Exclusive — Vivek Ramaswamy: We Must Get Ohio to a ‘Zero State Income Tax’

Ohio must become a “zero state income tax” state, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.

Ramaswamy, one of the originals involved in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) movement, explained that making Ohio a zero income tax state will “require a government that doesn’t spend money on unnecessary things, but actually focuses on the few things the state needs to be doing well, like infrastructure and building highways,” emphasizing that there is a “lot of waste, a lot of fraud, a lot of abuse that we have to wring out of the system.”

He said state leaders need to look at where they are spending money and weed out the fraud. One area in which Ramaswamy believes this is rampant is the Medicaid budget.

“So if I want to get our state to zero income tax, like Texas, like Florida, like Tennessee, then the truth is that we got to take a hard look at where that money is going. And right now, one of the biggest line items in our state budget, actually the biggest line item, is the Medicaid budget, where there is rampant — I believe rampant — at least 10 percent waste, fraud, and abuse,” he said, explaining that he is going to “prosecute” that “aggressively.”

“Medicaid spending in this state went from 27 billion in total dollars to 47 billion over the last decade, and yet enrollment has been effectively flat. If you look at those numbers, at least 10 percent of that good independent statistics say that there’s waste, fraud, and abuse,” he said, noting he laid out a plan to go after it and “take the money from the people who shouldn’t be getting it, from the bad guys, and putting it in the pockets of law-abiding citizens to bring down healthcare costs, increase wealth, and also rein in the unnecessary overspending that’s really paid for by our taxpayers and our citizens.”

“So that’s just one example, but that’s how we’re going to govern,” he revealed.