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In this episode of Leave Us Alone, Grover Norquist teams up with Mike Palicz, James Erwin, and Rowan Saydlowski to break down the latest wins for taxpayers—and the battles ahead.

The team covers:

  • Two Florida special election victories that strengthen the pro-taxpayer majority in Congress
  • The critical push to make the Trump tax cuts permanent using a “current policy” baseline
  • Why Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” plan must include gig workers and independent contractors
  • A major executive order gutting the influence of Big Labor in national security agencies
  • The fall of USPS Postmaster Louis DeJoy and the betrayal of his taxpayer mission
  • Updates on overdraft fees, de-banking regulation, and inside-the-swamp tax hike leaks

From exposing union abuses to defending small businesses from stealth tax hikes, this episode is packed with policy, political insight, and a few well-earned laughs. If you’re ready for lower taxes and less government, don’t miss it.

Show Notes:

Apple Podcasts:

Spotify:

Transcript:

Grover Norquist: [00:00:00] Welcome to Leave Us Alone, the podcast that Champions Individual Freedom and Limited Government. I’m Grover Norquist, and today we’re gonna be talking about politics, recent elections, taxes, tariffs, collective bargaining, and other good stuff. If you’re new here, this show is about one simple idea: 

Government should stay out of our lives. Our coalition, A Leave Us Alone coalition, includes taxpayers, gun owners, homeschoolers, small businessmen, everybody who wants the government to simply leave them alone. Today we’re joined by Rowan, Mike, and James. And we’re gonna be talking about a number of things, but guys, I’m gonna toss this out on the table, 

We had some elections. What happened?  

James Erwin: Well, there are two new members of the house, both out of Florida. There were two nominees from the Florida Congressional Delegation for the Trump administration. One Michael Waltz [00:01:00]  was confirmed as National Security Advisor. The other, Matt Gaetz as you like to say, Grover, had too many girlfriends, so he did not make his nomination as Attorney General. 

And instead, we have the lovely and talented Pam Bondi, also out of Florida, but not a member of Congress. Either way, both of those seats were vacant, so there were special elections to fill them. And we had Jimmy Patronis win the Panhandle seat in the Pensacola area, that had been Matt Gaetz’s, and we had Randy Fine, our newest pledge signer for the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. When Michael Waltz’s district, formerly that of Governor Ron DeSantis actually, which is in Western Florida, or sorry, Eastern Florida, around the villages and sort of the, just north of the Space Coast, I guess. I’m not quite sure what you would call that area, but, and I know they’re villages, isn’t it? 

Grover Norquist: Patronis was the Treasurer or Comptroller?  

James Erwin: He was the Chief Financial Officer of Florida.  

Grover Norquist: That’s it.  

James Erwin: Which is a unique position they have. 

Grover Norquist: Yeah.  

James Erwin: But it’s the equivalent of their… 

Grover Norquist: and he was a pledge taker and somebody I’ve worked with a lot in Florida. So a good friend of taxpayers there. A nice pickup on as they move forward. 

James Erwin: There was a lot of talk down in Florida. Yeah, I was gonna say there was a lot of talk that, uh, the Dems were really mobilizing and oh, we’re gonna lose these deep red seats [00:02:00] but everybody trusted the process. Randy signed the pledge and, the election came out favorably for both of them,  

Mike Palicz: And I think coming out with about 15 and 20 point margins, I think respectfully. 

And, you know, I think important here in DC gives house Republicans a little bit more breathing room. Although they still have a tight majority. I think we have now moved the vote margin to Republicans can now afford to lose three Republican votes on any vote and still pass a bill. So still tight, but slightly more breathing room for Speaker Johnson and House Republicans.  

Grover Norquist: Well, the last time we had a fight, there were two problem people at the end. The president had to make phone calls, a lot of meetings, and we could only afford to lose one. There were three that were misbehaving or thinking about it. We could have just moved on without all that drama if we didn’t need the extra two guys there. So, the difference between one and the three vote margin is a, is a bigger deal than you might think.  

Mike Palicz: And in these races we’re a little bit tighter considering how red the [00:03:00] districts are. But I think it’s fair to say that in the special elections, normal rules don’t really apply. 

So it’s not the best indicator here, but I think more, most importantly, you know, Democrats thought this could be an early victory for them. And that was simply not the case and still lost by. Double digit margins.  

James Erwin: And then there was one other house member who was tapped for the Trump administration Elise Stefanik, who was his nominee for the ambassador to the United Nations. 

She that nomination has been withdrawn, so she will be remaining in the house for the foreseeable future. A lot of that seemed to have to do with the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul not wanting to play ball fairly on when she was going to schedule the special election. The governor of each state obviously has a different level of discretion about when to schedule it. 

It seemed like the governor of New York wanted to use as much as liberal, a reading of her discretion as possible to delay that election as long as possible once the vacancy was created. So, just decided not to create the vacancy. She secured our three vote margin and ready to proceed with the one big, beautiful bill [00:04:00] that has been in progress for a while. 

Mike Palicz: And some credit there to Elise Stefanik too, for being a team player that helped protect the house majority. She had already stepped down from her house leadership position in anticipation of her confirmation. But I believe they’re restoring her to the leadership team, although in a new capacity, I believe. 

Grover Norquist: And as you go from. The issue of poli- of policy and politics, rather. Two, what happens on taxes and tariffs, I’m looking here at some polling data, not just the elections, but do Democrats think highly or poorly of the Democratic Congress, of the Democrat Caucus and Congress? 40% of Democrats approve of the Democrats in Congress and their behavior, 49%. 

So they’re upside down. They’re underwater in Democrats being happy with the Democratic House leadership and just the membership of the Democratic Party. And now, not too long ago, was 75% approval of the Democrats in the house. So that is a collapse worthy of some [00:05:00] note as we move forward. Trump tax cuts moving forward early. 

Mike Palicz: We’re gaining some momentum here. It is Thursday in the week here, and we’re expecting as early as tonight. The Senate can bring up its budget resolution, paving the way for the Senate’s step towards making the Trump tax cuts permanent. Crucially here, what the Senate has done has included the use of a current policy baseline, which we’ve talked about the importance of here. 

And that essentially allows, reflects the reality that what we’re doing here is preventing a tax increase from happening and not require any offsets. Any new, you know, tax increases for the continuation of current policy of the Trump tax cuts. Grover, can you tell us a little bit more about the importance there? 

Grover Norquist: Well, this, you’re quite correct. We’re not actually cutting taxes here. We are simply continuing the tax cuts that Trump and the Republicans passed in 2017. Now about 10% of that has eroded. It begins to, you know, they take it down the faster [00:06:00] depreciation slowed a couple years ago. So about 90% of the Trump tax cuts are still there, and they will be made permanent from present policy, and you don’t have to pay for it because it’s already there. 

You just projecting it out in the future. About 10%, maybe 400 billion over a decade is gonna have to be, quote unquote, “paid for with offsetting permanent spending restraint” like entitlement reform or tax increases. And some people were arguing, we should have to make, we should have to pay for 5 billion, 5 trillion, trillion, trillion, $5 trillion every decade into the future. 

A hundred percent. Those were the people who really didn’t want the tax cuts to exist ever. Not then, not now. And the good guys won. And we are now gonna be able, the one thing this will give us is certainty for decades into the future. It’s a vote for infinite, the end of the future, the lower rates that we had in 2018, 2019, 2020, [00:07:00] that will give us faster depreciation, that will give us more R&D tax credits; it gives us lower rates for every American citizen; for small businesses, for big businesses, the big difference is the certainty, not worrying about it, and that’s why people can start investing. Now, the stock market bopping around partially ’cause they didn’t know what we were gonna do with taxes. There was every reason to believe the Republicans could never have gotten this through the house. 

And we only had a one vote margin and we only got it with no votes to spare on that. And on the Senate side, you could have imagined things going wrong too. They’re not going wrong. The President, the House and the Senate are on the same page. It’s amazing. I haven’t seen that much cooperation in past years. 

Mike Palicz: And a couple other points here, just on current policy baseline specifically, because I think folks are gonna hear this more ’cause this is what the left and the media, but I repeat myself, are gonna grab onto. I think extremely important to point out that one Democrats used to like current policy baseline when President Obama was in office, and the Obama [00:08:00] administration specifically argued for the use of current policy baseline when he was in office, when we were extending the Bush tax cuts. 

And so thought that was the appropriate way to view this. So Democrats in the past have supported this. I think for anyone to, it’s important to keep in mind that what we wanna do here is we wanna cut taxes and cut spending in this bill. And the biggest step to cutting future spending is to prevent any future cliff in which the tax cuts would expire. 

If we had a split government, right now, Democrats had either the House or the Senate, they would be demanding more Green New Deal spending like they did in the Inflation Reduction Act. And they’d be, you know, supporting a blowout of subsidies and handouts and a huge child tax credit. 

You know, all things that are gonna be massive spending. That would be hung over Republicans heads in exchange for continuing tax cuts. So we avoid that future disastrous scenario by making the tax cuts permanent. Current policy baseline gets us permanency.  

Grover Norquist: Yes. And so [00:09:00] we are avoiding trillions and trillions of spending that would happen if we didn’t get this done this way, now.  

Mike Palicz: And now Grover, we do have a bad tax idea that was reported that needs to be slapped down, that hopefully has been slapped down sufficiently. And that was on Friday of last week. We had Axios report that anonymous staffers in the White House, it’s always anonymous, were reportedly considering allowing the top individual tax brackets to expire to go to the back towards the Obama higher level for individual taxes which would be a massive tax increase on small businesses putting in place a higher top rate on 26 million small businesses. 

And the ones that aren’t paying that rate, of course, hope to grow in one day, pay the top rate.  

Grover Norquist: 26 million small businesses, and it was some unnamed Trump’s staffer, White House staffer, or one or two. Who claimed that this would be a smart move for the Republicans and that it was being considered, they’re [00:10:00] claiming not just that this was their idea, but that it was like the White House’s idea and we could expect it at any moment. 

Mike Palicz: And, of course, the first person to seize on this outside of the White House was former Trump advisor who has been fired by Trump, Steve Bannon, who also in 2017. Wanted Trump to raise taxes on the top bracket in small businesses.  

Grover Norquist: Which does make it sound a little bit like what the House and the Senate people think it was, which is an effort by staff to jam the President and to say, you know, how could staff jam the president? 

Well, Dick Darman did that to George Herbert Walker Bush, convinced him to support a tax increase. Smartest man in the world, he thought and said, you should vote, you should do this tax increase. It’ll be very popular. He pushed Bush out into traffic, and the traffic ran right over him. And so instead of being remembered as the guy who won the Cold War, which he did, managed to collapse the Soviet Union, He’s remembered as a guy who lied his way into office and raised taxes not, you know, not what you want said at your [00:11:00] funeral.  

Mike Palicz: James was there, correct me if I’m wrong, was there a sighting of Steve Bannon with someone notable yesterday?  

James Erwin: Oh, that’s right, yes. Was it he was welcoming the beloved Lena Khan onto his podcast. This is the now former chair of the FTC that had been appointed by President Biden. This is a woman who had never served in any capacity, either private practice dealing with antitrust law or any like real government role, who basically got in by virtue of writing a law review article when she was a law student about why tech companies who are the most successful in America, that have been driving most of our economic growth in the last few years, really tech and energy have been the two sectors where we’ve been succeeding, should be broken up for being too big. Now, has there been any demonstrable harm to consumers because of this? No. It’s just vibes. They’re too big. I don’t like it. 

Mike Palicz: And Lina Kahn controversially, I believe, was just campaigning with several Democratic candidates, probably illegally. 

James Erwin: Yes. That is also true during the election cycle. But the fact that Steve Bannon is [00:12:00] cozying up to people like her, I mean, and calling for tax increases, then as he is now, just confirms that he’s really more a creature of the left who’s trying to socialize these ideas and I think, or to use advisedly. 

Mike Palicz: Any hint too of where you know, anonymous leaks in the White House are probably coming from it should be known that’s you know, what, where this effort is coming from. Yes. I think it’s important for folks to know, but the good news on this is we did have the full house leadership team slap this down Monday morning with Punchbowl Reporting that Speaker Johnson said, I’m never for raising income taxes. Period. Whip Emmer, Tom Emmer, of Minnesota apparently whipped his head back and said, “ha ha, ha ha. No, never.” And Steve Scalise the leader of the house, said, “no, no, no” when asked about this. 

James Erwin: Surely now Mike, surely we can get a better laugh than that. Yeah. Belly laugh. Ho ho ho ho. 

Mike Palicz: And then we had the wall editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal in the National Review come out against the idea of raising taxes on the top bracket. So if this was a trial balloon from White House staff, I think it has [00:13:00] been sufficiently shot down. 

And we were part of that effort as well, reminding folks of just exactly what President Trump has been said and what his position is and what he campaigned on. So we have a clip of that. If we can play,  

Donald Trump: The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this congress to pass tax cuts for everybody. They’re in there. They’re waiting for you to vote cuts. We’re seeking permanent income tax cuts all across the board. Instead of a Biden tax hike. I’ll give you a Trump middle class, upper class, lower class business class. Big tax cut. You’re gonna have the biggest tax cut. I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent. 

You know, they expire in a year. And we will cut your taxes even more than that. I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent. You know, they expire in a year, and we will cut your taxes even more than that.  

Grover Norquist: Here [00:14:00] you have the president saying again and again that he wants to take all taxes down, and there were people on his staff who, the taxpayers have money stolen from them, pay the salaries of these jerks, who then say, “you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna turn the president and make him into a liar. I’m gonna stab him in the back and convince people that he should, that he didn’t mean it, that he was lying when he ran and said, ‘we’re gonna reduce taxes across the board for everybody.’” There’s something rotten in Denmark there. This is this is not good. 

I hope the president pays attention to this little effort of a coup.  

Mike Palicz: Yeah, and I think that’s why it’s so important that we did have quick action to slap this idea down and shoot down the trial balloon. Obviously anonymous staffers should not be going to left-wing media like Axios to completely undermine what the president’s campaign promise was. 

So I think hopefully it’s been shot down. I think any idea that Trump isn’t going to be the largest tax cutting president we’ve had is ridiculous. And obviously something, I don’t [00:15:00] think the president’s gonna raise taxes on small businesses.  

James Erwin: And one last thing on this. One thing that Tom Emer and Mike Johnson and Donald Trump have in common that this anonymous source does not. 

They all won elections in November of 2024. If you did not win an election in you’re a staffer, is not your place to be doing this sort of thing, especially when you work for an administration that has made a priority out of getting rid of unelected bureaucrats and restraining their power over the American people. 

Grover Norquist: Good point. Good point. Next, collective bargaining. Unions in the federal government. How’d that happen?  

Rowan Saydlowski: Well, we had a big, big victory last week in terms of collective bargaining. How big? It’s massive. A massive, massive victory where President Trump wrote this executive order ending collective bargaining at federal agencies that deal with national security issues. 

ATR has long advocated for this policy. We have a memo that we had shopped around giving the legal basis for how the president can do this. Which is based in the Civil Service Reform Act of [00:16:00] 1978 which says that the president may issue an executive order, excluding any agency or subdivision thereof from the collective bargaining rights and rules. 

Grover Norquist: The President, not Congress, not the bureaucracy, not the Supreme Court. The President, full stop. He gets to, he or she, gets to decide yes or no, and President Trump spoke.  

Rowan Saydlowski: Yep. The president has the right to determine whether the agency has a national security primary purpose, and whether that national, those national security concerns make it so that unionization is not feasible. 

Right. It, it doesn’t work, and it, it makes the country less safe. President Trump wrote this executive order excluding many, many agencies adds up, according to media reports, to about 75% of the current federal unionized workforce. Their union bosses will no longer be able to negotiate against the taxpayer because of this executive order we’re talking about at the Department of Defense at Veteran’s Affairs [00:17:00] Administration the EPA at Treasury, at Energy. 

Some agencies are completely written out of collective bargaining. Some just have certain subdivisions cut out. But it’s a huge victory in reducing the union boss’s powers over the government. So a few weeks before this we had the TSA union lost its, yes, collective bargaining abilities as well. 

And in that report from the Department of Homeland Security, they revealed that 200 TSA employees were working full time on behalf of the union while earning their salary from the taxpayers. And doing no work to actually screen people at airports or anything of the sort. It’s a complete waste of taxpayer money. 

There is legislation that’s been proposed to roll back that ability of unions to, to pay workers to work for that or for to make the government pay workers to work for the union. The Protecting Taxpayers’ Wellness Act by Senator Ernst and Representative Scott Perry would make the [00:18:00] unions payback the government for those hours and any government resources they use to recover those taxpayer funds. 

Grover Norquist: That sounds like progress.  

Rowan Saydlowski: Absolutely. We were hoping it can get passed could possibly get stuck into a reconciliation or passed independently in the future,  

Grover Norquist: but to be clear, nothing needs, no legislation needs to pass to end the unionization of these workers and the government’s requirement that they negotiate with them on anything that’s done. 

And over the, what you’re talking about is separate subject of banning them from, if they exist as unions ever getting paid.  

Rowan Saydlowski: Yes that’s correct. The unions that deal with the national security issues, they are their collective bargaining abilities. Have been vanquished by this executive order that’s already gone,  

Grover Norquist: but that should, if they can’t bargain collectively, they obviously, the only way they get to steal taxpayer money and have the taxpayers give it to the union bosses is to negotiate that. 

So didn’t we not win both when we won that one? [00:19:00]  

Rowan Saydlowski: Well for those, for those national security agencies, we absolutely did. However, there’s still another 25% of those unionized workers. Their union bosses can take money from them, can take money from the government and support their union activities at our expense. 

Grover Norquist: Okay. And I would argue the IRS advertises when you go to work for the IRS, we are the only thing that stands behind between America and Barbarism. And if it wasn’t for us in the IRS taking everybody’s money and having national security and police there, nothing would work. So they claim to be all about national defense in their advertisements to come and work for them. 

So I think that we should include them in the future in one of, in national security, important department and ban unions at the IRS.  

James Erwin: Well, and if I may ask a quick question Rowan why, why don’t you explain to the folks exactly why collective bargaining for government unions is so bad?  

Rowan Saydlowski: Well, the central point of why it’s bad is because, who is the union negotiating against? 

Who are the union [00:20:00] bosses trying to fight against? It’s the taxpayers. At the end of the day the government is supposedly representing the American people and the taxpayers. It’s our money that’s taken to right now fund public unions. And through all the negotiations, the unions are collectively bargaining against us. 

Against you, the listener.  

James Erwin: And do you think the government does a good job representing our interests in these negotiations?  

Rowan Saydlowski: Not always. I would say quite often. No, they don’t. And especially when the government, right, as of right now, is funding both sides of the negotiation. Both the, you know, government agents negotiating with their employees and the union bosses that claim to represent those employees. 

Mike Palicz: And you’ve also got this problem of, you effectively have government workers paid with taxpayer dollars now lobbying the government with taxpayer dollars  

James Erwin: against the taxpayer’s interest. 

Mike Palicz: Against the taxpayer’s interest, right?  

James Erwin: Yeah, exactly. We’re paying for our own demise. I love it. Fantastic. 

Grover Norquist: Overdraft fees?  

James Erwin: Oh, yes. So we [00:21:00] talked a little bit in the last couple of episodes about overdraft fees. There have been some efforts to impose price controls. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is a creation of the Dodd-Frank Bill that has been dogging us for the last 15 years or so. 

Created this office. And in on the last minute in December they issued a midnight rule capping most overdraft fees at $5 for overdrafts at banks. And there have been a number of of efforts to combat this. We were happy to leave a coalition letter and we’ve published a number of blog posts about why they are bad. 

The Senate last week passed a CRA. That’s a resolution of disapproval that enables Congress to overturn a rule that has been promulgated as long as it’s within 60 legislative days of the passage of the rule. Don’t need to get into all the procedural ins and outs of that, but the Senate and the House both have to vote in favor and the President has to sign it. 

This president will sign it. It’s, as I said, the Senate passed it last week. The house was supposed to pass it this week. Unfortunately all house business ground to a halt [00:22:00] over a completely unrelated issue. Some Republicans defected and voted with all Democrats to defeat the rule. Again, we don’t need to get into all of the procedural ins and outs, but each week the house has to pass a rule to enable them to consider all the bills they want to vote on. 

That week. This one was brought down because there was a dispute over whether proxy voting should be restored for certain members of Congress.  

Grover Norquist: What was the name of the lead Republican who bucked the rest of the party and destroyed an entire week of work getting done for her own fantasy land.  

James Erwin: Yeah, that would be Tampa’s own Anna Paulina Luna, who by the way is also the co-sponsor of a bill to impose price controls on interchange fees,  

Grover Norquist: Price controls! 

James Erwin: I’m sorry price controls with, on interest rates. So even worse with, I believe a OC is the other sponsor, but it’s the Bernie Sanders, Josh Hawley bill in the Senate. 

So in addition to, to co-sponsoring that legislation, she is also ostensibly over proxy voting, which is when members get to vote without showing up to work which is something that Pelosi adopted when Democrats were in the majority during the [00:23:00] Covid pandemic. In practice, that meant that there were many members who were literally just doing media hits. Right? 

Talking to the press outside of the room when they should have been in the room voting and representing their constituents.  

Mike Palicz: And to remind people too that this led to the situation in which we had members who were out sick using proxy voting while really out, you know, on boating trips. Yeah. Or even worse, probably having members who were in the building. 

But not showing up for votes and just voting by proxy  

James Erwin: In the building, voting by proxy. Because they’d rather be on TV than do their job and represent their constituents. There was also the infamous case of the guy from Hawaii who was an airline pilot and he was flying airplanes. He was working full time drawings, salary, that story, and also, yeah. 

And then also drawing a taxpayer salary. But voting by proxy, by delegating someone else to do it for him. David Toan lives in the Maryland suburbs. He lives not 20 miles from where we’re sitting right now. He represents one of the districts adjacent to Washington DC and he voted by proxy more than 30 times I believe. It may have been even higher than that.  

Mike Palicz: And the key point here of the opposition to this from Speaker Johnson and the vast [00:24:00] majority of House Republicans is, what is the limiting principle here? If you allow voting per proxy, if you let it for one thing. Not even really a slippery slope, but you can see how quickly it’ll be abused. 

And you know that Democrats, the first time they’re in power are gonna push the boundaries on this.  

James Erwin: Yeah, absolutely. And so that’s what the dispute was ostensibly over. But Anna Pal Luna has now not only co-sponsored the terrible bill on credit cards, she has now also delayed a key vote to overturn this price control on overdraft fees. 

And just to quickly explain. As we have in the last couple of episodes, overdraft fee. I mean, overdrafts are when you don’t have money in your bank account and the bank basically extends you an emergency line of credit by letting you overdraw your account so you can make your rent or you can pay whatever you have to hopefully getting the money back quickly. 

But they can’t just let people do that willy nilly. So. There is a fee for doing so much like an interest payment. It’s very, it’s not quite a loan ’cause it’s a different type of financial product, but at the end of the day, I mean, they have to indemnify themselves against losing the money entirely if you never pay it back. 

And they [00:25:00] have to impose some sort of moral hazard on you for, you know, overdrawn for taking out money you don’t have. And this is perfectly reasonable because if they don’t do that well, then they’ll just either have to drain the savings of the people who do not overdraw their accounts to subsidize the people who do or more likely they just won’t offer them at all. 

And so many people who are cash strapped will not have an emergency line of credit that they can easily repay with a bank with which they have a relationship. And rather, instead, they’ll probably turn to loan sharks or something like that. So it’s going to push people into the black market if you impose a price control and create a shortage on overdrafts. 

So anyway, hopefully this will pass in the near future. But Grover, you sent a letter to the house that everybody received encouraging them to swiftly pass this as the Senate has. We have a blog post on atr.org. The Senate has passed the CRA on overdraft fees. The house should follow suit. 

And if you’re enjoying the conversation, please take a moment to rate and review. Leave Us Alone on your favorite podcast platform. We promise we will not charge you any overdraft fees [00:26:00] ’cause it helps us read, reach more listeners who care about freedom. And don’t forget to share this episode with friends who value Liberty. 

Now back to the discussion.  

Mike Palicz: So Grover, we’ve gotten a little bit more detail on what no Tax for Tips might look like and some of the problems to avoid in drafting. We had a Wall Street Journal piece over the weekend. Making the case that independent contractors have to be included as part of no free tips. 

So these are things, you know, like Uber drivers, if everyone’s getting food deliveries hair salon owners who you know are hairstylists, who will typically rent out a booth in a salon are usually independent contractors. Lots of professions in which people would be surprised if they were not part of Tax Free Tips. 

No tax on tips. Grover, what are your thoughts on, in including independent contractors in this?  

Grover Norquist: Well, it’s particularly important to do so. One of the things that’s in the background here is that organized labor. The labor union bosses have been going around trying to outlaw tips. They wanna push up the minimum wage and then say no tips at all. 

And the reason [00:27:00] is they don’t like workers. People who, bartenders, waiters, waitresses, uber drivers who do a really good job. And get paid more ’cause of tips. And some people who don’t do a very good job, don’t get paid as much. ’cause tips, the union’s position is we need to treat everyone like as if they were robots. 

Okay? There’s no difference between them. They all get paid the same amount of money, whether they’re any good or not. And of course in personal service industries, it makes all the difference in the world how somebody treats a customer, whether they get something to your door quickly when you’re ordering dinner. 

People will tip for really good service. The union doesn’t want that to happen. They wanna say everybody gets X amount of dollars, whether you’re any good or not. And that is what they’re trying to protect by banning tips and if we’re gonna make tips tax free, it’ll become increasingly difficult for the unions to say, we ought to ban that with any success. 

They’ve been working in cities, city by city, trying to get this, the [00:28:00] idea of tips banned. It’s none of their business, but they think it’ll help them force people into being members of the union. And so this will protect workers against the union effort to take away their ability to have tips. 

Mike Palicz: And  that’s what I love most about Trump’s tax free tips plan, is we already saw the political impact of it, of how it cuts directly through union bosses and speaks to workers directly. 

We saw this when he introduced it, the culinary union, huge union in Nevada. They came out and they opposed tax free tips. Once Trump came out with it, weeks go by and they were forced to reverse their position because their membership loved it so much and knew how important it would be to them that they forced their union bosses to break ranks from Democrats and to support Trump’s idea on this. 

So it’s proven that it speaks directly to workers. What we can’t do now is avoid a situation in which we would punish independent contractors and create a massive incentive for them to be forced to be re-categorized as employees, essentially no longer [00:29:00] being their own boss in order to qualify for no tax on tips. 

And we look at efforts that Democrats have pushed to force everybody into a union like AB5 in California. If you have this incentive hanging out there where you have, you know, this incentive for workers. To be forced to be employees makes it much more politically difficult to fight back against. 

I think it’s critical we include them, no tax on tips. 

Grover Norquist: There are one, there are one or two Republicans in the Senate and Congress who say, I know how we reach middle income blue collar workers. We talk to their union bosses and then they’ll tell them to like us, okay? And we’ll give stuff to the union bosses and then the workers will appreciate it. 

They haven’t been paying attention. But over the last 50 years, people have been leaving labor unions not wanting to pay dues, not wanting somebody to tell them how to run their lives. And the number of people in labor unions is down from 53% of the workforce in the 1950s to under 10% now, and in the private sector about 7%. 

[00:30:00] So why in the world would these idiot Republican senators go, “I know how to talk to workers, don’t talk to workers, talk to the union bosses.” How insulting, how insulting, how foolish. Now union bosses are more likely to write you a check, and maybe that has something to do with it, but it really is bad, bad, bad news. 

And the good news is, as you were saying, the no tax on tips was Trump to workers. And then while the union bosses were against it, against it, still are against it. They had to at least say they were for it.  

Mike Palicz: And I think this is Trump’s most popular, most memorable political campaign promise that he made. 

I think when we’re doing the, when we’re setting this into policy, we really should avoid doing anything to water it down or would fall short of what the expectation is around this. And I think people would be shocked to find out that their Uber driver or food delivery person, which is probably one of the areas they’re tipping the most, don’t qualify for tax free tips. 

So I think it’s critical that we include this [00:31:00] as part of the tax bill.  

Grover Norquist: Yeah. And Ted Cruz has legislation to get this done, and he’s looking to put that into the legislations.  

Mike Palicz: Yeah, I think the, I think it’s a question more of how to fix this now rather than the political will to do it. I think one of the ideas that’s been floated out there, the slight complication, this is that existing independent contractors tax forms, like 10-99s they’d have to change the forms themself to account for tipped income. 

So I think just thinking through things like that of how to technically go about it. But I think the will politically there, to include these people, will be, we will be will push through.  

James Erwin: Yes. First of all, I need to issue a correction from the beginning of the show. We said Randy Fine was the Chief Financial Officer of Florida. 

We got him mixed up. Oh, yeah. Jimmy Petronas was the other the one who won Gates’ seat. Randy Fine. Was a state senator. So I apologize. I think we just mixed that up whenever we’re talking about.  

Grover Norquist: Both fine gentlemen.  

James Erwin:  Yeah, both Patronis gentlemen. So one last thing I wanted to mention as well. So the CRA on overdraft fees was introduced by Senator Tim Scott in the Senate. 

We also recently discussed in this podcast his other recent introduction, which is of the Firm Act. Yes. And this is to address concerns [00:32:00] over de banking. We’ve talked, we talked a little bit in the last couple weeks about Operation Choke Point and Operation Chokepoint 2.0, where regulators have used this nebulous category called reputational risk. 

Which as Grover recently said, some they claim that they care about the reputation of the bank more than the bank does absurdly. But they’re using that as a regulatory category to get the banks to stop doing business with firearms manufacturers, ammunition manufacturers, crypto dealers, and potentially with disfavored political groups of various kinds. 

So, there’s ba some states are pursuing these de banking laws where they’re trying to grant their citizens like basically a constitutional right to a bank account. While well intentioned, this will have a bad unintended consequence, which is that it will basically ruin bank’s ability to specialize in different types of business, and it will also infringe on freedom of association for banks. 

The better thing to do is to pursue the Firm Act, which Senator Scott has introduced, this will take Reputational [00:33:00] risk away from the regulators as a tool. And in the meantime, President Trump is making appointments and issuing executive orders that will put an end to all of this. So the current regulators are not going to steer the banks in this direction holding a gun to their head, threatening them with fines and unless they exit the accounts of people they don’t like that they’re currently not going to do that. Senator Tim Scott is working to get this bill passed so that that tool is taken out of their toolkit permanently. What states can do in the meantime is just support Congress. States don’t want to be passing bills that infringe on freedom of association, and they certainly don’t wanna be passing bills that will then be preempted by federal law in some way. 

They might have to go back and fix later. So, I want to give a shout out to a state senator in Texas. We’ve been working at the state level on this and hope hopefully Texas will be a model for the nation as it has been in so many other things. But State Senator Tan Parker introduced a resolution praising 

The, the Firm Act and the work of the Trump administration on this and calling upon Congress and the Texas Congressional Delegation. And hopefully it’ll pass and, and they’ll see it to support this effort. And if we can [00:34:00] get more states to do that, we can get more members of Congress on board with this effort and restore financial freedom to the American people. 

Mike Palicz: And Grover, one last light item to touch on. While I would not say we’re entirely motivated by political vendettas here at ATR we do like to see our enemies fail. And that this week since our last podcast, we had the resignation of Postmaster General Lewis DeJoy who we consider to be a turncoat against President Trump. 

Someone who was brought in to lower costs at the post office and reformed the place but after Trump left office had completely switched towards supporting the Biden agenda. Essentially unionizing the workforce and moving forward with things like electric vehicle post trucks and bragging about it. 

Rowan, can you feel fill in a little more detail about the work of Louis DeJoy and why people should be happy? He has been forced out at the postal service.  

Rowan Saydlowski: Absolutely. As you said, Louis DeJoy came into his position under President Trump, selected [00:35:00] by the Postal Board of Governors that had been appointed by President Trump. 

And DeJoy had promised to bring financial stability back to the USPS. Unfortunately, after his five years there, four and a half, or so things have only gotten worse. The postal service reported a $9.5 billion loss in 2024 even though it had been predicted to only lose 8 billion that year. So it did even worse than the terrible predictions. 

And that’s up from a $6.5 billion loss in 2023. So things are only getting worse. This is in part because DeJoy, to keep his job during the Biden administration, decided to fully embrace the postal unions even being caught on tape talking about how he wants to insource everything at USPS to their 100% unionized workforce.  

Mike Palicz: I believe his quote was to the postal service union comrades, 

“How come you’re not celebrating me?” As reported by a friend of the show, [00:36:00] Washington Reporters, Matt Fody. Caught on video was Louis DeJoy saying that probably the low point of a low tenure as postmaster general. So we’re glad to see him go.  

James Erwin: Did you remember when the Democrats were freaking out ’cause he was gonna steal the election for Trump in 2020, because I remember that. 

Grover Norquist: Yes, that’s right. I have not spent a more painful half hour, 40 minutes than the one listening to him explain how he was going to build up a government run post office to, and all the money he was gonna spend at it, and he was gonna use the law to stop other people from competing with him. It was, it, I thought he was French or something. 

It was, it was ridiculous.  

Mike Palicz: Certainly not a friend of the taxpayer.  

Grover Norquist: No, no. Complete contempt for taxpayers. This was his play thing.  

James Erwin: So no Ode to DeJoy Rowan?  

Mike Palicz: Yeah. Everyone should go read Owen’s Post, which has I think one of the top five all time ATR blogpost titles, which is No Ode to [00:37:00] DeJoy.  

Grover Norquist: Very good. 

Okay, well that’s it for today’s episode of Leave Us Alone. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this discussion valuable, please rate, review and share the podcast. It helps us reach more freedom-loving listeners, we’ll be back next time with more insights on protecting your liberty. Until then, I’m Grover Norquist reminding you to cherish your freedom and keep pushing for a government that leaves us alone.