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Jan. 18, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
38:57
Handouts can leave you addicted to the check
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Your navigator in a volatile world of investments.
You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast.
Before we get to the interview today, which is going to be a good one, if you ever wondered about the economics, you wonder about unemployment, you've wondered about, you know, how we do the job market, why people go to work, why people don't go to work, today's going to be a great episode.
We're going to get to it in just a few minutes.
The new labor commissioner, elected labor commissioner in the state of Georgia, Bruce Thompson, is going to be with us here in just a minute.
But I want to catch up on a few things.
Look, I mean, we're in the middle of the week.
The first week of the playoffs is over, the football playoffs.
It was a pretty amazing weekend when you look at some of the comebacks.
I mean, things that you thought you would never see in playoff football.
Number one, four misses in a point after attempts by a single kicker in a single game.
And they still kicked it, which was what was amazing to me.
And then also you had a quarterback throw four interceptions in the first half and throw four touchdown passes in the second half.
I think this just shows that playoff football is alive and well.
We're going to get some more of that action coming up.
Pretty soon.
Also, you gotta say, you know, Dallas made it past the first hurdle.
We'll see if they make it past that Philadelphia hurdle if they make it that far, you know, coming up in the near future.
So, we've got that into play.
But also, some other things coming up since last time we talked, the Biden document scandal just continues to get worse for the Biden administration.
And here's some real interesting, you know, developments.
And everybody tries to say that the Democrats are coming out saying these are different, the Trump and the Biden are different.
Well, no matter what you say there, the problem is it's no longer a talking point for the Biden administration.
They can no longer, you know, sort of, so this is just a Trump problem and not their problem.
They have a problem, too.
But some big differences have been occurring more and more, and that is, you know, number one, at the time these documents were there, Joe Biden was not president.
He had no declassification authority.
There was the finding of this.
National Archives didn't know they were there.
I mean, there's just so many different things here.
And no matter what is coming about with Trump and whether he should have been negotiating, shouldn't have been negotiating, again, irrelevant calls here.
The way the FBI handled that situation with the Trump documents, and now the way we're seeing the FBI, even with a special counsel, seemingly handle the Biden issue, I think is leaving a lot of people out there continuing to confirm that You know, that discussion that there's two sets of justice standards out there.
There's two sets.
There's one for those in power, and there's one for those that are not.
Or maybe there's just one for liberals and one for conservatives.
And I think that's becoming more and more of an issue.
We're going to watch this grow.
This is not going away.
I mean, just think of the questions that can be asked here.
And we'll continue to examine this here on the podcast.
I mean, nobody had control of access where this was.
This is not just regular documents.
These are top secret documents.
There's things that are going on that will be investigated.
James Comer and his group in the House Oversight Committee, I'm sure, will have a field day with that.
But again, it's just continuing to get worse.
So for those people last week who were saying...
Oh, this is just a few papers.
Well, you know, it's not just a few papers and it continues to get worse.
And there's no real oversight here.
So hopefully, you know, the special counsel will be doing something about this.
But before I get into today's episode, I have to talk about Sheila Jackson Lee.
Sheila Jackson Lee is a congresswoman from Texas.
I served with her.
Sheila Jackson Lee has an amendment for everything, an idea for everything, and has never failed to meet a mic in a speech that she didn't want to give.
She gives more one minute.
She gives more, you know, basically extension of remarks than almost any other member.
But she's now come up with something that should be very concerning, and it is a bill that comes up.
It's called Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023. It would not make it just a federal crime to commit a crime that was inspired by white supremacy.
In other words, sort of the takeoff of the hate crime legislation acts here and enhancements.
But it would also make it a crime to post something on social media that promotes white supremacy views if someone else sees it and then commits a crime.
This is, you know, starting to draw the attention of everybody from Jonathan Turley and everybody else on down.
But listen to that.
If you post something, they go out and do something, and somehow you're viewed as white supremacy.
Again, just an overt attack on the First Amendment.
I just, you know, again, Sheila Jackson Lee, I think, knows better than this.
I think this is a...
A statement bill that she wants people to talk about or draw attention to.
But at the end of the day, folks, we've got to quit playing fast and loose with the Constitution.
Playing fast and loose with the Constitution is not a good idea.
And when it comes to the issues of speech, remember, I've said it here on this podcast before, I'll say it again.
The First Amendment exists for speech that you do not like.
It protects the speech that actually makes you upset.
It is that kind of speech that is really protected.
It's political speech.
And by the way, it's a government actor here.
She's putting the government right in the middle of this.
And again, unconstitutional as it all comes, But, you know, just something to point out.
Sometimes up there in Washington, they put out these messaging bills to play to the base.
But at the end of the day, if enough people started thinking this was a good idea, then our constitutional values go downhill.
But that's just to catch up on some things that are happening this week here.
Can't wait.
We've got another edition of Stories You Won't Believe come Friday.
But today, I want you to dig into this.
There's a quote in this you won't want to miss.
It's called, Addicted to the Check.
It's addicted.
You know, there's certain value and infinite worth in finding a job.
Bruce Thompson, new labor commissioner in the state of Georgia, joins me today on the podcast.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
It is amazing how, you know, sometimes elections go smoothly and transitions go smoothly.
You know, I'm always wondering, what is it, you know, and again, you know, what does it gain you by not going smoothly, you know?
Well, you would think with all of the media's focus on the Department of Labor and fraud and challenges and so on, that an outgoing commissioner would want to have an amicable relationship with the incoming because, you know, I do now have the keys to allow access to anything and everything.
Yeah, it is pretty interesting, but I think there's a lot of life lessons there, Bruce.
We look at it from a perspective of business and life, and you think about it.
I'm really beginning to wonder, as we get into this this morning, how much of that is not being taught these days?
You and I are a little bit from a generation that...
And some nowadays may call it naive a little bit, but I don't think it is.
I think there's a place for human kindness.
I think even when you're mad, you know, there's a way that you can, you know, relate.
As long as, you know, I mean, again, you always have, you know, I guess blood feuds if you would, but for the most part, everything in life is not a fight.
Sure.
Well, growing up in Montana, you'd have fights just like you would anywhere else.
But you'd knock someone down and go, you had enough?
And when they'd had enough, you reached down and gave them your hand and you got back up and shoot, you'd become friends.
And what happens on the practice field or as a wrestler, what you did in practice, you worked like crazy trying to knock the guy off.
But once it was game time, you were one.
And we have got to get to the point where we're one.
Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all.
And I think we see that too much, in a sense, and, you know, frankly, as us, I think, as Republicans, we tend to take the other route.
But folks, you know, look, if you're just tuning in to us, we're having a conversation here with Bruce Thompson, new Labor Commissioner for the state of Georgia.
I'm very proud of him.
He has done a great job winning that election last year, coming in now to take over a very interesting department.
We'll get into that a little bit.
And I wanted to have Bruce on the podcast here for Across the Country-Wise.
Because we'll dig into it here a little bit, Bruce, about the labor issues, the marketplace, the workplace.
But you have a fascinating story, and especially with one of the biggest stories of last year from the pro-life, and you and I have connected on that issue before because both of us are very much pro-life in what we do.
Your story, tell people that story.
Where it comes from from you is very personal, your life story.
Yeah, pro-life is not a box I check.
My mom made some very poor decisions when she was younger.
She is nearing the end of her life, so she's not doing well.
But she's been married five times.
And in some of the choices she made, she wound up getting gang raped and working the streets and so on.
And I'm the byproduct of that.
So spent most of my adult or really childhood life with a stepdad that was an alcoholic and abuser physically as well.
But I always thought this other individual was my dad.
And I sought out to see who he was.
And as I got my secret clearance, found out that person was not my dad.
And so that's how I came to understand and was revealed to me that she actually didn't know who my dad was.
But it's interesting because The pro-life stance, I mean, we've gotten to a point in society now where we say all lives matter.
And I think we have to really understand all lives truly matter.
We can't just say it.
We can't say we're pro-life.
It's interesting.
Both of my children are newborn adoptions.
Many people have heard Faith sing.
She got the chance to sing the national anthem for Trump and Pence and had a couple of songs.
And she went to college over at Samford University in Birmingham.
And works as a co-worship leader over at that church as well as in the executive level at Lifetime Fitness.
So she's graduated, does very well.
But she was literally five minutes from being aborted.
Her mom wanted to abort because she didn't think she had any other options.
God allowed us to intervene and bring her into our home out of another state and care for her and then care for her faith who was born.
And then Max was our alcohol syndrome drug baby that has a little bit of Asperger's and the same thing.
They didn't think he would be...
Quote, productive in society, but fortunately, the parents couldn't bring themselves to abort, and they were looking for an opportunity to give that child to someone.
Max got the Presidential Award over at Riverside Military, or now called Riverside Prep School.
He's an honor student.
Is he a little different?
He's a little different, but I will tell you that my kids, and I'll show you real quick as we look at this, but my kids are...
They're just the all-American kids.
And so if you look at those two right there, You can see.
There they are.
There they are.
Max and Faith.
So we're pro-life because it matters.
And Doug, I believe that when we live what God has called us to do, people are different places in their life.
They come from different backgrounds.
But the truth of the matter is, if you'll just give the Lord an opportunity, you never know what He'll do with you.
And here I sit leading a constitutional office in the state of Georgia because for once in my life, I actually listened.
Yeah, I think that's a whole story we could probably go down together on that listening part.
It's interesting you should mention the Riverside Military Academy.
I'm a Gainesville boy, grew up and born and raised in Gainesville, been in the Air Force now for 20 plus years.
But the interesting part is it's always been Riverside Military Academy.
They used to go back and forth between Florida and Gainesville.
And now they have stayed, you know, for the last 30 years, I guess they've almost stayed completely in games.
But great school out there.
A free plug for them, Riverside Prep Academy, I think they've called it now.
But wonderful program.
I mean, a very high-motivated, high-academic program, you know, for folks.
It's cool to see him.
Again, and I take off of that...
Because, as you well know, Jordan, my daughter, has spina bifida, and we battle through the, you know, how do you overcome a physical disability with some slowness and stuff like that?
How do you deal with that?
And the world is hopefully coming around to the fact that there is different levels, but everyone has potential.
Everyone can do something.
God is an amazing God.
He gifts us with things that, you know, quote, normal people may not have, but he's gifted them.
I mean, the empathy out of my daughter and your kids, it's just things that I envy.
I mean, in a sense, I love to have.
Yeah, and again, as Republicans, that's what we should emulate.
And doggone it, as a party that is supposed to be engaging and supposed to really have a core principles in our life, sometime we miss that.
And listen, I'm honored to have the privilege to be able to do this.
We're going into an agency right now has been neglected.
The people have been neglected.
The agency has been neglected.
Shoot, even the building has been neglected.
I mean, we're finding rooms that stuff have been ripped off the walls.
But that gives us an opportunity to go in with grace.
And because of where we come from, because of what you and I as dads have seen raising children, hopefully it gives us the patience to be able to not only motivate, but also be able to dig in ourselves and be able to get that to a point where people can be proud again of who they are, what they do, and understand they matter.
Yeah, and you're a different, I think, character as far as coming back from your background.
You didn't just grow up, you know, in the last few years, all I wanted to do was work in government, being government, and, you know, now running God's speech.
I want people to understand, because I think this is important out there, is getting involved in the local level, getting involved in the state level, you know, and doing whatever, you know, you said listening to God, it tells you to...
Talk to us about how you, you know, you started a young age selling milk.
I mean, you know, there's a lot for everybody.
Give us your sort of background as we then prepare to talk about this labor, you know, department, labor commissioner job and everything else.
Yeah, Doug, it's interesting because people ask me, they said, do you have any brothers and sisters?
I said, we were so dysfunctional.
I didn't have halves.
I had quarters.
But my older half brother, it was his job on the farm.
We grew up in Montana, rural Montana.
What part of Montana, Bruce?
Between Great Falls and Havre, it's a little town called Big Sandy.
And for your listeners, there's a couple of important factors of a town of six, seven hundred.
Number one is I was a running back and my quarterback was Jeff Amitt that started Pearl Jam.
So a shout out to Jeff out there.
If anybody in the house, there we go.
Yeah.
And another friend, his name's Robin Williams, Colonel Williams.
He is the one that was the architect for the Pentagon for cybersecurity security.
So he did the structure that we follow in the United States for cybersecurity.
And then we had another individual that we tend to banter with a little bit, but that is U.S. Senator John Tester.
We all grew up in the same school, same town, knew each other.
But you grew up working hard, but you may disagree, but you learn to get together.
When it's 30 below zero, nobody cares what your denomination is or what your political affiliation is.
But my older brother's job was to milk the cow and I was to slop the hogs.
He was seven years older than I was.
So I'd have been between 10 and 11 years old and he was pouring it out all the time because we had so much milk.
And I thought, you know, we should do something with that.
So I asked him, I said, can I have the milk?
And he said, as long as you pasteurize the jars, because that was a dirty job.
You had to boil them and clean them and so on.
And I thought, well, shoot, why not?
So I started selling milk to the bus drivers for a buck a gallon.
And, you know, I didn't know what a union was or labor strike or anything.
And he said, man, this seems unfair.
I need some of that money.
And I said, no way, man.
We made a deal.
So he started pouring the milk out before he brought it up to the house.
And I said, dude, you're pouring out what I'm selling.
And he said, cut me in on the profits or I'm going to keep pouring it out.
I had to pay him a quarter of my dollar to make sure he wouldn't pour out the milk.
But it was still a good deal.
I went to school on a wrestling scholarship, broke my kneecap.
That ended that for Montana State Northern.
Went into the Army National Guard and went through Tank Command School and then returned home.
There were no jobs.
So got on my motorcycle road non-stop out to California and went to work as an apprentice electrician.
And about seven months into it, they asked me, I guess they identified me as a hard worker.
If I'd be willing to relocate to South Florida at a plant.
I was 22 years old.
I'd never been to South Florida.
There was no Google or Yahoo, but there was this magazine that said it was cheaper to live there and I was keeping the same pay.
So I piled everything in my truck, tarped it off, and I put a trailer behind for my motorcycle and headed south.
And wound up down there and I lasted a week because they went through a strike.
They were breaking windshields and they were keying cars.
And I just couldn't live in that environment.
That was my truck.
And even though the company was willing to pay for it, that wasn't the point, Doug.
It was mine and I just couldn't work in that environment.
So that led me to start another company where I was doing shopping center work, doing all of their tenant improvement work, and then went into the cover business and grew that company.
A series of companies later, I started them and sold them.
I was headed back out west and stopped in Georgia and spent the night.
I was supposed to report in three weeks to Boulder, Colorado, and it was snowing.
It was below zero and it kept snowing.
It was nice here, so I stayed.
And went up through the Home Depot ranks in management while I started some other companies.
And then honestly, I started some insurance companies up in North Georgia.
And somebody said, you need to join the Chamber of Commerce.
I honestly didn't realize what the Chamber of Commerce did, had never been a participant.
And I went and joined because it was the thing to do.
Check the box.
And before you know it, I was leading a group and then became one of their executive members on their board and was in line to become the chamber chairman for 2012. That really led me to what you're talking about, and that is somebody handed me a book.
And it's a plug that I continue to praise and we're bringing it into the Department of Labor.
And the book is Lead for God's Sake.
It's by Todd Gongler.
And it says you don't get to choose to be a leader because you are a leader.
Someone is watching you.
It might be one child.
It might be one neighbor.
It may be 1,200 employees.
It could be hundreds of thousands of people like you, Doug.
But the reality is we're influencing somebody.
So just engage it.
Exactly.
Well, and I think that's so important these days.
And we sort of started our conversation off today, Bruce, with this discussion of people.
In your mind, I mean, in some ways have we lost the idea that what we're doing is about other people?
And I think we get wrapped around the axle.
And look, policy's great.
Look, you'll hear me talk policy all day long.
But if you ever divorce what I say the two Ps, the policy and principle part, this is what I think Republicans actually have the advantage because we have good policies and we believe in the people.
As opposed to a more liberal tradition that says they may have policy, but they believe that people are subject to the policy.
We believe that people can actually do that.
How does that translate into now working at an agency that's inherently your job is to look at people in labor market?
Yeah, I mean, it's real important.
Again, I'm bringing this book in and the book goes in and says you lead with a hatchet or you lead with a heart.
Sometimes you got to have a stick.
You got to have some authoritative rule.
But then you honestly look at people with a heart.
And how do you do that?
Well, number one is people think a Department of Labor is that's where you just file your unemployment claim and you get it.
Certainly, we've had our problems with not getting those claims out.
But you need to complete the life cycle.
We've got to get people off of unemployment and back to work.
There is something inherent inside of us that if we work with our hands, it's biblical, and you accomplish something yourself, it gives you the dignity to be and feel and be proud.
And when someone's just giving and handing to you, like it says in the Bible, don't just give them a fish, teach them how to fish.
That's what the Department of Labor is supposed to do, and it's been broken, and we seek to be able to change that, regardless whether you're a janitor or you're an airline pilot.
It doesn't matter.
Whatever your skill is, we want to get you back on your feet and back gainfully employed.
And the truth of the matter is, we can go down and look at statistics.
The person that is not gainfully employed There's an erosion that happens not within them, or it is with them, but also that extends to their family and so many other parts of their life.
I think so many times we try to separate the physical, spiritual, and mental parts of our life.
And it's more of a wheel.
If one of those parts is out of balance, if you want to call it a triangle or you want to call it whatever, if one of those is out of balance, it throws us off.
And if we don't exercise that, I think that's an interesting discussion.
Let's get into some things, what we're seeing across the country.
I mean, recently, we're back now post-pandemic.
We're at 3.5% unemployment.
But there's an interesting change to that.
I'd love to hear your take on this.
That 3.5% unemployment is also a shrinking workforce.
In other words, there's many people just opting out of the workforce.
Some of it, and I'd love to hear your, because I think people hear this all the time.
There are certain states and certain places where it is actually more profitable, and I hate to use those words, to not be working because the benefits accrue.
How do we break that cycle?
When you're upwards in some states of $60,000 and $70,000 equivalency, For doing nothing.
You know, it's interesting.
Where I grew up, great state of Montana, and I said this on a campaign trail, if you go into the parks, there are monster signs up that say, do not feed the bears.
And people think the reason they say don't feed the bears is because the bears are somehow going to harm you or something.
There's some truth to that.
But the reality is don't feed the bears because they lose the ability to feed themselves and they perish.
That's exactly what this government did during the pandemic.
We handed out so much money for so long.
And I'm not saying that people did not need to be cared for.
We know the pandemic was real.
There were some real challenges that happened.
But we got them addicted to a check.
The great resignation became where people didn't want to come back to work.
We see it in our state.
We see it in other states.
And we are going to have to make the tough decision.
Frankly, even here at the Department of Labor, we eliminated or at least postponed the requirement to actually prove you're actually out looking for a job.
And that's a challenge.
And so we've got to take the tough stance to say, listen, you've got to get out and be a part of the society, a part of that wheel.
You can't just be a recipient.
There's another part to that as well.
And I think maybe we could talk a little bit about that.
And that is Georgia is the number one place in the country to do business.
We're nine years in a row.
I mean, it is roaring our economy.
But we have to be very careful about that, because here's what's happening.
In a lot of areas of the state, big companies are coming in, and we're grateful they're coming.
So I don't want any of our listeners to think I'm not grateful for that.
But hear me for a second.
Our state was built on the backs of the people that were here, that were mom-and-pop businesses, that grew to be maybe...
Just remember, Chick-fil-A started with one little restaurant.
Yep, go fast.
That's right.
And there are a lot of those businesses out there that are 300 people or less And when large companies come in that are driven by stockholders, their requirement is get the people to work.
And if they can't get it organically, they're going to start cherry picking or hiring away the team members of those companies.
And we're already seeing that.
You can afford in your budget to be able to pay, say, $60,000 a year, and they come in and they offer them at $80,000 and $90,000 and $100,000, and you can't blame them for leaving.
And those companies will wind up perishing, and now you have a whole other displacement of a workforce.
Bruce, you've hit on something, and this is something, you know, when I was in Congress, I represented one of the largest.
What most people don't realize is the ninth district up in my part of the world is the second largest farm gate district in the state of Georgia.
We don't have the field work and field row crops of the South Florida, but we have, you know, poultry, cattle, and, you know, fruits, all this kind of thing.
Anyway, large agricultural president.
I had a, and this would be something I was interested in our new labor commissioner talking about.
I had one of our chicken plant operators.
You know, because poultry processing is huge.
It's not sexy work.
It's hard work.
And they pay, but it's not, you know, $80,000 sitting in an office doing nothing.
He made this comment, and he was talking about the Chamber of Commerce earlier.
He said, if I hear one more time that he named our Chamber of Commerce brother bringing another industry into town, he said, I'm going to scream.
He said, because, he said, I'm struggling.
And we got, how do we balance that now?
Because we're becoming more of a high-tech, you know, field.
We're getting a lot of battery.
We're getting a lot of EV. We're getting a lot of micro, you know, the big companies.
But yet, we're still inherently an agricultural industry.
How are we going to balance that, Bruce?
It's a trick.
It's a real trick.
The outgoing commissioner had an initiative where he was actually moving one of the very significant responsibilities of the Department of Labor over to the Technical College of Georgia, and that is Wagner-Peyser, which works with the workforce development.
I frankly think it was a mistake.
I'm fighting that, trying to make sure we can retain it, not just because of the resources, but You have a huge disconnect when you take someone unemployed and then you're going to send them to a technical college.
There are a lot of individuals that cannot take the time to go.
They need to work now.
We need on-the-job training now.
And honestly, the academic approach to that I don't believe is going to work.
The technical colleges do a fantastic job taking young people and introducing them to trades.
And I'm a firm believer.
My college wrestler used to say this.
Pick what you do and do it well.
That's why I was terrible at writing time, but I was really good at takedown, became a takedown specialist.
And sometimes we try to become jack of all trades and master of none.
And I think that we have got to make sure we focus on the importance of what we're supposed to be doing.
If we don't, we're going to be very dysfunctional in our approach to this and the whole thing will collapse.
I think the other thing we've got to do is we've got to get our high schools engaged in this at a younger age.
Doug, you know, we go in with career counselors and start talking to people when they're 16, 17, 18. Do you want to go to a university?
Do you want to do this?
You know what?
Those kids are making decisions at 10 and 11 now.
You need to get their attention at 10 and 11 and 12 and say, listen, Johnny, you're important.
And I realize you may come from the same background I did.
But do you realize if you'll listen to us for a second, we can have you graduate college or high school.
And whether you pursue college or tech school, you can have certifications where you can be making 80 grand at a high school.
I mean, take my son.
Max is at Riverside, right?
I love that school.
Stoss is doing a fantastic job over there.
But he's already working on his second certificate in cybersecurity.
When he gets that certificate, he qualifies for $60,000 a year.
Now, he's at least going to be National Guard, which means he's going to go to college.
Not because I think that is the path that he has to do to be successful, but I want him to be able to accomplish that.
And we've got to get into these schools and strip away the things that aren't important and empower those kids the things that are important.
How do we, I mean, this is something really, and I've been, one of the things that I was privileged to do when I traveled the country as a congressman and also in the state of Georgia, I've been to Mississippi, Michigan, Ohio, out in Washington State, and other places, and where there is this much more moving back, if you would, to what you were talking about, in the sense of technical skills, plumbers, electricians, you know, constructors.
That make really, really good money.
You know, the old joke is, as I was talking to my plumber the other day and asked him what he used to do, he said, well, I used to be a brain surgeon, I just make more money plumbing.
You know, it's, you know, but how do we now, I remember when I was in school, I don't know about for you out in Montana, by the way, Great Falls area, Shelby, beautiful part of the world.
If you ever have a chance to go out there, I love that area.
But, you know, we had a class in which they would take us out and we would go and experience companies.
We would tour Plants.
I was in eighth, ninth grade.
And we go see these plants.
And now, because how many times do you hear a kid, I don't want to work in manufacturing, and they never have been to a plant.
They think of it in the older terms of dirty, nasty, hard.
And these are a lot of automation.
There's a lot of CAD CAM. There's a lot of stuff out there.
How do we begin to maybe partner with the Department of Education to start inputting that back in a little bit?
I will tell you, one of the things that has been our demise, and that is technology, I love technology.
I've got software companies and so on.
But technology cannot...
I have this saying, and it's been in my companies as well as here in the Department of Labor.
Let's stop being transactional and become more relational.
And what we do is we bring technology into the schools because it's less...
It's less expensive.
And we put a PowerPoint or maybe a movie on or even maybe a Zoom.
And yes, you and I are doing it right now, but that's great.
But the truth of the matter is when you get these young people and you say, hey, I want you to experience this Welding.
I want you to experience a Kia plant.
And it's automated and so on.
And they're watching it on a screen.
It is not the same as taking it there.
It's like trying to take a man and telling them about birthing a child.
And they watch it and go, you asked Lisa.
And she'd grab your neck.
Doug, when you say, I know what you went through.
She'd say, oh, no, you don't.
They've got to experience it.
And I think that's where the investment needs to be.
We've got to get them on these campuses to experience it.
All right.
Let's turn here.
I think, like you said, you've got a huge job ahead.
Part of the Department of Labor, and I know the concern I've had, and this is for a national, all over the world audience, I don't want to be Georgia-specific, but I think there's been a lot of problems at the Department of Labor in Georgia with trying to get rid of work instead of taking on work.
And one of the areas, and I want to touch on this before we sort of finish up here in a minute, is this developmental disabilities issue.
And I know that Department of Labor with Warner Springs, the rehabilitation, how do you envision what, I know some of it's been taken away, some of it's been moved, some of it needs to be brought back.
How do you envision a workforce for, like, my daughter, others and others who, you know, want to get out there, they need the skills, but often are overlooked in the system because, as you said earlier, it's just easier to give them something.
Well, first of all, I wish you still were in Congress.
I'll say that.
It would make it a lot easier.
We're one of only three states that the people elect the labor commissioner.
So that is a distinction that's very important, really.
What can we do with that?
What's my vision with that?
I think the reality of it is if you look at just autism alone, right?
Autism is like one in four, one in five of every male now has some form of autism.
We've got to take and get to the young people in schools and the families and provide an opportunity.
I've got a young lady that's on my team.
She's a special assistant to me.
She's off our Chief Development Officer.
She's been with us five years.
She created a mentoring program called Hannah's Gardens where she took young ladies and taught them essential skills.
We used to call it soft skills and hard skills.
They're essential skills.
Those young ladies did very, very well.
We plan to do the exact same thing in the Department of Labor, but also do it where you open it up to the individuals, the young people that have some special disabilities or special needs.
You can teach them those essential skills and then marry them up with the opportunities.
Listen, the companies out there are begging for employees.
It's time for those barriers to be broken down and say that There are individuals that maybe have hearing loss or other things, or maybe they can't be as mobile, but they can do these jobs.
They just have to be married up to be able to do that.
And we want to be that partner to be able to bring people together.
I love it.
All right, before we get going here, you are now stepping into a very political role.
It's a very, you know, you're dealing a lot with the federal government because of the benefits and packages that you're having to deal with.
You're literally one weekend, so to speak.
Day 2. Day 2. Here we go.
As we look at it.
Four years from now, what would Bruce Thompson say was successful?
What do you think?
What's your metrics that you're looking for?
Well, I would tell you already, we are day two and we are going to go to our appropriations in our Senate and House with a presentation already.
There's a hundred and some thousand people backlog the Department of Labor on appeals right now.
And we have a plan already that we have already put in motion, my team, that we believe we can have those caught up in six months.
And that is taking an aggressive business approach to identifying the problems, formulating a solution and executing.
So in four years, I hope it's in two, we're going to modernize this agency.
We're already looking at a lift and shift, getting our...
Our UI programs off-premise, get them up in the cloud so they can be modernized, and then getting in a consortium where we can reduce the cost for the next crisis.
I want to modernize this agency so that number one is we can be more efficient, but number two is we can mitigate any risk.
We can do that, then I've accomplished what I can do, which is all that we have right now.
If I can bring back that workforce development, GVRA and the others, and we can make this an agency that actually can be a full circle and be able to accomplish what we're trying to do, great.
If not, we're going to move on to the next thing, go tackle another problem.
I put together a pretty aggressive team that I think you're going to Appreciate this.
I just hired a former federal prosecutor that's joining my team next week, and her job is to go in and find out if there was fraud, get to the bottom of it, let's get after it, prosecute it.
If there wasn't fraud, let's get this cloud off of the Department of Labor so we can go to work.
I think that's a great thing.
Folks, you're going to be hearing a lot more of Bruce, Tom, especially what we're doing here in a state that is great for business.
But like everywhere else, we have that groups that are not employed, unemployed, going through transitions.
This is what Bruce and his team are going to be working on.
Bruce, I mean, we're starting off the year great, another Dawgs national title.
We've got a great team.
You're at work.
And now that you have the keys to the building, I know you're going to make a difference.
Bruce, thanks for everything you're doing.
Doug, thanks so much.
And I can't wait to see what God does with you.
Amen.
Well, we're going to have some fun doing it.
I can't wait.
When I'm back and we have a chance, I want to come down and maybe have lunch with you and you show me what's going on.
I'd love to see it inside the building.
Anytime, my friend.
Thank you.
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