DOGE Is Over... So What Did We Actually Get? | Wacky Wednesday

🎙️ This week on Common Sense...

DOGE is officially over.

After 18 months of political battles, government layoffs, promises of massive savings, and nonstop headlines...

what actually changed?

This episode follows the receipts—not the talking points.

We break down:

✅ What DOGE permanently accomplished

✅ Why temporary cuts don't always create permanent reform

✅ Oregon's Prosperity Council and its recommendations

✅ California's latest affordability and tax decisions

✅ Why accountability matters more than announcements

Sometimes the most important question isn't whether government identified the problem.

It's whether anyone ever came back to finish the job.

📞 252-CHAD-LAW

🌐 ChadParkerLaw.com

📥 Download your FREE Common Sense Conservative Manifesto

▶️ Watch full episodes on Rumble

Chapters

00:00 The Ten Bills of Bureaucracy
 03:42 DOGE Is Officially Over
 05:57 What Did DOGE Actually Accomplish?
 13:02 Congress Responds to DOGE
 18:11 The Government Already Had the Answers
 25:40 Oregon's Prosperity Council
 33:58 The Prosperity Report vs. Reality
 36:42 Oregon's Policy Decisions
 40:20 California's July 1 Policy Blitz
 43:32 California's Cost of Living Crisis
 48:28 The Bureaucracy Problem
 53:25 Government Keeps Adding Rules
 56:52 Accountability vs. Announcements

Transcript

Ten Bills For Less Bureaucracy

SPEAKER_00 0:01

So I'm reading the House Committee markup schedule this week, which, yes, is what I do now. This is my life. You're all welcome. And the Education and Workforce Committee met, and they marked up 10 bills. 10. And I'm going to read you all 10, every single one, because I need you to hear this the exact way I heard it. The Less Bureaucracy Better Workforce Development Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better Student Aid Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better International Foreign Gift Transparency Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better International Education Oversight Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better Foreign Medical Accreditation Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better. The Less Bureaucracy Better Child Care for Student Parent Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better Higher Education Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better K through 12 Education Act. The Less Bureaucracy Better Family Engagement Act. And, and I promise you, I am not making this up. The Less Bureaucracy Better Tribal Education Act. Ten bills. One committee. In one morning. It took ten bills to say less bureaucracy. Ten. They made ten more things to have fewer things. Wait a second. That's not a solution. That's a ransom note written by the hostage. And somewhere in that building is a grown adult whose entire job this week was putting the word better in front of ten different nouns. That's a person with a parking spot and a dental plan. And I guarantee you, somebody in that meeting said, What if it's 11? And that's not even the show tonight. That's the warmup. Hang on. And before we get started, one quick thing. If common sense has become part of your weekly routine, ChadParkerLaw.com is your home base. Every week you'll find something new, whether it's my latest books, a new editorial, the gaily news, the free Common Sense Conservative Manifesto, or something else we've been building together. And if you've got a question, an idea for an episode, or think I missed the mark, don't forget the phone number 252 Chad Law. Some of the best conversations on this show start with your texts. All right, let's get to today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

When you need common sense, come see Chad Law. The boldest pundit you ever saw. It's true, truth. It's hard, and the talk is real. Reality rules, and that's the appeal. Spreading truth. That's his car's opening eyes. Who needs the thoughts? When you need common sense, then comes Steve Dad. He lays down the law when the lights get bad. I may think you're dead. So come where it's real.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

With common sense. I'm Chad Law, the last gay conservative, America's binary brother, the common sense extremist living in radical reality, broadcasting truth on the only rainbow that matters: the red, white, and blue rainbow. And this is Common Sense, the show where we read the fine print so you don't have to, where we bring receipts instead of outrage, where politics is just the beginning point for something much bigger. This is the shelter for the politically homeless, which where reality gets a vote, results matter, truth matters, common

Doge Ends And The Fight Lingers

SPEAKER_00 3:40

sense matters. Welcome home. Well, Doge is over. It ended on the 4th of July. Website went dark, nobody threw a parade, nobody lowered a flag, it just stopped. And I want you to sit here with me for one second and think about everything this country went through for that. 18 months. The chainsaw, the cabinet meetings, Elon versus Trump, Trump versus Elon, the breakup, the makeup, the other breakup, the one they did on two different social media platforms at the same time, like a divorced couple who both got podcasts, people screaming outside of dealerships, people setting cars on fire over a spreadsheet, federal workers crying on television, congressmen crying on television, cable news anchors crying on television, which, okay, that's just Tuesday now. But every single one of you watching right now had a fight about it at a dinner table with somebody you love. It doesn't matter. We all fought about Doge. For what? Why? And I'm not being cute. I'm asking sincerely. What did we get? And that's tonight. Except it isn't just in Washington, because once I saw it, I couldn't stop seeing it. It's everywhere. It's in Oregon, my state, where the governor did something I actually respect. She hired serious people, some of them Republicans, sent them out for six months to go find out what's wrong with Oregon's economy. And they found out. Oh, they found out. And it's in California, where on July 1st, three separate things happened to your wallet on the same day, and the governor's office put out a press release about it. I want you to read it very slowly. Because I've read it four times now and it still doesn't make sense. And at this point, I'm starting to think that's the entire point. Now, you know where I stood on Doge. It's on tape. I wanted it to work. I still believe government should doge itself every Tuesday morning. That's exactly why we're doing tonight's show. But Doge is over. I mean, officially, the lights are off. The receipts are finally in. Let's see what we actually bought, shall we? January 20th, 2025 was day one. The president signs an executive order and creates the Department of Government efficiency. And the promise is not small. The promise is $2 trillion. $2 trillion. Then it becomes $1 trillion. Which look, I'm not going to sit here and act like $1 trillion is a letdown. That's still the biggest thing anyone tried in my lifetime. And the president says out loud, a smaller government with more efficiency and less bureaucracy would be the perfect gift to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Boy, that's a great line. I'd have written that line. And Musk goes full zen about it. The final step of Doge is to delete itself. Well, he was right about that part. So they go to work. And you remember this, you lived this. They were embedding people in agencies, doing buyouts, deferred resignations, contracts, getting killed by the hundreds, USAID basically taking part in a weekend. Melee hands Elon a chainsaw on stage in February, and the internet loses its mind. And I loved it. I want to be honest with you, I loved it. Every morning of Doge was like Christmas for me. What'd they find today? What'd they cut today? And they basically did the same thing I've been asking for for 20 years.

Receipts That Do Not Add Up

SPEAKER_00 7:15

They put up a wall of actual receipts, put the numbers on a website, let anyone look, any citizen at any time. That's basically my whole show right there. That's what I do for a living. I was thrilled. So naturally, people looked. Yeah. But CBS goes through it and finds a contract listed at $8 billion. It was worth $8 million. $1 million. That's a typo with three extra zeros on it. That is the single most expensive keystroke in the history of the republic. And fine, it's a typo. Fix it and move on. They fixed it. And the receipt they linked to, the one proving the fix, still pointed at the $8 billion. The receipt for the receipt was wrong. That's like correcting a typo with the typo. Then there's a USAID contract counted three separate times, inflated it by about $1.96 billion. Government had actually spent $400 million on it over four years across 44 subcontractors. A wastewater monitoring contract, $38 million in savings claimed. CBS calls the company. Company says the contract's still active. CDC confirms it. It wasn't canceled, it was modified, and the new one is worth $41 million. They claim $38 million in savings on a contract that actually got bigger. I mean, imagine your contractor calls you up real excited. Great news. Saved you $38,000. And the new invoice is $41. So where's my $38? Oh, it's in there. And they take credit on X for selling a building in Washington. CBS checks. Biden's people auctioned it off. They build us for a sale that already happened. Now that's bold. That's putting your neighbor's diet on your own vision board. Now, two names. And I want you to hear who they are before you hear what they said. Nate Malchus, American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, not someone who's wandered in from MSNBC. That's my side of the room. He tracked this thing the whole way. His verdict, they were way overestimating contracts by a factor of two. And they had, in his own words, funny math definition of savings that doesn't actually capture what the typical person would ever view as a savings amount. Funny math from the guy on our team. And Jessica Riedel, Manhattan Institute, used to be chief economist for Rob Portnon, a Republican senator. She said this I have not found any legitimate evidence of fraud in the spending that Elon Musk has highlighted. I have found expenditures that a lot of people wish the government wouldn't engage in. That one hurt. I'm not going to pretend it didn't. Not fraud. Spending you don't like. And those are two different things. And if I can't say that out loud on this show, the one about reading the fine print, then what exactly am I doing here? NPR ran the claims against the actual federal contracting database. Top line said $55 billion at the time. They could verify about two. Doge adds 1,200 more receipts, claiming another $4 billion. NPR reruns it. Verified number, basically unchanged. They added $4 billion in receipts, and the verified number didn't move. That's not a database, that's a mood board. And about a thousand entries, roughly 40% of the wall, got quietly changed or deleted. Think about that. 40% of the receipts needed receipts. And here's the part that should bother every single person watching, and it's got nothing to do with Elon. Who caught that? Not an inspector general, not the GAO, not Congress. Congress has an entire building for this. Multiple buildings. There are people in Washington whose whole job, the thing printed on the business card, is checking this stuff. But no, it was CBS, it was MPR, and a guy at a conservative think tank doing it on his own time. Imagine you hire an accountant and you find out the only person checking the accountant's math is the newspaper. And the newspaper's doing it for free. And you're still paying the accountant. Nobody's whose job it was actually checked. Now, something real happened,

Permanent Savings Versus Post It Notes

SPEAKER_00 11:40

and I'm not skipping it because I wanted this to work. The White House sends Congress a rescisions package, 9.4 billion, codify it, make it law, make it permanent, take it out of the hands of the next guy. House passes it 214 to 212. Wins by two votes. Senate 51 to 48. Murkowski and Collins, the only Republican knows. And the last time Congress pulled off a rescision before that one was the Clinton administration. That's real. Somebody stood up, took a hard vote, made something permanent, $9 billion in law forever. I'm not going to sneer at that just because it's inconvenient for my monologue. Here's the second scoreboard. Doge claimed $215 billion. $1,335 a taxpayer. Congress made $9 of it permanent. 9 out of 215. That's 4%. Everything else. Which means it lives exactly as long as the next guy feels like letting it live. That's not law. That's a post-it note. That's a post-it note the next guy peels off on a Tuesday afternoon and throws it in the trash on his way to lunch. And that brings me to the thing I found this week that I cannot get out of my head. Go back to day one, January 20th, 2025, the executive order, the one that created the thing. It says right in it, in the text, in the order, that the organization terminates on July 4th, 2026. Day one, it came with an expiration date printed on the side, like milk. And everyone in Washington could read it. Every agency head, every department, every contractor, every union. It wasn't hidden, it wasn't classified, it was in the founding document. So nobody had to beat Doge. They just had to outlast it. 18 months. That's it. That's your whole assignment. Keep your head down, say the right things in the meeting, wait for the 4th of July. Think about that. How is that even possible? We announced the raid and we published the getaway schedule? It's like telling your teenager you're grounding him till Thursday. He's not grounded. He's just busy till Thursday. And nobody fought it because nobody had to fight it. And they were right. Just watch. First five months of this year, the federal government posted more than 104,000 jobs. Last five months of 2025, about 68,000. The IRS got permission to fast track 8,000 hires after cutting more than a quarter of its staff. HHS laid off about 10,000 people last year. This year, they're trying to hire 12,000. Wait, so we called that a layoff? That's not a cut. That's a sabbatical. And the energy department is scrambling to hire nuclear waste experts because they pushed out the nuclear waste experts. Turns out you needed those. Who could have possibly known, besides everyone? Somewhere there's a guy who took the buyout in March and got rehired in June by the same agency to do the same job, and he's the smartest man in America. He got paid to leave and paid to come back. That man should run the treasury. All right. And here's the thing that actually makes me mad, and it's not the money. The point of a cut was never really the money. I've sat in that chair. I've had to do this. And here's the thing nobody tells you. The layoff isn't the objective. The layoff is never the objective. Anyone who tells you they enjoyed that part is lying to you or shouldn't be in charge of people. The objective is what the cut forces. Because the second the money's actually gone, not threatened, gone, every single person in that building has to sit down and look at their own budget and answer one question. Is this necessary? Not is this nice, not do I like it? Not have we always done it this way? Is it necessary? And that question is brutal and it's clarifying. And it is the single most valuable thing that ever happens to any organization. You make people spend the company's money like it's coming out of their own pocket. And the good ones get sharper and the fat falls off, and you find out what you actually do for a living. That's the whole exercise. That's what Doge is for. And nobody in Washington ever even had to answer it. They didn't have to. They read the executive order. They saw the date. They did the math. And they figured, just wait. Congress will put it back. Of course they will. And what did Congress do? Put it back in the most embarrassing Republican-controlled session in the history of America. So July 4th, 2026, right on schedule, because the schedule was always the point. Website goes dark. Final number on the board, 215 billion. Last post says it's been our greatest honor to serve the American people. And I think a lot of those people meant that. I really do. But there's a congressman, Dave Royce, Republican out of Ohio. He chairs the subcommittee that handles exactly this. And he asked Russ Vott the most boring question in the world. It's not a gotcha. It's basically, hey, is there going to be a report, something we can look at? And Vaught says, We have no plans to do kind of closing doge report. The Department of Government Efficiency never measured whether it was efficient. Only the geniuses in Washington could come up with that. I mean, just read it again. That's not scandal, that's not corruption, that's just the name. It's the name of the department. It's the only thing it was ever supposed to do. I mean, that's a fire department that won't tell you if the house is still on fire. The 215 hasn't moved since January. The $5,000 rebate checks they floated never came, and the Center Square went digging through the 2027 budget looking for a line item showing what doge itself costs? There isn't one. We don't even know what we saved. We don't know what we spent, and we closed the office that was supposed to find out

Splitting Education Into Five Agencies

SPEAKER_00 18:10

on a holiday. And Congress heard all of this. They heard it loud. Remember those ten bills from the top of the show, the less bureaucracy ones? Well, I went and read them. One by one. It's one package, ten bills, one idea. And the idea is take the Department of Education and split it across five other agencies. Five. Student loans go to Treasury, Pell Grants go to Treasury, the FAFSFA goes to Treasury. Trio and GearUp go to labor. The grant programs for HBCUs and the Hispanic serving institutions go to labor, career and technical education, adult education and literacy, labor, adult literacy to the labor department, and the rest gets scattered to HHS and DOJ. So I want you to think about what just happened. You had one number to call. Now you've got five numbers to call. That's not less bureaucracy. That's a phone tree. For your student loan, press one. For your Pell grant, also press one, but a different one. For adult literacy, please read the following menu. And here's the chairman, Tim Wahlberg, explaining it. And I don't think he's being cynical. I think he means it, which is sadder. He says the bill stops, quote, unnecessary layers of Washington bureaucracy from standing between families and the services they rely on. Unnecessary layers. And his fix is for more agencies. Look, I want the Department of Education gone on the record. I've wanted that my whole adult life. But this isn't gone. Nothing's gone. Nothing's got smaller. Every one of those programs still exists, still has a budget, still has a person, still has a badge. They just live at a different address now. That's not a demolition. That's a move. You didn't get rid of the junk in the garage. You put it in four other people's garages. Now you can park your car. Oh, and one more thing. Those are ordinary bills, which means they need 60 votes in the Senate. And the Democrats are unified against them. So they're not going anywhere. It's a big waste of time and taxpayer dollars. Big nothing burger. Ten bills, one committee, one morning, named after the problem, dead on arrival, and everybody in that room knew it when they walked in. They didn't write a law, they wrote a press release with a bill number on it. Hi, I'm Congress. See you next year. And here's the part that turns my stomach a little. And

GAO’s Boring List Beats The Chainsaw

SPEAKER_00 20:40

I saved it for last. There was a list the whole time. The entire 18 months. There was already a list. The government accountability office, the GAO, the congressional watchdog, boring, no chainsaw, nobody's ever made a meme about them, puts out a report every year called the Duplication Report. And all it is is a list of federal programs that do the same thing as other federal programs. This is its 16th year, 16th annual report. They've been doing it since the Obama's first term. And this year's list has 610 open items on it. 610 things Congress and the agencies have been told about and haven't done. And the GAO says if you did it all, you'd have saved at least $100 billion. $100 billion on a list that's published, free, searchable, sitting on a government website with a PDF link and everything. And Doge, with the chainsaw and the cabinet meetings and the burning Teslas and your dinner table, got nine. The list was right there. Nobody picked up the list. And I want to tell you what's actually on it, because this is the good part. GAO's new findings this year include, and I'm quoting the topic here, fragments. Anti-scam strategies across 13 federal agencies. 13 agencies fighting scams separately, not talking to each other. 13 different guys in 13 different buildings, each one certain he's the only one on the case. And they found a lack of coordination on workforce development programs between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. Workforce development between education and labor. The bill from this morning, the Less Bureaucracy, Better Workforce Development Act. Same week, same building. Nobody in the room even mentioned it. And here's the GAO's recommendation for how to fix all this fragmentation across agencies that don't talk to each other. More interagency working groups. More bureaucracy. The cure for too many groups is a group about the groups. And it's not just that nobody does it, it's that the list is growing. Two days ago, July 13th, the GAO published its update on the General Services Administration. Last May, they gave GSA eight priority recommendations, eight things, fix these. Since then, GSA fixed two and the GAO dropped one. And then the GAO added six new ones. So now we're at 11 total. Obvious money wasters that Congress could fix right now. 11. They fixed two and the list got longer. That's not a to-do list. That's a hydra. Same day, the Department of Education got its letter. Eight priority recommendations open since the last review they've implemented. One. Now, I want to give GAO its due because this is the part that gives me hope, and it's the part that makes me the maddest, and it's the same fact. Since 2011, Congress and the agencies have actually addressed about 77% of what GAO put on those lists. 1,662 items out of 2,148. And it has saved real money. Counted. Verified. $774 billion. $774 billion. Without a chainsaw, a stage. Nobody handed a power tool. Nobody set a car on fire. An auditor with a list coming back every year for 16 years. Doge made 9 billion permanent. GAO's list has done $774 billion. That's $86 times. The boring guy with the clipboard beat the chainsaw by $86 to $1. Because he came back. Every year, 16 times, same list, same guy, nobody clapping. 18 months, the chainsaw, the screaming, the burning cars, your dinner table. 4%. Nobody lied to you. I need you to hear that. I think they meant every single word of it in January. They just never came back. They never finished the job. And I'll

Oregon’s Prosperity Council Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 25:00

tell you what I told myself when I finished reading all this. I said, okay, that's Washington. That's 3,000 miles away and 800 agencies and nobody's actually in charge of, and of course it happened there. That's the biggest, dumbest, slowest government on planet Earth. So what happens when it's small? What happens when it's one state, one governor, one economy you can actually see? What happens when a governor hires a room full of serious people, smart people, business people, people who've actually fixed things and sends them out for six months to go find out exactly what's wrong? And then they come back and tell her, I live in Oregon half the year. You all know this. Which is a sentence I say now with the same energy as I have a rash. But it's beautiful and I love it here, and I'm not leaving. So here we are. But December 2025, our wonderful governor Tina Kotec has a problem. And the problem is that Oregon's economy is not doing well, and there's an election coming, and those two facts are starting to have a conversation with each other. So she does something. And this next part, I'm not going to make fun of this next part. It was the right call. For the first time in her life, she makes the right call. She convenes a council, goes and finds actual people. She names Renee James to co-chair it. He's the former president of Intel, founder and CEO of Ampere Computing. And he's not a donor. He's not a guy who ran her field office. He's someone who has built real things with real money and real people. And Curtis Robinhood, who runs the port of Portland. And then she hires Tim Nope, the former Republican Senate leader, as her chief prosperity officer. Think about that for a second. A Democratic governor and an electioneer in Oregon hires the former Republican Senate leader to go find out what's wrong with her state. That takes something. I'm not going to sit here and pretend it doesn't. If your governor did that, you'd tell people too. And they worked. This wasn't a lunch. Five working sessions. Portland, Pendleton, Eugene, and Redmond, 66 listening sessions in more than 25 communities with 45 letters. Over a thousand Orgonians filled out a survey. Remember, six months, 66 listening sessions in Pendleton. Nobody's in Pendleton by accident. So June 25th, they came back. 33 pages. And here's what Renee James, the indel person, the governor's own cook, says out loud when they hand it over. People love Oregon. They do not love what's going on in Oregon. That's the whole state. Nine words, and she's right, and everyone watching this in Oregon just nodded, and everyone watching this outside just thought about their own state. So what did they find? Oregon is 49th in the nation in private sector job growth. 49th out of 50. We're getting beat by states I couldn't find on a map with two tries. Paychecks growing at half the national rate. Unemployment 21% above the national average. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics says Oregon is the only West Coast state to lose jobs overall since last year. The only one. California's over there setting money on fire, and they're still beating us. Think about how hard that is. You have to work at that. And this one, 41% of Oregon households don't earn enough to cover basic necessities. Four in 10, not vacations, not about necessities. And the report warns their words, not mine, about a cycle of economic stagnation, declining public confidence, eroding services, and fewer pathways to upward mobility. Sounds like Detroit. So what's the prescription? What did six months and 66 towns and a former Intel president come back with? Lower taxes. Slash regulations help business owners open up some of the protected land. They told her to put a shot clock on permits, meaning the agency has to say yes or no by an actual deadline instead of just marinating on it. Raise the corporate activity tax threshold from 1 million to 2, and get rid of the climate protection program, which, and this is the part that got me, prices carbon higher than California and Washington and cuts us off from everybody else's market. We out California into California on purpose, and then we stood there wondering where everybody went. Only an idiot like Kotech could create a state like this. Now, I want you to notice something about that list. Cut taxes, cut red tape, answer the permit, let people build. That's not a revelation. That's not a breakthrough. Nobody needed six months in Pendleton to find that. Every single person who has ever tried to open a business in the state could have written that list on a napkin, standing up in the parking lot for free. That's the mechanic charging you 120 bucks to tell you the check engine light is on. Yeah, I know. I've been looking at it. It's right there on the dashboard. It's been on since March. I'm here to get it fixed. But okay, fine. Sometimes you need the expert to say it out loud so everyone in the room has to hear it. I've paid for that. That's a real thing. Sometimes you're buying the permission, not the answer. So she got it. Six months of work, intel, the port, a Republican, 66 towns, a thousand surveys, and the answer is sitting in her hands. And that same afternoon at the press event, she says she's positive about most of it. But on the four short-term tax cuts, she'd need to examine the fiscal impact. The goal would be revenue neutrality. And she doesn't want to reduce current programs. Then what was the point? And then she says the sentence, and I want you to read it to you exactly because I've been chewing on it for three weeks. The question will be: can we do this in a way that allows us to continue to pay for services? That's not a question. That's an answer with a question mark stapled to the end of it. Because think about what she just said. She asked her own experts what's wrong. They told her you're too expensive. And her response the same day, before anyone's had lunch, is okay, but is there a version of this where nothing costs less? She asked the doctor if there's a diagnosis where she gets to keep the ice cream. But wait, because I went and looked at the calendar. And the calendar is where this stops being disappointing and starts being art. December 2025, Kotech announces the prosperity roadmap. A roadmap. January 22nd, 2026, the Prosperity Council holds its first meeting, which exists, and I'm not making this up, to achieve the goals laid out in the roadmap. So the roadmap needed a council to find the roadmap, and running it, as I mentioned, is a chief prosperity officer. So let's count. In the state that is 49th in job growth, we have a prosperity roadmap, a prosperity council, a chief prosperity officer, and now a prosperity report. We don't have any prosperity, but we've got a tremendous amount of prosperity infrastructure. We're 49th in jobs and first in letterhead. Okay. So the council starts meeting in January. February, one month later, the legislature's in session, and Oregon Democrats pass a bill to disconnect the state from a federal tax break. A break for people who sell equity in stakes and small companies, small business stock. That's who it's for. That's the whole population of what the tax break, somebody who built a small company and sells it. Cost the state about $28 million a year to let people keep it. And Kotex signed it in February, while the council was still meeting, while 66 listening sessions were happening, while a thousand Orgonians were filling out a survey. She signed a bill making it more expensive to build and sell a business in Oregon. You can't make this stuff up, folks. And she did this while a room full of people she personally hired was out driving to Pendleton to find out why nobody's building and selling businesses in Oregon. Think about that. That's not a contradiction. A contradiction takes two people. That's one person doing both in the same building in the same season. April 7th, the survey comes back, a thousand plus Orgonians, and the message, the reporting's word, is clear and consistent. High costs, taxes, and regulations are making it harder for businesses to grow. Well, yeah. You just did one, June 25th. The council hands over the report. And one of the recommendations, right there on the list from her own people from the former president of Intel, is to restore the small business tax break. The one that she blocked while she had the Prosperity Council going. The one that she signed away in February. Six months, six towns, twenty five communities, 45 letters, a thousand surveys, former Republican Senate leader, the former president of Intel, the guy who runs the Port of Portland, all to tell her to undo the thing she did in February. That's not a study. That's a receipt for a return. And here's the kicker. This is the one that actually made me laugh out loud in my kitchen. When she signed the disconnect bill back in February, she said she'd be interested in revisiting the deduction. She was interested in revisiting it? At the exact moment she was doing it. That's a guy backing out of your driveway going, we should get together sometime. You're leaving. You're actively leaving. You're in motion. Away from me. Oh, and one more. An earlier draft of the council's report had another recommendation in it. Accelerated depreciation. Faster write-offs on new equipment, new investment. Business groups love it. It didn't make the final cut. It got edited, got co-tech edited. The council cut it themselves before they handed it over because of pressure from progressives. They didn't just get the answer and shelve it, they pre-shelved part of it on the way in the door. They negotiated with the governor on the governor's behalf before the meeting. That's not a recommendation. That's a hostage video. Now, the legislator isn't in session, so she can't walk into the Capitol in July and cut the corporate activity tax. A lot of this is keyed to 2027 and beyond. That's true. But you don't need a legislative session to answer a question. She had the answer that afternoon. She didn't need Salem. She didn't need a vote. She needed to say what she thought. And what she said was revenue neutral, no program reductions. That's not a scheduling problem. That's a position. She took it before anyone could count votes on it. And the council did work. They said they found a supermajority of consensus on every single issue, except taxes. Well, yeah, everyone agrees on everything until somebody has to pay for it. That's not an organ problem. That's a humanity problem. That's every Thanksgiving in America. And then there's this. There are no detailed recommendations in that report on Oregon's K through 12 education outcomes. Council leaders said it was outside the scope of their duties. A six-month investigation into why Oregon can't keep a business that doesn't look at schools. Out of scope? 66 listening sessions and not one person brought up the kids? And I know Oregon, obviously. That's not what people talk about. That's all people talk about. Why won't anyone move here? Well, have you asked about the out of scope? Now, while all of that was happening, while the council was driving to find out why Oregon's economy is stuck, I want to show you what Oregon actually did.

The Paddleboard Permit And Hidden Fees

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Because we didn't do nothing. That's the thing. We were busy. January 1st, 2026, a new law takes effect in the state. If you want to float on the water in anything, you now need a permit. Not a boat. There's no motor in this. I'm talking about a kayak, a canoe, a paddleboard, an inner tube, any non-motorized craft of any length. Any length. $20 a year, or you get a $115 fine from the same people who think it's okay to smoke fentanyl on the streets. And here's the part I want you to sit with. To pay the $20 online, there's a portal provider fee. $1.50. There's a fee to pay the fee. That's not government. That's a ticket master. And the sponsor of the repeal, Dwayne Younger, a Republican from Grant's Pass, put it about as plainly as it can be put. He said, paddleboards aren't boats. And his bill, in his words, restores common sense. Well, now he's just doing my job. And on the tourism piece, he said, his words, nothing hurts tourism more than targeting paddleboards and small inflatable floating devices. Now, I'll give you the other side because it's real and I'm not going to skip it. There are invasive muscles that's not made up. And there's a woman named Sue Fox who supports this permit, and it costs her money. She's not getting anything out of it. She just thinks the water's worth protecting. I believe her. That's a real argument made by a real person in good faith. But here's my thing. Here's what the opposition actually said, and I can't get it out of my head. A woman named Goodhart, she's been in this fight, said people are so put off by the permit requirements that they don't want to kayak or canoe at all anymore. Not that they can't afford it, that they don't want to. They just don't want to anymore. Twenty bucks, that's all it took. And she's right. And she does the math for a family. Family of six goes kayaking, that's $20 a permit each. $120 to get in a river. Public water. That's before you've bought a sandwich. That's before gas, which don't worry, we'll get to gas. And this is where it gets me, because there was a repeal effort, a real one. Group called Let Us Paddle went out and tried to put it on the ballot. They needed 117,000 signatures. They got about 36,000. And before they lost, before, their own chief petitioner said out loud that it targets a small group of paddlers, knowing full well there aren't enough kayaks, canoes, and paddle boards in the state to qualify this on our own. She called her own shot, and then it happened exactly the way she said it would. And a reporter went down to Riverbend Park in Bend and talked to the people who were out on the water that day. A bunch of them had no idea. Didn't know there was a permit, didn't know there was a fine, didn't know any of it. And whoever wrote that piece put it better than I could. A person cannot become outraged about a regulation they have never heard of. Thank you, media, who doesn't cover this. That's it. That's the whole trick. Not a conspiracy, not a scheme. Nobody hid anything. Kotec and the media, the Orgonian, hide these things on purpose. You just weren't told. And you can't fight a thing you were never told about. And by the time someone tells you, it's $115 and a guy with a clipboard at a boat ramp. So look at the ledger. Look at what Oregon actually got done this year. The tax cut under review. Fiscal impact, revenue neutrality, maybe 2027. The permitting shot clock, recommendation on a desk, 33 pages. The corporate activity tax, we'll see. The paddle board permit, signed, effective, enforced, collecting. Hmm. Shows you where their priorities are, huh? $1.50 convenience fee and everything. Everything that council recommended is somewhere between under review and 2027. And the one thing that actually finished was the fee. The only thing they can ever pass is fees and taxes. And look, it's not like the people around her didn't see this coming. Her own opponent, Christine Drazen, put out a statement that same day and she said, We all knew this council was an election year gimmick, but these recommendations are a meaningful start and deserve strong bipartisan support. Which is the most organ sentence ever constructed. This is fake, and also let's do it. And on the other side, the Oregon Center for Public Policy, that's the left-leaning shop, trashed it too. Said it was cutting taxes for millionaires and prioritizing corporate handouts. So everyone agrees the council was a gimmick. And it still came back with the right answer. Folks, a gimmick that accidentally tells the truth is still telling the truth. So here's where I've landed. The council was serious. The people were serious. The work was real. 66 towns is a lot. And the answer is real, and it's sitting on a desk in Salem right now, and it says one thing on every page. It costs too much to live and thrive here. And the response was, can we fix that without changing what anything costs? Hi, I'm Oregon now. If you're sitting there watching this and thinking, well, that's organ chad. Everyone knows Oregon's a mess. We're fine down here. Hang

California’s July First Wallet Hit

SPEAKER_00 42:45

on to your hat. Because right now I want to take you 300 miles south to a state that admits everything. Admits people are leaving, admits it's too expensive. Their own universities have run the numbers and published them. And on July 1st, they did three things. So you just wait until you see what happened in California. Because California knows. That's the thing. That's what makes this one different. Oreg had to go find out. California already knows it's published, it's peer-reviewed, it's sitting on a university website with footnotes. Nearly 10 million people left California for another state between 2010 and 2024. About 7 million came in. That's 3 million people who sat down at a kitchen table, did the math on their own life, and decided the answer was a U-Haul. And when you ask people why they move, 58% say affordability. 28% say a job. And who's saying that? Heritage, Cato, some guy in a bow tie at a think tank? Berkeley. UC Berkeley. Groceries, 11% more expensive. Gas, 40% more expensive. Utilities, 61% more expensive. And here's their conclusion in their own words. California policies merit considerable blame. Berkeley said that about California in print. When Berkeley is writing you up, the argument's over. That's not the opposition research, that's your own family. So everybody knows. Diagnosis is in, signed, sealed, and published. Then July 1st, three things happen on the same day. Watch. Number one. The gas tax goes from 61.2 cents a gallon to 63.5 highest in the nation. Diesel goes up to 46.6 to 48.2. Now, when's the last time anyone in Sacramento had to stand up and put their name on that? 2017. It's automatic. Because under SB 1, it rises every single July without a vote of the legislator. Nobody's name on it. Nobody has to stand up. It just goes up like a tide. And when that law passed in 2017, the gas tax was 27.8 cents. Nine years later, more than doubled. They literally built a tax that does its own homework. Doesn't even need them anymore. It's fine. It's got this. It's a Roomba. They set it to lose in 2017 and it's been going ever since. Number two, same window. The governor signs the budget package, $352 billion, more than $5 billion in new revenue. And it makes the cap on business tax credits permanent, which hits the RD credit, one of the most valuable tools a California business has, plus enterprise zone credits, hiring credits, the hiring credit in the state that 10 million people left. Now, go read the press release the governor's office put out announcing that budget, that same budget, the one I just described. It's a list, check marks, green check marks, and it's very clean. And one of them says check mark. Funded small business tax cuts. But it's the same package from the same week. On the same piece of paper. They capped the business tax credits and announced small business tax cuts in the same document. How is that even possible? That's not spin. Spin takes two documents. And here's the thing: it's not a lie. I checked. I wanted it to be a lie. It isn't. They did cut something. If you start a brand new LLC, your annual tax drops from 800 to 400, first year only, 2027 through 2029. So that check mark is doing more work than anybody else in Sacramento. 400 bucks one year on a $352 billion budget, and it got a check mark. Same size check mark as Medi-Cal. Same size check mark. That's the part that gets me. The check mark is out there next to the big ones, like it belongs, like it lifts. And the third thing, SB 125, they lower the tax on Medi-Cal plans and raise it on private plans, which shifts more of the cost onto people who buy their own insurance while the state brings in less money overall. The state's own analysts say that's about $100 a year per person. The health plans say it's north of $400 a year for a working family. Now, the feds forced this one. CMS put out a rule saying states can't tax Medicaid plans more than commercial plans. Sacramento did have to move, that's true. But the rule wasn't ever made for them to pick how they picked. They were supposed to drop the Medicaid plans, but they didn't. Because look at what the old math actually was. California was taxing Medical plans about $274 per person per month. Commercial plans, $2.25. $122 times. So wait a second. It's the same state, same service, same month. Somebody built that on purpose with a calculator and went home and slept fine. How is that even possible? So that's July 1st in California. Gas up, business credits capped, premiums up, in the state where three million more people left than then have arrived because 58% of them said it costs too much, which Berkeley says is California's own fault. Everybody knows. And I'd like to stop there. I would. Three things. That's a segment. We could all go home. But July 1st wasn't three things. The minimum wage went to $16.90 for most employers, most. Because if you work in a healthcare at a system with 10,000 or more full-time equivalents, it's $25. At a general clinic, $23. Dialysis Clinic, $25. Skilled nursing, phased, different number. Hotel workers in Los Angeles, Glendale, and Long Beach, up to $25 or $26.50, depending. And Santa Monica automatically matches whatever Los Angeles does. They don't vote, it just happens to them. Santa Monica outsourced its wage law to a neighboring city. That's not federalism. That's a group text. And fast food stays at 20 bucks. Oh, unless the Fast Food Council adjusts. There's a fast food council, which I've talked about many times on this show. There's a government council for fast food, and the acronym spells FASTS. Oregon's got a prosperity council. California's got a fast food council. Everybody's got a council. Nobody's got a result. But the councils are thriving. The council sector is the strongest part of the American economy right now. Truly, there is no minimum wage in California. There isn't one. There's no number. It doesn't exist. There's a minimum wage for you, specifically based on your city, your industry, your employer's headcount, and whether a council's met recently. And the actual advice, this is from a law firm's compliance guide. This is what they tell business owners. The advice is confirm the rate applicable to your specific location and industry. You can't look it up. You have to derive it. Imagine you own two sandwich shops nine miles apart, same sign, same sandwich, same guy. Different minimum wage. And if you get it wrong, that's wage and hours claims, statutory penalties, paga claims, government enforcement and litigation. That's not me being dramatic. That's the list. That's the actual list of what happens to you for not correctly deriving a number the state won't just tell you out loud. Same day, AB 1777. California law enforcement can now issue traffic tickets to driverless cars. There's nobody in it. That's the entire premise of the car. That's the whole product. Who signs it? Does the car have points on its license? Is there a car in California right now on its third strike? Did you mail it a court date? And the companies have to run a 24-7 free emergency hotline with a remote human operator on the other end. So, let me get this straight. They built a car to get rid of the driver, and the law says there has to be a guy. So now we've got a person sitting in a room on call all night in case a car has a question. We invented the driverless car and then legislated the driver back in. He's just in a different building now with a headset. Same day, SB576. California now regulates how loud the ads are on YouTube. Streaming platforms cannot play a commercial louder than the show. This is the stuff the least affordable state is working on. But and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that's bad. That's actually great. I hate that. That's the single most agreeable law California has ever passed. But again, look at the priority. This is the stuff they're passing. An update to the Calm Act. The Calm Act is from 2010. 16 years. It took the state of California 16 years to move a volume rule from the television to the phone. Oh, the gas tax got from 27 cents to 63 in nine years automatically without a single vote. 16 years for the volume knob, nine years for the tax on autopilot. Now you know what's actually load-bearing in Sacramento. Same day, SB68, the Allergen Disclosure for Dining Experiences Act. A D D E. They did the acronym. They sat there and worked backwards from ADDE, which isn't even a word. They didn't even get a word out of it. All that effort for a noise, A D. And it hits any chain with 12 or more locations, even if only one of them is in California. So you've got 19 restaurants in Texas and one in Fresno. Congratulations, you're a California company now. Sacramento would like a word about your menus. And then there's this one. And I want to be careful because this is where people are going to want me to be something I'm not. Same day, SB729, employers with 100 or more workers now have to cover infertility treatment, including IVF. Three complete egg retrieval procedures and an unlimited number of embryo transfers. Now, I'm not here to audit that. I'm not going to stand here and tell you whether that's a good policy. That's a real thing for real families, and I'm not going to be cheap about it. That's not my business tonight. But it's on the same receipt. Because on July 1st, California raised your health insurance costs and told you the federal government made them do it. CMS rule. Their hands were tied. That's true. I said it earlier and I meant it. And on July 1st, California also mandated new coverage, unlimited embryo transfers, 100 employee thresholds, state law, state signature. Both of those things raise premiums. You don't get to blame the feds for your premiums in the morning and add them in the afternoon. That's not a policy disagreement. That's just a ledger. They are so stupid. Oh, and my favorite thing on this entire list, AB671. They created an expedited permitting pathway for small independent restaurants. Faster approval, retrofit your space, get open. Great, good. That's the shot clock. That's what Oregon Council asked for. It's optional. The fast lane is opt-in. Somebody in Sacramento built an express lane and made merging voluntary. And I found all of this in about 45 minutes on a laptop in my kitchen. Which brings me to the last thing, and I promise you this is real, and it's the single best sentence anybody wrote about California this month, and it's in a compliance article for business owners, and it's not meant to be funny. A reporter explaining why it's hard to keep track of all this actually wrote, I'm quoting, staying informed can be difficult because California laws take effect on different dates throughout the year. That's the state. That's the whole state in one sentence, written by somebody who wasn't kidding. It's not hidden, it's not a conspiracy, nobody's lying to you. You just can't keep up. Nobody can keep up. That's not a bug in the system. At some point, that is the system working the way

Transparency That Is Still Illegible

SPEAKER_00 55:30

progressives created it. And that brings me to a reporter at KSBY. And she decides to do the most reasonable thing a reporter has ever done. She's going to find out where the gas tax money actually goes. Not an opinion, not a take, just the highest gas tax in America. Where does it go? So she gets the state's own document, the official one, the flow chart. This is where your dollar goes. And she puts it up on a six-foot screen. It was illegible. Illegible. Six feet tall. Couldn't read the chart. Nobody hid it. It was published. It's right there. You can download it right now. You just can't read it on a screen the size of a wall. That's the whole thing, isn't it? That's not a cover-up. Nobody's hiding anything. It's transparent. It's just illegible. So three stories tonight: a federal agency, a governor in Oregon, a California governor. Different parties, different problems, different people, 3,000 miles apart, never met each other. Not one of them has any idea the other two exist. Ish. And every single one of them did the exact same thing. They stood up. They looked right at it. They said the words out loud into a microphone with their own name attached. We have a problem. And America clapped. And then nothing happened. Bot had no report and no plans to write one. Kotech got the answer and handed you back a question. California put a green check mark on it and moved on. Nobody lied. I keep saying that, and I mean it. They meant it in January.

The Two Questions That Matter

SPEAKER_00 57:10

They just never came back. So here's what I want to leave you with, and it's not a slogan, it's a tool. Put it in your pocket and use it for the rest of your life. The next time somebody on your screen stands up and admits a problem, and they will tonight, they'll do it tonight on cable. I promise you. Don't clap. Ask two things. What's the date? And whose name is on it? That's it. That's the whole thing. A date and a name. Because folks, admitting it is free. Admitting it gets you applause and a clip and a decent news cycle. Every person in this episode got applause. But a date means somebody has to come back. And a name means somebody has to come back and answer for it. Doge had a date, July 4th, 2026. It was printed on the thing from day one. That's not a deadline. That's an escape patch. Everybody read it. Everyone just waited it out. A date without a name is just an expiration. Because, like I always say, I'm not here to audit hearts. I'm here to audit the ledger. And every ledger I picked up this week had a beautiful first column. And nothing in the

Reagan’s 90 Day Social Security Fix

SPEAKER_00 58:25

second one. Now let me tell you about a guy who did come back, 1981. Ronald Reagan's got a math problem, and it's a bad one. Social Securities Trust Fund is going to run out of money, possibly as early as August of 1983. Not a projection for your grandchildren. 18 months to insolvency. So Reagan does what Reagan wants to do. He proposes a fix that leans heavily on benefit reductions, and it fails flat. Goes nowhere. He gets told flat out no. So here's where a normal politician forms a commission and buries it. You know the move. You've watched it your whole life. That's what a commission is for. A commission is where you send a problem to die with dignity. Instead, Reagan and Congress appoint a commission together. The National Commission on Social Security Reform, bipartisan Alan Greenspan's the one running it. And it deadlocks. Of course it does. Republicans won't take a tax increase. Democrats won't slow down benefits. Nobody moves. And finally, Bob Dole and Pat Moynihan, a Republican and a Democrat, break off into a side room and build a compromise with some of each. Some tax, some cuts. Everybody eats something they hate. And Greenspan said later, it never would have worked without one thing. A quiet agreement between Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill that neither one of them would knife it. A Republican president and a Democratic speaker who agreed on almost nothing, agreeing on one thing. Don't blow it up. Report lands in January of 1983. Congress passes it in March. Reagan signs it in April. 90 days. 90 days from here's your problem to It's the Law. Morgan's had three weeks, and we're waiting on 2027. And here's the part I need you to hear. What he signed taxed Social Security benefits for the first time in American history and raised the retirement age. The tax cut president signed a tax increase. Because the math told him to. He hated that report. He hated what was in it. He'd spent his entire career arguing against exactly that. And he signed it in 90 days, anyways. And at the signing, he said, today, all of us can look at each other square in the eye and say, we kept our promises. That's the difference. That's the whole difference. It's not that Reagan was smarter, it's not that he had better experts. He had a deadlocked commission in a Congress that hated him. He came back by a date with his name on it. And that's why I'm not cynical about this. I refuse to be, and neither should you. Because it's not impossible, it's not naive, it's not some fantasy from a black and white photograph. It happened. It took 90 days. And the guy who did it didn't even want to do it. But the math told him to do it. So keep doing, please. Every Tuesday forever. Just come back and tell us what happened. All right, that's the show. Phone's always open. 252 Chad Law. We're on

Final Challenge And How To Reach Me

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Rumble X, Instagram, and Substack. And remember, if you see us, share us. I'm Chad Law. Go be somebody's date and name this week. And this has been Common Sense. You're on Rumble, stick around for 10 seconds while I answer all the questions that came in in the after hours Rumble exclusive QA right after this.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

Marvel that you should care for me. Yes, you've made my life so glamorous. You can't blame me for this. It's so marvelous. That's you should change the book. Marvel Dance.