You Can’t Just Jack Up Wages and Call It a Solution

You can't fix poverty or affordability by just jacking up wages. That's still the plan, though. Democrats want to push the federal minimum wage higher, and a bunch of states are doing the same.

They treat payrolls like bottomless pits that can just spit out more money. Some big companies might absorb the hit and figure it out better. But small operators already scraping by on thin margins don't have that option.

And by the way, for the big companies who can figure it out, I'm not sure the Democrats grasp what that means. It doesn't mean they will figure it out in the workers' favor.

We've been through this before. Forcing wages up looks good on paper, but the costs don't disappear. They show up somewhere else, usually in ways that end up working against the people the policy is supposed to help. The money still has to come from somewhere.

And it will. Some of it will come from more automation. Some will come from hiring fewer people or cutting hours. Some businesses will trim benefits. Almost all of it gets passed along to customers as higher prices.

Higher wages weren't the main driver of the inflation spike under Biden—the worst in 40 years—but they still added to it. They also pushed some companies to start replacing workers. Taco Bell, for example, rolled out ordering kiosks across its restaurants, and self-checkouts became as common as peanut butter and jelly.

The worst part is we're still dealing with the fallout from the inflation that already hit. Stores have closed across the country. Companies have gone bankrupt. Fast food and retail places are struggling just to get people in the door.

A lot of fast-food spots even started pushing loss-leader items on their menus just to get anyone to order. Hiking wages further would only make all of that worse.

Part of the problem is that people see what a CEO gets paid and assume there's a big pot of money just sitting there that can be spread around. I've used this example before, but let's look at Walmart.

The CEO's total compensation last year was about $29.2 million. Walmart has roughly 2.1 million employees. If he took nothing and that entire amount was split equally, each employee would get about $14 a year. That's it. Not a raise. Not a living wage boost. Fourteen bucks.

People treat executive pay like it's the reason everyone else isn't better off. The math doesn't work that way, and the reality is that there's much less money to actually go around than people think.

People do the same thing with taxes. They see the wealth of the top 1% and act like that pool of money is big enough to pay for whatever the government wants. It's not. Even if you could somehow confiscate every penny of the combined wealth of the top 1%, it would only fund the government for a short period of time. And it's not renewable cash. Once it's gone, it's gone.

That's the pattern. People keep treating wages and taxes like they're free money that can be pulled from somewhere else and handed out with no consequences. But the numbers don't support it. Raising the minimum wage again won't fix poverty or affordability any more than it did the last time. It'll just force more of the same adjustments—fewer jobs, more automation, higher prices—while the people who were already struggling get hit again.

The money has to come from somewhere. Pretending otherwise doesn't make it true.

© 2026 Jim Bauer/The Springboard. All rights reserved.

FIRE JOHN THUNE (Apparently Nobody Heard That Part)

Why do I have to constantly grumble about my own party? Some days it must look like I'm a Democrat in disguise. How many times have I heard, "Exactly who's side are you on, Springboard?"

I've even started calling my YouTube channel "no-cult conservative talk." This blog may have to do the same. It's getting there. My level of frustration, and maybe even confusion, is starting to go beyond me.

But here's the thing. I still value our party's values—or what I think those values are supposed to be. I like to think of conservatives as principled, and we are. You and I, that is. The people we elect to serve us? That's a different story.

I have questions. Plenty of them. And they keep forcing me to ask them out loud.

Like the question I have right now. How in the fuck did we just re-elect John Thune as Senate minority leader?

No, literally. I'm asking how this happened?

Didn't we just see a bunch of Republican senators post, "We heard you. We understand. We want to get the work done for you."?

What exactly did you hear, and who exactly did you hear it from? Because everything I've heard for the past eight months has been, "FIRE JOHN THUNE." I haven't heard from a single person on our side who was happy with his leadership. Not one person said, "Give him a break."

Every single sentiment from every single Republican voter was clear: JOHN THUNE MUST BE FIRED.

If the massive loss of both the House and Senate wasn't confirmation that we really screwed this up—and that John Thune was largely responsible for most of it, all other circumstances aside—I don't know what else is.

Republicans are trying to sell us on the idea that they're listening. This is another huge slap in the face. It makes it clear as day they haven't heard us at all. Set everything else aside. The fact that he couldn't get the SAVE America Act passed alone should have been enough.

NOW the Senate has pretty much just waved their middle finger in our faces.

What they are saying is, we lost a major election. We don't care what you want. We're going to conduct business as usual. Thank you very much and have a good day. We took notes, but we decided to ignore them...

ONCE AGAIN!

I wasn't angry that we lost. I was disappointed. But I knew why. I said why many times, here and elsewhere. I sang as loud as I could from my tiny little pulpit. But even when we lose, I expect the reason to be understood and for the course to actually change.

We're not Democrats. We don't win just because of the letter after someone's name. Like I said, we're principled. You and I. The real Republicans. The real conservatives who keep having to shake our heads and wonder why we have to keep questioning our own side.

Susie Wiles was right to step down after the loss. Replacing Mike Johnson with Jim Jordan was a move I strongly approve of.

But John Thune getting re-elected? I still can't wrap my head around how this happened. I can't wrap my head around how the Senate allowed it to happen.

It takes a lot to piss me off. This did it. And I bet I will be asked many more times, "Who's side are you on, Springboard?" Because going forward I am going to be harder on the Senate minority than I've ever been.

All I can say to the Senate is this: you better justify your choice. And as for John Thune? You have a hell of a lot of convincing to do.

© 2026 Jim Bauer/The Springboard. All rights reserved.

Why Gas Prices Came Down After the Election

Why are gas prices suddenly dropping? Did someone hit a magic button after the Democrats won the midterms? What's actually going on?

Same thing that's always driven the oil markets. Supply and demand. Middle East tensions or the lack of them. And trader sentiment.

Oil markets get accused of shenanigans all the time. And some days it sure looks like it. Prices jump right before a big driving holiday, then fall once it's over. That's hard not to see.

Even many conservatives often have raised eyebrows and questions. I can include myself in that camp as well a lot of the time. Sometimes things just look...fishy. In fact, I saw a few conservatives on X claiming the oil companies were playing us—holding prices high to help the Democrats win. To me, that doesn't make any sense. The Democrats are the ones trying to kill off fossil fuels with all their Green New Deal nonsense.

Still, it's hard to ignore the timing. Gas prices sat stubbornly high in the $4.39 to $4.79 range where I live for a long stretch right up until the midterms, and just the other day I filled up at $4.09. That drop showed up right after it became clear the Democrats had won.

There's plenty of information that can explain it. Some of the same factors I mentioned earlier. Supply is up as production has ramped up, and high prices knocked demand down more than expected, putting us closer to pre-war levels and toward surplus. That alone puts downward pressure on prices.

Then there's the idea that a Democratic majority could make further military escalation in the Iran situation harder, opening the door for more diplomatic approaches. That feeds into both the Middle East tensions piece and trader sentiment. If the market thinks those risks ease, prices come down.

But overnight? That still feels like someone hit a button.

But there's one more factor that could explain a lot of this. Winter blend. Sellers are allowed to switch to the cheaper blend starting around September 15. There's a catch, though.

Refineries and stations still have to work through the summer blend inventory first, and a lot of that tends to clear out right around...November. Convenient timing. And winter blend is used in all 50 states.

The other factors still matter—higher supply, lower demand, maybe easing Middle East tensions. But if the winter blend switch is doing a big part of the work, the drop was probably coming either way. Whichever side won would have taken the credit.

© 2026 Jim Bauer/The Springboard. All rights reserved.

This Was a Blue Wave, not a Blank Check

You can't call what happened in the midterms anything less than a blue wave—or a total sweep. This was the Brewers putting up 8 runs in a single inning against the Rays in game 3 of the World Series. As much as I hate to admit it, the Democrats hit the ball out of the park.

I don't like the result. But I have to accept it. More than that, the most important thing—for me, for everyone on our side, and especially for the Republicans in Congress—is that the why needs to be fully understood.

And don't get me wrong—the Democrats need to understand that why just as much. This wasn't a mandate for them to play politics as usual. It wasn't a green light to charge ahead with investigations, retaliation, or impeachment hearings.

This was swing voters saying loud and clear: we have issues, the Republicans didn't solve them, so now it's your turn to do what they couldn't—or wouldn't.

Will the Democrats actually work on those issues? I have serious doubts. I also have serious doubts we've solved anything by handing the reins to the other side of the aisle. We have to remember that most of the problems people are worried about right now were set in motion by Democrats in the first place.

A lot of this election came down to the economy and how Americans feel about it. We've been hit with high prices on everything, skyrocketing energy bills, people racking up credit card debt just to cover basic living expenses, and brutal prices at the pump.

But a lot of that traces back to Biden's inflation. If that hadn't happened, affordability wouldn't even have been a talking point. The problem is people have short attention spans. They don't care what happened then. They care about what's happening now. Republicans had two years to change how Americans felt about their wallets,  and they didn't do it.

And to be fair, you can only point backward for so long before people start treating it as an excuse instead of a solution. Inflation may have been Biden's fault, but by the midterms it was the Republicans' problem. It was theirs to solve.

There were other factors, too. The Iran War is unpopular and has dragged on. Some of the deportation efforts didn't sit well with a lot of people. And to some degree—and this is just me being fair again—I don't think many people appreciated the pettiness of things like changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America or Lake Ontario to Lake America.

When your wallet's wheezing, you really don't care what a lake or a gulf gets called. It raises the question, where are the priorities?

Not passing the SAVE America Act played a role as well, especially with the swing voters who handed this election to the Democrats. It had the support of 80% of the country, and the Republicans basically sat on it, offering excuse after excuse for why they couldn't round up the votes or change the rules to get it passed.

And let's face it—the bill was stuffed, like most bills are, with things that had nothing to do with voter integrity. That made it harder for Democrats to support it. I actually think that was done on purpose, and a lot of people saw it that way.

The American people wanted the bill to pass. For whatever reason the Republicans made it nearly impossible, and voters noticed.

The bottom line is that the Democrats won and the Republicans lost. Now the Democrats need to deliver the real solutions they convinced people they have.

Trump needs to work with the Democrats. The Democrats need to work with Trump. Both sides need to work with each other. It's time to stop the partisan games and get things done. It's time to stop pointing fingers and start finding compromises that actually work.

Because if all we get is more of the same, we're just kicking the can, and the American people will be once again left holding the bag.

I want the Democrats to succeed. Success in politics is what helps the country succeed. So, I wish them well. And going back to the why I mentioned earlier, I hope Trump gets it. I hope the Republicans get it.

The American people want progress. They want policies that actually work and get things done. We're tired of being pawns, and this election made that clear.

© 2026 Jim Bauer/The Springboard. All rights reserved.

Chip Roy’s Bill and the Case for Making Border Rules Stick

"A nation cannot maintain its sovereignty nor guarantee protection of its citizens with an open border. Period. End of story."

That was my response recently on X to a post asking whether people support a bill President Trump is backing that would ban any future U.S. president from reopening the border.

"Are you in favor of this?" the post asked.

The post was referring to something called the No Invasion of our Country Act. At the moment, though, no such bill actually exists. The closest thing that has been introduced in Congress and moved forward is the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act (H.R. 9199/H.R. 9773), sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). That legislation would permanently write President Trump's current border executive actions into statute.

The Chip Roy bill wouldn't make it impossible for a future president to reopen the border. It would just make it a lot harder.

I think that's a step in the right direction. We all know what tends to happen to executive orders. A new president comes in and reverses them, rewrites them, or scraps them entirely. Turning these policies into law wouldn't lock them in forever, but it would make them stickier and more difficult to undo.

Of course, whether any of this actually passes and becomes law is a real question. Plenty of bills get introduced and just sit there. The SAVE America Act comes to mind. So does the recurring argument over daylight saving time. Sponsoring something and getting it across the finish line are two different things.

And of course, we're right up against the midterms and we don't even know which side will be in power on the other end of them.

Still, regardless of what happens with the Chip Roy bill—or even if the proposed No Invasion of our Country Act eventually becomes real—it strikes me as common sense legislation. And I suspect most Americans would support it.

Despite the fights in Congress or sentiments portrayed in the mainstream media, on Main Street, I think a lot of Democrats weren't particularly happy with former President Biden's border policies. For one thing, secure borders used to be a fairly mainstream Democratic position. Then Trump made it a central issue on the Republican side, and the party itself largely flipped to the opposite extreme.

The party. Not the voters.

The basic question posed here is hard to avoid. How do we maintain our sovereignty and protect our citizens if the border is wide open? An open border means anyone can come in—including people who mean us harm. If we don't enforce the border, we have no real idea who's entering the country, where they are, or what their intentions are.

That's dangerous. It puts every American at greater risk. We've seen enough stories of illegal immigrants committing serious crimes that most people are already familiar with them, whatever their broader views on immigration happen to be.

What should be clear by now is that we cannot afford to repeat a policy shift as reckless as the one under Biden. Even for those who object to how Trump has enforced the border—whether through ICE raids or the accompanying media firestorm—the reality is straightforward.

Had Trump's first term policies stayed in place, the crisis would never have escalated to the point where a second term required such forceful action.

The problem would have remained largely contained instead of becoming an emergency that demanded aggressive correction.

A bill like the one Chip Roy sponsored is designed to prevent that exact mistake from happening again. The most basic responsibility of the federal government is to maintain our sovereignty and protect the people living inside our borders. There is no version of events in which locking in stronger border rules stops making sense or becomes unnecessary.

Yes. I support the action. Everyone should. Because, once again, it's just common sense.

© 2026 Jim Bauer/The Springboard. All rights reserved.