Sign New Hampshire Banking Permission Slip Simple

Industry sign banking new hampshire permission slip simple

[Music] this is the caterer daily podcast for monday october 5th 2020. i'm caleb brown the biennial cato institute governor's report card for fiscal policy is out today one of the best grades goes to chris sununu the republican governor of new hampshire i spoke with governor sununu last week about fiscal policy covet 19 and the relatively unique nature of what he calls the new hampshire advantage it is pretty awesome for uh i'm not gonna lie to you i went to mit and i didn't get many a's there uh it was as an engineer uh but to uh to get an a i i am honored it's look it's um it's the cato institute it's it's one of the most respected uh well-renowned organizations in the world when it comes to uh just good civics good uh public service good fiscal responsibility so anytime that you're doing right by them in terms of fiscal discipline and management uh whether it's in the public or the private sector that's a great takeaway and i think it definitely means doesn't mean we don't have more work to do right but we're on a good track and i'm very proud of that new hampshire doesn't have a personal income tax it's regarded broadly as a low tax state but it does have a business profits tax and a business enterprise tax uh what has happened to those taxes in recent years uh they've gone down so i the democrats keep coming in and they keep trying to raise taxes and it's just typical national playbook stuff you'd think here in new hampshire with what we call and define the new hampshire advantage uh having no sales tax having no personal income tax keeping regulations minimal um or you think that they'd even take a little bit of a play out of that if you will the lowercase l libertarian playbook uh but they don't they keep trying to fight and and drive this this stuff up but what we've shown is that the model um that does prove itself out is when you support individuals and individual businesses when you get rid of regulation you become a pro-business state more businesses want to go here you can actually cut taxes and your revenues actually increase not that we need you know lots more money we don't have a revenue problem in new hampshire by any means uh we want small government we want local government we want individuals to be connected to government uh not have to go through 20 layers of bureaucracy just to get a phone call back right we want to be everything washington isn't uh frankly and and we we pride ourselves on that and you know we work always going to work with our regional partners we have massachusetts maine and vermont around us in particular or even new york um you know across thank god we have vermont between us and new york frankly it's a great border for us but uh but we have to work with those regional partners but because they are so fundamentally different in their uh constructs of government we really do set ourselves apart not just uh regionally but even but nationally frankly and we like to be that gold standard but it isn't by accident it isn't because we're lucky it isn't just because it's because we work really hard uh you have to get the right people in office that support policies that support individuals and when you do that it really does work and that's why one of the reasons i think through this crazy pandemic that we're seeing and the economic challenges that the entire country is receiving we're booming i mean i don't know a better way to say it we're doing really really well we got challenges but nothing we can't overcome just with some good innovation what has uh given new hampshire its new hampshire advantage um you know a friend of mine a former uh full-time cato scholar jason bedrick was a lawmaker in the legislature which you know sounds impressive until you sit and think about how many people are actually in the legislature of new hampshire is when you say the structure of government contributes to new hampshire's advantage is is the size of the legislature part of it uh absolutely so uh as you're alluding to and maybe some listeners know some don't but the fact that we have the what i think the third largest parliamentary body in the free world uh you know with i think the british parliament us congress and then the state of new hampshire with our 400 representatives uh and every single one of them gets paid about a hundred bucks a year so it's truly a volunteer government that's before taxes what taxes how dare you uh and then it's and then every one of us whether it's the governor our executive council one of the only states that has an executive council it's a very important checks and balance on the power of the governor frankly and then our legislature every one of us can be fired every two years we are one of the only states where we have to get elected every two years that is a complete accountability to the citizens i'm not going to lie to you as governor i wish it didn't after i didn't have to run every two years but as a citizen i love it and and and that is a big part of what makes us special the fact that uh the bulk of our taxes that we do pay for the little bit that we pay but the higher proportion unfortunately it does have to go to property tax but the value there if you will i mean nobody likes to pay property tax but the value there is in our small towns you know your selectmen you know who's on the budget committee half the time they're probably related to you in some way in new hampshire and you see them at the grocery store and you can go up and say hey look why are we spending money uh here here and here in our schools in our cemetery committee on the library you know for the new fire truck whatever it is and you have an incredible say in terms of how your dollars are actually spent you don't just write a check here the government and then hope for the best you are a true part of the system and you know when you if you think about it with our legislature our cities and towns our planning boards our town moderators our county government when you add it all together if you don't know or aren't related to somebody who's running for office at any given time that's a bit of an anomaly and it isn't because we all love politics but we all i think appreciate that when it is truly local as tip o'neill said when because all good politics is local uh we have a say and a responsibility to participate in that process make sure our voice is heard and we're listened to and that's that's a really a great thing and so you can't fall into that those bad habits you see other states taking or even the washington that that takes and um and really make sure that those individuals have a voice it's easy to for that to slip it's easy to let politics take over but you got to remember what keeps to your initial question what keeps that new hampshire advantage so special and so unique in the country so taxes are uh half of the equation for uh or you know good chunk of the equation when it comes to fiscal responsibility the other is spending what contributes most to new hampshire keeping spending relatively low these days um well first like you know i come from a business background i i was an engineer for a long time i ran a business for a long time now a lot of folks will tell you you got to run the government like a business well you can't really do that unfortunately it sounds great the reason being is that when i had my business as the owner and ceo i could you know make an investment a new capital investment or we could create a new program whatever we might have been doing we ran a ski i ran a ski resort in a four season resort for a while but when you're in government it's not my money it's your money right it's the public's money and so you do need that extra level of checks and balances so that's the fundamental difference now the key there is you don't let government get big you keep government small it doesn't mean you have to shortcut your programs but you can keep your bureaucracy streamlined your constituent service is very strong so if someone has a problem they can call in find out how to get you know that better service put the dollars to your your folks on the ground you want to make sure you're for example division of children youth and families making sure kids just aren't getting abused right making sure that kids that are in foster you know you have more kids hopefully leaving foster care than coming into foster care those types of things invest in your folks on the ground on the front lines of those programs not into the second third fourth fifth and sixth layers of bureaucracy that tend to muck up the whole system and slow it down so by doing that you save money you create a more efficient system and then when you can you defer to the locals let them take charge and empowerment of their own communities and and again let them make those investments at the community level because again they're they're forced by that because of the high interaction of the citizens to just be a much more efficient system and you're going to get a bit better bang for your buck for your dollars so uh we're in a pandemic right now i'm sure you heard about it uh i got the memo thank you the uh you you mentioned that property taxes are probably a bit higher in new hampshire than they are in surrounding states and and nationally how does that impact your ability to meet obligations uh relative to other states where incomes have uh fallen fairly dramatically for a large share of the workforce so let's talk there's kind of two answers to that if i may let's talk strictly in the realm of the pandemic right so congress put out the cares act money and the relief money um the the dollars that went to every state were a little bit different uh the ability for states to spend it was pretty pretty much all the same but then some states had to deal with legislatures some didn't because i took control of those dollars and didn't let the dollars get caught up in the bureaucracy one thing i tried to insist on is by god if the government's going to spend these trillions of dollars and it's just outrageous i mean or what they're spending and even what they're proposing to spend that three trillion dollar uh plan out of out of congress was just uh ludicrous frankly um but what they did give us okay we're going to spend it wisely and we're going to make that investment not into ourselves but into business into healthcare into those areas that are the most needed and we're going to do it directly we're not even going to go through the legislature legislature sued me for that but i won so and at the end of the day we did it right and we did it very efficiently so being able to have the the government's uh support was important i'm not you know that that's that was great because this was unprecedented no one had a playbook you couldn't get testing anywhere you couldn't get ppe anywhere we had to set up emergency shelters and things of that nature in case the hospitals got overrun up here in new england as a whole early on we were very very hard hit boston new york and that affected us you know new hampshire for your listeners you think of us as like the tax-free suburb of boston right so um if you don't want the taxes and the bureaucracy and the traffic you take an extra you know go one mile north and boom you're in tax free new hampshire so we were able to set ourselves apart in terms of how we spent the dollars from other states even though we were kind of at the tip of the spear a little bit with the pandemic early on and we had to make some tough decisions to be sure but that flexibility of spending the money early on allowed direct efficiency i spent 500 million dollars it's a lot of money on business right we didn't do this ppp stuff where there were these elongated loans that were gonna essentially ask businesses to borrow themselves into oblivion um we we didn't try to that and that also gets hung up on their balance sheet as a liability it it prevents their ability to work with their banks banks are doing very very well by the way they are flush with cash but they have an inability to lend out because so many businesses have their ppp loans at the federal level hanging on them as a liability so we give up grants because my goal was to play for the long game to say look i can't make a business whole but i can make it hopefully get a business to survive so they're paying their property tax their bills their mortgages whatever it is maybe keep some folks employed because my goal is that when 2021 comes around and the economy is really coming back strong throughout the united states we want to already be there we already want to be at the front of the line coming out like a rocket and so my goal was to invest in these businesses invest in nonprofits nonprofits hire a lot of people in the state and they provide a lot of our services that's one of the ways we keep our our costs low is we basically outsource a lot of our services uh to the nonprofit so supporting those folks on the front early on has created an efficiency and will allow them to be there for econ for our economy in 21. if there were one policy change for uh governors that they could fight for that would give them the biggest bang for the buck in terms of improving uh fiscal stability uh and fiscal responsibility in their state what has new hampshire done that they should emulate well two things if when i fight there's two answers to that in that in washington i'll give you two words block grant block grant block grant let states decide how to spend their federal dollars whether you're talking about medicaid whether you're talking about education whatever it is because with respect to medicaid you're referring to the fact that when the federal government spends money on medicaid it essentially obligates the state and sort of perverts the typical incentives that states would have to spend x versus wide dots oh completely oh completely i can't i don't know how who wrote these original rules and who have who has changed them over time but the roadblocks that come with each of those dollars um are are completely um counterproductive right they make no common sense frankly and and i give the president some credit he's really tried to break down a lot of that those regulations regulatory reform is really the third leg of the stool when it comes to uh i think fiscal responsibility um and allowing us for example whether it's to buy our pharmaceuticals into canada and we've finally passed that law and hopefully we can break down those barriers things of that nature i can't even negotiate a lot of my own pharmaceutical rates through medicaid at all because they create that barrier that makes no sense let every state compete let the free market work as it is supposed to do uh instead of you know creating these arbitrary rules that we all have to live by now within new hampshire uh you know that's so that's that's what i would say to washington block grant free of a lot of those burdens uh give us the check and and we'll say by the way in doing that we could probably take 80 percent or 70 in some cases maybe even 50 depending on the program um you know just have like one guy sitting at hud and one guy sitting at the department of education in washington get rid of the 10 000 employees save that money you could uh you know cut us probably less dollars so i don't have to hire all the lawyers and everything to cut through their regulation so the efficiency you get from that is is exponential it builds on itself okay assuming that uh states are unable to dictate to the federal government changes in policy in dealing with states what are the what is a reform at the state level that new hampshire has adopted that other states could uh could emulate i got to be honest our we have an executive council our executive council is a five individuals they are elected every two years independently and and they represent about a fifth of the state each and they are essentially a checks and balance on the governor and they approve virtually every contract in this state they meet now open public meeting every two weeks with the governor anyone can come to that meeting all the commissioners come from the state because they want they can be asked questions on any contract that comes up in the state and it get voted on and or up or down and because of that it really has forced all of our commissioners not just recently but literally over the past 200 years it forces them all to say well i'm going to be held to an open and public scrutiny on this i better make sure i've bid the process right i'm not just doing sole source contracts or making these things competitive and that inherently drives the cost down and just having the public uh openness and then secondly they they approve all of the the governor's uh their uh the approval body like the senate is for the president the executive council is for the governor so i can nominate who i want but the checks and balance on our commissioners and the third piece there is our commissioners because i get elected every two years you can't have every commissioner come in and out every two years so most of our commissioners are there four or five years governors inherit other governors commissioners sometimes for a period of years so it forces you to really make sure that you're putting the right people in for the job for the right reasons it takes a lot of the politics out of it and inherently makes the entire system much more efficient but most governors uh ours was created in 1680 the king george the third or the first actually created it uh most of the colonies had it and over time each governor has kind of knocked it out and if i could just bear with me chris christie was up here running for president and chris and i have become good friends and at one point i was an executive counselor and he said so you want to run for governor i said yeah he said no that's great but um you know what is this executive council thing it sounds like they have a lot of the the power and i said well it's the checks and balances and i explained it he said man why would you want to run for governor in a place like that that you know where you can't just do whatever you want now for those who don't know new jersey uh constitutionally has one of the strongest governors i mean the governor of new jersey can effectively do almost whatever they want with line item vetoes and bringing people in and out and employee at will and all that kind of stuff uh we here have a true checks and balance system because again we don't think any individual should have too much power because that can fundamentally corrupt the system so it's um it's a unique system it's hard for folks to accept that it's going to give you a better result but believe me if uh if all 50 states and the federal government adopted that type of checks and balance onto the system the efficiencies would just be tremendous we see it here in new hampshire and it's a big part of our new hampshire advantage and everybody across this country is going through tough times whether it's the anxiety of the pandemic the anxiety of the covet virus itself what's happening with their jobs what hap what's happening with the economy we're very blessed here in new hampshire that our covenant numbers are very low and our economy is very strong now we have a lot of work to do our original estimate was we're going to have a half a billion dollar budget gap that we had to manage and i've always said no matter what that gap is i don't need a new tax to do it in fact i think i can lower taxes frankly and spur more business activity which fundamentally helps uh you know fund and make sure that the most essential programs of government can move forward so having that that efficiency is so important but you don't need new taxes you don't need new spending you don't if if your governor or your legislature is telling you have a revenue problem you don't you just don't there's always a better way to manage and there's always a a better way to innovate so there's hope there these are these are some pretty tough times but what i what i've seen and talking to other governors specifically democrat governors if i may is yeah we we need more revenue we need more this you know this is a crisis so we're going to have to go out and and and raise taxes and i keep saying guys in an economic crisis that's the last thing you should be doing kicking people when they're down asking for another buck out of their pocket when they don't have it to give in those models that's putting government first in new hampshire we put individuals and businesses first it's that simple so when times are tough we want to give you the opportunity and open the and open that and it just baffles me when when i see so many folks out there that are putting government first over those individuals and when you have that change in just that simple change in perspective amazing things can happen we're we're not perfect here by any means i mean new hampshire has a lot of issues that we have to deal with but um but we do try to i think stay true to our model because fundamentally our success is built on 200 years of of staying true to that and it's working new hampshire advantage live free or die right live for your diet it is not four words on a license plate it's just how we do it here in new hampshire chris sununu is the republican governor of new hampshire he received an a on the cato institute's fiscal policy report card for governors released earlier today subscribe to the cater daily podcast anywhere you please and follow us on twitter at catopodcast