[00:12:32] And so the new version of the bill actually requires all the agency rules that are already on the books to be submitted to Congress, not all at once.

[00:12:43] It strings it out over I think 10 years.

[00:12:45] But basically all of the existing rules and regulations that have any economic significance have to be sent up for approval.

[00:12:53] And if they don't get it, they would come off the books.

[00:12:55] They would be repealed if they don't get affirmative approval.

[00:12:57] And so the new version is much more ambitious than the original version.

[00:13:01] It not only kind of fixes the process going forward, but it says let's look back and force Congress to take a look at all the rules and regulations that are already on the books as well.

[00:13:09] I think that's so important.

[00:13:11] I think that's so important because you can make sure that Congress has voted for everything at that point.

[00:13:17] And it would effectively sunset anything they're not approving, right?

[00:13:21] Right.

[00:13:22] Exactly.

[00:13:22] I suspect that most of the regulations are going to wind up passing anyway.

[00:13:28] I can't see how that would work.

[00:13:30] Unless someone comes up with really good reasons why they should vote no.

[00:13:34] You imagine they'll have a bunch of days where they're just voting them all and they're just approving them all.

[00:13:39] But that exercise will give me and you and everyone else who cares about these things an opportunity to pick out the ones where there are problems.

[00:13:46] Right.

[00:13:47] And to challenge them and to make those votes more difficult and to defeat some of them.

[00:13:51] And that goes for both sides of the aisle.

[00:13:53] This should be something that both political parties would want because the other side of the aisle can look at the things that are voted on as well and use it.

[00:14:03] So, I mean, not that I want – if we're getting rid of regulations, I don't want it used against people.

[00:14:07] But the point is it cuts both ways.

[00:14:11] It should.

[00:14:11] Yeah, it should.

[00:14:12] You know, I've been very disappointed about how little Democratic support there's been over the years for this bill because, you know, if you're a Democrat, you're a liberal, you believe government should be regulating, doing all these sorts of things.

[00:14:24] Don't you hate it when someone like Trump comes in and gets rid of all your regulations when all that power is in the executive branch?

[00:14:31] And, you know, maybe historically they didn't worry about it too much because even when we got Republicans, they didn't usually undo much.

[00:14:36] But Trump was very net deregulatory in his first term.

[00:14:39] And I think he's going to be much more net deregulatory in his second term.

[00:14:43] And so, you know, wherever you are kind of on the political spectrum, it would be better for the country to have a process that doesn't swing wildly like a pendulum depending on the party that's in control in the White House because the country needs some stability, some predictability so that you can have – make investment decisions knowing what the rules of the road are going to be without, you know, it all depending on what happens in the next election.

[00:15:06] That's not a great way to run a country.

[00:15:08] And so you would hope that maybe they would say, hey, you know what, maybe we should slow down both the regulation and the deregulation and kind of have a more considered process.

[00:15:19] And then I think of it this way also.

[00:15:23] If I want Trump's legacy or part of Trump's legacy to be that he created a lasting, enduring, America-first-centered country.

[00:15:37] And one way to do that is to ensure that he isn't just changing things through executive order because that can be undone in four years to the minute from when he's sworn in potentially.

[00:15:51] The best way to do that is to get legislation passed and to have it put enshrined into law because legislation is much more difficult to change than just an executive order.

[00:16:01] Right. Look, I mean ideally we wouldn't even need that many regulations because they'd be passing laws that are so specific that the law is the law and it doesn't need to have a bunch of regulations explaining it because it would just – you'd read it and you'd know what the rules are.

[00:16:14] It would be written into the law.

[00:16:15] And I think that we need to develop a lot more institutional capacity in Congress.

[00:16:19] We need a lot of – we need regulatory experts in the congressional offices so that they can – in these different areas, whether it's healthcare or energy and environment or labor, every area, financial services.

[00:16:33] We want them to have enough expertise to write the laws with a lot of specificity on the front end so they're not just punting everything to regulation.

[00:16:40] And that I think – Congress is just institutionally – it's tiny compared to this massive executive branch.

[00:16:49] And so there are a lot of times they want to legislate in an area and they just sort of – we don't know what the level should be so the agency will decide.

[00:16:57] And ideally they should be deciding because they're the people we elect to make the laws.

[00:17:03] And so I would love to see them create an office of regulatory analysis in Congress like they have CBO for budget.

[00:17:10] They should have something for regulation and they should have their own numbers and they should have their own experts.

[00:17:14] And this should all be part of what it means to be a congressman is that you understand these tradeoffs and these issues.

[00:17:22] And not everyone is going to be an expert in everything but you can certainly have staff who are and especially on the committees and really understand this stuff and make the decisions.

[00:17:30] And when you're wrong, the voters will let you know.

[00:17:33] And if you think it's too much to keep up with, then maybe you could figure out a way to make government more limited.

[00:17:40] Or to do less.

[00:17:40] Yeah, to do less.

[00:17:41] Imagine that.

[00:17:43] If we did – if they did what you just mentioned, the people working in there, there have to be some people who are constitutionally minded and limited government minded.

[00:17:55] Otherwise, you just get a bunch of experts again inside of Congress and they go and do whatever the experts do.

[00:18:03] Yeah.

[00:18:04] Well, principles and values always come before expertise.

[00:18:07] They have to.

[00:18:08] They have to.

[00:18:08] And this is, I think, one of the big dangers in this idea of expert agencies is that we have way too many people who should know better from a first principle standpoint and should be limited government who just kind of say, well, OK, but the experts will decide.

[00:18:21] And then the experts end up being basically ideological leftists, socialists, big government.

[00:18:27] And that informs what they say is, oh, these are just the facts.

[00:18:31] It's just the expertise.

[00:18:31] But it's their values.

[00:18:32] And so the values always have to come first.

[00:18:35] But if we're going to have the government active in all these different areas, then it doesn't work to just say, you know, to go campaign on limited government principles but then, you know, allow the laws to be vague enough that the agencies are out there doing all kinds of things to micromanage the economy and people's lives.

[00:18:52] Right.

[00:18:52] That's exactly right.

[00:18:53] Now, what can people do to help with this legislation?

[00:18:59] And I understand that we're doing this interview and it's in December.

[00:19:02] The new Congress isn't set up and we don't know exactly where the new Congress is going.

[00:19:07] But that's why we exist, because from the outside, we're trying to influence and drive some of the direction.

[00:19:12] And we're trying to do that in line with what the voters just voted on.

[00:19:16] They want a more efficient government.

[00:19:19] And Trump campaigned on it.

[00:19:21] Yeah.

[00:19:22] Well, I've got reinsact.com, which is very easy to remember.

[00:19:26] R-E-I-N-S.

[00:19:27] Reins.

[00:19:28] Like reining it in.

[00:19:29] Regulations from the executive in need of screwing.

[00:19:31] Reinsact.com.

[00:19:32] It's just a – I mean it's just a forwarder to our action page writing to Congress telling them to support it.

[00:19:37] So, I mean I would say share that around and when the new – I don't think it's loaded the new Congress yet in our vendor.

[00:19:43] But when the new Congress loads, you're definitely going to want to send letters in and ask them to pass it.

[00:19:47] And I think most importantly, we've got to tell them that this has got to be a priority to include on a must-pass bill.

[00:19:54] And as I mentioned, it was on the first version of debt ceiling under McCarthy and then it came out.

[00:19:59] I would love to see House leadership really commit to putting this on a debt ceiling bill or a government funding bill.

[00:20:06] Something where –

[00:20:07] Or NDAA.

[00:20:08] They always pass terrible things with NDAA.

[00:20:10] When do we ever let something good get a ride on that?

[00:20:13] But I don't think we're going to ever pass it by itself, sadly.

[00:20:17] No, I don't think that –

[00:20:18] And so it needs to be a priority to where we're willing to make it one of the demands that we have to have on one of these must-passes.

[00:20:29] And frankly, it would be worth the very heavy lift to get that accomplished because it really would change the incentives and the process in a way that would be very beneficial to all the specific things that we care about.

[00:20:41] And we didn't really get into – we didn't get into mandating electric cars or government regulating the internet or – I mean, we could have a laundry list.

[00:20:50] I'm sure of all the regulations we're against out of every single –

[00:20:53] Weeks of nine years to go through.

[00:20:53] HHS is transgender.

[00:20:55] I mean, you could imagine every single thing that you care about is implicated by this because almost all of the worst mischief happens from agencies.

[00:21:04] Right.

[00:21:04] The FDA, OSHA, the EPA, the IRS.

[00:21:09] I mean the –

[00:21:10] And all of the worst stuff happens by sidestepping Congress because all the things that you can't get through a vote, you do by some other mechanism.

[00:21:21] Right.

[00:21:21] So this would largely stop that.

[00:21:23] It wouldn't be perfect because you can never write a process that captures everything and they'll try to use some – on the edges, they'll find ways to get around it.

[00:21:35] But for the big things, there would be no way around it and we'd at least get votes.

[00:21:39] We wouldn't win them all, but we'd at least get votes.

[00:21:41] Yeah.

[00:21:41] And I know that we won't win them all.

[00:21:43] And I get that what I want in the country is not always what the majority of the country wants or the majority of the voting body is going to vote for.

[00:21:53] But you also know many, many times there's been a bad idea coming up for a vote and we've activated the grassroots and we've won those votes.

[00:22:01] Right.

[00:22:01] We have.

[00:22:01] We've stopped them.

[00:22:02] We've stopped things.

[00:22:02] We've reversed them.

[00:22:03] It's almost impossible when an agency is trying to do something to convince them not.

[00:22:07] You can sue them.

[00:22:08] Yeah.

[00:22:08] Or you can go fill out regulations –

[00:22:11] You know, a comment on regulations.gov.

[00:22:12] And I think that's worth doing and we do that.

[00:22:15] But how often has it convinced the agency not to do something it wants to do?

[00:22:18] It's very rare.

[00:22:19] Almost never.

[00:22:19] I think that we stopped one thing from the IRS related to donations or something.

[00:22:29] I think we were active in that too.

[00:22:31] I remember that.

[00:22:32] But it's very rare.

[00:22:33] But it's so rare that I'm having trouble pulling it right back up because we've done it over and over and over to no avail.

[00:22:42] Not that we shouldn't keep activating where we can, but this would really help.

[00:22:47] It would just help so, so much.

[00:22:52] And this isn't – right now Congress is really pushing for – or some of the people in Congress right now are pushing for tax reform.

[00:23:02] And Trump talked about a few things with taxes, like no taxes on overtime, no taxes on tips, right?

[00:23:09] Yeah.

[00:23:09] But by and large he wasn't going, and then I'm going to go in and do this with taxes and that with taxes and this with taxes and that with taxes.

[00:23:15] He said he'd grow the economy and you and I both understand tax cuts help grow the economy.

[00:23:21] But he was specific in saying I'm going to have a Department of Government efficiency.

[00:23:25] I want to make the government more efficient.

[00:23:28] He was very specific in saying that.

[00:23:30] He has a mandate to do that.

[00:23:32] And Musk was saying it.

[00:23:36] Trump's – the strong economy we had under Trump was not just from the tax cuts.

[00:23:42] That's right.

[00:23:42] The deregulation was at least equally important.

[00:23:44] Yes.

[00:23:44] And it was the – my friend Casey Mulligan from the University of Chicago had Trump's net deregulatory impact at about $10,000 per household.

[00:23:54] That's amazing.

[00:23:55] Which is incredible.

[00:23:56] Yes.

[00:23:56] Because regulation almost never runs in that deregulatory direction even under Republicans.

[00:24:01] Well, and I think that right now the cost per household difference between what it was four years ago and now is something like –

[00:24:11] Biden's – Casey's got Biden's regulations at plus $50,000 per household.

[00:24:16] So it's – that's like on a lifetime basis.

[00:24:19] So it's not like you got hit by $50,000 just in the last four years.

[00:24:22] But those rules, if they stay in place, the new rules under Biden add the cost to your household of $50,000 over the rest of your life, which is a huge, huge number.

[00:24:32] And I think you're right.

[00:24:34] Trump clearly has a mandate and Ilan and Vivek clearly have a mandate to significantly reduce the federal regulatory burden as well as the burden of government spending.

[00:24:43] And, of course, those are related.

[00:24:44] I mean the worst spending in the whole federal government is the spending in the regulatory agencies because most of the other government spending just gets wasted.

[00:24:52] The federal regulatory agencies, most of the spending goes to people who are spending all day long destroying the private economy in various ways.

[00:24:59] So it's much worse than the money that's just wasted.

[00:25:02] It's actively destructive.

[00:25:04] And it goes against the things – as you just pointed out a couple of minutes ago, it is the worst of the worst.

[00:25:10] It's stuff that can never get past Congress because nobody would actually be OK with it.

[00:25:15] So all the really bad things are happening in these regulation – the regulatory agencies.

[00:25:20] And they affect households.

[00:25:22] They affect individuals.

[00:25:23] They affect families.

[00:25:24] They affect businesses.

[00:25:26] Yeah.

[00:25:26] I mean I think the biggest regulatory issue in this past election was the electric vehicle mandates.

[00:25:30] And when Congress voted to overturn them, you had bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate to overturn them but not super majorities.

[00:25:38] And so it didn't pass, right?

[00:25:40] Right.

[00:25:40] But if it had worked the other way, if they had to get majorities to pass them instead of us trying to get majorities to block them and our majorities weren't big enough because they weren't super – then that never would have had a chance.

[00:25:50] Right.

[00:25:51] Not any chance for something like that if it had had to go through a legitimate process.

[00:25:56] OK.

[00:25:56] So it's reignsact.com.

[00:25:59] And we're going to make sure as we get into the next Trump administration and the next Congress to follow this closely.

[00:26:07] I want us to be able to accomplish this finally.

[00:26:10] I mean my co-founder Mark Meckler and I wrote about this in the book we wrote.

[00:26:14] This is – we've wanted this for years.

[00:26:16] This is part of the original Tea Party agenda.

[00:26:17] Yes.

[00:26:18] Part of the original Tea Party revolt from an original Tea Party member who sadly we lost about a year ago.

[00:26:24] So I was – my big hope was that he would get to see it passed before he passed.

[00:26:28] And he did – he was 90.

[00:26:30] So he made it to a nice old age.

[00:26:34] Maybe we should name it after him.

[00:26:35] Maybe it should be the Lloyd K. Rogers Ransact.

[00:26:37] Something to think about.

[00:26:37] Oh, I love that.

[00:26:38] We should tell Kat Kamek that.

[00:26:40] Maybe she would do that.

[00:26:41] Or Rand Paul.

[00:26:43] Yeah.

[00:26:44] Okay.

[00:26:45] Well, then that is what we will focus on.

[00:26:47] And I appreciate your time today.

[00:26:49] And everyone needs to go and check out Rainsact.com.

[00:26:52] And then what is the rest of your website and your social media?

[00:26:56] AmericanCommitment.org is the website.

[00:26:58] And the only social media I do really is X, but I'm a little addicted to it.

[00:27:02] So I'm on there all day.

[00:27:03] It's my last name, Kirp and K-E-R-P-E-N.

[00:27:05] Well, it seems like a lot of people are on there all day every day.

[00:27:07] That's where everything is now, right?

[00:27:08] Yes, it is.

[00:27:09] It is.

[00:27:10] All right.

[00:27:11] Well, thank you so much, Phil.

[00:27:12] I really enjoyed being with you again today.

[00:27:13] My pleasure.

[00:27:15] The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mooneyham, and directed

[00:27:22] by Luke Livingston.

[00:27:24] The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action.

[00:27:28] For more information, visit TeaPartyPatriots.org.

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[00:27:55] Thank you so much.

[00:27:56] Thank you so much.