469: Rep. Riley Moore—I'm Just a Bill

The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

History, Society & Culture

4.9 • 40.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike sits down with West Virginia Congressman Riley Moore, whose path to Capitol Hill began with a welding torch. Moore shares why he chose the skilled trades early in life, what that work taught him about dignity and opportunity, and how those lessons now shape his approach to policy. The discussion centers on Moore's new legislation, the Jumpstart Savings Act, a proposal designed to remove financial barriers to apprenticeships, tools, and certifications—and to breathe new life into America's skilled trades by treating them with the same respect long afforded to four-year degrees.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, friends. It's me, Mike Rowe with what you call a bonus episode of the way I heard it.
0:09.8	Chuck, this was not entirely planned, although somewhat anticipated. And it's just one of those things that
0:16.7	turned out to be meteor than I thought it otherwise might be. Yeah, well, it was supposed to be a
0:23.4	hot take on this particular topic, which is near and dear to all of our hearts here at
0:28.4	MicroWorks. But Representative Riley Moore was pretty representative,
0:34.0	and he really brought it. We're calling it, I'm just a bill, because currently the jumpstart bill is precisely that,
0:42.0	sitting there on the steps of Capitol Hill, hoping that one day it will become a law.
0:47.7	I say this as though I'm anthropomorphizing the bill in much the same way our friends did
0:53.6	on Schoolhouse Rock once upon a time.
0:56.1	Schoolhouse rock, man. That was great. Yeah. You know, I would love to get somebody on the pod if they're still around who was instrumental in making schoolhouse rock.
1:07.0	Like they played an instrument on schoolhouse rock. That would make them profoundly instrumental.
1:14.4	Anyway, yeah, I Am Just a Bill was a terrific song, and it's impossible not to think of it.
1:20.1	What Riley Moore has done, he's a congressman from West Virginia, he had this idea to take basically the 529 savings accounts for education, right?
1:31.0	This is something that he was in charge of when he was the, what was he before this,
1:35.4	secretary of treasury, I think.
1:37.8	He did it on a local basis in West Virginia, and now he's trying to bring it national,
1:42.0	the Jumpstart program.
1:43.5	Right.
1:53.1	What Jumpstart does, basically, is it lets a tradesperson use tax-deferred funds that grow in an account to buy tools, to buy a work truck, to buy whether it's scissors for a cosmetologist or welding gear for a welder who's hanging out his own shingle,
2:07.8	it's a way to help defray the extraordinary capital cost of becoming a freelance tradesman, which is a huge problem.
2:16.7	I've been waiting for somebody to do this for years, and it's come out of West Virginia,
2:21.3	and the bill looks great.
	...

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