Vivek Ramaswamy

And one of the things that I intend to do when I'm governor

My first two years, remember, will be President Trump's last two years as president.

I have great relationships with many members of the cabinet, with President Trump, of course, and Dr. Oz and I have had great conversations, including in potential visits we've talked about to Ohio, to think about how we're able to change that game, to be able to say, I mean, a lot of these insights came to me from the two and a half months that I did co-head Doge,

We need to fix those incentive structures just like you would in a business where somebody who's running a given division of a business generates greater profitability.

You want that person to be rewarded for it.

I'd say the same thing with respect to the states that, you know, from the federal government, if you're saving the federal government the money, you also as a state should participate in a greater portion of those savings.

So that'll be something that I'm definitely going to work on when I'm governor.

And I'm confident that with a friendly administration, we will be able to deliver common sense solutions.

The other issue, Ben, is just human nature.

I mean, at the end of the day, if someone's grown dependent on the federal welfare state, most politicians are afraid to touch that.

And the reality is that goes for, if we're calling a spade a spade, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Democrats have been worse in this respect, but a lot of Republicans prefer to talk about or change the subject to other issues.

And at some point as a country, we're gonna have to reckon with this.

We've got a $37 trillion national debt and growing.

Our children, their generation are not gonna be able to sustain the brunt of this level of federal spending.

And you look at how the scope creep of these programs from welfare to SNAP to Medicaid, often now finding their way to individuals who were never intended to be the beneficiaries of those programs.

That's not only bad for the federal budget, not only bad for state budgets,

It's in the long run also bad for the very people who are supposedly the recipients of those dollars.

That's what's driving an epidemic of purposelessness, of depression, anxiety, a loss of meaning.

When you ultimately aren't working and are permanently dependent on Uncle Sam, that actually reduces your own sense of agency too.