Robert Jones Portman

You know how the, the, the beard came about, I was j- I was never a, a beard guy.

We went on vacation once and I just didn't bring a razor, and I, like, grew it out, and my wife was like, "Oh, it looks pretty good." And then Rob Portman announced his resignation from the Senate, and I started running for the Senate, and I had a beard, and it's just kinda stuck, but anyway.

I, I, I had a similar situation-

I-

You know, he really hasn't used that time to define himself.

Reminds me a lot of Rob Portman.

And so that's on the Republican side.

Yeah, he reminds me a lot of Rob Portman.

Right.

He's- was in office for a long time and, you know, the, his, people didn't...

I think one of the best pieces I read, I just wanna say this quickly, was by former Republican, center right probably in his orientation which is Max Boot, and I think he was Marco Rubio's foreign policy advisor during the presidential campaign in 2016 and has done a number of other things.

And he wrote a piece sometime around 2018, '19, I don't remember when it was, that Rob Portman is worse than Marjorie Taylor Greene, and his argument was it was the Rob Portmans who had connections to the Bush past of the party who were considered genial.

Everybody likes Rob Portman who meets him personally.

He's a nice guy.

He's whatever.

As I said, I didn't come here to critique Matt Wiley.

I also don't know his whole history.

I can only speak about people that were either major public figures, like Rob Portman.

I guess it's more for Amber, but I am interested in Ravi's point of view on that.

Yeah, Amber, uh, John Husted makes, uh, Rob Portman look like Jon Bon Jovi.

[laughs]

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

Uh, Rob Portman.

Mm-hmm.

And then when you have someone that sounds more like JD Vance or to a more, a greater degree Bernie Moreno-

George Will dedicated a column to the idea in the Washington Post, um, as a, an, as an essential step to reining in our debt crisis.

Um, and, uh, there's been a, a lots of favorable writing on it, including from former Senator Rob Portman.

Paul Ryan's been making the rounds with the idea.

Um, Representative Schweikert is another champion in this, uh, Congress pushing for fiscal responsibility in a commission like this.

Right.

Replaced my old client, Rob Portman.

Right.

So he was on the ballot with a popular Republican governor, Mike DeWine, and JD Vance got 400,000 fewer voters.

Um, and I blame Roger Wicker for this, you know?

Yeah

My, my old client and friend.

Um, had Roger Wicker told Donald Trump, "Look, there's a lot of good conservatives.

And the problem right now is that nobody, either on the Democratic or Republican side, seems to be very concerned about about the need to, first of all, restore the budget process, and secondly, then, to take the tough decisions that are going to be necessary in order to try to deal with this huge debt that is going to impact on our future.

Another former OMB director who joined us to discuss a debt-induced crisis was Rob Portman, a former U.S.

Senator, Republican from Ohio.

He served as budget director under President George W. Bush.