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unidentified
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Mediacom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then USA Today White House correspondent Francesca Chambers has the latest on the Trump transition. | ||
| And Brigham McCown with the Hudson Institute, along with Trevor Higgins of the Center for American Progress, will discuss President-elect Trump's energy and environmental agenda. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| On this Friday, January 17th, we are days away from the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, and the GOP-controlled Senate is hurrying to confirm Mr. Trump's cabinet with a flurry of confirmation hearings this week. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal notes the president-elect's moneyman, his pick to serve as Treasury Secretary on Capitol Hill yesterday, outlining how a second Trump administration would steer the U.S. economy. | ||
| This morning, we'll get your take. | ||
| Will the incoming Trump administration improve the U.S. economy? | ||
| Democrats, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Or post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Let's start with that confirmation hearing before the Senate committee yesterday. | ||
| Scott Besant, who is the President-elect's pick to serve as Treasury Secretary, testifying up on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| C-SPAN was there and we covered it in its entirety. | ||
| Look at this exchange between Democratic Senator Maggie Hassen questioning the nominee on his plans to lower costs. | ||
| Under President-elect Trump's policies, do you believe that prices for families will go up or down? | ||
| I believe that inflation will be much closer to the Federal Reserve's target of 2%. | ||
| And I believe that what we have seen over the past few years is that the bottom two income quintiles have a very different basket of goods and services. | ||
| So there are two ways. | ||
| We can either lower cost or we can get real wages up. | ||
| I would hope that we would be able to do both. | ||
| So you believe that President Trump's policies will further increase wages and lower inflation? | ||
| I believe that they will increase real wages and lower inflation closer to the Federal Reserve's 2% target as it did during President Trump's first administration. | ||
| Are there any specific policies proposed by the president-elect that you expect will increase prices for families? | ||
| Nothing I can immediately think of. | ||
| So that's a no. | ||
| If the president-elect were to propose a policy that you believe will increase prices, would you advise against it? | ||
| I would speak to President Trump about it. | ||
| It is his decision. | ||
| And I believe that we think that if we look back, that it is a complete composite return in terms of aggregate inflation numbers. | ||
| And I think it's very difficult. | ||
| Well, if you believe, I have limited time, so if you believe that a policy that is proposed by President Trump would increase prices, would you advise him against doing it? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| I can't answer that question because it's a hypothetical. | ||
| Scott Besson, in the hot seat on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying before senators on how the Trump administration would steer the U.S. economy this morning. | ||
| Do you believe that this second term by President-elect Donald Trump will improve the economy? | ||
| The Associated Press recently conducted a poll asking folks, do you have confidence in Mr. Trump's ability to lower food costs in 2025? | ||
| 21% said they are extremely, very confident in his ability and his administration's ability. | ||
| 17% said moderately confident, while 61% said slightly or not at all confident. | ||
| When they asked about Mr. Trump's ability to lower costs of housing in 2025, take a look at those numbers. | ||
| 64% said slightly not at all confident, while 16% said they're moderately confident, and 19% said extremely, very confident. | ||
| We want your thoughts on this. | ||
| Will the incoming Trump administration improve the U.S. economy? | ||
| Before we get to your thoughts, outgoing President Joe Biden sat down with MSNBC last night, Lawrence O'Donnell, for an exit interview. | ||
| Here's what he had to say when he was questioned about where the U.S. economy is today. | ||
| The only way to deal with inflation is to create unemployment and another recession because we had to make sure that we lost jobs. | ||
| That's the only way you're going to keep the inflation down. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| I was absolutely convinced. | ||
| Give the American people half a shot. | ||
| They'll step up and get the job done if you give them the opportunity. | ||
| Look what they did. | ||
| They stepped up in every major endeavor. | ||
| And the idea, and I never believed we couldn't have a soft landing and a soft landing. | ||
| Inflation is down almost to 2%. | ||
| A lot going on. | ||
| But the first thing we had to do was go out and take care. | ||
| And I had an advantage and disadvantage. | ||
| I had a thing called a pandemic that was so badly handled that we're still dealing with people, thousands of people a day dying in America. | ||
| Well, first of all, it was rationale to spend the money to go take care of that. | ||
| That was the first big piece of legislation that got passed. | ||
| And secondly, when I came along, I said, look, in addition to that, we can now change the dynamic and invest more in the things that make us who we are. | ||
| For example, I remember walking through the, I used to commute every day to Delaware, 300 miles a day, basically, each way, I mean, total round trip. | ||
| And going through the Baltimore tunnel, I'm probably the only guy that's not an engineer that walked through that tunnel. | ||
| Last piece of work done in that tunnel going under the bay was, I think it was like 1917 or 18 or 19. | ||
| Light bulbs hanging down from inside, the water leaking in. | ||
| I mean, what else are we talking about, man? | ||
| These are things that, and they were going to create jobs immediately. | ||
| So you start building that tunnel, you're creating thousands of jobs. | ||
| People are getting paid a good salary. | ||
| You're generating American product to build it. | ||
| And look, the other thing, Lawrence, I got a lot of criticism, understandably. | ||
| We've invested more in red states than blue states. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's in this book. | |
| That's in this report. | ||
| For two reasons. | ||
| One, Red State's really screwed up in terms of the way they handle their economy and the way they handle manufacturing, the way they handle access to supply chains. | ||
| From the incoming and the outgoing, do you have confidence in the incoming Trump administration to improve the economy? | ||
| That was our conversation this morning for the first hour of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Before we get to it, though, an update for you from The Guardian on where that ceasefire and hostage release deal stands. | ||
| Here is their headline: Israel-Gaza ceasefire. | ||
| Netanyahu says hostage release to begin on Sunday if the Security Cabinet approves the deal. | ||
| As the cabinet meets right now, the Prime Minister's office has said hostages expected to be released as early as Sunday. | ||
| We'll keep an eye on that this morning on the Washington Journal as well. | ||
| Andrew, let's hear from you in Sterling, Virginia, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Greta. | |
| I hope you give me a couple minutes to get a couple things off my chest. | ||
| I've really been wanting to say this, and this is my opportunity, so I'd appreciate it if you could, please. | ||
| Is it on the economy and what you think the second Trump administration can do here? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, ma'am. | |
| All right. | ||
| So if you just show a little patience, please. | ||
| To all my fellow Americans who voted to re-elect Donald Trump, congratulations. | ||
| You've just sold out our country, our democracy, and our Constitution, basically over the price of eggs, bacon, and gas. | ||
| My God, look how far we've fallen as a country. | ||
| We have lost our way, our decency, and our morality. | ||
| We've become a mean, selfish, and uncaring nation. | ||
| Whatever happened to our Christian principles, it was a sacrilege to call Trump our Savior, a Messiah sent by God to save us. | ||
| One day we'll have to answer to our Creator. | ||
| To those Americans who voted for Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress thinking they would lower the price of food, housing, and health care, you were conned again. | ||
| They could care less about you, your family, your financial situation. | ||
| All they wanted was your vote at the ballot box. | ||
| They have shown time and time again that they are incapable of governing. | ||
| The only meaningful legislation that they ever pass is to have massive tax cuts to their wealthy billionaire donors and corporations. | ||
| You are only a means to an end. | ||
| And that end is to make drastic cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. | ||
| The money they steal from those entitlements will be used to pay for those huge tax cuts and in the process add an additional $15 trillion to the national debt. | ||
| Isn't it ironic that at least 12 billionaires will be sitting at the inauguration along with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg? | ||
| My bet is they'll all be trillionaires by the time Trump leaves office. | ||
| All right, Andrew, we do have other people waiting, so I'm going to jump in. | ||
| Front page of the Wall Street Journal, Treasury Pick Besant pressed on tariffs and taxes. | ||
| Scott Besson, the choice of President-elect Donald Trump to be Treasury Secretary, testified to the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, speaking favorably of higher taxes, sorry, higher tariffs and tax cuts. | ||
| The money man on Capitol Hill yesterday, will the incoming Trump administration with the president-elect and Mr. Besant, if he is confirmed, improve the economy? | ||
| Ed in Ocean City, New Jersey, an Independent. | ||
| What do you say, Ed? | ||
|
unidentified
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Ed O'Donnell, the first need for the economy is a guaranteed job for everyone, starting with the people at the bottom of society. | |
| And I don't have any confidence in either of these two political parties to do that because it's not their priority. | ||
| There's at least $800 billion in the bank accounts of our charities. | ||
| There's billions in the college endowments. | ||
| The churches have billions of dollars. | ||
| There are, I think, the last count, 17 billionaires said they wanted to give away all their money to help the poor. | ||
| That's the need. | ||
| Ed. | ||
| So, Ed, when you heard the outgoing president, President Biden, yesterday or earlier this week, give in his farewell address talk about an oligarchy taking shape in America. | ||
| Would you say you agree? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, it's been running the country for decades, and both parties are part of it. | |
| But the key is a guaranteed job and a place to live for the poor. | ||
| That's the key. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Ed in Ocean City, New Jersey, independent caller. | ||
| A poll, let's go back to the Associated Press poll on creating more jobs in 2025. | ||
| Ed brought it up. | ||
| When they asked if they had confidence that the Trump administration would create more in 2025, 54% said that they are slightly at or not at all confident. | ||
| 27% said they are extremely very confident, so higher numbers on this job question. | ||
| And then 18% said that they are moderately confident. | ||
| This is from an Associated Press poll that was done recently. | ||
| On Capitol Hill yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders listed Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg in a question to Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Besant on whether or not he agrees with President Biden's assertion that there's a quote-unquote oligarchy taking shape in America. | ||
| Listen to this exchange. | ||
| When you have a small number of multi-billionaires who have enormous economic, media, and political power, would you agree with President Biden, who last night stated, and I quote, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, and freedoms, end of quote. | ||
| That's what President Biden said last night. | ||
| I agree with him. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| Senator Sanders, I enjoyed her visit. | ||
| Talk a little bit closer into the mic. | ||
| I enjoyed her visit, and I hope you got my follow-up materials on the discussions, my previous readings on the terrorist and China. | ||
| And look, the three billionaires who you listed that all made the money themselves. | ||
| Mr. Musk came to the country as an immigrant. | ||
| I understand that, but what I'm asking you is when you have a handful of people like Musk, who will soon be part of the Trump administration and others, when you have three people owning more wealth in the bottom half of American society, when these people have enormous influence over the media, when they spend huge amounts of money in both political parties to elect candidates, what Biden said last night is we're moving toward an oligarchy. | ||
| I'm asking you that question. | ||
| Do you think, forget how they made their money, do you think that when so few people have so much wealth and so much economic and political power that that is an oligarchic form of society? | ||
| Well, I would note that President Biden gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two people who I think would qualify for his oligarchs. | ||
| So this is not a condemnation of any one individual. | ||
| I'm just asking you, would so few people have so much wealth and power do you think that that is an oligarchic form of society? | ||
| Senator, I think it depends on The ability to move up and down the no, that's not really the answer. | ||
| I mean, even if you had that mobility, no matter who those individuals might be. | ||
| Scott Besant, the nominee by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Treasury Secretary, taking questions on Capitol Hill yesterday with his son Cole sitting behind him. | ||
| We covered that hearing. | ||
| You can find it all on c-span.org. | ||
| We've covered numerous hearings this week on Capitol Hill confirmation hearings, and you can find them all on our website at c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now. | ||
| And today, up on Capitol Hill on this Friday, Governor Christy Noam of South Dakota will be in the hot seat. | ||
| She'll be before one of the Senate committees talking about her nomination to serve as the Homeland Security Secretary as President-elect Donald Trump readies an aggressive immigration push on day one. | ||
| You can see her bio there. | ||
| Tune in right here on C-SPAN at 9 a.m. Eastern Time for coverage of that confirmation hearing. | ||
| She'll be sure to take questions on mass deportation and other immigration policies. | ||
| You can also watch online at c-span.org or on our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW. | ||
| Jim in Missouri, a Republican. | ||
| Let's hear from you, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| I really appreciate your program and everything. | ||
| As far as President Trump is concerned, I think definitely he'll improve the economy. | ||
| He's done it before. | ||
| And it's just the fact that we've had this long four-year nightmare with the present president. | ||
| He's always been a liar and a thief, or at least a dishonest and unruly person. | ||
| Jim, what policies that you've heard President-elect Donald Trump talk about that you think will improve the economy? | ||
| Well, to start with, the energy sector, that's going to be a boon. | ||
|
unidentified
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We use oil for everything. | |
| And people that think we can do without oil at the present day is just fooling themselves. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the President-elect Donald Trump's picks to serve as energy secretary and the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. | ||
| They were on Capitol Hill this week as well. | ||
| And we will dig into their testimony and policies during the next Trump administration in our second hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| Jack, Upper Marlborough, Maryland, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Jack. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| So the question is: what's Trump going to improve? | ||
| I mean, because we're surely not talking about unemployment. | ||
| We've had steady, a strong labor market for well over two years now. | ||
| Unemployment has never really been over 4%. | ||
| We've had steady GDP growth of about 3% quarter after quarter. | ||
| The stock market has been blazing hot. | ||
| I mean, you can't get any better than that. | ||
| If you have a 401k, which I can attest to, that's been growing out of this world. | ||
| So what exactly would he be improving? | ||
| So let's talk about what he's proposing. | ||
| He's proposing extending the tax cut, which would do nothing to lower grocery prices, gas prices, et cetera. | ||
| He's talking about across-the-board tariffs, which every economist around the world has said would do nothing but increase prices for the average American consumer. | ||
| Mass immigration and deportation, again, inflationary. | ||
| Everything he's proposing is inflationary and will hurt the economy. | ||
| So if he's smart, what he'll do is really nothing and just try to maintain what we've been able to accomplish over the last four years and just rebrand it as the Trump economy. | ||
| I don't care, but don't mess it up. | ||
| But everything he's proposing will do exactly that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Jack, a Democratic caller in Maryland, says that he thinks these policies outlined by the incoming president on taxes and tariffs will mess up our current economy. | ||
| You agree or disagree with that caller? | ||
| All part of our conversation here this morning on the Washington Journal. | ||
| Back to that Associated Press poll. | ||
| View of these proposed tariffs by the president-elect. | ||
| 29% favor them, 46% oppose, while another 24% are not sure or neither. | ||
| They don't know what to think quite yet. | ||
| We'll see what happens when Mr. Trump takes over as the 47th president of the United States. | ||
| Monday is Inauguration Day here in Washington, and our coverage begins at 7 a.m. Eastern Time and continues throughout the day here on C-SPAN. | ||
| We will give you some context along with sights and sounds, history, all here on C-SPAN and over on C-SPAN too. | ||
| We will give you unfiltered inauguration sites and sounds. | ||
| You'll be able to watch it all unfold on the C-SPAN networks as well as C-SPAN.org and on our website or on our free video mobile app C-SPAN now. | ||
| On taxes and tariffs, here's an exchange from that hearing yesterday with the Treasury Secretary nominee from Fennett's top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden. | ||
| It's tariffs. | ||
| You can call it whatever you want in terms of trying to gussy it up. | ||
| They're going to be paid for by our workers and small businesses. | ||
| All through the campaign, we heard they weren't that foreign countries were going to pay it. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think that's baloney. | |
| It's going to be paid for by workers and small businesses. | ||
| So your response. | ||
| Yes, Senator, I would respectfully disagree. | ||
| And the history of tariffs and tariff theory, optimal tariff theory, does not support what you're saying. | ||
| Traditionally, we see that the current, if we were to say, use a number that has been thrown around in the press of 10%, then traditionally the currency appreciates by 4%. | ||
| So the 10% is not passed through. | ||
| Then we have various elasticities. | ||
| Consumer preferences may change. | ||
| And finally, foreign manufacturers, especially China, especially China, which is trying to export their way out of their current economic malaise, will continue cutting prices to maintain market share. | ||
| Scott Besant, who is the president-elect's picked to serve as Treasury Secretary on the Hill yesterday, talking about the impact of tariffs. | ||
| Al in Battle Creek, Michigan, a Democratic caller, Al, it is your turn to be part of this debate. | ||
| Do you think this incoming Trump administration will improve the economy? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I think the myth or the myth is that the economy is bad. | |
| And I have examples here of, well, you can talk about economic growth. | ||
| The last quarter under the Biden administration was extremely good economic growth, extremely good job creation, a stock market at all-time record highs. | ||
| How is it with the stock market would be at all-time record highs if the economy was doing badly? | ||
| And then I have here prices were coming down. | ||
| Inflation was almost back to normal. | ||
| I have in Michigan, gas prices are now below $3 a gallon. | ||
| So the idea that Trump is going to get the gas prices down lower, I think, is unlikely. | ||
| And then I have the headline of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| This is, let's see, printed in October. | ||
| It says, the next president inherits a remarkable economy. | ||
| The high quality of recent economic growth should put a win at the back of any president. | ||
| So this idea that Trump has propagated and the Fox News has propagated is the economy is bad. | ||
| No, the economy is quite, quite good. | ||
| So I think the challenge for the Trump people and the Trump administration is, can they not screw it up? | ||
| Can they not screw it up and cause a recession? | ||
| I mean, we're in a good economy. | ||
| I mean, I'd love to hear other statistics that say we're in a bad economy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Al in Battle Creek, Michigan. | ||
| Bob is a Republican in Old Fort, Tennessee. | ||
| Bob, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
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I say if anyone don't think Joe Biden was a disaster, something's wrong with him. | |
| And then the first guy said something about the Bible when you all support murdering babies and child mutilation. | ||
| No, hold on. | ||
| And he's going to straighten up that border. | ||
| We got laws. | ||
| And you talk about compassion. | ||
| Have compassion on our own citizens. | ||
| So, Bob, what about the economy? | ||
| What will he do to improve the economy, in your opinion? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, look, he didn't win the election because this economy is great. | |
| You just can keep trying to play this game all you want to. | ||
| Joe in Willow Springs, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Joe, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| And what I think will happen with Trump, see, the reason I like Trump now is because he is not a career politician. | ||
| He actually made things. | ||
| He built things. | ||
| And he's got Elon Musk and Ramashwami going to look into all of this over board spending. | ||
| Now, let's say this. | ||
| Back in 2005, George Bush Jr., I don't know if he's W or HW, I don't know. | ||
| I give a shit. | ||
| He, George Bush Jr., signed the Renewable Fuel Act. | ||
| And what that did is that drove up the price of soybean oil and corn oil because they mandated. | ||
| They forced people to use this. | ||
| Now, if suddenly they come in and say, okay, you can still use it, but you cannot get a, it's not going to be mandated, ethanol and biodiese will be dead tomorrow. | ||
| And when that happens, you're going to see the price of the soybean oil and corn oil drop through the bottom. | ||
| And so that alone is just one step in reducing price and cost of food and other items. | ||
| He starts allowing drilling and fracking and all this other stuff. | ||
| You're going to see the price of oil go down. | ||
| I mean, we saw petroleum down in the 20s when he was in office. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Joe, Joe, they're there with an outline of what the second incoming Trump administration will do on the economy, what he believes they can do to improve the economy. | ||
| We are in this conversation for our first hour of the Washington Journal, so keep calling in. | ||
| Want to share some other headlines with you, though, this morning. | ||
| This is from the Hill newspaper. | ||
| The Supreme Court decision on TikTok could come as early as this morning here on this Friday morning. | ||
| The Supreme Court has signaled it will release at least one opinion Friday, a hastily scheduled announcement that comes as TikTok's divest or ban deadline approaches Sunday. | ||
| The justices indicate in advance when they will hand down opinion, but Thursday's update was highly unusual. | ||
| It came with short notice and indicated the justice won't read their opinions aloud in the courtroom, as is typical. | ||
| So watch for that. | ||
| Related headline in many of the newspapers is that the incoming president is weighing an order to keep TikTok online. | ||
| That is a storyline for all of you to watch on this Friday and throughout the weekend as that deadline nears on Sunday. | ||
| Another headline to share with you this morning related to Congress, this is the Tallahassee Democrat with this headline: The wait is over. | ||
| Governor Ron DeSantis names Ashley Moody to replace Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate. | ||
| Ashley Moody, who is the state's Attorney General, will soon move from the Florida cabinet to the U.S. Senate. | ||
| Governor Ron DeSantis Thursday announced Moody as his pick to replace U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who is poised to be the next Secretary of State for President-elect Donald Trump. | ||
| The governor made the announcement in a Thursday news conference in Orlando. | ||
| And Marco Rubio testified at his confirmation hearing to serve as Secretary of State this week as well. | ||
| And you can find that on c-span.org or free video mobile app, C-SPANNow. | ||
| Dale in North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Dale. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You showed that clip of Bernie Sanders. | ||
| Why don't C-SPAN show the clip of this is where Joe Biden's mind is at? | ||
| He gives the Medal of Freedom to George Soros. | ||
| Anybody out there know who this man is? | ||
| All right, Jake. | ||
| So, Dale, what about the economy? | ||
| Do you think the Trump administration will improve it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the economy right now to an illegal alien. | |
| You got freak health care. | ||
| You got a debit card. | ||
| These people call in. | ||
| Trump ain't even in office yet. | ||
| This man gave the Medal of Freedom to George Soros. | ||
| All right, JJ in Maine, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| We're listening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do think the economy will grow under Trump. | |
| I do hope that he can unleash the oil and, you know, like they say, drill, baby, drill, because I think I agree with previous callers. | ||
| That is, you know, the underlying cost that has made everything more expensive. | ||
| I do believe in any tax cut, and whether it's on the wealthy or the middle class. | ||
| And even though there will be a tax cut, I do think the tax revenues will increase because the economy will improve that much. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, listen to what the Treasury Secretary nominee had to say about the 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| Was asked by the Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo about the importance, their argument for extending those 2017 Trump era tax cuts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is not a tax cut for the wealthy that we are talking about. | |
| It is a tax increase on all Americans, the majority of whom are in the lower and middle income categories. | ||
| My question to you is: one of our pivotal tax is to make sure that this tax increase does not happen. | ||
| Can you give us your perspective on the impact that would occur in this country if we allowed this $4 trillion tax increase to happen? | ||
| Senator Crapo, thank you for this, and thank you for the meetings over the past few weeks. | ||
| I've enjoyed working with your staff. | ||
| And this is the single most important economic issue of the day. | ||
| This is past fail. | ||
| That if we do not fix these tax cuts, if we do not renew and extend, then we will be facing an economic calamity. | ||
| And as always, with financial instability, that falls on the middle and working class people. | ||
| We will see a gigantic middle-class tax increase. | ||
| We will see the child tax credit halved. | ||
| We will see the deductions halved. | ||
| So it will be what we call in economics. | ||
| It has the potential for a sudden stop. | ||
| And as I said, traditionally with these sudden stops, it falls on working Americans. | ||
| Scott Besson, answering the question from the chair of the Senate Finance Committee there on extending the 2017 Trump era tax cuts, you can talk about that. | ||
| Tariffs, monetary policy, inflation, lowering costs, all that on the table this morning as we get your thoughts on whether or not this incoming Trump administration will improve the U.S. economy. | ||
| Steve is a Democrat in Painesville, Ohio. | ||
| Steve, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| Well, hey, two things, two institutions that will make an improvement on the economy. | ||
| One isn't the executive branch. | ||
| Trump is inept. | ||
| He's not able to perform. | ||
| He didn't in the past. | ||
| He won't in the future. | ||
| Let me just say that Congress has the power of the purse. | ||
| You know, if they can set a budget and get us out of this $36 trillion deficit, that would be a miracle. | ||
| The other thing is the Federal Reserve. | ||
| They control monetary policy, so they control interest rates. | ||
| Their dual mandate is price stability and full employment, which I think both of those objectives have been relatively met. | ||
| I mean, inflation's been tamped down to 2.6 or something. | ||
| Unemployment is 4.1. | ||
| Those numbers are great. | ||
| This economy is a $27 trillion economy. | ||
| Compare that to Russia, a $1.7 trillion economy. | ||
| China, a $17 trillion economy. | ||
| Here's a piece of data for you people out there who might be interested. | ||
| It's called M2. | ||
| It describes the amount of cash that Americans have in their bank accounts and savings and whatnot. | ||
| I believe the number is $21.7 trillion that Americans have in cash, an increase of like 1.98% from last year. | ||
| Americans have a lot of cash, okay? | ||
| The economy is doing great. | ||
| But here's the other thing with the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's how the central bank was created by an act of Congress. | |
| Can Trump make a phone call to Mike Johnson and say, hey, I want to put pressure on the Fed? | ||
| I don't like Jerome Powell anymore, whom he appointed in 2017. | ||
| So, you know, Trump, with Trump, it's about control. | ||
| He's going to make a move for the Fed and try to pressure the Fed. | ||
| Read Project 2025. | ||
| Their idea is free banking system, go back to the gold standard. | ||
| I mean, it's kind of unhinged and kind of unbelievable to think about. | ||
| But anyways. | ||
| All right, Steve. | ||
| Let me move on. | ||
| We got your thoughts. | ||
| We'll go to Randy, who's a Republican, and Wichita Falls, Texas. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes, it is. | ||
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| You mentioned eggs and bacon earlier in the TV show here. | ||
| And I'd like for people to know that in a commercial egg farm, the price of diesel that it takes to get that egg to the market, the grain that has to feed these farms, they've got millions of birds on these farms. | ||
| And we have one in North Texas that feeds two tractor train loads of grain every day to these chickens. | ||
| Well, those trucks, even with the latest in technology, get six and a half miles to a gallon. | ||
| So the tractor that has to plow the ground runs on diesel. | ||
| The combine that has the service of feed to make it into the granary, and then it's mixed to feed to the chickens. | ||
| And then once the chicken lays the egg, the eggs have to be transported in a cool tractor trailer that is supplied by diesel. | ||
| And if you take that, nowhere in this equation can that be absorbed. | ||
| And if you take just that price down by getting us energy independent, you take that price of that down through the whole process, the price of that egg is going to go down. | ||
| And it's the same way with the pork industry. | ||
| Once you take the price of that diesel, it's going to really make the price of that product come down. | ||
| Randy, what do you do for a living? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was a diesel mechanic for 42 years. | |
| So you're familiar with the price of diesel and how it impacts the economy, et cetera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it has almost doubled in price. | |
| And nowhere in this can you absorb that price. | ||
| And they're talking about being energy independent. | ||
| Well, yes, it's going to take a long time to do that. | ||
| But the price of diesel goes by speculators and not by the actual supply of it. | ||
| So the price will come down before we ever get independent. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Randy's thoughts there. | ||
| In Texas, a Republican. | ||
| Story to share with you as we continue with this conversation about whether or not the Trump administration will improve the economy. | ||
| Here's from Bloomberg News. | ||
| Mr. Trump plans to designate cryptocurrency as a national priority. | ||
| How will this impact the economy? | ||
| An executive order is expected to create a crypto advisory council. | ||
| And Trump allies are discussing federal crypto litigation. | ||
| Charles in Texas, a Democrat. | ||
| What do you say, Charles? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't believe he's going to be able to do the things that he's been promising. | |
| And he's done what he had to do in order to get in office. | ||
| Now he's in office, and you have millionaires and billionaires in his administration, and they are not going to be working for the ordinary people. | ||
| So all the people that fail for that, what they call it, Okey-doke to think that Trump can do something for poor people. | ||
| He never said one time while he was running what he was going to do for ordinary people. | ||
| It was always about him, money. | ||
| So, Charles, as a Democrat, what would you like your party to do in the House and Senate when if legislation that impacts the economy comes to the House and Senate floor? | ||
| What do you want them to do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's nothing they're going to be able to do. | |
| They don't control anything now. | ||
| Trump controls the White House, the Senate, the Supreme Court. | ||
| True, but their majorities are thin. | ||
| So they might likely need some Democrats to join them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if they need Democrats to join them, they should not join because they're not going to do anything for ordinary people. | |
| And they know that. | ||
| And one problem, only problem I have with the Democratic Party is this. | ||
| You hear me? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| When they were doing good on the economy, you never hear them sending them about how good they were doing the things they were. | ||
| And all you heard was Republican. | ||
| Now, they're just like this in lockstep. | ||
| They're like a gang number. | ||
| Whatever one say, all of them repeat the same thing, whether it's a lie or not. | ||
| They learn it from Trump. | ||
| Do not admit nothing you've done wrong. | ||
| All right, Charles, I'll leave it there and share with you this story in the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| House Democrat from Maine stands alone in supporting Trump's tariffs. | ||
| The House Democrat who wants Trump to go big on tariffs is the Washington Post. | ||
| Most Democrats are poised to bash Trump over any price increases that follow new tariffs in his second administration, especially on inexpensive consumer goods such as clothing. | ||
| But Jared Golden is embracing Trump's maximalist trade vision and saying his own party needs to rethink theirs. | ||
| That stance reflects one end of the emerging debate among Democrats over how to respond to one of Trump's central economic policies. | ||
| And on Thursday, the four-term congressman from northern Maine will introduce legislation to codify Trump's campaign proposal to enact tariffs of at least 10% on all goods imported to the United States. | ||
| This is according to a copy obtained by the Washington Post. | ||
| And even though Golden's legislation reflects Trump's signature economic policy, not a single House Republican has agreed to co-sponsor his bill. | ||
| You can read more by Jeff Stein in the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| Also in the Washington Post, their editorial board on this, there's another way to fight a trade war is what they write. | ||
| In 2018, after Trump launched his first batch of tariffs on imports from friends and foes, China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union, targeted Kentucky bourbon to send a pointed message to then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hails from that state. | ||
| China and Mexico also took aim at pork to squeeze Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, America's pig capital. | ||
| According to one model from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, imposing a 10 percentage point additional tariff on imports from every foreign country and a 60 percentage point tariff on imports from China, as Trump has threatened, would lower American gross domestic product and employment, regardless of whether other countries retaliated. | ||
| Over the course of Trump's next presidency, the higher tariffs on Chinese goods would reduce U.S. GDP by just under $165 billion in today's dollars, even if China did nothing in return. | ||
| Likewise, the new tariffs on all other countries would cut GDP by $360 billion. | ||
| Though it is true that the U.S. economy would suffer more if other countries were to strike back, in doing so, these countries would hurt themselves. | ||
| The hit to China's GDP from higher tariffs would rise from $820 billion over the course of Trump's presidency with no retaliation to $980 billion if China's imposed its own 60% tariff on American goods. | ||
| The loss to Mexico's economy would rise from $36 billion if it didn't strike back to $67 billion if it did. | ||
| Rather than shooting themselves in the foot, countries might instead copy one thing China did when it was hit by the tariffs during Trump's first term. | ||
| It lowered tariffs on imports from other countries. | ||
| This disadvantaged American exporters and benefited the Chinese economy by attracting cheaper imports from the rest of the world. | ||
| That is the Washington Post editorial board this morning. | ||
| Tom, an Illinois Republican. | ||
| Tom, we're talking about economic policies during the second Trump administration. | ||
| Will they improve the economy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, they will. | |
| If you remember when Biden came in, you know, he got rid of all Trump's directives, and then he started cutting fuel production back. | ||
| And Randy, who called up just a little bit ago and was talking, he was a diesel mechanic, well, I've been a farmer for 40 years, and there's lots of years when we run into red. | ||
| We don't make any money. | ||
| And a lot of that is because of diesel fuel, because diesel fuel runs everything. | ||
| And that's the way you cut prices for food, and that's the way you cut prices for everything. | ||
| I listened this morning Bernie Sanders say, and another guy called on the radio say on the TV saying that we need to give people housing and a salary. | ||
| We've tried that in the past. | ||
| We did it in a war on poverty. | ||
| We spent like $33 trillion. | ||
| What we get completely destroyed the black family, and they all lived in projects, and it just made drug addiction a lot worse. | ||
| Tom, can I jump in and ask you about the president-elects Pick to serve as Treasury Secretary? | ||
| Scott Besson, were you able to watch any of his confirmation hearing yesterday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, but I watched a little bit of it on what you've been showing these clips on it. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He has a lot of, he's not like Janet Yellen. | ||
| I mean, he has a lot of good ideas. | ||
| He actually said no, I mean, because the Democrats have been trying to get him to say yes or no. | ||
| And he said no because they don't like to get put in a box with one question or the other. | ||
| But they need to tell these Democrats no because the problem is all this money, every time I think I'm going to get ahead and I think I'm going to make a lot of money at the end of the year, it all goes away to taxes to Washington, D.C. | ||
| And I live in the state of Illinois, which is totally run by Democrats, which doesn't even have a triple class A rating anymore, borrowing money. | ||
| The state of Illinois is in really bad shape, and it's just like California. | ||
| Hey, Tom, let me jump in and notify you this about, you can go to C-SPAN.org and watch the confirmation hearing. | ||
| I wanted to let you know that the nominee was asked yesterday about economic policies, banking policies specifically, and the impact of them on rural America. | ||
| The nominee talked about how he enjoys listening to farm radio on Sirius on the weekends and how that has informed his thinking about rural America in this country. | ||
| Your reaction to hearing that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it does. | |
| I watch the RFD channel all the time. | ||
| I get my market prices on there and I listen to the cowboy. | ||
| He makes predictions. | ||
| He gets people on there to tell us predictions what it's going to do in the market. | ||
| And most of the market has always been tried to be manipulated by the government because these guys get ideas of what they're going to do. | ||
| Well, Tom, does it give you comfort that this nominee is listening to farm radio? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it does. | |
| Because for the last, last, I'll say this one thing: last thing. | ||
| The only free enterprise in this country yet, which is disappearing rapidly, is the farm economy. | ||
| We've put in insurance, we've done all kinds of stuff that's subsidized by the government, and it's all to manipulate us. | ||
| So we make sure that nobody goes broke. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Tom, I got to jump in at that point. | ||
| Front page of the Wall Street Journal calls Tom Bessant the money man. | ||
| He was on Capitol Hill yesterday testifying for his nomination to serve as Treasury Secretary. | ||
| C-SPAN cameras were there. | ||
| You can find it all on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Lisa in Georgia, Democratic caller. | ||
| We'll go to you, Lisa. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I don't think Trump is going to make the economy any better. | ||
| He will make it worse. | ||
| That is a fact. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, going back to what a couple of gentlemen said about the diesel fuel, the first gentleman at the end, he kind of contradicted himself because the price of the fuel pretty much is based on stock market. | ||
| So that's how, you know, diesel oil, you know, fluctuate, goes up and goes down based on stock markets. | ||
| But Trump will not do anything. | ||
| He will. | ||
| Now, I want people to have a spirit of discernment. | ||
| I want people to be able to analyze and have critical thinking skills. | ||
| When Trump tells you something, okay, don't just believe it. | ||
| Research it. | ||
| And Democrats are poor messengers. | ||
| They are such poor messengers. | ||
| When Trump came into office and took credit for the economy that Obama gave to him, he inherited a good economy. | ||
| He was claiming that he done turned the economy around the first three months that he was in office. | ||
| It took Obama eight years to pull America out of the ditch, stabilize it in four years, and things were booming in the next four years. | ||
| Donald Trump walked right into that. | ||
| He did not create that economy. | ||
| All right, Lisa. | ||
| Let me go to Jerry, who's in Butler, Georgia, Republican. | ||
| Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| I've been farming for a little over 50 years now. | ||
| And the last four years has probably been the worst four years we've ever had. | ||
| When Joe Biden went in, I think he canceled a pipeline the first day he was in. | ||
| Fuel prices started to increase. | ||
| When fuel prices increased, everything we had to purchase increased. | ||
| Fertilizer went from $500, $600 a ton to $900, $1,100 a ton. | ||
| Diesel fuel prices doubled. | ||
| And everything we, everything, equipment, everything that we had to purchase, chemicals, everything went up. | ||
| Not quite twice as much, but almost. | ||
| Probably anyway. | ||
| Jerry, did you make, did you also then did you see the price of your crops grow up, what you sold? | ||
| Did you get more money? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Soybeans were bringing around $12 to $14 when Joe Biden went in. | |
| I'm actually going to craft some soybeans out today for probably $9.50 a bushel. | ||
| And why is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The grain market is worldwide. | |
| So the commodity markets control the grain markets. | ||
| But the problem we have is everything we purchase to fuel prices has almost doubled. | ||
| Yeah, understood. | ||
| Jerry there in Butler, Georgia, a longtime farmer and Republican. | ||
| Mike Elmont, New York, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I'd like to start by saying that maybe you can bring up an article by the Wall Street Journal two weeks before the election saying whoever wins the election will inherit a remarkable economy. | ||
| That's a quote, a remarkable economy. | ||
| We just did 3% GDP in the third quarter, which was phenomenal. | ||
| They were predicting a recession for a number of years, which ticked them off when it didn't happen. | ||
| You know, the thing with the gas price, in answer to the question, he's not going to improve it at all. | ||
| His first time there, I mean, when we had COVID, things sort of stopped. | ||
| So you don't know what happened. | ||
| We just pumped more oil out of the ground last year than ever before. | ||
| So I don't know what these people are talking about. | ||
| There is a Keystone pipeline, too. | ||
| Mike, and for you and for the others who have brought up energy policy and its impact on the economy, that is our focus in the next hour of the Washington Journal. | ||
| So stay with us this morning. | ||
| Let's go to the lawn of the White House. | ||
| Francesca Chambers is joining us there. | ||
| She's the White House correspondent for USA Today to talk about the transition that is going to be happening or is underway there for the incoming Trump administration. | ||
| Francesca Chambers, let's first talk about the latest on the Israel-Gaza ceasefire. | ||
| Is the administration confident things are on track? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we actually expect the Israeli government to formally approve this deal later this morning. | |
| And it's been a long road, as you noted, to get to this point. | ||
| President Biden first unveiled the details of this deal in May. | ||
| And then for months, there were fits and starts to get to what happened this week, which is when the administration said that Hamas finally agreed to a list of hostages that it would release. | ||
| Now we expect that this deal will go into place beginning on Sunday. | ||
| There is also a flurry of activity from this outgoing administration. | ||
| What has the president done in recent days in executive orders and other actions that he can take from the White House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Biden, they always say they're running through the tape, but he is making the most of every last minute that he has here at the White House. | |
| In just the last few days, we saw him announce that he would like to reverse the Cubans being on the state sponsor of terror lists. | ||
| Now, that is something that the next administration can undo, as he has put other executive orders into place that the next administration could undo if they would like to. | ||
| Just this morning, we saw him commute the sentences of another 2,500 individuals. | ||
| And later today, he will give a speech to mayors where he will talk about his climate and infrastructure investments. | ||
| What is happening behind the scenes as Washington prepares for Inauguration Day on Monday? | ||
| What is happening at the White House logistically? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you can't see it behind me, but they've already set up for the inauguration. | |
| The stands are out there now. | ||
| There's heightened security to get in anywhere around the White House because there will be a parade that comes through after the inauguration. | ||
| We've seen moving trucks outside of the White House in recent days as well, because, of course, once President Biden is leaving office and President Trump is coming in, there's a very short amount of time where they have to change over everything in the residence and furniture and all kinds of things in the White House. | ||
| So we've already started to see that process begin here at the White House. | ||
| On Monday, what is the activity like inside the White House? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I've been here in the past at the White House for two changeovers between President Obama to Trump and then President Trump to President Biden. | |
| And often what we will see is a tea that is held before the inauguration between presidents where they're greeted. | ||
| As you recall, President Trump did not go to President Biden's inauguration, so that didn't happen last time. | ||
| And then he talked to reporters on his way out of the White House as he got on Marine One for the final time. | ||
| President Biden is going to the inauguration on Monday, so that process will be a little different at the White House. | ||
| But in the afternoon, as you noted, there's always a flurry of activity. | ||
| You get to see new administration officials coming in. | ||
| They like to check out the press digs, the briefing room, introduce themselves sometimes as well. | ||
| Sometimes in the past, in the Trump administration, we also saw that they started to gaggle out here behind me on the White House North Lawn. | ||
| I don't know if we'll see that in the next Trump administration again, but that was an opportunity for reporters to get to talk directly to administration officials. | ||
| What else? | ||
| How else does this transition impact the White House Press Corps? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, some reporters who covered President Joe Biden won't be returning to cover President Donald Trump. | |
| Some reporters will be staying on. | ||
| I will be staying on to cover the next administration personally. | ||
| And so, you know, some people who will continue to cover them both will have that switch over at 12.01 p.m. as well. | ||
| What are your thoughts on the incoming White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt? | ||
| What have you heard about any changes to how this White House, this incoming White House, will brief the press? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, she was an assistant press secretary in the last administration, so returning reporters who covered the first Trump administration have already had a relationship with her and know her already. | |
| And of course, she was the press secretary on the transition and during the campaign as well. | ||
| So she's already interacted with some members of the White House press corps. | ||
| It's not entirely clear yet how often she plans to brief when there will be the first press briefing. | ||
| Gensaki held one on Inauguration Day four years ago. | ||
| ago. | ||
| We don't yet know if that will take place next week. | ||
| But we do know that the administration has said that they want to include, in addition to reporters who have traditionally been in the room, more voices. | ||
| They want to reach out to more podcasts. | ||
| And the way that that would work, by the way, is that reporters can apply to come in through a day pass for the White House. | ||
| Those who don't have clearance to come in every single day, they're able to come into the White House press briefing room and raise their hand and ask questions. | ||
| And we've seen some administrations in the past do some virtual editions as well, where they've taken reporters from, whether it be, as we noted, podcasts or from local media on screens where they can ask questions. | ||
| I think all of those things are possibilities in this administration. | ||
| There is lots of talk of what will happen on day one of the second Trump administration. | ||
| What can our viewers expect? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we've been told that there will be a blizzard of executive orders, a flurry of executive orders. | |
| We don't yet know what all of those would be. | ||
| The incoming president has signaled that he'd like to put tariffs on some countries. | ||
| Now, we don't know if those will be individual tariffs shed or if he'll be looking at blanket tariffs. | ||
| He has also suggested that he would undo many of the Biden administration's not only recent executive orders, but he'd like to try and undo some of Biden's signature accomplishments as well. | ||
| Again, we don't know all of those executive orders that he'll plan to unroll on day one, and we also don't know how many of them will come days later in the administration. | ||
| There's a lot to do when an incoming president comes into office. | ||
| From C-SPAN's perch at the White House on the lawn, Francesca Chambers joining us. | ||
| She's the White House correspondent with USA today, and we thank you for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We're going to take a short break when we come back to a conversation with Brigham McCollum at Hudson Institute and Trevor Higgins at the Center for American Progress about the incoming Trump administration's energy and environmental agenda. | ||
| That conversation coming up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, South Dakota Governor Christy No, tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security, appears before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. | |
| Watch live on the C-SPAN Networks. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Witness Democracy Unfiltered with C-SPAN. | ||
| Experience history as it unfolds with C-SPAN's live coverage this month as Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress. | ||
| And a new chapter begins with the swearing in of the 47th President of the United States on Monday, January 20th. | ||
| Tune in for our live all-day coverage of the presidential inauguration as Donald Trump takes the oath of office becoming President of the United States. | ||
| Stay with C-SPAN this month for comprehensive, live, unfiltered coverage of the 119th Congress and the presidential inauguration, C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Since his first interview on C-SPAN on Book Notes in 1993, Harold Holzer has appeared on the network close to 200 times. | ||
| Up to that year, he had written or edited six books on Abraham Lincoln. | ||
| Since then, Harold Holzer has added another 50 books to his name. | ||
| C-SPAN viewers and listeners have had the opportunity to hear Mr. Holzer talk about Lincoln's life from his birth in Kentucky in 1807 until his assassination in Washington, D.C. in 1865. | ||
| The following conversation is meant to be extensive. | ||
| The center of attention will be Mr. Lincoln, but in this case, also the life of Harold Holzer, a New Yorker for the past 75 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer talks about his life and work on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| C-SPAN Now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what's happening in Washington, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| You can also stay current with the latest episodes of Washington Journal and find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV networks and C-SPAN radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| C-SPAN Now is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Scan the QR code to download it for free today or visit our website, c-span.org/slash c-SPANNOW. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, your front row seat to Washington anytime, anywhere. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| Our next hour, we will focus on environment and energy policies of the next Trump administration. | ||
| Joining us for that conversation this morning, we have Trevor Higgins, who is the Senior Vice President of Energy and Environment Policy at the Center for American Progress, and Brigham McCowan, who is Director and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute's Initiative on American Energy Security. | ||
| Brigham McCowan, let's begin with you. | ||
| What are we expecting during this Trump administration, the second one, day one, when it comes to energy policy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, I think that's a great question. | |
| I think you can look back at round one of the Trump administration for an idea of what he will do. | ||
| It's his view that he needs to unleash American energy independence to make the country stronger and more secure. | ||
| If we look back at a traditional definition of energy security, it's about availability, it's about accessibility, and it's about cost, affordability. | ||
| And the president will focus on energy sources that he believes will be cheaper and better for the American economy. | ||
| What will those be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It'll be a mix. | |
| I think, you know, the president's known for liking fossil fuel, and certainly natural gas production has been very important. | ||
| Just switching from coal to natural gas has resulted in low prices, but a 50% reduction in carbon emissions just from those two fuel sources. | ||
| He likes nuclear. | ||
| I think he's actually an all-the-above type of person, which is what we're America used to be 10, 20 years ago. | ||
| In your view, what impact does that have on the economy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it'll be great for the economy because next to people and raw materials, energy is that third most expensive component. | |
| It will help us make us more competitive or it can hurt us. | ||
| So energy abundance generally leads to a better economy. | ||
| Trevor Higgins, your reaction to what you just heard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, you know, there's actually a really interesting transition that's happening right now, including because of the investments of the Biden administration to build new wind and solar and manufacturing. | ||
| And that's a diversity of resources that is increasing the amount of energy produced here in the United States. | ||
| It's lowering energy costs, it's increasing jobs. | ||
| And I think the real question will be whether that momentum can continue. | ||
| There's a lot of reason why these investments made sense and will continue to make sense, but there are going to be some headwinds potentially of policy change, including if the Inflation Reduction Act investments are repealed by Congress. | ||
| I think there's a good reason to believe that they'll survive, but that's going to be a subject of debate. | ||
| And a lot is on the line in terms of energy prices, jobs, and competitiveness with China. | ||
| Explain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So right now, if you have a desire to invest in the United States, you can get additional tax incentives. | |
| And we've seen more than $90 billion in new clean energy manufacturing in the United States. | ||
| That's put us on track to supply enough batteries that are American-made for 13 million EVs by 2028. | ||
| So that in the next four years, we could be producing a lot of the world's demand for electric vehicles right here in the United States. | ||
| Your reaction to what you heard from Brigham McCown about fossil fuel and the production of that and this Trump administration's all of the above strategy, nuclear power, et cetera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, the U.S. oil production is already at record levels. | ||
| And the real question is, where does that go? | ||
| In order to try to push that further, the administration has talked about, the incoming administration has talked about potentially trying to lease more lands. | ||
| That takes time. | ||
| They've talked about increasing exports of natural gas, which would actually take some of that gas from the United States and put it overseas. | ||
| They've talked about potentially repealing the investments in clean energy. | ||
| So it's not clear to me that the total energy supply will increase based on those policies, but we'll see how they put it together. | ||
| Well, let's get a response to that last point. | ||
| Will the energy supply increase as you just heard a concern that it won't? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think it will. | |
| And if we look back throughout history, the world has never used less energy, only more. | ||
| And while we can transition to more efficient resources, we're still going to need, excuse me, we're still going to need a lot of energy. | ||
| 2024, coal usage was the highest in the planet's history. | ||
| So the question is, how can we responsibly produce the fuel that we need for ourselves and for our allies, some of whom don't have the abundance of natural resources like we do, and do that in an environmentally sensitive and protective way? | ||
| Do you think the incoming Trump administration retains these tax incentives for so-called clean energy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's a great question. | |
| And I wish I had the crystal ball to be able to figure out. | ||
| Should they? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, the IRA has been successful for a lot of red states as well as blue states. | |
| There's a little bit of money for everybody, whether we can afford that type of investment given our budget deficit, whether or not there should be a level playing field. | ||
| I happen to own an EV, but not because the government told me to buy one, because it works in an urban area. | ||
| It doesn't work for everybody. | ||
| And ultimately, I think the free market economy has to be the driver of what people are going to purchase. | ||
| How does energy policy reduce costs for the American people? | ||
| We have heard from a couple of farmers already this morning in our first hour talking about diesel specifically. | ||
| You bring down the price of diesel, the price of food will go down as well. | ||
| Brigham McCown, you're shaking your head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, absolutely. | |
| You know, I spoke about this to somebody on the street just outside before coming in. | ||
| He said, everything costs too much. | ||
| Coffee costs too much. | ||
| My fuel for my car costs too much. | ||
| We've got to get inflation under control. | ||
| And a big component of what we purchase, every single thing we buy comes to us from somewhere around the world. | ||
| You know, it doesn't get here for free. | ||
| It doesn't get here via teleporter. | ||
| It gets here on the backbone of energy. | ||
| And so that energy cost is a fundamental component of the expense of everything we purchase. | ||
| And how do you expect the Trump administration to address that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Trump administration wants to lower energy prices. | |
| And we've seen mixed results really with some of the new investment. | ||
| If you look out to California, some of the highest electric prices in the world, just not competitive. | ||
| You look to Germany that has had very aggressive decarbonization strategies. | ||
| And they've also had very aggressive deindustrialization strategies because they can't afford to make what they used to make. | ||
| So the bottom line is energy has to cost less, not more. | ||
| And ideally, not because of subsidy, but because the levelized cost of production. | ||
| Turtle Higgins, do you agree, disagree that you can lower the cost of food in this country and other areas for the American people if you address energy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I definitely agree. | |
| I think that fossil fuel prices are one of the major components of inflation or deinflation. | ||
| They're one of the major drivers of changes in grocery prices. | ||
| And one of the things that's great about electric vehicles is that even for the people who aren't buying them, they don't fit for their lifestyle today, they still lower total demand for gasoline. | ||
| They take that price pressure off of diesel and gasoline and make fuel more affordable for the people who are still needing to use that fuel. | ||
| And so there's an approach here where you can do investments in building more capacity, more capacity to manufacture, more ability for households to afford the choices they want to make. | ||
| And that benefits everybody. | ||
| Let's get to calls. | ||
| We'll go to William, who's first in Tucson, Arizona, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you, William. | ||
| We're talking about environment and energy policy in the second Trump administration. | ||
| Your question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Greta. | |
| Listen, the main thing that I have, because I don't think enough people answer this question. | ||
| We've got residual things. | ||
| I remember being a high school student and driving to school every morning during the wintertime, and there was this huge brown cloud that hovered over the city of Tucson. | ||
| My question this morning is, what do we do with those EV batteries when they wear out? | ||
| Nobody seems to answer that question. | ||
| Nobody wants to answer that question. | ||
| It's maddening because they will wear out. | ||
| Some people, when you get rid of flashlight batteries, you just dump them in the trash and walk away. | ||
| But the point I make is what are you going to do with those overly heavy EV batteries when they're gone? | ||
| Thank you, Helen. | ||
| Trevor Higgins, you take it first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love this question. | |
| So, you know, when you throw out your little AAA battery, it often winds up just polluting a landfill. | ||
| But the pressure right now for the critical minerals that are in EV batteries is so intense. | ||
| Right now the supply chains are frankly dominated by China. | ||
| And so the ability to try to reclaim those minerals, including cobalt and lithium, out of the batteries is a huge opportunity. | ||
| Right now there are investments being made in the United States to produce more critical minerals, but most importantly to try to process critical minerals, to refine them and recycle them. | ||
| And if the United States can build that capacity, we'll be in a position to reshape the way that global supply chains are written and address things like landfill pollution from the batteries afterwards. | ||
| Bregg and McCown, have you had to replace your battery in your EV car yet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, and it'd be about $15,000. | |
| But the issue with the EV battery is you lose 1% to 2% of the battery every year, depending on how you drive, how you charge. | ||
| And so, you know, I think the car will last 10, 15 years, but we're also seeing an evolution in battery technology, phosphate ion instead of nickel and cobalt and some of the more rare earth materials. | ||
| But it is an issue, and it's something that I don't know that we fully understand the total cost of an EV through its entire life cycle. | ||
| They're also more expensive to fix in the case of an accident. | ||
| And, you know, my insurance rates are up and all of our insurance rates are up. | ||
| And that is unfortunate. | ||
| But I think we don't know the full impact yet, but the technology will continue to evolve over time. | ||
| On Capitol Hill this week, we heard from the President Alex Picks to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department, as well as the Interior Department. | ||
| All of those nominees testifying on the Senate side this week, and C-SPAN covered those hearings. | ||
| You can find them if you go to c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow. | ||
| Let's go to Lee Zeldin's hearing, the former member of Congress to lead the EPA. | ||
| At his confirmation hearing yesterday, he spoke about his views on climate change. | ||
| President-elect Trump has said that climate change is a hoax. | ||
| You will be, if confirmed, one of the leading spokespeople in this country, representing us throughout the entire world. | ||
| Do you agree with President-elect Trump that climate change is a hoax? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first off, Senator, it was great to meet with you as well. | |
| I believe that climate change is real. | ||
| As I told you, as far as President Trump goes, the context that I've heard him speak about it was with a criticism of policies that have been acted because of climate change. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think he's concerned about the economic costs of some policies where there's a debate and a difference of opinion between parties. | |
| I would respectfully disagree with you. | ||
| I think he has called it a hoax time and time and time again. | ||
| From yesterday's confirmation hearing with the former Congressman Lee Zeldon to head up the EPA. | ||
| Brigham McCowan, who is with the Hudson Institute, the director and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Initiative on American Energy Secretary, is our guest, along with Trevor Higgins, who's the Vice President of Energy and Environment at the Center for American Progress. | ||
| Trevor Higgins, what did you make of the answer there from the former congressman to head up the EPA? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm glad that he feels it's necessary to say that climate change is happening. | |
| I agree with Senator Sanders that that hasn't been President Trump's position. | ||
| The thing is that climate change really is happening. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| The EPA has a responsibility to acknowledge that. | ||
| At another point in his hearing, he talked about whether CO2 is a pollutant that contributes to climate change. | ||
| And he acknowledged that EPA has said it is, but it really is. | ||
| And it's important for EPA to take responsibility for that. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because the pollution standards for carbon dioxide pollution for cars and trucks and power plants are set by EPA. | ||
| And there are new rules that are taking effect now that the industry is relying upon to guide their investment decisions. | ||
| And if the EPA throws that into uncertainty by trying to rewrite the rules and retract what's already been proposed and potentially replace them with very little, it leaves, it makes it much more difficult for the United States to plan its future course to industrial development. | ||
| Brigham McCowan, what do you expect from the Trump administration on those standards that Trevor Higgins was just talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, the U.S. leads the world in greenhouse gas emission reduction. | ||
| We do it cleaner, better than any other place in the world. | ||
| I think what you're going to see, though, is as we continue to raise efficiency standards, you've wrung most of the efficiency out of the system. | ||
| And at this point, to get another 5% or 10% on the CAFE, the mileage requirements, it's going to cost a lot more now. | ||
| And I think we've gotten to the point where people are no longer able to buy new cars. | ||
| We've all looked at new car prices. | ||
| They're very expensive. | ||
| So I think we have to take a look that this is actually a counterintuitive proposal because it keeps older cars, what we call the fleet, still operating the U.S., which means we'll have more older cars remaining in active service, which actually means more pollution. | ||
| So I think it's time to take a pause. | ||
| Does the Trump administration, though, roll back what's already in place for those CAFE standards? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I can't speak for the Trump administration, but if you talk to the automotive manufacturers, they are already tooled for the 25 and 26 fleets. | |
| So it would cost billions for them to retool. | ||
| I think what you may see, though, is enforcement discretion in allowing the automo, the automo, I can't say that this morning, the automotive manufacturers are more leeway in how they approach the regs. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| All right, Jermaine, in North Charleston, South Carolina, Democratic Caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how you doing? | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, I hear a lot of callers call in, and they speak about a pipeline that Biden supposedly shut down. | ||
| I would like the guests to explain this pipeline and kind of clear it up, how it was never operational, and it didn't do anything. | ||
| All right, we'll talk about that. | ||
| Brigham McCown, you can go first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, not exactly. | |
| Keystone, I think, is what he's talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, there are a lot of pipeline projects throughout the world. | |
| We have more pipelines than any other country because almost two-thirds of any of the energy that we use, and certainly every drop of fuel that you put in your car that goes into an airplane or a truck comes to us via pipeline. | ||
| It's the most efficient way to move stuff around, and it's been that way for a very long time. | ||
| Keystone XL was a joint U.S.-Canadian project. | ||
| Most of Keystone was built. | ||
| It actually exists in different phases, but the extension was canceled under the Biden administration. | ||
| It has been studied longer during the Obama administration than it took to win World War II. | ||
| I think everybody in town admits it was a political decision, but yet, you know, here we are. | ||
| Unfortunately, that developer has sold off and has no plans to do that. | ||
| But we get. | ||
| So then what did President Biden do on Keystone if all of this took place during the Obama administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. | ||
| It started during the Obama administration that came to no decision. | ||
| The Trump administration decided it was in the U.S. national interest and started with the permits. | ||
| Lawsuits ensued. | ||
| It didn't get completed, the reviews, the legal challenges before President Trump left. | ||
| On day one, Biden said, I'm canceling the project. | ||
| The company, though, at that point, had already moved on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They had. | |
| And honestly, it's something that happens every day. | ||
| You basically kill a project by increasing costs by delay, delay, delay, until the developer throws their hands up in the air and says, you know, time to move on. | ||
| I'm losing too much money. | ||
| Talk about where this extension was in our country and why was it important? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, it was important because it didn't follow the trajectory of the original Keystone, but it cut through from Alberta through North Dakota and South Dakota and would have picked up oil from the Bakken region, which is desperately needed. | |
| That's American crude oil. | ||
| That's in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is in North South Dakota, Wyoming area, and that could have helped lower costs of getting oil out of the Bakken. | |
| But that didn't happen. | ||
| So it's trucked out. | ||
| It's put on rail cars. | ||
| It's put on things that are, you know, frankly more expensive and a tad less safe. | ||
| So this is coming down into toward the Louisiana, toward Louisiana, toward the exporting area there. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That's what the extension would have allowed to happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the extension would go down to Oklahoma and connect in Cushing and join the rest of the Keystone system and then go both to our refineries down in Louisiana and Texas. | |
| And some of it may have ended up in export too. | ||
| But, you know, we import about 4.5 million barrels of oil every day from Canada. | ||
| And along the East Coast, we export a couple million barrels of energy products to Canada. | ||
| It's an integrated North American system. | ||
| Trevor Higgins, what about Keystone and your perspective of what happened there and the impact of it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that I agree with your overview. | |
| The Keystone fight was sort of an old fight, but the funny thing is that it was about the vision for what the energy system would look like today and in the next 30 years. | ||
| And it was meant to mostly connect tar sands oil from Canada, which in addition to being more polluting than other sources because it's so energy intensive to extract, it was also more expensive. | ||
| And at this point, the world is facing potential peak for global oil and gas demand over the course of the next few years. | ||
| And at that point, prices are not going to continue to respond the same way they have before. | ||
| And I don't think it makes economic sense to be investing lots of infrastructure to try and connect extremely expensive forms of energy that are unlikely to be needed given where prices are going to be. | ||
| Well, what do you replace it with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right now, we're cutting demand for oil and gas by investing in electric vehicles here in the United States and elsewhere and by improving efficiency. | |
| And there's a lot of different ways. | ||
| And that's what's contributing to a potential turnaround in the growth of oil and gas. | ||
| Oil and gas demand has grown for decades and decades and decades now. | ||
| And it'll be a new thing when that starts to turn the corner. | ||
| Do you agree? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In part and not in part. | |
| I mean, you know, whether or not private companies should invest billions of dollars in the U.S. economy, that's their decision to make. | ||
| It shouldn't be the government's decision to make. | ||
| It's a commodity. | ||
| It's a legal commodity. | ||
| That's like saying you can't open a coffee shop. | ||
| The government's going to tell you what you can and can't do. | ||
| You know, in our system, that doesn't work out very well typically. | ||
| And number two, there are many areas of the global economy, the global south, China and India, which we haven't really gotten into, that are leading the pollution around the world. | ||
| I don't know that fossil fuel is going anywhere in my lifetime. | ||
| Going back to that Keystone extension and how it would have brought the oil that you're talking about into Cushing, why Cushing, Oklahoma, and was the glut there addressed or has it been addressed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It has been addressed. | |
| Cushing is designed to be the crossroads of the American pipeline system. | ||
| And we have tens of millions of barrels of oil in Cushing to be redistributed throughout the country. | ||
| The Keystone system actually drops oil off to the Midwest too, into Illinois and affects Midwest gas prices. | ||
| So, you know, that delta between the Cushing price and what we call West Texas Intermediate, which is the standard benchmark, that margin has declined over the years. | ||
| And, you know, the more efficient we can make our transportation system, whether it's for cars or oil or gas or electricity, the cheaper prices will be for the consumer. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We are talking about energy and environmental policies here on the Washington Journal this morning and our last hour of the journal at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| We're going to take you up to Capitol Hill where Christy Noam, the governor of South Dakota, will be testifying in her confirmation hearing to lead the Homeland Security Department. | ||
| Before we, there it is on your screen, you'll be able to watch that right here on C-SPAN at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Before, though, we are continuing to talk about energy and environmental policy because the president-elects picks to lead EPA, energy, and interior all testified this week on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Before we continue on with that conversation, though, an update for you on the Israel-Gaza ceasefire hostage release deal. | ||
| This, according to AP News, the Israel's Security Cabinet has recommended approval of that ceasefire for Gaza. | ||
| There you can see the Prime Minister on your screen meeting with that security cabinet. | ||
| Everett in Grand Junction, Colorado Republican. | ||
| Everett. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'll try and make this really quick for a big article on a big change in our country with electric cars and solar panels and whatnot. | ||
| There's an article that I've called in before a long time ago about. | ||
| And it's an article that I doubt either one of your guests are aware of. | ||
| Pardon me. | ||
| Anyway, NASA has invented, and this is an article from 12-12 of 2002. | ||
| It was put out by David Schirlack by the Daily Press. | ||
| And it's about catalytic converters and using catalytic converters. | ||
| And our whole reason for changing our economy with the energy is because we can't get the pollution out of the air. | ||
| So this article, if either one of these gentlemen would look up this article, all he's got to do is just text it into Google Earth or something. | ||
| It's called NASA's New Invention May Reduce Car Pollution. | ||
| It's a two-page, less than two-page, one and a half-page article. | ||
| But it talks about the existing catalytic converters, they only work when the vehicle is at operating temperature. | ||
| This catalytic converter supposedly would eliminate the pollution coming out of an interim combustion engine. | ||
| All right, Everett, we'll take those thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor? | |
| Well, one thing that's interesting here is the combination of technical innovation and the regulatory backstop that pushes it out into the world. | ||
| And, you know, it was California's regulators trying to deal with terrible smog in LA and elsewhere. | ||
| And the EPA and NHTSA establishing fuel economy standards that drove the adoption of catalytic converters in the United States and has significantly reduced the air pollution you can see, you can smell, and that affects kids' asthma. | ||
| So I think it's an interesting thing to look back at the way that technologies evolve and how they get adopted and to think that largely that's a good thing. | ||
| We want to have competent government that can take those technologies up and when they make sense, set standards so that industry is on a level playing field to adopt them. | ||
| All right, we'll go to Tom Raleigh, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My concern was, and I'm glad that President Trump has won, is the government making us buy electric cars, I think, by 2032. | ||
| The average price, I think, last time I looked was around $60,000. | ||
| People can't even afford a $30,000 car. | ||
| And secondly, my neighbor has an electric car. | ||
| He can go to a charging station. | ||
| It takes 20, 25 minutes to charge it. | ||
| He says when he charges it at his house, it takes all night long. | ||
| So look at all of that energy it's going to cost to charge your car at home. | ||
| And our power bills are now out of the roost. | ||
| So I am so glad that we do not have to buy these electric cars by 2032 because the majority of the Americans can't afford it. | ||
| All right, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Brendan McConnell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think cost is a big indicator. | |
| And despite massive subsidies, electric cars are still more expensive. | ||
| Now, to be fair, and prices are coming down, but the bottom line is this tailpipe emission rule, which is meant to reduce emissions and particulates, is really a de facto ban on the internal combustion engine and a push to drive all Americans toward adopting EVs. | ||
| Like I said earlier in the program, and I sympathize with the caller, I've driven an EV cross-country, and it adds a lot of time. | ||
| And when you're charging in a commercial station, it's four times the cost of charging at home. | ||
| And so there are things that need to be worked out. | ||
| I think a lot of this will occur in time, but we need a lot more time than the Biden administration has given. | ||
| Trevor, Higgins, your response to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, affordability is actually a key question. | |
| That's why the Biden administration invested in tax credits to make the purchase of a new car, a leased car, and a used car all more affordable for more Americans. | ||
| That is one of the three of the tax credits that the new Congress has talked about trying to repeal. | ||
| I think that would make it more unaffordable for more people who do want to be able to plug in their car at night and wake up with a full charge in the morning. | ||
| Yeah, I think the problem is the costs are redistributed to others. | ||
| Ford Blue lost over a billion dollars. | ||
| They're getting that money back somehow. | ||
| I suspect if you've bought a Ford pickup truck, you've noticed your price is more expensive. | ||
| So I think the costs of EVs are being distributed to all of us. | ||
| President-elect Donald Trump's picks to steer his energy and environmental policy include Doug Bergham, the former governor of North Dakota, Republican, who will be the nominee or is the nominee for Interior Secretary. | ||
| And his confirmation hearing was held this week. | ||
| Lee Zeldin was up on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| He's the nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency, the administrator of that, former congressman, ran for New York governor as well. | ||
| And then Chris Wright is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to serve as Energy Secretary. | ||
| Trevor Higgins, any reaction to these gentlemen and the positions that they may hold if the Senate confirms them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was relieved that they also acknowledged the reality of climate change, and I hope that that continues to influence the choices that they make at the head of these agencies. | |
| You know, these departments do incredibly important work for the American people, and you can see it right now in California with the wildfires. | ||
| The federal government needs to be there to support wildfire fighting efforts, forest management efforts, disaster relief and recovery efforts. | ||
| And we don't want politics influencing the decisions of these agencies. | ||
| Yeah, I might disagree a little bit with Trevor. | ||
| You know, our hearts go out to everybody in California. | ||
| Obviously, it's a terrible situation out there, but it's made more difficult by the decisions that California has made over the years. | ||
| And while climate change is real, the question we should be asking, if we care about climate change, we should be going to China. | ||
| We should be going to India. | ||
| We should be asking them, why do you get a free pass until 2030 under the Paris Climate Change Agreements? | ||
| Yes, China is upscaling on renewables, but they're putting coal-fired power plants on every day. | ||
| We're in a great power competition with China, and China would like nothing more than to us unilaterally disarm our industrial base. | ||
| And there's more to play here than just simply addressing local emissions. | ||
| It's a worldwide issue that has to be addressed. | ||
| You bring up the Paris Climate Accords. | ||
| President Obama got us into it. | ||
| President Trump got us out. | ||
| President Biden put us back in. | ||
| Now what? | ||
| Trevor Higgins? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, well, we expect that the president would withdraw from Paris again. | |
| So we'll see. | ||
| You know, what's interesting about Paris, though, is that it was the way that we got China to come to the table on emissions reductions. | ||
| The very first effort was the Kyoto Protocol a long time ago. | ||
| They had worked for years to try to enact a global treaty on this, and it failed. | ||
| The United States rejected it because it didn't require emissions from China. | ||
| And so it was the Paris Agreement where the Obama administration came in and figured out how they could get China to come to the table with promises about their emissions. | ||
| And it created a space for the United States and China to compete over who would keep their word, over who would actually deliver emissions reductions. | ||
| And when the Trump administration, their first term, withdrew from Paris, it was only four months before Biden was able to get back in because he had done it late. | ||
| And we're lucky that we did because it gave us a chance to step back up to China, who in the meantime had become the world's largest emitter. | ||
| And the challenge now is how to get them to turn it around. | ||
| China doesn't want to admit it, but after the Paris Agreement, they've put in their place their policies, and they are now functionally at their peak emissions. | ||
| From here, it's all downhill for their greenhouse gas emissions. | ||
| And what we're fighting for right now is the influence over which country gets to shape the global clean energy economy. | ||
| And Paris provides the space where that fight happens. | ||
| And I think it's going to weaken the United States to pull out of that competition and lead the mantle of leadership to China. | ||
| Would you disagree? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I do, because I think Paris climate change is a giveaway. | |
| It's a giveaway to polluters. | ||
| China has not peaked, and under Paris, they have to think about peaking or hopefully reach peak by 2030. | ||
| If you look at it, it's a rocket trajectory north. | ||
| We could take the entire West's emissions, and it doesn't come close to China. | ||
| So we're creating an unfair economic advantage for China. | ||
| India is supposed to peak by 2030, and actually, I'm sorry, by 2030, reduce about a third of its emissions from the 2005. | ||
| They're not on track. | ||
| The world's not on track to meet any of the Paris climate change emissions. | ||
| The issue isn't talking nicely to China. | ||
| The issue is how do you really get people forcibly to the table? | ||
| We've now had 29 years of COP agreements and people getting together. | ||
| And frankly, this current mechanism doesn't work. | ||
| We'll go to Easton, Pennsylvania. | ||
| John is a Democrat there. | ||
| John, your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you, Greta. | |
| The two guests you have on are the best I have ever seen on this show. | ||
| I congratulate you on that. | ||
| The question is, why is Trump going to bring back nuclear power when it's been dead in the ground for 20 years? | ||
| And number two, electric cars. | ||
| Now, why can't you have an electric car? | ||
| I think they have them that run on gas and electric. | ||
| And instead of using a battery, why don't you put strips in the road that carry power, just like on a ride, like a bumper car ride? | ||
| They have those things in the ground and they carry electricity. | ||
| And if you pull off the side, when the power stops coming through the car, the gas engine kicks on and you get home. | ||
| All right, John. | ||
| Breggam McConnell, why don't you take nuclear power? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, nuclear power. | |
| So about 18% of our electricity comes to us, Greta, via nuclear power. | ||
| We've just put a new reactor down in Vochtel, down south online, first one in, I think, 20 years. | ||
| The issue with nuclear power has been we have an agency that's supposed to permit new designs and they spent their entire lifetime avoiding permitting new designs and the industry itself has been too complicated. | ||
| So there's bipartisan support for smaller modular reactors that are a copycat design. | ||
| You just reproduce one after the other so you don't have to go through these licensing. | ||
| It's net zero emissions and we've learned also how to use different fuels so we don't have the waste. | ||
| So I think nuclear is far, its season is far from over. | ||
| It's seeing a renaissance resurgence. | ||
| And the second question is, theoretically it works, but it would be so expensive to put power in every roadway throughout America. | ||
| Trevor Higgins on nuclear power. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for your question, John. | |
| I actually think all three of these questions are sort of related to the question of how technology evolves. | ||
| And in the case of nuclear, we have still existing nuclear reactors that have been around for a long time providing clean, firm power. | ||
| And there are a number of opportunities, even beyond small modular reactors, for more advanced designs still, potentially all the way someday to potentially include fusion. | ||
| But the key is to continue to do the investment in the science to make sure that they're safe, that they are affordable. | ||
| So far, new investment in nuclear hasn't really been as affordable as the other alternatives. | ||
| Same thing with the plug-in hybrids. | ||
| If you want to buy a plug-in hybrid, it can drive your first 30 miles, which is enough for most people's commutes, all on electricity. | ||
| And it only needs to turn over to gasoline once you get beyond that. | ||
| That can work for a lot of people. | ||
| I think in the long run, it's going to be more expensive because you have to have both drivetrains in the same car. | ||
| But if it works for you, it's available as a technology and new manufacturing investments and research should continue to promote it. | ||
| And the road charging situation, it actually exists in some places right now. | ||
| It works for buses because a bus is on a fixed route. | ||
| It's a major capital acquisition and you can put a charging coil underneath its stop. | ||
| And so there have been a few demonstration projects to see how those economics work out. | ||
| And if it's cost-affordable, that's great. | ||
| If it turns out that batteries continue to innovate and become even more affordable, we can go that route. | ||
| And so the key here is a stable investment and RD, a willingness to try out new things, a willingness to keep investing in our future. | ||
| Well to Anthony, who's in New York, Independent. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| The previous caller actually took one of my questions. | ||
| I had three questions about is the Trump administration going to be expanding U.S. nuclear power as a cost-effective and reliable alternative to solar and wind power as we increase the demand for electricity with EV vehicles. | ||
| But two other questions I have are, you know, after reading Alex Epstein's books on the moral case for fossil fuels and his new book, A Fossil Future, he contends that, you know, global human flourishing is going to require more oil, coal, and natural gas. | ||
| And he talks about how many people ignore the positives of climate change, such as the warming and the green of the planet. | ||
| And asks questions, why is it assumed that all of climate change is due to human impact rather than other causes? | ||
| And I'll take my answers off the air. | ||
| All right, Trevor Higgins, why don't you take it first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So I think that those it's dangerous to neglect how significant climate change is. | ||
| We can already see its influence on the disasters that we're feeling here in the United States today at a relatively low rate of warming. | ||
| Things are going to continue to get worse. | ||
| And in fact, humans are responsible for more than the amount of warming we've seen so far because aerosols in the air have also depressed the amount and the net effect of fossil fuels is abbreviated by that. | ||
| When you look at the Hurricane Helene that hit North Carolina, 50% of its rainfall can be attributed already to climate change that's already happened. | ||
| When you look in California right now, they just got off the third hottest summer on record, which led to much drier vegetation that set the conditions for when the Santa Ana winds came over, potentially at gusts of 90 miles an hour, it really lit that wildfire, all four of them. | ||
| And that was made worse, 25% worse, because of climate change. | ||
| We're already feeling the effects. | ||
| And the truth is that we need fossil fuels today, but we don't need fossil fuels forever. | ||
| There are ways to build energy systems that are going to help people across the world achieve their goals and have lighting and heat and cooling that they need without continuing to pollute our own local communities and the global climate. | ||
| Mr. McConnell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is four one-hundredths of 1% of the atmosphere and of the air that we're around. | |
| So I don't deny that CO2 is an issue, but Now, I don't know that the science has totally settled on how much is caused by humans, how much is caused by the planet itself, and we've seen wide fluctuations of CO2 over Earth's history. | ||
| But leaving all that aside, because I'm not a climate expert, you know, the bottom line is we have to be able to have clean air, clean water. | ||
| I think this is an area of bipartisan support that probably Trevor would agree with me on. | ||
| And it's not just CO2. | ||
| There are other emissions. | ||
| There are other pollutants that we need to tackle. | ||
| And the good news is we have some of the cleanest air and water on record since President Nixon created the EPA back in the 1970s. | ||
| There's still more work to be done. | ||
| And on nuclear and other things, I think there's bipartisan support for a lot of energy if both sides can just tone the rhetoric down and sit down and talk about what we agree on. | ||
| Sunday Atten in Atlanta, Georgia, Independent Caller, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, everyone. | |
| I was calling because there's a lot of people that are very upset about this pipeline not being built, but a lot of people don't, that single lot even know why it was argued. | ||
| And the reason why is because the pipeline actually affected Native American land, mainly in South Dakota and Montana. | ||
| And pretty much, you know, affected our land, including drinking supplies. | ||
| And the thing is, you know, people, you know, if it actually affected their land, they actually will be fighting it. | ||
| And what I want to know is just to get people, just the callers, the speaker's opinion here today, is just curious if it actually affected your land, would you actually just take it, just take it, and just sit down and let this pipeline be built? | ||
| Or would you actually fight it if it actually affected your home? | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll get an answer from both. | ||
| Trevor Higgins, you want to go first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I think that that pipeline is now in the past, but the fights that you saw over it apply to the infrastructure that's being built everywhere. | ||
| And if you have a pipeline that's putting your community at risk, you deserve to know about that, to be able to speak up about it and have a process that's going to look at it and decide. | ||
| And in the case of the Keystone Pipeline, it didn't make sense to do. | ||
| And now it doesn't make economic sense to even continue to push it. | ||
| There are going to be future pipeline fights. | ||
| There's going to be future transmission fights. | ||
| There's going to be future oil and natural gas export terminal fights. | ||
| And in each case, it's important to make sure that the stakeholders, including the communities and the people who would benefit and the people who would be harmed, have a voice and are able to speak up. | ||
| And that's part of the democratic process. | ||
| Well, yeah, I disagree a little bit with that. | ||
| You know, one of the things I used to do is run the federal pipeline and hazardous material safety administration. | ||
| I was responsible for pipeline safety. | ||
| I grid all over the country. | ||
| And I can tell you that pipelines are the safest form of transportation. | ||
| And they transport, as I said earlier today, the lion's share of energy products. | ||
| The fact that they're buried underground, out of sight, out of mine, keeps them safer. | ||
| Most accidents are caused by people, not the pipelines. | ||
| And so, you know, we try to separate people from the pipelines. | ||
| But, you know, there was never any indication of groundwater contamination or pollutants from the proposed Keystone pipeline. | ||
| And I think what we often find is if we have the mentality of not in my backyard, we can't get anything built in this country. | ||
| So if you live in the Midwest, you're not going to be able to get your corn to market if I can't build a roadway. | ||
| A data center in Ohio or Florida is you're not going to have internet traffic because I can't get that built because I can't build high power lines, transmission lines somewhere else. | ||
| America builds things and we have highways and the infrastructure system that is the envy of the world and that only happens because of interstate commerce and not allowing people to say not in my backyard. | ||
| In the cases of a lot of these pipeline projects, we find that the local protests are pretty limited. | ||
| It's all the out-of-towners that show up. | ||
| It's all the national money that pours into these local fights. | ||
| So it's much bigger than just a local issue. | ||
| What a humble text says. | ||
| Thomas, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| One thing, the Excel pipeline was never operational, the peace that they were talking about. | ||
| Did he council? | ||
| It was never delivering anything. | ||
| It never happened. | ||
| And second of all, do you remember during COVID, all that dropped so far that a lot of refineries were going out of business? | ||
| Guess who saved the oil companies? | ||
| Biden. | ||
| He made a deal to buy gas at $70 a barrel and to save big oils, believe it or not. | ||
| And right now, gas is trading at $80 a barrel. | ||
| If it goes any lower than that, most companies will go out of business. | ||
| If you want gas at 99 cents, great. | ||
| And now you're going to lose a lot of jobs. | ||
| But what else did Biden do? | ||
| Well, Thomas, let's leave it there. | ||
| Brigham McConnell, would you agree with what Thomas just said? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, oil did go to negative pricing shortly after COVID, the way everything got shut down. | |
| And we've had lots of stimulus, which we could argue is pro or con. | ||
| But yeah, you know, the Biden has done some things. | ||
| But Biden has also taken 200-plus separate actions to try to constrain the oil and gas industry since then. | ||
| And he's doing it even on his way out, putting 250 million acres of offshore production off-limits on his way out the door in the 11th hour. | ||
| So, you know, I think it's a mixed message, a mixed bag at best. | ||
| And I think you will see President Trump coming in and reversing that. | ||
| Ken in Pennsylvania, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is probably five years ago now, but I was talking to a salesman, and I was talking about electric cars. | |
| I said, what happens if you try to trade this car in seven years? | ||
| He says, take it to the junkyard. | ||
| We don't want it. | ||
| There's nobody going to buy a seven-year-old battery car. | ||
| And the problem is you go to the junkyard, they don't want it because they can't handle the batteries. | ||
| Most of them, anyhow. | ||
| That's all I had to say. | ||
| Trevor Higgins? | ||
| So I think that actually it's really important to be able to find ways to recycle these batteries. | ||
| And there are companies right now that are looking to take old batteries from cars and put them at houses or industrial facilities where they can use the battery for on-site power. | ||
| But the real key will be building new recycling facilities in the United States so that we can try to reshape the global supply chains by reclaiming the minerals that are in these batteries and putting them into the new ones that will come. | ||
| We'll go to Patricia in Pennsylvania, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Patricia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| It's back to the Keystone XL pipeline and pipelines like it, which are going through people's lands when they don't want it to. | ||
| That is basically a land grab most of the time. | ||
| That these people are left with not much, even though they are paid. | ||
| But trying to buy a house later on or something like that is insufficient money. | ||
| The Excel was a the indigenous folks up there had protests, peaceful protests, and they were violently set upon by the police. | ||
| This is well known, and Governor Nomi was part of the problem. | ||
| Another issue is that, well, my question is, how much oil is exported from the U.S.? | ||
| And third, what about our alternative energy sources? | ||
| These are industries that are growing and should be encouraged to grow. | ||
| They produce new economy, new monies, and should not be suppressed. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's take her question, Brigham McConnell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I've been to Cannonball, North Dakota during the height of the Keystone issues. | |
| And it's funny, people opposing fossil fuel flew in and had plastic tents and cars and everything else going on. | ||
| So, look, that was a nationally staged opposition. | ||
| The locals actually just wanted everybody to leave. | ||
| And so I dispute that. | ||
| And the police from as far away as the Midwest were violently attacked by protesters at various times. | ||
| National Guard trucks were burned. | ||
| So I dispute that sort of version of facts. | ||
| But, you know, the real answer, again, gets back to we need infrastructure in this country, all types of infrastructure. | ||
| And frankly, permitting reform is going to be required, even to build out green projects. | ||
| We have to build new transmission lines, different aspects. | ||
| And, you know, we have 3.3 million miles of federally regulated pipelines in this country and probably 5 million miles of pipelines. | ||
| If you don't want a pipeline, you can't have natural gas at your house. | ||
| If you don't want a pipeline, then you can't buy gasoline. | ||
| You know, it's a simple fact that we all need these. | ||
| And there are a lot of landowner rights in place. | ||
| And I support more landowner rights. | ||
| Trevor Higgins? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a right way and a wrong way to build things. | |
| And people who have genuine responses to their own homes or their own interests are acting often in good faith. | ||
| And we don't need to denigrate the people who have spoken up to go to protest to make their voices heard. | ||
| That's the First Amendment right in this country. | ||
| And we do need to build more transmission. | ||
| And it can be difficult. | ||
| The Biden administration has reformed environmental permitting processes. | ||
| It has stood up the dashboard at the Permitting Improvement Steering Council. | ||
| It has advanced, which started before him, but they have continued to push these. | ||
| They've revised the guidelines at the CFCQ for NEPA. | ||
| They've negotiated changes in the law for permitting reform. | ||
| They pursued additional changes for permitting reform. | ||
| There are ways to try to build things that can get the social license from the communities where these sites are hosted, get their buy-in, meet the future that we need to build, and meet our current energy needs. | ||
| And it takes a clarity of vision for how to do that. | ||
| Did you want to add? | ||
| Just let me respond. | ||
| Let me clarify. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I totally agree with you. | ||
| Local landowners, local people have an absolute right to be a part of the stakeholder decision-making process, and we need to encourage that. | ||
| My beef are with national organizations that fly people in from all over the country for political means who are not actually part of the process. | ||
| Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey. | ||
| Joseph is watching there on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Greta, how are you? | |
| Morning. | ||
| Go ahead, sir. | ||
| Question or comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, both, kind of. | |
| Let me just start off with a comment. | ||
| The one guy, Mr. Higgins, mentioned about the fires in California. | ||
| I'm a retired city fireman, 25 years. | ||
| Fires have been around for 4,000, 5,000 years. | ||
| And the reason why they want control is that that governor is more worried about his hair. | ||
| They're right by the beach. | ||
| They have access to an ocean. | ||
| And if they had any interest in solving the problem, they would use that water. | ||
| They could put that water and get pipelines from that water to put out the fires. | ||
| Second, the marketplace has to solve a problem with this. | ||
| In 10 years, if I want to buy an electric car that's safer and cheaper for my family, I'll buy it. | ||
| But I don't want two guys that hang out in Washington, D.C. that drive around, fly around everywhere, tell me what to drive. | ||
| It didn't work that way 130 years ago when they got rid of the horseless carriage. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We'll take your point, Joseph. | ||
| So, Trevor Higgins, let the market sort this out. | ||
| That's his argument. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll say, Joseph, you should buy the car you want to buy. | |
| I'm not going to tell you which car you want to buy. | ||
| But I do think it's a good idea for the federal government to help people afford the cars they want to afford, to continue to invest in innovation, and to make sure that we have safe and affordable options for people. | ||
| And I think that's what these tax credits have enabled. | ||
| And when it comes to firefighting, you know, there's a lot of problems involved. | ||
| Climate change has made that worse. | ||
| There are a lot of things that have contributed to it. | ||
| And when they look at how to rebuild, it's really important that we are mindful of the fact that wildfires in this country are going to triple because of climate change in these coming decades. | ||
| And that is a significant problem. | ||
| And it means that the places where we build, the ways that we build our reservoirs, the amount of training and investment we do in our firefighters is critical. | ||
| And we have to approach this with eyes wide open because people's lives are at stake. | ||
| Okay, we'll go to Scott in Spring Hill, Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
| Morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Just a comment and an observation. | ||
| The earth kind of sends us messages, and unfortunately, during COVID, all around the world, they had massive shutdowns. | ||
| So people were not driving to work and they were working from home, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Make a long story short, there were a bunch of pictures put out where they had before and after pictures, where you saw cities that were covered with smog and smoke. | ||
| And then during the period where people were working from home and things were shut down, you could see blue skies all over. | ||
| So I think the earth is trying to tell us something. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| All right, Scott. | ||
| Let me go to Anthony, who is in Los Angeles, Republican. | ||
| Anthony, were you personally impacted by these wildfires in Los Angeles? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, definitely. | |
| I have several friends that lost their homes. | ||
| The pollution here is very bad during that time. | ||
| But my comment is that the earth naturally does the shift change in weather and everything. | ||
| It's been doing that for a thousand years, and scientists have proven it. | ||
| I don't believe global warming is a real thing. | ||
| It's more of a money thing right now because there's nothing that mankind can do for this shift. | ||
| And I want to know that we have crazy people that think environment is more important than the people that are living today. | ||
| They're worried about 100 years from now. | ||
| 2035, we don't know what's going to happen in 2035. | ||
| The government needs to get out of the people's way and let us live. | ||
| So hopefully, after this indication, I believe that the Democratic Party in California will be wiped out and gone because there's many people that are upset about this administration not having water in the palisades. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| All right, Anthony. | ||
| Hold it. | ||
| I'm going to leave it at that point. | ||
| Brigham McCown, you go first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, you know, and our previous caller was a firefighter. | |
| Thank you very much for your service. | ||
| And, you know, early explorers back hundreds of years ago called it the city of smoke. | ||
| Wildfires are predominant in California. | ||
| We can look at forestry mismanagement. | ||
| We can look at where we put our power lines there, where we put developments. | ||
| There are a lot of different reasons for this. | ||
| And I wouldn't latch everything on to climate change with this, but the fact remains we need better policies. | ||
| And the last election was a repudiation of some of the Biden climate change policies. | ||
| Energy was on the ballot. | ||
| And whether it's true or not, the Biden administration has been unable to sell the vast majority of American public that the last four years were a step forward. | ||
| Jerry, Somerset, Kentucky, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, guys. | |
| All across the country, there's thousands of oil wells that were drilled back in the early 1900s, and now the casings are rested away, and now they're permitting or emitting gases out into the air. | ||
| Now, I spent about 15 years stripping coal and remounting. | ||
| I know when a company puts up a before they can get a permit, they have to put up a bond that they'll reclaim that land. | ||
| And if they don't reclaim it, then the money goes to government. | ||
| And of course, it's never enough because I've reclaimed. | ||
| It's never enough to do it back. | ||
| But anyway, is there any government money or any plans to help put any government money out there to fix these oil wells and maybe recase them or do something? | ||
| Thank you, Mr. House. | ||
| How about have a great day? | ||
| All right, Mr. Higgins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you for the question. | |
| As you said, it's really the oil company's responsibility, but if they go bankrupt, it's a liability for everybody who lives there and including for the atmosphere. | ||
| So the Biden administration passed money in their Inflation Reduction Act for cleaning up abandoned mines that no longer have a company, a solvent company, that's taking care of them. | ||
| And that money has continued. | ||
| And I actually, there was only one governor who tried to block it. | ||
| Most governors have been very happy to try to take that money and address the needs of their areas. | ||
| And I was pleased to see that the nominee for the Secretary of the Interior said that was one of the points that he wanted to continue to work on. | ||
| So I think that there's hope for continuing to invest in closing up those old oil wells. | ||
| It gives jobs to people who are the same types of people who would have drilled the oil wells, and it cuts down on pollution and risk for everybody. | ||
| All right, Michael in Pasadena, Texas, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, gentlemen. | |
| I have a positive attitude about pipelines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We, here some years ago, Enterprise came and put a pipeline across some of the property that we have right out of the Austin area. |