people give us innovative ideas to reduce the medicaid budget. washington would only give us the opportunity to have flexibility like with welfare reform in 1996. mike: how much push-back did you get from bureaucracy. people in the agency saying we don t want everybody to know what we re doing. was there a pushback? of course there was. i know the answer was the question. i want you to give it to us. you re a smart man. you broke the code. not just agency head but local government, and folks with a good old boy system going. you shine a light on. if you think about the sfien a sunshine, open it up. good ideas grow. bath ideas die in sunshine. we ll make mistakes, i agree. but give benefit to the taxpayers and spend the money, that s how we make the improvement in government. mike: site is up and running. people can go to it if they want to take a look. what are you doing to make it more user friendly and navigable? every day we get e-mails. how about this? i had trouble findi
improvements. as i move in the senate presidency next year, one of my number one goals is open up the system for people of florida to make changes. we save money there and then we can spend more on schools, healthcare, more importantly maybe give tax relief. we need to get the economy going. all i care about is job creation. this is one way to do it. mike: one thing that is evident is if the federal government is not interested, 49 states that could be. that could use the same program to bring a transparency. have you had other state legislators, maybe even members of congress say we re interested in looking at this? they sure have. that is the direction. we want to be the state of innovation and sunshine. we see the states like texas take a look at it. even new york state with their budget problems, new jersey, looking at this. how do we do it better and how do we contrast in washington, d.c. from rhetoric to the action we are taking in florida? mike: we re almost out of time. c
thank you, sir. mike: you re a funny guy. you do an imprompt show with larry david and you write about a serious top nick a funny way in a book called my footprint. how do you make funny stuff out of health issues? i don t try. that is the first thing. i write about it s really funny to read about somebody failing. you know, you know, when you try and diet, you re bound to fail. diets don t work. when you hit the failure point is good humor. mike: i identify with the book. i m a food addict and i ve gone through the battle over and again. and it s one of the most difficult challenges i think many of us face. very much. mike: living with a huge crisis in country now; particularly, with children. you had a crisis unlike many people. right. mike: you had a stroke. young man. i was young. heart problems when i was
in the audience look stupid. mike: was there a time early in your life you said i want to be a comedian? when did it happen? i was eight years old. i was funniest kid in school. preschool on. thrown out of class a lot? i did. mike: i knew that! all good natured stuff. i was never disrespectful to my teachers, if you can believe that. mike: i don t believe that. i wasn t. you but i was disruptive is what i was. i was eight years old. my parents living in chicago, from chicago, and my parents took me to see jimmy durante at the palmer house in downtown chicago. i remember watching him and i was so mystified by him, and also the audience, it was so exciting. on the way home, the drive home i said to my parents is that job? they said yes, that s a job. i said that s the job i want. mike: at 8 years old. yeah. mike: worked out well for you. worked out well. i m happy. i m with you! mike: audience, that s supposed to be good, you
react to you? you know, i was about to say to you is it scary to goc govern a state, but it probably is. mike: it was scary for the people. they were the ones afraid. it s not scary at all for me. it s extraordinarily i don t want to say easy, because i work really hard, but no, it s what i do. i d be scared if i had to fly a plane today. that would be scared. sny d be scared if i was on the plane because you probably don t have a pilot s license. you should be screaming if you re on a plane and i m flying it. it s quite enjoyable. i m getting asked a lot if my losing weight will of course will of cou will affect my . no. i never relied on fat jokes. if i talked about being fat on stage it was a way i was telling a story of something that happened to me or how i feel about something and not belittling myself. when i perform, if anyone looks stupid, it s me. i don t like to make people