Gov. Mike Braun Joins In-Studio!

Nigel (0:01)

You're listening to The Hammer and Nigel Show. Hello, everybody. My name is Nigel Jason Hammer, right over there with a very special and esteemed guest, live in studio.

Jason Hammer (0:12)

He is the governor of our great state of Indiana. Governor Mike Braun joins us. Mr. Governor, how are you?

Mike Braun (0:20)

I'm very good. Good to be back on.

Jason Hammer (0:22)

So let's get into this gas tax holiday reimbursement. OK, this is the fourth gas tax holiday reimbursement. This came out earlier today.

Where's the money going? Where the money come from?

Mike Braun (0:36)

So the money is going to the local, so there's no mystery to it. It had about a three month leg, which we predictably been replenishing each time, and we will throughout the whole journey of the gas tax reprieve. So I've got one more swipe at that in early November, but it's been out there publically that they're going to be 100% reimbursed. And the state portion as well, we've got the reserves there. And I didn't do any of these reprieves without making sure that you had the state leaders in line with it. So, and it's what we've done in the state in a short period of time.

No other place could afford it, but when you're running our state government that much more efficiently and your revenues are that much higher than forecast, we could do it. And to me, a gas tax reprieve went to where it was needed most. As you're looking at that weekly or every two weeks, and it's saved about $140 million per month for Hoosiers, the only place in the country until I think recently, maybe Louisiana, Arizona, two other states have copied it for a month or so.

Jason Hammer (1:49)

So let's say I'm a gambling man. Let's say you do this one more time. You say you've got one more chance to do this. Let's say you do it after that. Do we go back to having some of the highest gas tax prices in the country?

Mike Braun (2:02)

No, we'd be probably in the middle because our cost of gasoline, including the taxes, was stacked up about in the middle. The highest costs are going to be probably in your blue estates because they tax the hell out of gasoline and they have for a long time.

Jason Hammer (2:22)

Man, I was just in Arizona.

Nigel (2:24)

Man, the further west I feel like you get, the higher it is. And Hobbs is just an awful governor out there.

Mike Braun (2:33)

Yeah, and you get to California and you're going to get the max.

Jason Hammer (2:36)

Governor Mike Braun with us. Touch on a couple of different topics here. Let's talk about how we're doing as a state with jobs and the economy. How are we doing? Are we working? Are we making money?

Mike Braun (2:46)

We're doing as well as you can be doing in the difference between January of 25 and now October of 26

Our unemployment rate was 4%, maybe a little above 3.3%. That's uncharted, low territory. Don't hear much about it because mainstream media isn't interested in promoting it. But when you're doing it, it is a fact and it gives us so many advantages.

Imagine the number of people not on unemployment benefits. You got to make sure you're teasing enough people back into the workforce because companies are going to need that. So there's some challenges with it, but I don't know of any other governor that would be not proud of the fact that you got a 3.3% unemployment rate. And along with it, we're growing twice as fast as Illinois and Ohio, three times as fast as Kentucky, six times as fast as Michigan. And people are voting with their feet. We're the only state in the northern half of the country that we got folks moving into it. Fort Wayne, fastest growing city in the Midwest. You know where the bulk of the people are coming from? Chicago, which surprised me.

Jason Hammer (4:02)

Now, are they moving here and then voting the same way that they left? Because that's always been counterproductive, I feel.

Mike Braun (4:08)

You're talking about places like Colorado and where Californians have exited.

Jason Hammer (4:13)

You see people leaving New York City and going to Nashville, for an example. And then I got friends that live in Nashville saying, these morons are doing the exact same thing here that they did in New York and that's why they left.

Mike Braun (4:23)

Some of them, but Florida is the best example. It's now a larger in population than New York. And it's been the beneficiary of New Yorkers conservatives. I mean, it's still a 40, 60 state, and that's shrinking a little bit because people are getting fed up with it. So they are the state that's benefited the most. Texas has had mostly conservatives moving into it.