Ep. 54 - Ohio State Rep. Jennifer Gross talks about fighting against a Central Bank Digital Currency

This is the FCB Podcast Network. This is the Jeff Welcome to the Jeff, Lori and Nick Show. We are an exciting and interesting show that's focused on finding solutions. Today we have a great representative, Jennifer Gross. She is a state representative in the state of Ohio. She represents the forty fifth district and she is here on our show. I'm doing this solo today only with our producer. Good morning, Darbo. How are you. I'm good? How are you, sir? Doing great? Dario is an incredible producer and he can help you if you want a podcast or want to be on air. And again, we're gonna jump right into this show because, as I said, it's a very important issue that we're dealing with. And our state representative, Jennifer Gross, we're glad to have you today. How are you, Jennifer, I'm great, sir. Thank you so much, Reverend for having me today. Yes, and we're ready to jump right into it so that our folks can be informed, so that the public can be informed as to what's happening. Jennifer. You've introduced House Build one sixty three and we're going to talk about that today. It is the bill to ban the central bank digital currency. Tell us, Jennifer, give us a little bit of about your background, tell us about your district before we get into that. Just pretty all right, Thank you so much, sir. Well, I'm in southwest Ohio. I am a twenty one year Air Force combat lieutenant colonel. I was a nurse. I was not a combatant per se that. I also am a practicing nurse practitioner. But I am a freedom and liberty represent native and I believe in standing for this great state of Ohio as well as the United States, but protecting my individual citizens and constituents as well as all Ohioans privacy, liberty, and freedom. Absolutely that is so important. And this central bank digital currency, this this bill that you've introduced to band that I don't think a lot of people are familiar with the ramifications of actually moving towards a digital currency, and there's so many people that would be hurt. Can you talk about this? How how did it come into play? Well, you know with COVID and I hate to mention that word, but the COVID crisis has really exacerbated two types of currency, and those are CBDCs, which stands for cent bank Digital currency, a digital bank liability that's issued by governments and bitcoin, and that one is more private, and both of these could replace cash, but both come with their own challenges. So digital currency and this will just I just ask your your listeners to stay with me. But digital currency is a virtual representation of value, so and it's stored in an electronic form. It's not available in a physical form which can be used as a medium of exchange. So digital currency does not have the status of the US currency in any US jurisdiction, so no state, and no like Puerto Rico and and you know, like Saint Croix and some of those other areas. So central bank digital currency is it would be is authorized by a sovereign nation as a digital representation of that nation's currency. The Federal Reserve has not yet adopted a US central bank digital currency. So the people that want this kind of built say it would be more efficient, it would be less expensive for our financial transactions, but it would it would fundamentally rewire our infrastructure in the United States and our banking and financial system, and would change that relationship between citizens and money. So it gets a little complicated. But we have something called the Uniform Commercial code, and that tells you know, how states go back and forth with how they deal with leasing and commerce and things like that. There's been discussion by the Biden administration to look into a digital currency. This is not backed by our dollar. This would be just a digit, little form of currency, but it would be controlled by the federal government. And again, we do not want a central bank controlled by the federal government. I mean, I mean both you guys Darvo and I don't think whatever government gets bigger, it gets more efficient. Right, So we need to protect the individuality. We need to protect the individual's ability to be able to buy and sell. My bill HB one sixty three says we will not recognize digital currency as a form of currency now, because think about this, if we get if the government said, oh, we're going to issue you ten thousand digital dollars, but they can make them expire at a certain day and you don't spend the money, or how about this, you buy something they don't want you to buy. You spend too much gas because you have a Ford one fifty and you spend too much gas and they say, oh, I'm sorry, you've used too much petroleum this month. We're going to turn off your gas, you can't get to work, you can't go buy groceries, or say you buy whatever. Let's say I mean I don't smoke, but let's say you have a smoker and the government decides, well you can no longer smoke, or you can only buy beef. That's ninety three seven instead of eighty twenty. They can literally look into your bank account and stop you from buying whatever they don't want you to. You can look into that, and you can think of the privacy considerations, or about how about church if we don't have an ability to use cash, which my bill also requires public entities to accept cash as a form of fayment, you can't pass the hat at church or even a fundraiser for a nonprofit and have an anonymity, so you lose your anonymous ability to buy and sell anything. Yeah, yes, I appreciate this. I really believe that there's not enough this conversation going on in most of the state and in a lot of communities at kitchen tables and then small gatherings, a lot of people are not talking about this actual threat. And then can you you know, I want people to be aware that this is actually being discussed and being moved on and pushed forward by the Biden administration right now. Yes, and yes, and a lot of people again are just don't realize the ramifications of this. For instance, what this really means is that the individual will lose freedom, um of what they're doing with their money. For instance, you can't tip someone that launt mosr lawn. You can't give that person money unless it's tracked. Every little thing that you will do with your dollar will be this setized and tracked. Uh that and it really affects unfortunately, a lot of the religious community that takes up depending offerings and a freewheel and love offerings. Um, it affects them. It's going to affect them tremendously. Um. Other other um, your tips at your restaurants and things like that. You may just want to help someone, just give them, uh fifty dollars, thirty dollars. Yeah, that all of that will disappear. Yes, And let's let's let's consider the countries that favor this kind of stuff. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and Turkey and and and they are they are for these kinds of things. In fact, China already has their own form of digital currency called the DCP. So in China, we know that during COVID, if they didn't if they're digital path sports said they were in a certain status or whatever, they were not allowed to leave their home, they couldn't go to work, and they couldn't buy food, and we know people actually did starve in China. We don't want to be connected to a form of cash or a form of currency that China likes. I don't think, sir, absolutely not at all. So this can you tell us this particular ban has it taken place in any of the other states. What you're doing is a you're doing a yoman's job in making sure that Ohioans are protected from this move to switch over to digital currency. Have are there other states that have stepped up and introduced bills very similar to protect the freedom? Yes, sir, how spill which is what HB is right, HB one sixty three is very similar to the Florida bill which has passed so Governor Ronda Santis was actually the first who passed that, and then it just recently passed in Texas, and I believe we also have it passed in South Dakota. So there are a lot of states looking at this. Now there are other states who want to pass a form of agreeing with digital currencies. So yeah, so there are there's Texas, Florida, hopefully US in South Dakota, and there may be others that I'm unaware of. Okay, But again, the most important thing is the loss of freedoms. You want this bill. It's not a black or white issue. It's not a Democrat or Republican. Is not a partisan issue. Protecting the freedoms and rights of the individual that's right, is that issue here? So again, what can folks do to support this and where does it stand? Right now? Where does your bill stand in how can the individuals speak up to support this particular bill. Well, I would like to go back and confirm with you that yes, in fact, there was only one no vote in Florida. That means both Republicans and Democrats supported this bill. It as a bipartisan bill. What people can do? The bill is currently HB one sixty three is currently in the Financial Institutions Committee with Representative Laray who is the new chair. So there's been no chair for a couple of months, So it's not that he's not moved on the bill. It's that he just literally got to that committee. So people could write to Chairman Laray and say, we really want to hear Representative Jennifer Gross's HB one sixty three, and again mine is it also protects cash as a form of payment. They could also write their own Ohio House Represents Senitive and say there's this bill, HB one sixty three, we would like you to look at it. They could look at the House the Financial Institutions Committee and say you are going to be hearing HB one sixty three, and we would like you to support and vote out of committee Representative Jennifer Gross's anti CBDC bill, which which denies Ohio recognizing digital currency as a form of currency in Ohio, and we would like you to specifically support that bill out of committee and get it to the floor for a vote. So they can write the chair Larrey, They can write all the committee members on Financial Institutions and say we really want you to hear this bill, and not only do we want you to hear the bill, we'd like you to vote yes and move it out of committee. And then they should write their own Ohio House representative and they should send them a copy of the bill and say here's the bill, this is what we want, and they can find that on LEGI scan. I'm sure you guys have talked about that in the past. But if your listeners want to find any bill, they need to type in Ohio House Bill, you know, whatever the number. But mine is one sixty three and it's on a website called legiscan and I believe it's legiscan dot com and they can check any bill there and they can find it. And they need to be clear that this is HB one sixty three because if it's sp that means Senate bill. So that's what they can do. And I appreciate you asking, absolutely. I'm just thinking about the folks that will be impacted here. Anytime you go to get your woman, goes to get her hair done, or goes too you know, you might want to leave a twenty dollars dip or something like that. But you everything's gotta gonna be digital, and that means every little thing that you do will be tracked. And uh, it's it's you know, it's again, it's about standing up for your own freedoms. So i'd like to can I say something else. There are about five point four percent of Americans, or what we call unbanked. Now that doesn't mean they don't have a bank. They could not have a bank. But these people who write checks and they use cash, they don't use credit cards because, by the way, I remember that every time you use a credit card, five percent of that purchase is lost goes to the credit I don't hate visa, but I mean, you know, we still use credit cards. But the fact is when we use a credit card, we are paying all these people banks, the vendor has to pay, you have to pay. You're paying a percentage of that cost to the credit card. When you use cash, you get more of a pure value, if you will. But five percent of the United States is unbanked. This is why there's also a push for full broadband into rural communities and everywhere else. Because once everybody has an ability to be on computer, then the government, the federal government can overreach, which never happens, right, No, it happens, and I want to push back. I want to push back government and keep government out of your lives, out of our lives, and preserve liberty and freedom. But what happens is we expand broadband everywhere and then they can say, well everybody now has access, you must have an electronic bank account, and that ushers in again the ability for electronics to control every single thing you do. Say to your point yesterday, I mean, my hairstylist sells her own brand of like oil, like lotions, she takes cash. We do cash for that. You would lose, Like you said, you're the guy the tip. You want to pay it forward to the person at the McDonald's drive through. You want to just hand them a twenty dollar bill because you know they're making pennies on the dollar minimum wage. You just want to bless them. Can't do it. It all would have to be through electronics. I think people need to really see the value of their privacy again, the government overreach of taking again your anonymity of whatever it is that you want to buy. You would not be able to do so. You would have to use a phone app or something like that, and you would be tracked. I mean, quite frankly, guys, we've already lost a lot. I mean, we have lost a lot of individual liberty by using our credit cards already, and I think that we've gotten I think we've gotten used to that, but I think we need to look back and understand that even some of the credit cards during COVID said, we're just going to look and see what you're buying. PayPal said, if you did a certain thing, we're gonna DOCU two thousand, four hundred dollars in your PayPal account. If they can see your accounts. You are not safe to be anonymous. Absolutely, and this reminds me of a certain evils. There's a biblical scripture that says in the Latter Times, in the Book of Revelation, it says that we'll reach a point where they're where no man will be able able to either buy or sell unless he has um he unless he conforms Wow that you just so. So we're moving. We're moving to that point, and it's sad and it should be scary, it should be alarming, and it should be something that UH people just fight against so that we don't give up their freedoms. Hopefully, hopefully we will. Um Jennifer, we're actually running out of time and I have to close out now, but hopefully we'll have you back because to talk more about this. But again, UH, I want to thank our audience thank you. Representative Jennifer Gross. Yes, from District forty five, and that district again, Jennifer is right between your district is encompasses the city of Fairfield, west Chester, right between Dayton and Columbus. I believe right between Dayton and Cincinnati, and I have Ross Township, Morgan Township, Fairfield City, and Westchester Township. Yes, sir, awesome, awesome. We're gonna have you back, and we're gonna do everything we can to support this House Bill one sixty three and educate the public about what is going on with the loss of their freedoms if this does not pass. So we're gonna do it again, do everything that we can. Thank you again for having us, Darvo being our producer for this show. You've done a great job. Representative Gross again, thank you. And to our audience, thank you. And let's all remember to keep fighting the good fight and that we can all do better. Yes, sir, Thank you, sir. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where real talk lifts. Visit us online at FCB Podcasts dot com.