Joe From Texas Knows How to Take Back America for the People

“Joe From Texas,” Joe Penland grew up in Texas in a family with limited financial means. His father had a stroke and eventually passed away when Joe was in middle school. His mother took in laundry and ironing, and Joe and his three brothers worked odd jobs to help with family expenses. He says the family was strapped, and could not have made it without Social Security.

“Social Security is not a gift to anyone,” Joe said. “We all pay into it. But government has squandered it, and pilfered the trust fund.”

But it would be horrible for the 70 million Americans who rely on Social Security to lose it, Joe said.

Joe from Texas is a family man with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who has had tremendous success and lived the American dream. His beliefs are both straightforward and deeply held. He believes in God, his family, and the United States of America.

He wants to Save America. He believes our cumulative debt poses the single greatest danger to our way of life. So he’s making his way around the country, meeting and talking with people who have worked in the White House, Congress, and government.

Joe is terribly concerned with the Social Security shortfall.

Joe is concerned about the United States’ $33 trillion debt crisis.

Joe is concerned about National Security.

Joe is concerned about all of the U.S. manufacturing shipped overseas.

Joe is concerned about American dependency versus self sufficiency.

He also says both parties are responsible. “All they [political parties] want to do is fight. But we are losing track of America,” Joe said. “I’m concerned that if we don’t have the money, we can’t fix the problems – crime, the border, schools…”

“People are suffering. Inflation is at a 40-year high. The cost of a car today is what a home used to cost.”

“But we can’t fix the problems without money.”

How does Joe propose to tackle the U.S. debt crisis?

“Stop all waste, abuse and fraud,” Joe started. “It’s way out of control. We need politicians unafraid to take on these problems.”

Joe told the Globe the 87,000 IRS agents the Biden administration wants to fund need to go first. Then we need to tackle medicare fraud and waste in military contracts. And Joe wants to get rid of replicated programs, layered on top of each other, often in multiple agencies.

Joe said the day before the 9-11-2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Pentagon’s budget was $300 billion a year – and they could not account for $2.3 trillion. That was in 2001. It’s much worse today he said.

“When our credit gets downgraded, the world knows about it,” Joe said. “We can’t sit back and ignore it,” and we can’t continue to subsidize huge projects, like wind and solar farms, he said. “It’s not the American way.” Joe discussed the opportunity available to new immigrants to the U.S. gong back to those emigrating right after WWII, and how they would create businesses on their own. Subsidies were not an option until more recently. Joe said it’s not the role of government.

“We are driving the country into bankruptcy with climate change focus, yet we are the cleanest country extracting oil and gas,” he said. And with the Biden Administration cutting production of our oil and gas and draining our reserves, we have to import it from foreign countries which aren’t extracting as cleanly as the U.S. And our workers benefitting from the well-paying oil and gas jobs.”

Joe said the U.S. should not be depending on foreign countries for our oil or necessities – particularly “bad actor” countries. “Depending on these countries for some of our necessities makes no sense. This is one of the many reasons that I believe Joe Biden’s war on oil and gas is so dangerous. Despite his rhetoric, we are using just as much oil and gas today as we were when he became President,” Joe wrote recently in a Townhall op ed.

Joe said we need to do a “Bad Management Overhaul” the way we would overhaul a car – with new spark plugs, or a new transmission.

“America is lost, and will continue to stay lost, ” Joe said. “What we are doing just isn’t working.”

He reminded me that in 1992 when Ross Perot ran for President as an Independent against Bill Clinton and George Bush, he said he’d only stay for 4 years. “He wanted to alleviate America of its debt problems – he was going to do what was best for America, without worrying about a reelection.”

I asked Joe if he was President, what would he do first, and how. “If I was President, to anyone who brought anything to my office as a proposal, I’d ask ‘is it good for the American people?’ and ‘How are you going to pay for it.'”

“We have 10 million jobs we can’t fill, and entitlements need to be reformed, start to finish.”

I asked how he would bring back more manufacturing jobs. He shared his own story:

“Back in 1980, there was the Industrial Revenue Bond. I wanted to expand my business. I took out $1.5 million, and had to qualify for certain criteria, but it was a tax free loan. The government gave up the interest on the loan in order for businesses to expand. I went from 11 employees to 25 – the government got five to six times more money from that growth than they would have from interest on the loan.”

Joe says the United States is still a manufacturing powerhouse, but we are nowhere near producing what we manufactured ifollowing WWII. We discussed the loss of manufacturing jobs, replaced by service sector jobs, which are typically part time, entry level pay, without benefits.

Joe said the country first needs to get back to pre-pandemic spending. At the time, it was about $4 trillion – today we are spending $7 trillion. “We just keep increasing our spending.”

Joe discussed the need to buy more of our own goods rather than importing things. He said his employees’ paychecks turn over 7-times in the local economy on food, clothes, rent and local services. “Even if we bring back just $1 trillion, that’s 7-times spending in the local economies.”

Joe’s bottom line: “I really don’t want another country to own us. Let’s save America.”

Watch Joe: