Walker Wildmon and Rick Green host American Family Radio each week
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This is at the core on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon Welcome to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on today's edition of the program. Walker Wildmon and Rick Green, we're your host each week on the program. I'm with you most, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, and then Rick's with you on Tuesday, Thursday. Once again, it's good to be with you today on the program. We've got a lot of content, a couple of guests coming up in the next few segments, and so we'll try to utilize our time wisely. Acts 15 is where we have been this week. Acts 15 is where we have Been reading from verses 1 and 2. And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, unless you are circumcised according to the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved. Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this very question. And so, here Paul and Barnabas are defending, the core tenet of the Christian faith, and that is that salvation is not man made, man acquired, or man earned. It is through faith alone in the Son of God, the Messiah. And that's what Paul and Barnabas were defending here in Acts chapter 15. Very, very important, as even today, some 2,000 years later, folks are still trying to add to the doctrine, add to the Scriptures, and make salvation about more than what Jesus said it was about and the requirement of belief and faith in Jesus for salvation. So That's Acts chapter 15, verses 1 and 2.
Truth for Youth is sending Bibles into America Schools through youth
Well, the, Truth for Youth campaign is going on this week. TFY.org is the URL we're trying to send 65,000 Bibles. America Schools through youth ages 13 to 18 is our target audience here. Of course we want parents and grandparents and those involved, to be involved in this. But we're sending these Truth for Youth Bibles into America Schools through our youth ages 13 to 18. So if you want to order your free Bible this week on AFR, you can visit tfy.org, tfy.org I'll give out the number to call in as well and order your Bible. 800-733-4737. If you call this number, you can order one Bible per teen in your home to send with them to school to give out to an unbeliever. 800-733-4737 or tfy.org Our goal is 65,000 for the week. We are well underway, nearing the halfway mark for that goal. And so help us reach that goal and order your free bible [email protected] alright, well, let's jump into the topics for this segment.
The economic data just, uh, continues to come out week after week
The economic data just, continues to come out week after week, month after month, showing, the progress of President Trump's agenda to rebuild the economy and fix the damage that was done under President Biden, which was a lot of damage. And, and manufacturing has been a core tenet of President Trump's agenda for a long time, even going back to the first term. And the manufacturing numbers are looking good. Remember this was his core campaign promise and one of his things that he had worked on in the months after being sworn in this go around and that is traveling around to plants and factories and job sites in order to rebuild America's manufacturing base. Because let's not forget our, over the last 30 to 40 years, really 40, over the last 40 years we have shipped many of our manufacturing jobs overseas and we've had things made in Mexico and Canada and China and Taiwan and all these other places rebuilding or building their economies, their manufacturing base. President Trump said let's bring it home. Let's bring manufacturing home. you add security to the supply chain and you add jobs for the American worker. That's what President Trump's been doing. So, just this week we have manufacturing numbers out. Largest manufacturing expansion in four years since 2022. Let's listen to this CNBC clip. This is going to be one.
CNBC Reporter If we look at manufacturing, these are fresh July reads from the ISM on, manufacturing comes in much better than expected. 55.6. That would be the best read in over four years, since May of 22.
Walker Wildmon Well there you have it. Best reading since 2022. Manufacturing expansion growing. there's also this database that Bobby made me aware of this morning called the American Factory Tracker. American factorytracker.com and this is tracking America's industrial comeback. Here are the stats. Just over the last 18 to 24 months, really 18 months, we've had $600 billion in verified investments M in our manufacturing base. We've had about 160,000 job announcements, over the last two years or so and over 130 projects going on all around the country. These are major. Not just data centers, not just AI centers, but vehicle plants. the Lockheed, Martin and others just announced a production capacity expansion, multi billion dollar projects to increase our missile defense and interceptor capabilities and quadruple the ability to supply the military with certain interceptors. And states like Arizona, Texas and Ohio are leading the way and very positive signs there. And these are long term investments. These aren't government subsidized programs that last a year or two and then they fade out and then you leave people without a job. what this is doing is this is creating long term manufacturing based jobs around the country. And this is what President Trump and we're going to link to that investment, tracker, the American Factory Tracker, on America's industrial comeback. But this is what President Trump's gonna have to hammer home on the campaign trail. And honestly, if I were him, I'd stop talking about Iran because we don't know where that's gonna go. We don't know what's gonna happen. You could have a deal, but you could not have a deal. And so, and I don't think you're going to have a deal. But this constant answering questions about Iran I think is a distraction for the midterms. I don't think President Trump needs to talk about Iran anymore. It is what it is. We're taking care of it. Let's talk about the economy, let's talk about our manufacturing comeback. Let's talk about the largest number of individuals in the labor force in the last 50 years. those are the things that I would be talking about along with core inflation, lower than it was under Biden. Now there's some categories like beef and energy that are still elevated, but the vast majority of the inflation tracker Data is at 2% are below 2%. let's listen to Alex Marlow. This is the Breitbart chief editor talking about how President Trump is the best person to deliver the economic case to the American people.
Alex Marlowe I still think he's very good. Trump is very popular within his own party and he's got a clear command of the party. And so I still think that even though the Iran war is not particularly popular, I think he's got a long time to make the case. And he's making a case against a very weak Democrat opponent. The entire party is overcome by socialism, and it's very incoherent with their anti law enforcement, open borders, anti Israel agenda. it's just they don't have a coherent case to make. It's very alarming for a lot of people. And Trump can make a much more sane case to people.
Walker Wildmon Well, there you have it. That's Alex Marlowe from Breitbart talking about, the need to, for President Trump to deliver the message to the American people on, the economic rebound that he is overseeing right now. And as I've said multiple times, you get past this Iran thing, whatever this Iran thing turns out to be, you get on the other side of it. you talk about a breakout. I mean, the market's having a breakout now, but everything else is going to break out, because a lot of the consumer sentiment will improve, energy prices will improve. We've got the nuclear modular reactors being built out, going to lower the cost to run your business. And so all of this is coming together. It just takes a little time. And, the question is, do the American people have the patience and the wherewithal, to give this process time? And, the November election will tell us that.
Christian: The alternative to President Trump's economic agenda is destruction of Western civilization
But the alternative here, and I'm writing a column on this right now for our Stand magazine, but the alternative here is, destruction of Western civilization. That's the alternative. And that's not an exaggeration. But when you, when you look at the two parties, when you look at the various ideologies, you have a very pro business, pro economic development, pro national security party in the Republicans. And then you look across the aisle of the Democrats and they want to burn it all down. Their words, to be specific. According to the Democrat Socialist of America, which is now pretty much the talking head of the Democrat Party, they said, we want to bring down the American empire. Those are their words, not mine. And so you look at the two sides. You've got one of revitalization, rebuilding America first, and then you've got the destruction of Western civilization. Because without, America, there virtually is no Western civilization. and so you can say, well, what about Europe? Well, look, America is The leader of Western civilization and one of the best, nations in human history from multiple vantage points. And so we have to preserve that. That's what's at stake here on the ballot in November. And, we also have to resist this, perpetual victimhood mentality that, is prevalent, I will say, within the right. Now, I know the term right with a capital R is a very broad term, but within kind of the conservative, right base of the Republican Party, some of the more nationalist elements, there's some kind of disgruntledness about the lack of economic progress under President Trump's administration and claiming there's still an affordability issue, et cetera, et cetera. And they say that explains this drift towards socialism and government intervention on everything, which is what Elizabeth Warren wants. But we need to be careful with that line of thinking and here's why. It is true that, America, that our economy in some regards has not been working for the little guy or not been working more specifically for the middle class. that's a phenomena over the last, As I said, 30 to 40 years as we began shipping America's manufacturing base overseas, that gutted in many regards, a lot of the middle class. So that is a problem. I'm not denying that. But President Trump is literally in the middle of reversing that trend and reversing that problem. And so the question I have is if President Trump is doing what he can to reverse that manufacturing base gutting that happened, starting with Clinton and Bush and Obama, then what are you going to replace that with? I mean, what are you going to intervene and do different than what the Trump administration is currently doing, other than socialism and the destruction of Western civilization and capitalism as we know it? And so whether you like it or not, the Trump economic agenda is the best game in town. And as a matter of fact, it's pretty much the only game in town if you want to preserve anything that's a semblance of the American economy as we know it. and some of this is just some of the criticisms on the economy and affordability and stuff is just unfounded. I mean, some of it's just outright unfounded. And we've got to be problem solvers. I mean, we've got to be problem solvers and we got to be leaders. And this is the core problem with the podcast world and the Tucker Carlsen's and others is, and Candace Owens, just to name a few, is they don't really fix problems. They've never had a career in fixing problems or finding solutions. All they do is talk. And so we can find a lot of people that can just talk and get ratings and do clickbait. But who's gonna lead? And right now, over the last 10 plus years, President Trump's been one of the few that have raised his hand and said, I'll lead. I'll take the bullets literally, and I'll lead this American comeback. And so that's where we are. We don't need to take that for granted. President Trump has had, listen to this. Zero border, apprehensions and releases at the southern border in the last 14 months. President Biden had 600,000 in his first 18 months. President Trump has effectively closed the southern border. No illegal immigration, mass deportations, and a manufacturing comeback. Let's not forget that.
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Walker Wildmon: Do you know how to pronounce my last name
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to be with you today on the program. As a brief reminder, we do upload the show in the form of a podcast each and every afternoon. So if you go to your podcast library, your podcast store, type in at the The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. You can subscribe to the podcast there or in some platforms it's called following. They keep changing up the term, but you get the idea. Subscribe, follow the podcast and it will be queued up in your library each and every day. Well, we have a guest in studio with us, state representative, from Mississippi, Shane Aguirre And, he asked coming into the break, do you know how to pronounce my last name? Surprisingly, I do because most guests. I've had some doozies on here, Bobby, of guests with some last names that just throw me for a loop. but yes, I've got your last name and, glad I do, as opposed to getting it wrong in real time. But glad to have you on the program.
Shane Aguirre Well, you'd be surprised how many people just butcher my last name. So I wanted to give you a heads up before we got started.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, Gary is proper, but Aguirre is probably what people go for, most of the time just glancing at it,
Shane Aguirre but nine times out of ten.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, pat on the back for me for figuring that out. If you don't mind. Move a little bit closer to that mic. They're pretty sensitive.
People have had their bank accounts cut off for various ideological reasons
Representative Shane Aguirre is with us here, from the state of Mississippi. He's been in the legislature for three terms. I didn't realize he'd been in that long. Going on 12 years and going to run, I assume, for reelection in 2027.
Shane Aguirre That's the plan.
Walker Wildmon But you've been, working with us and others on some debanking legislation this past legislative, session and hopefully we can get some momentum behind this bill coming up in the next term. but nonetheless, give us a little background on this subject of debanking. I know it's a word that people don't usually put in their vocabulary, but it's been a thing in recent years where people have had their bank accounts cut off for various ideological reasons.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, this is something that came up, during the last presidential, administration. They were using ah, banking system to cut off the funds for different groups based on a lot of their, either religious views or conservative views or even their political affiliations. So, this is something that I saw happening nationwide, and I thought, you know, we need to do something in Mississippi to try to offset this and make sure that they can't, do this to our citizens.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, banking is something that, people, a lot of people probably just take it for granted because there are thankfully a lot of banks and a lot of competition, a lot of places for consumers to go. but Representative GARY the banking system, is somewhat critical. It is critical in 2026 to, and it has been for a couple decades, with the online era and you know, the digital era, in order to simply operate as a business or as an individual. So, you know, it's not the heavy cash days where, you know, if you didn't have a place to park the, the physical money, you could just take care of it yourself. If you don't have somewhere to bank because you've been shut down, or even if you have to transition because you've had your accounts cut off for political reasons, that's very disruptive. And so, talk a little bit about the importance of just being able to have confidence that your bank's not going to just cut you off one day without notice because they don't like the politics.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, you're right. you know everything. Right now we are, we are moving further and further away from a cash basin more of its own on our plastic or online. And if you lose access to that, you're stuck. And some of these groups that were debanked, they were given less than a week's notice to find a new way to process their payroll, pay the invoices that they needed to take care of. And so it's a real problem that that happens to these people and for no, apparently good reason, but it's something that we want to do to protect, our citizens, to make sure that they do have access to their money and their ability to, be part of our marketplace.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, there's multiple examples, President Trump's the most notorious example, or prominent, if you will, example of being debanked after the 2020 election. Capital, one, which there's since been some settlements on this. But Capital One debanked President Trump's private organization, not just his campaign account. They debanked his Trump organization, which runs all of his real estate transactions, et cetera. Millions, of money flowing in and out. They canceled that without notice. over, allegedly over the January 6th incident at the Capitol. AFA has been debanked and more technically deplatformed because Stripe Payment Processing, they're out of San Francisco, Uber left wing company, but they cut us off with 24 hour notice. And it was in December during our peak fundraising month. And it was in essence because of our religious and ideological viewpoints. They wouldn't say that, but that's what our suspicion is. and then there's I think Sam Brownback, former Secretary of State from, Kansas. Kansas, yeah, he was debanked as well. And there's more examples of this. There's been some pro life groups that this has happened to. My point is that this is actually a thing. This isn't just a theoretical, this might happen. This has actually happened, right?
Shane Aguirre Oh yeah, it has. And the examples you give out are on point. so what they do is they do it through mostly through regulations, through the regulators that come into the banks. All banks are regulated, state, charter banks are regulated by our state Department of Banking. And then national banks are regulated, by national regulators. and so what those national regulators under the previous administration and, and their guidelines would come in and they would pretty much say, well, this is a reputational risk having this person on here. And that's, I've Heard that term a lot. Yeah, and so that's you know, that comes up and so these banks, you know, they don't want these regulators on them. And so they, you know, they, they kind of like old school gangsters with them. You know, it'd be sad if something happened your bank here, you know.
Walker Wildmon So they as they're looking at like a group that they want to have taken down.
Shane Aguirre So, so it really, it was pressure coming from the regulators onto the banks. The banks weren't going out and choosing to do this just out of the blue that from, from the research I've been able to do, it looks like that they're getting pressure from, for the most part from from these regulators.
Walker Wildmon Well, and to your point, when you have these different state regulators, I'm sure every state has their own board or commission or regulatory body. for example, if you have a California commission or regulatory body, you know, making a phone call to what is probably a national bank or a regional bank. And to your point, given these threats are alluding to being punished, so to speak, that definitely affects their decision making. So these regulatory bodies have a lot
Shane Aguirre of power, can influence especially larger banks. so if you're over a $10 billion in asset bank, you have regulators in office 24 7, always there. And so those guys are under a lot of scrutiny. And you know, in today's day and age, after the financial crisis in 08, the regulations on all of our financial institutions just went through the roof and they are so over regulated. I've talked to other bankers saying like man, if we could go back to the old days it'd be a lot easier. I mean they've adapted to the climate that it is, but I think that they would all prefer to get rid of some of these regulations that are just over the top and pendulum swung from one way all the way to the other way. And we need to kind of probably be more in the middle, but that's, you know, what we're trying to do. But it really needs to happen more on the federal level. But sure, but we do what we can here in the state.
Representative Shane Aguirre has proposed legislation addressing debanking without creating new bureaucracy
Walker Wildmon Yeah, and let's talk about that. So we're talking with Representative Shannon Gary from Mississippi State, representative from the northeastern part of Mississippi and Tupelo area specifically. Let's talk about solutions here because obviously the problem of debanking is there, it's prevalent. We've talked about some of the cases of it happening. and to your point, we don't want to come in with A bunch of red tape, create another regulatory body, et cetera. so let's talk about the solutions here. what are some of the solutions, especially in some of this legislation you put forth, that we can address the concern of debanking without creating another government bureaucracy.
Shane Aguirre Right. And that's in discussions with the bill that we had this past session with, the bankers and with the Banking Commission was we don't want to put more regulations on the bankers. And our goal was not to do that. What we did was if a customer was debanked and there was a whole list of reasons, and if they felt that they were, that they could file a complaint with the banking department and then the banking department would look into it and do an investigation. And if it was proven to be a situation, then they would issue a cease and desist to, that bank or financial institution and say, all right, y' all gotta cut it out. This is why. But there was, that was basically it, you know, but we were just trying to make it as simple and as, not a regulatory burden on the banks. And some people, you know, were saying that there was, you know, regulatory burden, but this, it wasn't like they're making it out to be.
Walker Wildmon But no, and to your point, and we met with some of the bankers, I'm sure you got phone calls and lunch requests as well. But, the fact of the matter is, and I understand the hesitancy to, you know, sign off on any new regulations or any new statutes involving anything additional the banks have to do, our businesses in general. But to your point, correct me if I'm wrong, but this regulatory body or this banking association that this process was going to be facilitated within already exists. It does.
Walker Wildmon so we're not creating a new agency, a new director, a new commission, or the governor having to appoint somebody new. This is an entity or regulatory body that already exists. You're just simply creating a process within that body where someone can file a formal complaint, correct? Yes.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, that's it. And if, and if the bank's not doing that, doing any debanking, then they don't have anything to worry about. I'm sure that there's going to be people out there will say, oh, well, they debanked me and I did nothing wrong. There were a list of reasons in there of why they could. And that follows along with, federal guidelines as well. But nothing like religious or political. Political or anything like that, or ideological. None of that could be included.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, that seems like a no brainer. I mean, whether You're a Democrat or Republican. This is just good sense. And to your point, if the banks are following the rules, they have absolutely nothing to worry about. But the problem, to your point, and the word you used is, I think, reputational risk. That's like a buzzword with the, within the banking industry, where if they don't want to do business with a customer, they'll just pull out the Rolodex and say, yeah, sorry, your business is a reputational risk. We've had that specifically cited by different technology companies and others that don't want to do business with us. that's a buzzword for we don't like what you guys do. pretty much. and to your point, I mean, the banks, if you're going to cut somebody's bank account off, you ought to be able to give them a viable reason. I mean, either they're engaged in criminal activity or they're not following the banking guidelines, or they're not upholding their terms of terms of service. But this is kind of a big deal. This isn't like, you know, I don't want to serve you coffee. This is banking. This is core to basically living in 2026.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, well, and that's a fine line because there are issues in banking where if there is some misconduct detected and the bank has to fill out some, reports, they can't, by federal law, they can't let the person know.
Walker Wildmon Interesting.
Shane Aguirre Yeah. And so only the bank and the regulator know what about those, suspicious activity reports?
Walker Wildmon So they don't want to tip off criminals that like, hey, we're on to you.
Shane Aguirre Right, gotcha. And so it's, it's a fine line there on what they can let you know and what they can't let you know. And so if they debank someone or if someone is debunked because of one of those issues, they can't really tell them. But you would think, okay, well, we're not gonna, we're not gonna do your business because you're an NRA member. You know, that's another, you know, situation altogether. So, yeah, you have to keep those separate. And, you know, and we wanted to set the bill up where the banks weren't hit with a bunch of frivolous complaints, Suits and complaints. And so we tried to, we tried to make it where they, they weren't, they weren't just bombarded with those things as much as possible. But I'm sure some of them will, will cut, through and cause some issues. But, yeah, for the Most part, we're trying to, you know, keep it as low as possible.
Walker Wildmon Yeah. And this is not something, I'm not trying to undershoot my own argument here, but while there are cases of debanking happening, I would not call this a massive, widespread problem. But it is a problem. And when people are debanked, it is a very big deal. So to Representative Gary's point, I don't see us having thousands or hundreds of thousands of complaints across the country if this were, eligible. we're talking one off instances of people being cut off.
Shane Aguirre Yes. and I completely agree, but I think, and my thought with this was someone's got to stand up and say, you know, we don't agree with this and we're not going to accept it, you know, and again, it was done on the federal level, but if the states start fighting it back again, then maybe something will happen. I mean, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, he had a bill, but as we all know, the Senate is in lockdown. Right. You know, they can't get anything.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, they can't get anything done.
Shane Aguirre So we're trying to do something on the state level because ideally, you know, President Trump had an executive order about debanking, but we just, they can't get it over the finish line in the Senate. So Washington gridlock.
Reporter Well, and to your point about the
Walker Wildmon state's role here, if we can get multiple states to band together on this, you could end this debanking with just having three or four states like Mississippi and Texas on the same page, because then the capital ones of the world are going, well, we don't have to deal with Mississippi and Texas as regulators. So we're just going to quit debanking and then the problem solved. So, yeah, I mean, at this point, working, together with various states is the way to go. Representative Aguirre, thanks so much for joining us.
Shane Aguirre Thanks for having me.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, absolutely. Representative. Representative Shane Aguirre from the state of Mississippi, serving the northeastern part, specifically the Tupelo area, and, the state House of Representatives, and glad, to have him on the program. And he headed up this debanking legislation in Mississippi that we couldn't get quite over the finish line. But we're going to keep bringing it up and we're going to keep pushing it and educating folks on it, so that we can protect consumers and individuals from having their bank accounts for cut off for religious or political reasons. that goal should be pretty bipartisan. We'll be back in a few minutes.
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Walker Wildmon in many ways, abortion was on the ballot this past election.
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This is at the The Core on American Family Radio with your host, Walker Wildmon.
Chris Jacobs is CEO of the Juniper Research Group on American Family Radio
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. Well, introducing our next guest that we have on the program, we have Chris Jacobs. He's CEO of the Juniper Research Group. He's on with us now to talk about the Medicaid work requirements provision, that was put in statute last year and of course is being carried out now by the Trump administration. Chris, welcome to the program.
Chris Jacobs Great to be with you.
Walker Wildmon Well, Chris anytime we can talk to someone about people working harder and getting off the couch, I'm 100% on board with that because it's a biblical concept. The concept, of hard work and working with your hands and having honor and dignity in your work. It's a Very, kind of lost art, if you will, in America. tell us about your organization, your research group and then we'll jump into these work requirements.
Chris Jacobs Sure. Thanks, Walker. my organization, Juniper Research Group, it's a writing and research and consulting firm. I'm here in Washington, right in the middle of the DC swamp, trying to get people the story behind the story and explain really what's going on behind the scenes in Washington in ways that people can understand.
Walker Wildmon Excellent.
The work requirement is only for states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare
Well, the one big beautiful bill, one of the provisions in it, as you've noted coming out of the break, is that the work requirement for Medicaid, to qualify for Medicaid, the work requirement, is now in statute, which is a very big deal. It's been expanded a little bit. But give us a little background on the work requirement, what are the provisions, how it works, and then we'll talk about the implications in the months ahead. Sure.
Chris Jacobs So the work requirement is only for states and populations that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. So we're not talking about making Grandma work for 40 hours or 80 hours a month or anything else like that. We're talking about primarily able bodied adults in states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare to able bodied adults. I think one thing that's important to remember here is Democrats, when they passed Obamacare, they gave states a greater Medicaid match to fund care for able bodied adults than they did for aged, blind, disabled populations, the very sick, individuals with disabilities, pregnant women, children. It put able bodied adults at the front of the line. And I've said consistently that's an awful demonstration of values to encourage states to expand able bodied adults. Somebody sitting on the couch rather than the vulnerable, the most needy in our society.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, that's to me this is not only is it immoral to disincentivize work and to cut into resources for the truly needy, and the long term consequences are disastrous for our workforce and for our society and productivity.
Chris Jacobs: Work requirements for Medicaid recipients require 80 hours per month
talk about the updated work requirements that the Trump administration and Republicans put into place and what that's going to do, hopefully to the tax, obligations that the taxpayer obligations for the Medicaid program and getting people back in the workforce.
Chris Jacobs Sure. So the requirements in statute, and there were regulations implementing these that were released in early June, require 80 hours per month, of some kind of work or community engagement. It could be education, it could be going back to school to make sure you have a good education, etc. It could be work. The Other thing is it's, it's actually, they say it's 80 hours per month, but in many ways it's less than that because there's an income requirement that you can meet to fulfill the requirements. And it's 80 hours. It's equal to 80 hours at the federal minimum wage of 725 an hour. If you make $580 per month, you meet the requirements. Well, a lot of states have increased their minimum wage well above that. And in most places most people get paid more than the minimum wage anyway. So if you're getting paid $10 an hour, then you only have to work 58 hours per month. so I think these are very reasonable. And we're talking about M. 80 hours per month. We're not talking about 80 hours per week. to try to support endorse self sufficiency and people. The old saying of a hand up and not a handout.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this, the urgency to get people off of these welfare programs couldn't be higher. I mean the amount of money to the tune of ultimately over a trillion annually when you combine some of these programs together, not just Medicare, but I'm talking Social Security, the whole package of federal programs. lot of money. And it's one of the reasons we're hitting such a deficit so quickly and not able to pay our bills. the urgency here to level some of this out or at least begin to chip away at it couldn't be overstated. And that's why I was so excited about some of the doge cuts. And you know, we are at the lowest federal workforce since like the 50s or 60s. So President Trump is, has made some headway on this. But we got to keep going. I mean, Chris the problem here is so bad that doing one thing is not enough. Like we got to keep chipping away at this problem, correct?
Chris Jacobs absolutely right. I mean essentially we're a big insurance company. The federal government is big insurance company that has an army attached to it. And that's basically all we do. And that includes Medicare and Social Security and it requires, it will ultimately require making some difficult decisions. I think the low hanging fruit is going after some of the waste and the fraud people who are enrolled in multiple state Medicaid programs at the same time. Well that's absurd. You don't, there's no point in that. That's just more profit to the insurance company. So we need to do some of these kinds of things. The big beautiful bill started that. But we're going to need to keep going.
Walker Wildmon M. Yeah, we are going to have to keep going. And there's obviously talk of another round of reconciliation. I think they call it 3.0. do you think they're going to do something here? Like, is that being talked about or are we going to have to bring it up?
Chris Jacobs I think it always involves being the squeaky wheel, because it's very easy when you're a politician. You want to get light. And so you don't. You get votes by handing out money. You don't get votes by taking money away and say, you know, being the bad father. No, you cannot have ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I mean, that's, that's effectively what we're talking about here. so it's always going to involve work and making difficult political choices. and really some people having the courage, because we're mortgaging our futures for our children and grandchildren, that they are going to have live a life crushed with our debt, basically, and that's not fair to them.
Walker Wildmon No, it's not. It's not moral either. It's just wrong. to your point earlier about, you know, at some point we're going to have to cut. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I know people roll their eyes when we start talking about the deficit because we just keep going and it seems like there's no end to the deficit. We're going to hit 40 trillion by the fall. and it's just insane, that amount of debt per capita per person for the government. But I do think, I do think that at some point it's going to have to be addressed. And to your point, the first thing that's going to be talked about is where can we cut? because you can't. Despite, I know President Trump, they've said they want to grow their way out of this. I just don't know. You can grow your way out of 40 trillion. You can grow your way out of a couple hundred billion, not 40 trillion. so cuts are going to have to be talked about. We may have to get into a crisis for that to be talked about. But Europe has, has had to make cuts. I mean, some of these other countries that have had debt crises, they have to make cuts at some point, whether you like it or not, right?
Chris Jacobs That's right. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I mean, to give you a real easy sense of how bad it is, we could eliminate Social Security, abolish it this year, and still have a budget deficit. You think about all the people, all the senior citizens, all the individuals, disabilities getting payments from Social Security. You zero out each and every one of those and we would still have a budget deficit.
Walker Wildmon Wow.
Chris Jacobs So the idea that you can do this by just eliminating foreign aid or that kind of stuff, it's. It's untrue.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, yeah, it is.
What are the state's role in expanding Medicaid? What can states do
well, let me ask you this. we. What are the, what are the state's role here? Because I know this is a federal provision. The, it's now, the agencies are carrying this out, as you mentioned. It's now in place. What can the states do to, to also help in this arena?
Chris Jacobs Well, I think that the best thing that the states can do, first of all, if you haven't expanded Obamacare to able body decisions, adults than don't m. certainly we've seen that in where you're talking from Mississippi, that there's been pushes and certainly the hospitals and the medical providers want to expand it. And this is the problem is that the states see Washington and Medicaid as quote, free money. and so they come up with all these schemes that are that if you and I tried to do it, we will get put in jail for money laundering and fraud. But they're legal for states to do it. And really they're just these sham transactions that are designed to build Washington out of more money.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Jacobs States need to be independent about this. And if you want to raise taxes on your own citizens to pay for a big welfare state, then go ahead and do that. I disagree with that. But don't come to Washington through all these sham mechanisms and think there's just an unlimited tap on the federal spigot.
Walker Wildmon Yeah. And what you're alluding to there and talking about is ultimately the big problem, capital. Big. And that is that the states. And of course Washington's got its fair share of problems because they don't mind giving out the money. But this pork and this excessive bloated spending that the states expect from Washington is just insane. I mean, as quote, conservative as Mississippi is politically, ideologically, we are just munching off of Washington D.C. and it's a shame. And I've even told our elected officials, look, you guys are going to have to wean yourself off of this federal dollar because when Washington comes, they're going to. When Biden's in the White House, what do they do? They tell Mississippi what to do. Why? Because they send us the money. So, I think we're at like a two for one for every $1 we spend in the budget, $2 come from D.C. i think that's right. maybe more than that, but it's really, really a problem. And so I think the more that time goes on and the more ideologically divided we become as a country, the more necessary this is going to be for states to be more self sufficient.
Chris Jacobs That's, that's exactly right. And the problem really with health care and the problem with our government in general is that everybody does a wonderful job of spending everybody else.
Walker Wildmon You're right, you're right.
Chris Jacobs And that's the old Margaret Thatcher phrase from 50 years ago that the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people. And this is the problem. This is why we spend too much time, money in health care in general because my insurance plan pays for it or the, in Medicaid because the state pays for it or in Medicare because the federal government's paying for it. Everybody does a wonderful job. And I understand when you go, when you have a heart attack, you're not going to be able to pay for all of that out of pocket.
Walker Wildmon Sure.
Chris Jacobs But it's this attitude of everybody throwing the bill to somebody else.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Chris Jacobs Rather than self sufficiency.
Walker\ Yeah. And let's address that. We've just got a couple minutes left. But this fear mongering that we get when we talk about, we started out on work requirements for Medicaid, but you can apply this to any other program and even like Obamacare, they'll say, well you know, if somebody's having ah, a heart attack, you know, it doesn't matter what it costs, we gotta save their life. Well, whatever. Okay. There's already federal statutes on having to serve people in the emergency room anyway. That's why the illegals go and get free, quote free treatment even though we pay for it. but those are the statistical anomalies. When you go to the emergency room, what do you get somebody my ears hurting, I got an earache. And they spend, they go in there and they don't pay any bills. And then the hospital, what do they do? They charge you and me and our private healthcare plans in overage to make up for the people that don't pay for common things that can often be addressed at a small in and out, 30 minute medical clinic. But the people that don't have health insurance go to the ER because they know they can't turn them away. And so that same kind of entitlement mentality and abuse of the system mentality is why Medicare and others, have these massive problems.
Chris Jacobs: Transparency is what healthcare needs most
But Chris Jacobs, I'll give you the last word. We got about a minute left.
Chris Jacobs The other thing I would say I agree with all of that but the other thing that we need is transparency. If you can't figure out what things cost then you can't do the right thing. Yeah, I went through this just, just with some of my prescriptions that I realized I was paying three times as much for a prescription because I was using my insurance plan than just taking out my credit card and paying cash because the, the, the big health care conglomerates keep all this stuff opaque.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Chris Jacobs And so that's where the Trump administration, and frankly this has been bipartisan to make it more transparent about what things cost because then whether it's an individual themselves or the employers, when it can actually start cracking down on where all this fat and bloat is in the system because there's tons of it. But you don't know because you can't see where things are.
Walker Wildmon Absolutely. We ought to be able to shop for health care like we shop for everything else. You ought to be able to compare two hospital systems, compare multiple providers and figure out who's going to give you the best service for the best price. That's what we do with every other goods and service in the economy. But this whole healthcare is just shrouded in secrecy and non answers and it's very frustrating. Chris Jacobs, thanks so much for joining us.
Chris Jacobs Thanks for having me.
Walker Wildmon Absolutely. Chris Jacobs, Juniper Research Group Glad to have him. We'll see you next time.
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This is at the core on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon Welcome to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on today's edition of the program. Walker Wildmon and Rick Green, we're your host each week on the program. I'm with you most, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, and then Rick's with you on Tuesday, Thursday. Once again, it's good to be with you today on the program. We've got a lot of content, a couple of guests coming up in the next few segments, and so we'll try to utilize our time wisely. Acts 15 is where we have been this week. Acts 15 is where we have Been reading from verses 1 and 2. And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, unless you are circumcised according to the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved. Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this very question. And so, here Paul and Barnabas are defending, the core tenet of the Christian faith, and that is that salvation is not man made, man acquired, or man earned. It is through faith alone in the Son of God, the Messiah. And that's what Paul and Barnabas were defending here in Acts chapter 15. Very, very important, as even today, some 2,000 years later, folks are still trying to add to the doctrine, add to the Scriptures, and make salvation about more than what Jesus said it was about and the requirement of belief and faith in Jesus for salvation. So That's Acts chapter 15, verses 1 and 2.
Truth for Youth is sending Bibles into America Schools through youth
Well, the, Truth for Youth campaign is going on this week. TFY.org is the URL we're trying to send 65,000 Bibles. America Schools through youth ages 13 to 18 is our target audience here. Of course we want parents and grandparents and those involved, to be involved in this. But we're sending these Truth for Youth Bibles into America Schools through our youth ages 13 to 18. So if you want to order your free Bible this week on AFR, you can visit tfy.org, tfy.org I'll give out the number to call in as well and order your Bible. 800-733-4737. If you call this number, you can order one Bible per teen in your home to send with them to school to give out to an unbeliever. 800-733-4737 or tfy.org Our goal is 65,000 for the week. We are well underway, nearing the halfway mark for that goal. And so help us reach that goal and order your free bible [email protected] alright, well, let's jump into the topics for this segment.
The economic data just, uh, continues to come out week after week
The economic data just, continues to come out week after week, month after month, showing, the progress of President Trump's agenda to rebuild the economy and fix the damage that was done under President Biden, which was a lot of damage. And, and manufacturing has been a core tenet of President Trump's agenda for a long time, even going back to the first term. And the manufacturing numbers are looking good. Remember this was his core campaign promise and one of his things that he had worked on in the months after being sworn in this go around and that is traveling around to plants and factories and job sites in order to rebuild America's manufacturing base. Because let's not forget our, over the last 30 to 40 years, really 40, over the last 40 years we have shipped many of our manufacturing jobs overseas and we've had things made in Mexico and Canada and China and Taiwan and all these other places rebuilding or building their economies, their manufacturing base. President Trump said let's bring it home. Let's bring manufacturing home. you add security to the supply chain and you add jobs for the American worker. That's what President Trump's been doing. So, just this week we have manufacturing numbers out. Largest manufacturing expansion in four years since 2022. Let's listen to this CNBC clip. This is going to be one.
CNBC Reporter If we look at manufacturing, these are fresh July reads from the ISM on, manufacturing comes in much better than expected. 55.6. That would be the best read in over four years, since May of 22.
Walker Wildmon Well there you have it. Best reading since 2022. Manufacturing expansion growing. there's also this database that Bobby made me aware of this morning called the American Factory Tracker. American factorytracker.com and this is tracking America's industrial comeback. Here are the stats. Just over the last 18 to 24 months, really 18 months, we've had $600 billion in verified investments M in our manufacturing base. We've had about 160,000 job announcements, over the last two years or so and over 130 projects going on all around the country. These are major. Not just data centers, not just AI centers, but vehicle plants. the Lockheed, Martin and others just announced a production capacity expansion, multi billion dollar projects to increase our missile defense and interceptor capabilities and quadruple the ability to supply the military with certain interceptors. And states like Arizona, Texas and Ohio are leading the way and very positive signs there. And these are long term investments. These aren't government subsidized programs that last a year or two and then they fade out and then you leave people without a job. what this is doing is this is creating long term manufacturing based jobs around the country. And this is what President Trump and we're going to link to that investment, tracker, the American Factory Tracker, on America's industrial comeback. But this is what President Trump's gonna have to hammer home on the campaign trail. And honestly, if I were him, I'd stop talking about Iran because we don't know where that's gonna go. We don't know what's gonna happen. You could have a deal, but you could not have a deal. And so, and I don't think you're going to have a deal. But this constant answering questions about Iran I think is a distraction for the midterms. I don't think President Trump needs to talk about Iran anymore. It is what it is. We're taking care of it. Let's talk about the economy, let's talk about our manufacturing comeback. Let's talk about the largest number of individuals in the labor force in the last 50 years. those are the things that I would be talking about along with core inflation, lower than it was under Biden. Now there's some categories like beef and energy that are still elevated, but the vast majority of the inflation tracker Data is at 2% are below 2%. let's listen to Alex Marlow. This is the Breitbart chief editor talking about how President Trump is the best person to deliver the economic case to the American people.
Alex Marlowe I still think he's very good. Trump is very popular within his own party and he's got a clear command of the party. And so I still think that even though the Iran war is not particularly popular, I think he's got a long time to make the case. And he's making a case against a very weak Democrat opponent. The entire party is overcome by socialism, and it's very incoherent with their anti law enforcement, open borders, anti Israel agenda. it's just they don't have a coherent case to make. It's very alarming for a lot of people. And Trump can make a much more sane case to people.
Walker Wildmon Well, there you have it. That's Alex Marlowe from Breitbart talking about, the need to, for President Trump to deliver the message to the American people on, the economic rebound that he is overseeing right now. And as I've said multiple times, you get past this Iran thing, whatever this Iran thing turns out to be, you get on the other side of it. you talk about a breakout. I mean, the market's having a breakout now, but everything else is going to break out, because a lot of the consumer sentiment will improve, energy prices will improve. We've got the nuclear modular reactors being built out, going to lower the cost to run your business. And so all of this is coming together. It just takes a little time. And, the question is, do the American people have the patience and the wherewithal, to give this process time? And, the November election will tell us that.
Christian: The alternative to President Trump's economic agenda is destruction of Western civilization
But the alternative here, and I'm writing a column on this right now for our Stand magazine, but the alternative here is, destruction of Western civilization. That's the alternative. And that's not an exaggeration. But when you, when you look at the two parties, when you look at the various ideologies, you have a very pro business, pro economic development, pro national security party in the Republicans. And then you look across the aisle of the Democrats and they want to burn it all down. Their words, to be specific. According to the Democrat Socialist of America, which is now pretty much the talking head of the Democrat Party, they said, we want to bring down the American empire. Those are their words, not mine. And so you look at the two sides. You've got one of revitalization, rebuilding America first, and then you've got the destruction of Western civilization. Because without, America, there virtually is no Western civilization. and so you can say, well, what about Europe? Well, look, America is The leader of Western civilization and one of the best, nations in human history from multiple vantage points. And so we have to preserve that. That's what's at stake here on the ballot in November. And, we also have to resist this, perpetual victimhood mentality that, is prevalent, I will say, within the right. Now, I know the term right with a capital R is a very broad term, but within kind of the conservative, right base of the Republican Party, some of the more nationalist elements, there's some kind of disgruntledness about the lack of economic progress under President Trump's administration and claiming there's still an affordability issue, et cetera, et cetera. And they say that explains this drift towards socialism and government intervention on everything, which is what Elizabeth Warren wants. But we need to be careful with that line of thinking and here's why. It is true that, America, that our economy in some regards has not been working for the little guy or not been working more specifically for the middle class. that's a phenomena over the last, As I said, 30 to 40 years as we began shipping America's manufacturing base overseas, that gutted in many regards, a lot of the middle class. So that is a problem. I'm not denying that. But President Trump is literally in the middle of reversing that trend and reversing that problem. And so the question I have is if President Trump is doing what he can to reverse that manufacturing base gutting that happened, starting with Clinton and Bush and Obama, then what are you going to replace that with? I mean, what are you going to intervene and do different than what the Trump administration is currently doing, other than socialism and the destruction of Western civilization and capitalism as we know it? And so whether you like it or not, the Trump economic agenda is the best game in town. And as a matter of fact, it's pretty much the only game in town if you want to preserve anything that's a semblance of the American economy as we know it. and some of this is just some of the criticisms on the economy and affordability and stuff is just unfounded. I mean, some of it's just outright unfounded. And we've got to be problem solvers. I mean, we've got to be problem solvers and we got to be leaders. And this is the core problem with the podcast world and the Tucker Carlsen's and others is, and Candace Owens, just to name a few, is they don't really fix problems. They've never had a career in fixing problems or finding solutions. All they do is talk. And so we can find a lot of people that can just talk and get ratings and do clickbait. But who's gonna lead? And right now, over the last 10 plus years, President Trump's been one of the few that have raised his hand and said, I'll lead. I'll take the bullets literally, and I'll lead this American comeback. And so that's where we are. We don't need to take that for granted. President Trump has had, listen to this. Zero border, apprehensions and releases at the southern border in the last 14 months. President Biden had 600,000 in his first 18 months. President Trump has effectively closed the southern border. No illegal immigration, mass deportations, and a manufacturing comeback. Let's not forget that.
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Walker Wildmon: Do you know how to pronounce my last name
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to be with you today on the program. As a brief reminder, we do upload the show in the form of a podcast each and every afternoon. So if you go to your podcast library, your podcast store, type in at the The Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. You can subscribe to the podcast there or in some platforms it's called following. They keep changing up the term, but you get the idea. Subscribe, follow the podcast and it will be queued up in your library each and every day. Well, we have a guest in studio with us, state representative, from Mississippi, Shane Aguirre And, he asked coming into the break, do you know how to pronounce my last name? Surprisingly, I do because most guests. I've had some doozies on here, Bobby, of guests with some last names that just throw me for a loop. but yes, I've got your last name and, glad I do, as opposed to getting it wrong in real time. But glad to have you on the program.
Shane Aguirre Well, you'd be surprised how many people just butcher my last name. So I wanted to give you a heads up before we got started.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, Gary is proper, but Aguirre is probably what people go for, most of the time just glancing at it,
Shane Aguirre but nine times out of ten.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, pat on the back for me for figuring that out. If you don't mind. Move a little bit closer to that mic. They're pretty sensitive.
People have had their bank accounts cut off for various ideological reasons
Representative Shane Aguirre is with us here, from the state of Mississippi. He's been in the legislature for three terms. I didn't realize he'd been in that long. Going on 12 years and going to run, I assume, for reelection in 2027.
Shane Aguirre That's the plan.
Walker Wildmon But you've been, working with us and others on some debanking legislation this past legislative, session and hopefully we can get some momentum behind this bill coming up in the next term. but nonetheless, give us a little background on this subject of debanking. I know it's a word that people don't usually put in their vocabulary, but it's been a thing in recent years where people have had their bank accounts cut off for various ideological reasons.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, this is something that came up, during the last presidential, administration. They were using ah, banking system to cut off the funds for different groups based on a lot of their, either religious views or conservative views or even their political affiliations. So, this is something that I saw happening nationwide, and I thought, you know, we need to do something in Mississippi to try to offset this and make sure that they can't, do this to our citizens.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, banking is something that, people, a lot of people probably just take it for granted because there are thankfully a lot of banks and a lot of competition, a lot of places for consumers to go. but Representative GARY the banking system, is somewhat critical. It is critical in 2026 to, and it has been for a couple decades, with the online era and you know, the digital era, in order to simply operate as a business or as an individual. So, you know, it's not the heavy cash days where, you know, if you didn't have a place to park the, the physical money, you could just take care of it yourself. If you don't have somewhere to bank because you've been shut down, or even if you have to transition because you've had your accounts cut off for political reasons, that's very disruptive. And so, talk a little bit about the importance of just being able to have confidence that your bank's not going to just cut you off one day without notice because they don't like the politics.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, you're right. you know everything. Right now we are, we are moving further and further away from a cash basin more of its own on our plastic or online. And if you lose access to that, you're stuck. And some of these groups that were debanked, they were given less than a week's notice to find a new way to process their payroll, pay the invoices that they needed to take care of. And so it's a real problem that that happens to these people and for no, apparently good reason, but it's something that we want to do to protect, our citizens, to make sure that they do have access to their money and their ability to, be part of our marketplace.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, there's multiple examples, President Trump's the most notorious example, or prominent, if you will, example of being debanked after the 2020 election. Capital, one, which there's since been some settlements on this. But Capital One debanked President Trump's private organization, not just his campaign account. They debanked his Trump organization, which runs all of his real estate transactions, et cetera. Millions, of money flowing in and out. They canceled that without notice. over, allegedly over the January 6th incident at the Capitol. AFA has been debanked and more technically deplatformed because Stripe Payment Processing, they're out of San Francisco, Uber left wing company, but they cut us off with 24 hour notice. And it was in December during our peak fundraising month. And it was in essence because of our religious and ideological viewpoints. They wouldn't say that, but that's what our suspicion is. and then there's I think Sam Brownback, former Secretary of State from, Kansas. Kansas, yeah, he was debanked as well. And there's more examples of this. There's been some pro life groups that this has happened to. My point is that this is actually a thing. This isn't just a theoretical, this might happen. This has actually happened, right?
Shane Aguirre Oh yeah, it has. And the examples you give out are on point. so what they do is they do it through mostly through regulations, through the regulators that come into the banks. All banks are regulated, state, charter banks are regulated by our state Department of Banking. And then national banks are regulated, by national regulators. and so what those national regulators under the previous administration and, and their guidelines would come in and they would pretty much say, well, this is a reputational risk having this person on here. And that's, I've Heard that term a lot. Yeah, and so that's you know, that comes up and so these banks, you know, they don't want these regulators on them. And so they, you know, they, they kind of like old school gangsters with them. You know, it'd be sad if something happened your bank here, you know.
Walker Wildmon So they as they're looking at like a group that they want to have taken down.
Shane Aguirre So, so it really, it was pressure coming from the regulators onto the banks. The banks weren't going out and choosing to do this just out of the blue that from, from the research I've been able to do, it looks like that they're getting pressure from, for the most part from from these regulators.
Walker Wildmon Well, and to your point, when you have these different state regulators, I'm sure every state has their own board or commission or regulatory body. for example, if you have a California commission or regulatory body, you know, making a phone call to what is probably a national bank or a regional bank. And to your point, given these threats are alluding to being punished, so to speak, that definitely affects their decision making. So these regulatory bodies have a lot
Shane Aguirre of power, can influence especially larger banks. so if you're over a $10 billion in asset bank, you have regulators in office 24 7, always there. And so those guys are under a lot of scrutiny. And you know, in today's day and age, after the financial crisis in 08, the regulations on all of our financial institutions just went through the roof and they are so over regulated. I've talked to other bankers saying like man, if we could go back to the old days it'd be a lot easier. I mean they've adapted to the climate that it is, but I think that they would all prefer to get rid of some of these regulations that are just over the top and pendulum swung from one way all the way to the other way. And we need to kind of probably be more in the middle, but that's, you know, what we're trying to do. But it really needs to happen more on the federal level. But sure, but we do what we can here in the state.
Representative Shane Aguirre has proposed legislation addressing debanking without creating new bureaucracy
Walker Wildmon Yeah, and let's talk about that. So we're talking with Representative Shannon Gary from Mississippi State, representative from the northeastern part of Mississippi and Tupelo area specifically. Let's talk about solutions here because obviously the problem of debanking is there, it's prevalent. We've talked about some of the cases of it happening. and to your point, we don't want to come in with A bunch of red tape, create another regulatory body, et cetera. so let's talk about the solutions here. what are some of the solutions, especially in some of this legislation you put forth, that we can address the concern of debanking without creating another government bureaucracy.
Shane Aguirre Right. And that's in discussions with the bill that we had this past session with, the bankers and with the Banking Commission was we don't want to put more regulations on the bankers. And our goal was not to do that. What we did was if a customer was debanked and there was a whole list of reasons, and if they felt that they were, that they could file a complaint with the banking department and then the banking department would look into it and do an investigation. And if it was proven to be a situation, then they would issue a cease and desist to, that bank or financial institution and say, all right, y' all gotta cut it out. This is why. But there was, that was basically it, you know, but we were just trying to make it as simple and as, not a regulatory burden on the banks. And some people, you know, were saying that there was, you know, regulatory burden, but this, it wasn't like they're making it out to be.
Walker Wildmon But no, and to your point, and we met with some of the bankers, I'm sure you got phone calls and lunch requests as well. But, the fact of the matter is, and I understand the hesitancy to, you know, sign off on any new regulations or any new statutes involving anything additional the banks have to do, our businesses in general. But to your point, correct me if I'm wrong, but this regulatory body or this banking association that this process was going to be facilitated within already exists. It does.
Walker Wildmon so we're not creating a new agency, a new director, a new commission, or the governor having to appoint somebody new. This is an entity or regulatory body that already exists. You're just simply creating a process within that body where someone can file a formal complaint, correct? Yes.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, that's it. And if, and if the bank's not doing that, doing any debanking, then they don't have anything to worry about. I'm sure that there's going to be people out there will say, oh, well, they debanked me and I did nothing wrong. There were a list of reasons in there of why they could. And that follows along with, federal guidelines as well. But nothing like religious or political. Political or anything like that, or ideological. None of that could be included.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, that seems like a no brainer. I mean, whether You're a Democrat or Republican. This is just good sense. And to your point, if the banks are following the rules, they have absolutely nothing to worry about. But the problem, to your point, and the word you used is, I think, reputational risk. That's like a buzzword with the, within the banking industry, where if they don't want to do business with a customer, they'll just pull out the Rolodex and say, yeah, sorry, your business is a reputational risk. We've had that specifically cited by different technology companies and others that don't want to do business with us. that's a buzzword for we don't like what you guys do. pretty much. and to your point, I mean, the banks, if you're going to cut somebody's bank account off, you ought to be able to give them a viable reason. I mean, either they're engaged in criminal activity or they're not following the banking guidelines, or they're not upholding their terms of terms of service. But this is kind of a big deal. This isn't like, you know, I don't want to serve you coffee. This is banking. This is core to basically living in 2026.
Shane Aguirre Yeah, well, and that's a fine line because there are issues in banking where if there is some misconduct detected and the bank has to fill out some, reports, they can't, by federal law, they can't let the person know.
Walker Wildmon Interesting.
Shane Aguirre Yeah. And so only the bank and the regulator know what about those, suspicious activity reports?
Walker Wildmon So they don't want to tip off criminals that like, hey, we're on to you.
Shane Aguirre Right, gotcha. And so it's, it's a fine line there on what they can let you know and what they can't let you know. And so if they debank someone or if someone is debunked because of one of those issues, they can't really tell them. But you would think, okay, well, we're not gonna, we're not gonna do your business because you're an NRA member. You know, that's another, you know, situation altogether. So, yeah, you have to keep those separate. And, you know, and we wanted to set the bill up where the banks weren't hit with a bunch of frivolous complaints, Suits and complaints. And so we tried to, we tried to make it where they, they weren't, they weren't just bombarded with those things as much as possible. But I'm sure some of them will, will cut, through and cause some issues. But, yeah, for the Most part, we're trying to, you know, keep it as low as possible.
Walker Wildmon Yeah. And this is not something, I'm not trying to undershoot my own argument here, but while there are cases of debanking happening, I would not call this a massive, widespread problem. But it is a problem. And when people are debanked, it is a very big deal. So to Representative Gary's point, I don't see us having thousands or hundreds of thousands of complaints across the country if this were, eligible. we're talking one off instances of people being cut off.
Shane Aguirre Yes. and I completely agree, but I think, and my thought with this was someone's got to stand up and say, you know, we don't agree with this and we're not going to accept it, you know, and again, it was done on the federal level, but if the states start fighting it back again, then maybe something will happen. I mean, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, he had a bill, but as we all know, the Senate is in lockdown. Right. You know, they can't get anything.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, they can't get anything done.
Shane Aguirre So we're trying to do something on the state level because ideally, you know, President Trump had an executive order about debanking, but we just, they can't get it over the finish line in the Senate. So Washington gridlock.
Reporter Well, and to your point about the
Walker Wildmon state's role here, if we can get multiple states to band together on this, you could end this debanking with just having three or four states like Mississippi and Texas on the same page, because then the capital ones of the world are going, well, we don't have to deal with Mississippi and Texas as regulators. So we're just going to quit debanking and then the problem solved. So, yeah, I mean, at this point, working, together with various states is the way to go. Representative Aguirre, thanks so much for joining us.
Shane Aguirre Thanks for having me.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, absolutely. Representative. Representative Shane Aguirre from the state of Mississippi, serving the northeastern part, specifically the Tupelo area, and, the state House of Representatives, and glad, to have him on the program. And he headed up this debanking legislation in Mississippi that we couldn't get quite over the finish line. But we're going to keep bringing it up and we're going to keep pushing it and educating folks on it, so that we can protect consumers and individuals from having their bank accounts for cut off for religious or political reasons. that goal should be pretty bipartisan. We'll be back in a few minutes.
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This is at the The Core on American Family Radio with your host, Walker Wildmon.
Chris Jacobs is CEO of the Juniper Research Group on American Family Radio
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. Well, introducing our next guest that we have on the program, we have Chris Jacobs. He's CEO of the Juniper Research Group. He's on with us now to talk about the Medicaid work requirements provision, that was put in statute last year and of course is being carried out now by the Trump administration. Chris, welcome to the program.
Chris Jacobs Great to be with you.
Walker Wildmon Well, Chris anytime we can talk to someone about people working harder and getting off the couch, I'm 100% on board with that because it's a biblical concept. The concept, of hard work and working with your hands and having honor and dignity in your work. It's a Very, kind of lost art, if you will, in America. tell us about your organization, your research group and then we'll jump into these work requirements.
Chris Jacobs Sure. Thanks, Walker. my organization, Juniper Research Group, it's a writing and research and consulting firm. I'm here in Washington, right in the middle of the DC swamp, trying to get people the story behind the story and explain really what's going on behind the scenes in Washington in ways that people can understand.
Walker Wildmon Excellent.
The work requirement is only for states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare
Well, the one big beautiful bill, one of the provisions in it, as you've noted coming out of the break, is that the work requirement for Medicaid, to qualify for Medicaid, the work requirement, is now in statute, which is a very big deal. It's been expanded a little bit. But give us a little background on the work requirement, what are the provisions, how it works, and then we'll talk about the implications in the months ahead. Sure.
Chris Jacobs So the work requirement is only for states and populations that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. So we're not talking about making Grandma work for 40 hours or 80 hours a month or anything else like that. We're talking about primarily able bodied adults in states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare to able bodied adults. I think one thing that's important to remember here is Democrats, when they passed Obamacare, they gave states a greater Medicaid match to fund care for able bodied adults than they did for aged, blind, disabled populations, the very sick, individuals with disabilities, pregnant women, children. It put able bodied adults at the front of the line. And I've said consistently that's an awful demonstration of values to encourage states to expand able bodied adults. Somebody sitting on the couch rather than the vulnerable, the most needy in our society.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, that's to me this is not only is it immoral to disincentivize work and to cut into resources for the truly needy, and the long term consequences are disastrous for our workforce and for our society and productivity.
Chris Jacobs: Work requirements for Medicaid recipients require 80 hours per month
talk about the updated work requirements that the Trump administration and Republicans put into place and what that's going to do, hopefully to the tax, obligations that the taxpayer obligations for the Medicaid program and getting people back in the workforce.
Chris Jacobs Sure. So the requirements in statute, and there were regulations implementing these that were released in early June, require 80 hours per month, of some kind of work or community engagement. It could be education, it could be going back to school to make sure you have a good education, etc. It could be work. The Other thing is it's, it's actually, they say it's 80 hours per month, but in many ways it's less than that because there's an income requirement that you can meet to fulfill the requirements. And it's 80 hours. It's equal to 80 hours at the federal minimum wage of 725 an hour. If you make $580 per month, you meet the requirements. Well, a lot of states have increased their minimum wage well above that. And in most places most people get paid more than the minimum wage anyway. So if you're getting paid $10 an hour, then you only have to work 58 hours per month. so I think these are very reasonable. And we're talking about M. 80 hours per month. We're not talking about 80 hours per week. to try to support endorse self sufficiency and people. The old saying of a hand up and not a handout.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this, the urgency to get people off of these welfare programs couldn't be higher. I mean the amount of money to the tune of ultimately over a trillion annually when you combine some of these programs together, not just Medicare, but I'm talking Social Security, the whole package of federal programs. lot of money. And it's one of the reasons we're hitting such a deficit so quickly and not able to pay our bills. the urgency here to level some of this out or at least begin to chip away at it couldn't be overstated. And that's why I was so excited about some of the doge cuts. And you know, we are at the lowest federal workforce since like the 50s or 60s. So President Trump is, has made some headway on this. But we got to keep going. I mean, Chris the problem here is so bad that doing one thing is not enough. Like we got to keep chipping away at this problem, correct?
Chris Jacobs absolutely right. I mean essentially we're a big insurance company. The federal government is big insurance company that has an army attached to it. And that's basically all we do. And that includes Medicare and Social Security and it requires, it will ultimately require making some difficult decisions. I think the low hanging fruit is going after some of the waste and the fraud people who are enrolled in multiple state Medicaid programs at the same time. Well that's absurd. You don't, there's no point in that. That's just more profit to the insurance company. So we need to do some of these kinds of things. The big beautiful bill started that. But we're going to need to keep going.
Walker Wildmon M. Yeah, we are going to have to keep going. And there's obviously talk of another round of reconciliation. I think they call it 3.0. do you think they're going to do something here? Like, is that being talked about or are we going to have to bring it up?
Chris Jacobs I think it always involves being the squeaky wheel, because it's very easy when you're a politician. You want to get light. And so you don't. You get votes by handing out money. You don't get votes by taking money away and say, you know, being the bad father. No, you cannot have ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I mean, that's, that's effectively what we're talking about here. so it's always going to involve work and making difficult political choices. and really some people having the courage, because we're mortgaging our futures for our children and grandchildren, that they are going to have live a life crushed with our debt, basically, and that's not fair to them.
Walker Wildmon No, it's not. It's not moral either. It's just wrong. to your point earlier about, you know, at some point we're going to have to cut. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I know people roll their eyes when we start talking about the deficit because we just keep going and it seems like there's no end to the deficit. We're going to hit 40 trillion by the fall. and it's just insane, that amount of debt per capita per person for the government. But I do think, I do think that at some point it's going to have to be addressed. And to your point, the first thing that's going to be talked about is where can we cut? because you can't. Despite, I know President Trump, they've said they want to grow their way out of this. I just don't know. You can grow your way out of 40 trillion. You can grow your way out of a couple hundred billion, not 40 trillion. so cuts are going to have to be talked about. We may have to get into a crisis for that to be talked about. But Europe has, has had to make cuts. I mean, some of these other countries that have had debt crises, they have to make cuts at some point, whether you like it or not, right?
Chris Jacobs That's right. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I mean, to give you a real easy sense of how bad it is, we could eliminate Social Security, abolish it this year, and still have a budget deficit. You think about all the people, all the senior citizens, all the individuals, disabilities getting payments from Social Security. You zero out each and every one of those and we would still have a budget deficit.
Walker Wildmon Wow.
Chris Jacobs So the idea that you can do this by just eliminating foreign aid or that kind of stuff, it's. It's untrue.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, yeah, it is.
What are the state's role in expanding Medicaid? What can states do
well, let me ask you this. we. What are the, what are the state's role here? Because I know this is a federal provision. The, it's now, the agencies are carrying this out, as you mentioned. It's now in place. What can the states do to, to also help in this arena?
Chris Jacobs Well, I think that the best thing that the states can do, first of all, if you haven't expanded Obamacare to able body decisions, adults than don't m. certainly we've seen that in where you're talking from Mississippi, that there's been pushes and certainly the hospitals and the medical providers want to expand it. And this is the problem is that the states see Washington and Medicaid as quote, free money. and so they come up with all these schemes that are that if you and I tried to do it, we will get put in jail for money laundering and fraud. But they're legal for states to do it. And really they're just these sham transactions that are designed to build Washington out of more money.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Jacobs States need to be independent about this. And if you want to raise taxes on your own citizens to pay for a big welfare state, then go ahead and do that. I disagree with that. But don't come to Washington through all these sham mechanisms and think there's just an unlimited tap on the federal spigot.
Walker Wildmon Yeah. And what you're alluding to there and talking about is ultimately the big problem, capital. Big. And that is that the states. And of course Washington's got its fair share of problems because they don't mind giving out the money. But this pork and this excessive bloated spending that the states expect from Washington is just insane. I mean, as quote, conservative as Mississippi is politically, ideologically, we are just munching off of Washington D.C. and it's a shame. And I've even told our elected officials, look, you guys are going to have to wean yourself off of this federal dollar because when Washington comes, they're going to. When Biden's in the White House, what do they do? They tell Mississippi what to do. Why? Because they send us the money. So, I think we're at like a two for one for every $1 we spend in the budget, $2 come from D.C. i think that's right. maybe more than that, but it's really, really a problem. And so I think the more that time goes on and the more ideologically divided we become as a country, the more necessary this is going to be for states to be more self sufficient.
Chris Jacobs That's, that's exactly right. And the problem really with health care and the problem with our government in general is that everybody does a wonderful job of spending everybody else.
Walker Wildmon You're right, you're right.
Chris Jacobs And that's the old Margaret Thatcher phrase from 50 years ago that the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people. And this is the problem. This is why we spend too much time, money in health care in general because my insurance plan pays for it or the, in Medicaid because the state pays for it or in Medicare because the federal government's paying for it. Everybody does a wonderful job. And I understand when you go, when you have a heart attack, you're not going to be able to pay for all of that out of pocket.
Walker Wildmon Sure.
Chris Jacobs But it's this attitude of everybody throwing the bill to somebody else.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Chris Jacobs Rather than self sufficiency.
Walker\ Yeah. And let's address that. We've just got a couple minutes left. But this fear mongering that we get when we talk about, we started out on work requirements for Medicaid, but you can apply this to any other program and even like Obamacare, they'll say, well you know, if somebody's having ah, a heart attack, you know, it doesn't matter what it costs, we gotta save their life. Well, whatever. Okay. There's already federal statutes on having to serve people in the emergency room anyway. That's why the illegals go and get free, quote free treatment even though we pay for it. but those are the statistical anomalies. When you go to the emergency room, what do you get somebody my ears hurting, I got an earache. And they spend, they go in there and they don't pay any bills. And then the hospital, what do they do? They charge you and me and our private healthcare plans in overage to make up for the people that don't pay for common things that can often be addressed at a small in and out, 30 minute medical clinic. But the people that don't have health insurance go to the ER because they know they can't turn them away. And so that same kind of entitlement mentality and abuse of the system mentality is why Medicare and others, have these massive problems.
Chris Jacobs: Transparency is what healthcare needs most
But Chris Jacobs, I'll give you the last word. We got about a minute left.
Chris Jacobs The other thing I would say I agree with all of that but the other thing that we need is transparency. If you can't figure out what things cost then you can't do the right thing. Yeah, I went through this just, just with some of my prescriptions that I realized I was paying three times as much for a prescription because I was using my insurance plan than just taking out my credit card and paying cash because the, the, the big health care conglomerates keep all this stuff opaque.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Chris Jacobs And so that's where the Trump administration, and frankly this has been bipartisan to make it more transparent about what things cost because then whether it's an individual themselves or the employers, when it can actually start cracking down on where all this fat and bloat is in the system because there's tons of it. But you don't know because you can't see where things are.
Walker Wildmon Absolutely. We ought to be able to shop for health care like we shop for everything else. You ought to be able to compare two hospital systems, compare multiple providers and figure out who's going to give you the best service for the best price. That's what we do with every other goods and service in the economy. But this whole healthcare is just shrouded in secrecy and non answers and it's very frustrating. Chris Jacobs, thanks so much for joining us.
Chris Jacobs Thanks for having me.
Walker Wildmon Absolutely. Chris Jacobs, Juniper Research Group Glad to have him. We'll see you next time.
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opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
Today on At the Core, we discuss new signs of strength in the U.S. economy, including manufacturing growth, rising markets, and expected lowering of energy costs following the Iran conflict. We'll also examine how President Trump is making the economic case to voters ahead of the midterms.
Later, Mississippi Representative Shane Aguirre joins us to discuss concerns over debanking, and Chris Jacobs of Juniper Research Group explains the upcoming Medicaid work requirements and what they could mean for beneficiaries and taxpayers.
(00:00) Walker Wildmon and Rick Green host American Family Radio each week
(02:52) Truth for Youth is sending Bibles into America Schools through youth
(04:05) The economic data just, uh, continues to come out week after week
(10:12) Christian: The alternative to President Trump's economic agenda is destruction of Western civilization
(16:12) Walker Wildmon: Do you know how to pronounce my last name
(17:34) People have had their bank accounts cut off for various ideological reasons
(24:53) MS Rep Shane Aguirre has proposed legislation addressing debanking without creating new bureaucracy
(33:32) Preborn is on the front lines for at risk babies and mothers
(35:02) Chris Jacobs is CEO of the Juniper Research Group on American Family Radio
(36:18) The work requirement is only for states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare
(38:12) Chris Jacobs: Work requirements for Medicaid recipients require 80 hours per month
(44:33) What are the state's role in expanding Medicaid? What can states do
(49:27) Chris Jacobs: Transparency is what healthcare needs most
(51:00) Preborn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion
Juniper Research Group CEO Chris Jacobs
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