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unidentified
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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Back at our table this morning is Steve Moore. | ||
| He is the co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, also former economic advisor to President Trump. | ||
| Steve Moore, before we get to the economy, though, let's start with the front page of the Washington Post. | ||
| The headline reads, Heritage staff in open revolt over leaders' defense of Tucker Carlson. | ||
| The departures and condemnations built on brewing frustration with Kevin Roberts, the CEO, handling of Project 2025, and internal sexism allegations. | ||
| What happened at the Heritage Foundation yesterday? | ||
| Well, I was, by the way, thank you for having me on C-SPAN. | ||
| I love what you guys do, and it's always a privilege to be with you. | ||
| I wasn't at this meeting that was reported by the Washington Post, so I don't actually know what went on in that meeting. | ||
| I didn't attend it. | ||
| I'm a visiting fellow there, so I would go in once a week. | ||
| I'll simply say this, that Heritage is the most, has been ranked the most powerful think tank in the world. | ||
| It is an amazingly important conservative voice for the country, for free markets and free enterprise and a strong defense. | ||
| And so it will survive this, and I think it will continue to be an important voice promoting freedom and free enterprise. | ||
| The Washington Post says the fur began after Tucker Carlson invited Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who routinely espouses anti-Semitic views, onto his popular podcast. | ||
| Roberts, the leader of the Heritage Foundation, then posted a video that castigated a venomous coalition and the globalist class for attacking Carlson, whom Roberts called a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| The article goes on to mention you as the first name of people who resigned. | ||
| Did you resign because of this? | ||
| No, look, I've been at Heritage. | ||
| By the way, I've worked at Heritage for two stints now. | ||
| I came in the 1980s during the Reagan era and spent eight years there. | ||
| And then I've been with Heritage on the second stint for about 10 years. | ||
| And really, I had been thinking about leaving Heritage not because I was unhappy there. | ||
| They've treated me incredibly well, and it's still so impactful. | ||
| But I run a group now called Unleash Prosperity. | ||
| By the way, if anybody wants to get our hotline every morning, it's free. | ||
| Just go to unleashprosperity.com. | ||
| But it's become a full-time job for me to run that institute. | ||
| And so I had a nice meeting with Kevin Roberts and the management there, and we're parting on very happy, congenial terms. | ||
| When it comes to this controversy at Heritage, do you think Kevin Roberts, the president, should resign? | ||
| I'm not going to comment on that. | ||
| It's up to him and the board of directors. | ||
| I don't know where this goes from here. | ||
| I'm an economist. | ||
| I'm not someone who gets involved in some of these issues that were brought up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's for the board to decide. | |
| Moving to the economy, let's talk about what happened on Tuesday night. | ||
| When you look at exit polls from CNN and other networks, folks who voted on Tuesday in those key states, Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, affordability, cost of living was at the top of their list. | ||
| And Democrats swept those key elections. | ||
| What has President Trump done to make the economy better? | ||
| Well, I actually am a little surprised by this, and you're right. | ||
| I mean, the Republicans took a thumping on Tuesday, no question about it, and huge Democratic turnout in these races in New Jersey and New York and Virginia. | ||
| And so this was a protest vote, no question about it. | ||
| But as I look at the economy, my gosh, I think it looks really strong. | ||
| I mean, first of all, we have a record-high stock market, which is always a good forward-looking indicator. | ||
| We have inflation. | ||
| Now, people are upset about inflation, but we've brought the inflation rate down to about a little under 3%, which is a vast improvement from where it was under the Biden presidency, where we were averaged 5% or 6% inflation. | ||
| But prices are still rising. | ||
| The thing that makes people really angry right now is the grocery prices, beef and coffee and egg prices, which are still high. | ||
| But look, I'm probably about the most optimistic person you're going to have on the show in terms of where the economy is headed. | ||
| We're having record investment right now, thanks in no small part to the Trump tax cut, which I am really proud to have helped design back when we first passed that bill in 2017. | ||
| We're seeing really good numbers in terms of like oil and gas development are at their highest level ever in American history today. | ||
| Gas prices, I was just in Nebraska last week, Middle America, and my God, I mean, $2.79 a gallon for gas. | ||
| And that's always one of those barometers of what's, you know, we always look at what's happening with gas prices in terms of how people feel about the economy. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| So, no, look, I think next year is going to be a blockbuster year for the economy. | ||
| Are the president's tariff tariff policy, is that contributing to the cost of the goods that you mentioned Americans are upset about? | ||
| Yeah, a little bit. | ||
| And I know some of my friends in the Trump administration may not like to hear that. | ||
| So, look, a tariff is a tax. | ||
| And we know this as economists, taxes get passed on to eventually to consumers. | ||
| And so, let me give you an example. | ||
| One of the things that Trump has put a pretty high tax on is coffee beans that come in from Brazil and Colombia. | ||
| By the way, it's a perfect example of why we need trade and why international trade is a good thing. | ||
| We get coffee beans from Brazil and Colombia because they have really good coffee beans. | ||
| We sell them computer software because we make good software. | ||
| That's what we as economists call comparative advantage. | ||
| And it's a really important point in economics. | ||
| And it's why free trade is important because both countries benefit. | ||
| So I'm just using this as an example. | ||
| So we put 50% tariff on coffee beans. | ||
| Have you noticed what's happened to the coffee price? | ||
| It's gone up, right? | ||
| And part of that is because of the tariffs. | ||
| So I do think there's been a slight increase in prices of things that have been tariffed. | ||
| But here's the thing that I think that the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome Powell, and others are leaving out of the equation. | ||
| Yes, if you have a tariff, you're going to raise prices. | ||
| But look at the things that Trump is doing to reduce prices. | ||
| I mentioned the fact that we're producing record amounts of energy. | ||
| That's why energy prices are falling. | ||
| Look at the fact that we've cut regulations on businesses by a trillion dollars. | ||
| That reduces taxes. | ||
| That's disinflationary. | ||
| Look at the fact that we passed the Trump tax cut in 2017. | ||
| That's saving the average family about $2,000 and reduces prices. | ||
| So overall, I would say Trump's policies are disinflationary, not inflationary. | ||
| But you're right, that the tariffs do raise prices of specific products. | ||
| You said you believe the economy is doing well. | ||
| How do you react then when you see this headline from the Washington Post? | ||
| Layoffs rise to recession-like levels through October. | ||
| Employers have announced 1.1 million job cuts so far this year, the highest reading since the pandemic. | ||
| There's jobs out there. | ||
| We have 6 million job openings in this country right now. | ||
| Yes, there have been a lot of layoffs by big companies, but you're seeing a lot of small businesses hiring people. | ||
| I still talk to manufacturers who say our problem is finding good qualified workers. | ||
| So my message to people who are looking for a job, they are out there, and we need to fill those 6 million jobs. | ||
| I actually think going forward for the country, the challenge is not going to be having enough jobs, but having enough workers. | ||
| You know, I was just looking at these numbers, Greta. | ||
| I just turned 65, so I'm a baby boomer. | ||
| I could qualify for Social Security a few months. | ||
| So there's 11,000 Americans every single day that are retiring now. | ||
| Those are the baby boomers who are starting to retire. | ||
| We only have 8,000 people entering the workforce. | ||
| So as we move forward with this, and those problems are only going to get worse. | ||
| This is one of the reasons, by the way, we need immigration. | ||
| Immigration is a blessing to America because they fill some of those gaps in the labor force. | ||
| So are the rough patches for some industries? | ||
| Yes, but other industries are having a problem finding good qualified workers. | ||
| Which industries are having a rough patch and which industries need workers? | ||
| Because are those jobs that need to be filled ones that will give people affordability? | ||
| Will they have enough money to afford the things that they say they're worried about? | ||
| Housing, food, etc. | ||
| Generally, the technology industry is still looking for a lot of workers. | ||
| I mean, the future is technology. | ||
| This artificial intelligence and robotics revolution is coming a lot faster than people think. | ||
| And so Silicon Valley needs really smart programmers and coders and things of that nature. | ||
| If you talk to most manufacturers and construction companies, they say they need workers. | ||
| They're having a hard time. | ||
| Retail is not doing so well. | ||
| Look, the most important thing for people watching the show is as we move forward with this technological age, we have to make sure that every American is well qualified, well-skilled, well-educated. | ||
| I don't think we do a very good job of that in this country, but if you've got a useful skill in this country, you can find a job in two days. | ||
| Let's get to calls. | ||
| We'll go to Brad, who's here in D.C., an independent caller. | ||
| Hi, Brad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Greta. | |
| Thanks for having me on, and welcome to Stephen. | ||
| I thought that Washington Post headline was wonderful because the facts are that as an independent, the Republicans are in the power of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the presidency. | ||
| And to me, it seems like they're stuck in this kind of drama triangle of persecuting the Democrats, asking the Democrats to rescue them, or being a victim of the Democrats. | ||
| And when I look at the economic factors of energy prices going up, inflation still being high, Trump offering tax cuts, but unemployment is high, I'm wondering how Stephen Moore comes on and doesn't have enough courage to talk about the Heritage Foundation and their support of a white supremacy. | ||
| So if he has courage today, I'm wondering if fear wasn't an emotion, what would he advise the president to do when objectively the economy is suffering because of the president's lack of governing? | ||
| Steve Moore? | ||
| So, first of all, to say that heritage has white supremacists is preposterous. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Nobody, they're not racist at Heritage Foundation. | ||
| We can have a disagreement about some of the issues with respect to Israel and with respect to what our policy should be with respect to the Middle East. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| But I think it's incredibly unfair to say that just because you disagree with them, they're an anti-Semite or they are a racist. | ||
| Look, we inherited a really bad economy. | ||
| The reason that Trump won the economy, won the election, in large part was because of inflation. | ||
| Inflation is a killer. | ||
| We saw a 21% increase in prices under Biden. | ||
| I think that was the single biggest reason other than illegal immigration that Trump won the election. | ||
| So it takes some time to bring those inflation numbers down. | ||
| In Trump's first term, we had inflation rates that were half as high as they were under Biden. | ||
| And so far in this term, we've brought inflation down to below 3%. | ||
| Now, this gentleman is right. | ||
| We need to get it down to 2%. | ||
| And I think we can certainly do that. | ||
| Do you think it's an effective strategy, though, to say, well, we inherited a bad economy. | ||
| When you see a poll like this, has the Trump administration lived up to your expectations or has it fallen short on these issues? | ||
| When it comes to the economy, 34% said lived up. | ||
| 63% said the Trump administration has fallen short on the economy. | ||
| So, you know, I arrived in Washington in the early 1980s, so I'm having a bit of a deja vu. | ||
| That was the beginning of the Reagan Revolution. | ||
| And people forget, you know, Reagan obviously inherited the biggest mess ever from, you know, from Jimmy Carter. | ||
| We had 11% inflation, double-digit unemployment. | ||
| The economy was in wreckage. | ||
| It took Reagan 18 months to fix the economy. | ||
| The economy didn't start recovering until the summer of 1982, 18 months after Reagan was in office. | ||
| My point is, it does take a lot of time to fix a broken economy. | ||
| Look at what's going on with health care right now. | ||
| I mean, my God, people are now getting their statements on what they're going to pay next year. | ||
| Health care costs are going to go up by 20 to 25 percent for most families. | ||
| Obamacare is a complete disaster. | ||
| It is destroyed. | ||
| It is eating up the American economy. | ||
| By the way, the irony is they called that bill the Affordable Care Act, and all we've seen since we passed that bill is higher and higher and higher and higher costs of health care without any improvement in health care delivery or services. | ||
| So it is a mess. | ||
| But look, I'm really, really, I think 2026 is going to be a strong, strong year for the economy as we're seeing a lot of investment by businesses. | ||
| We're seeing a lot of new technologies coming on that are going to reduce prices. | ||
| So I'll tell you, I think we're going to get inflation down to below 2% in 2026. | ||
| And I think we're going to see a lot of job creation. | ||
| Your prediction here today on the Washington. | ||
| You're going to have me on a year from now. | ||
| We'll see if I'm right, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dutch in Boston, Democratic caller. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, good morning. | ||
| I just want to say to this guy that's on TV, him and Trump must be on another planet going on in this country and whatnot. | ||
| And let me tell you something. | ||
| You've got a president talking about taking food from people, poor people, food stamps, snaps, all kinds of stuff like that. | ||
| And then having this big old ballroom dancing and ma'lako, now you're trying to turn my lac onto the White House and whatnot. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And then as far as these taxes, let me tell you something. | ||
| This clown came in the White House. | ||
| There was no tax on nothing. | ||
| Now he's coming in for a second time, talking about some tasks. | ||
| We don't need no tafts in this damn country. | ||
| What we need is bumps like him and Trump need to be getting out of there. | ||
| That's what we need. | ||
| All right, Dutch, we'll take your policy argument. | ||
| So first of all, I'm having a little trouble hearing some of the callers, but I think he was talking about Mandami and being the kind of guy who's going to fix these things. | ||
| And then he went on to say that there were no taxes, referencing tariffs, I believe. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Before Trump took office. | ||
| Let me talk about this issue of what happened in the election in New York because this is something that's in my strike zone. | ||
| We've done a big study at Unleashed Prosperity. | ||
| People should go to. | ||
| You go to vote with your feet. | ||
| Just Google Go Vote With Your Feet. | ||
| And you can see we've done this 50-state analysis. | ||
| We have all the data about where people are moving to and where people are moving from. | ||
| And what it shows is that the states that are being bled to death are the big blue states like New York, like New Jersey, like California, like my home state of Illinois. | ||
| And they're moving out in droves. | ||
| For example, New York in the last 10 years has lost 2 million people on net. | ||
| That is 2 million more people have left New York than have come into New York. | ||
| And most of those people left New York City. | ||
| And so what is happening is a brain drain out of the blue states. | ||
| And by the way, where are they going? | ||
| Florida, Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, the Red States. | ||
| And so the reason I bring this up is: one, is these blue states better reform themselves or they're just going to see this incredible mass migration out of their states. | ||
| For the first time in 250 years, you know, as a nation, the Northeast is no longer the dominant economic region of the country. | ||
| It is now the South. | ||
| And you want to see where all the economic activity is? | ||
| It's in Tampa. | ||
| It's in Dallas. | ||
| By the way, I believe because of what happened in this election, if Mondomine does what he says he's going to do and raises taxes again on capital and rich people, you're going to see Wall Street move out of New York and Manhattan, and it will be located in Dallas, Texas. | ||
| So I'm very, very worried about what's going to happen in New York City. | ||
| Do the housing markets in those states that you mentioned give you any pause that you'll see that migration? | ||
| Florida, Texas. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So look, when you get massive amounts of people coming into states like Texas and Florida, you're exactly right. | ||
| I mean, look, Florida has gained $1 trillion from other states in terms of income over the last 10 years. | ||
| That's a gigantic wealth transfer. | ||
| My wife and I have been looking for five years for a place to buy in Florida. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| I mean, it's very expensive there right now. | ||
| That's what happens when you're attracting a lot of people. | ||
| Same thing with Texas. | ||
| So, yeah, it does become difficult to find a place to. | ||
| Now, if you're living in Florida or Texas and the value of your home goes up, you're a big winner here. | ||
| But this is the big destiny of America: and this is the question I'd ask your listeners. | ||
| If high taxes, high regulations, high minimum wages, all of the green energy policies work so well, why is everybody leaving all those states? | ||
| And why are they going to Florida and Texas and Tennessee? | ||
| Incidentally, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, which are the three top migration states, you know what they have in common? | ||
| They have no income tax. | ||
| Whereas the states where people are leaving have the highest income taxes. | ||
| So the worst possible thing that New York City could possibly do right now would be to raise taxes again. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Mike next, who's in Texas, a Republican caller. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi, Steve. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Steve, I can assure you that I had worked at the Heritage Foundation as an intern. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And it's just exactly the reputation you say it is. | ||
| As far as I'm sorry, what do you mean by that? | ||
| He agrees with me. | ||
| It's a great place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, oh, yeah, of course. | |
| What I wanted to say first is that the budget that we have today in the federal budget, if we look back to like the year 2000 and look at, I like to look at trend lines. | ||
| What are we spending? | ||
| What were we spending in 2000 when we balanced the budget with Newt and Bill Clinton versus today, 25 years later, the rate of growth in some of these programs, even in Medicaid. | ||
| Now, I love people as much as my next-door neighbor, and I want to help people who cannot help themselves. | ||
| So I live by those kinds of rules. | ||
| But we can't print money we don't have. | ||
| And what's happening with this, what's happening today, if I remember correctly, has something to do with extending the subsidies for Obamacare that were never intended to be in the original Obamacare. | ||
| The whole thing with Obamacare that bothers me, that never gets discussed, it seems to be more about insurance and not anything about the supply of doctors and physicians and providers. | ||
| So they're forced listening. | ||
| What are they supposed to do? | ||
| Work six days a week? | ||
| We're just spinning our wheels and just printing money. | ||
| And it just seems like we have got to put the brakes on this. | ||
| And the Democrats won't do it. | ||
| So neither will the Republicans, unfortunately, but you're exactly right. | ||
| I mean, look, both parties love to spend money we don't have. | ||
| And you're exactly right. | ||
| You know, when I came to Washington, excuse me, in 1983, I'll never forget I was working in the Reagan administration. | ||
| And in 1984, we passed the first $1 trillion budget in American history. | ||
| And we're aghast that that was so much money that we're spending $1 trillion. | ||
| That's one with 12 zeros. | ||
| And now here we are. | ||
| And by the way, the national debt at that time was $1 trillion. | ||
| So here we are, you know, some 40 years later, and the debt, the budget is $1 trillion, it's $7 trillion, and our national debt isn't $1 trillion, it's $37 trillion. | ||
| So we better start getting super serious about cutting government spending. | ||
| And incidentally, we don't have a revenue problem in Washington. | ||
| We are collecting record amounts of revenues from tax revenues from people. | ||
| We just keep spending and spending. | ||
| And my frustration with this shut, I mean, there's so much to be said here, but my biggest frustration is, look, the Republicans' budget that we passed back in July, that cuts $1.5 trillion of spending over 10 years out of an $80 trillion budget. | ||
| And by the way, that's not really cuts. | ||
| It's just reductions in the amount that government wants to spend. | ||
| So there's no, it's not like government spending is going to fall under that budget. | ||
| So $1.5 trillion is two cents out of every dollar. | ||
| And we shut down the government because, oh, the government says, you can't cut two cents. | ||
| And most of that is just to get people who are fraudulently collecting these benefits, whether it's food stamps, whether it's Medicaid, et cetera. | ||
| The government's own auditors are telling us $150 billion is being ripped off by fraudsters from these programs. | ||
| So we can say, why are we shutting down the government to prevent, to allow fraudsters to get these programs? | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| And I think it's also true that Obamacare, I want to make sure people understand the reason we're having this crisis and the massive cost of health care is precisely because of Obamacare. | ||
| On the deficit in debts, do you see this as a potential economic bubble? | ||
| A problem? | ||
| Bubble. | ||
| That could burst. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And if so, then explain to viewers why that could cause economic calamity. | ||
| Well, because we're spending so much money that we don't have. | ||
| At some point, people are going to stop buying the bonds. | ||
| You know, so China owns a lot of the bonds. | ||
| What happens if they sell them off? | ||
| But my biggest concern is that we're not growing. | ||
| If we want to get out of this crisis, we have to do two things. | ||
| We have to put some constraints on government spending. | ||
| That is not to say we have to cut it, but we have to make sure that rate of growth doesn't continue. | ||
| And the most important factor in making sure that our debt, we don't have this debt bomb that explodes that you're talking about, Greta, is we have got to grow the economy as quickly as we can. | ||
| So all of those forecasts that you talk about in C-SPAN and CBO and all that, they have the debt as a share of GDP going up and up and up and up. | ||
| But that is because they're projecting that the economy is only going to grow at about 1.7% per year. | ||
| Now, if you get the economy growing at, say, 3%, which is, by the way, our historical average, then we start to bend that curve down. | ||
| So the point I'm making is anything that can make the economy grow faster, we should do. | ||
| That's why raising taxes is a terrible idea because taxes increases will make the economy. | ||
| Would you put tariffs also as a bad idea? | ||
| I don't like tariffs. | ||
| Let me be clear on that. | ||
| You know, every time I see President Trump, and look, I'm a huge admirer, I think what he's done for our country is amazing. | ||
| But every time I see him, I say, Mr. Tresa, I don't like their tariffs. | ||
| But let me just say one thing. | ||
| I do, some of these trade deals that he has put, you know, has consummated are excellent. | ||
| I mean, he's starting to get China and other countries to lower their tariffs on us. | ||
| And I think that's what Americans want. | ||
| I think most Americans understand the value of trade. | ||
| But why is it that we have the lowest tariffs and we're getting ripped off by Europe, by Canada, and all these other countries? | ||
| When you say that to President Trump, what does he say back? | ||
| Oh, you know, I mean, he doesn't like the fact that I don't like his tariffs. | ||
| And again, you know, if we just had, say, a 15% across-the-board tariff as a revenue tariff and maybe use that money to lower our income taxes, I think that would be a fine thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| We'll go to Patrick in Wald Lake, Michigan, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Mr. Moore, I have a question for you. | |
| You continually say that we do not have a revenue problem. | ||
| But I wholeheartedly disagree. | ||
| We have to have revenue to equal our spending. | ||
| And when you give billionaires and large corporations massive tax cuts, you reduce our revenue. | ||
| For instance, Meta has paid less than 12% annual tax rate on their revenue. | ||
| Companies like Tesla have paid 0.4%. | ||
| People like Elon Musk, in many years, pay zero taxes. | ||
| So how is it we don't have a revenue problem where we're giving away subsidies to companies like Tesla and we undertax people who actually have money and give them more money, which reduces our revenue, which creates a disproportionate amount of debt. | ||
| And let me just say, the package that the big beautiful bill that was just passed does not decrease our deficit. | ||
| It increases our deficit. | ||
| So how is this such a good plan? | ||
| Okay, let's take both of those. | ||
| Let's take both of those. | ||
| Good point. | ||
| So, I mean, look, the facts are the facts. | ||
| We're collecting more tax revenues today from the American people and American businesses than any other time in the history of the United States. | ||
| So I would say that means we don't, our revenues are way up like this. | ||
| The problem is our spending is up even more than that. | ||
| So we're not going to solve this problem by raising taxes. | ||
| We keep doing that over and over again. | ||
| With respect to corporations, I was the one back in, I met Trump in 2016 when he first ran for president. | ||
| I told him the highest priority, we had the highest taxes on American tax rates on American businesses than any other country in the world. | ||
| We were at 35%. | ||
| The rest of the world was at 20%. | ||
| It was like we were putting a tariff on our own goods and services. | ||
| And one of the things that we did was so productive is we lowered our business tax rates so that we were exporting jobs to other countries that were, you know, Europe had completely reduced their tax rates because they were robbing our business as they were leaving. | ||
| And now for the first time, we're seeing a lot of investment capital coming back into the United States because we've made our corporate taxes more competitive with the rest of the world. | ||
| I'm a flat tax guy. | ||
| Let's just get all the tax rates down to, say, 18, 19, 20%, get rid of all the deductions and loopholes. | ||
| This gentleman is right. | ||
| There are a lot of companies that get away with paying nothing. | ||
| And then other companies are paying a lot. | ||
| Why not have a flat tax, get rid of all the deductions, loopholes, special interest provisions, the tax code? | ||
| Everybody pays their fair share, and we would have so much growth in this country. | ||
| It would be unbelievable. | ||
| Related to that conversation, front page of the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk's record pay plan approved at Tesla, $1 trillion pay package, and this would make him the first trillion dollar trillionaire in the United States. | ||
| Investors vote in favor of a $1 trillion package after the CEO threatened to quit. | ||
| So that's the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| The first trillionaire. | ||
| Well, look, I mean, he is, I've only met Elon Musk once, but my God, I mean, the industries that he has created, he's probably the, you know, Thomas Edison of our era. | ||
| He has created, you're right, he's probably created, earned a trillion dollars, but he's created trillions and trillions of dollars for American workers and American investors. | ||
| I want more. | ||
| We need more Elon Musk. | ||
| We want to dominate the future with our great entrepreneurs. | ||
| You know, we have seven companies today. | ||
| Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, and maybe one other one, Google. | ||
| Those companies are worth more than every company in Europe combined. | ||
| We have so dominated the internet age, it's an amazing, it makes it proud to be American. | ||
| It's largely driven by AI. | ||
| Are you concerned about the circular financing that's happening within those companies and a potential bubble there with AI? | ||
| Well, by the way, it was mostly the internet revolution. | ||
| So those valuations, you know, were what I was saying is we've dominated the internet age, which began in the 90s. | ||
| Now you're right. | ||
| Now we're moving into this AI age and this robotic age. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| I mean, I'll just give you one example, Greta. | ||
| I'm on the board of a company called Lightspeed. | ||
| We build houses with robots, with robots. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| We're going to be able to build, you know, we're talking about inflation. | ||
| How about this for reducing inflation? | ||
| We're going to build houses 40% cheaper with 40% less man hour, 40% faster. | ||
| So if we've got a housing shortage in the United States, we're going to be able to solve that through robotic. | ||
| I was in California a couple weeks ago. | ||
| About one-third of the tests, I mean, the Lyfts and the Ubers are now driverless. | ||
| Did you know that? | ||
| They're automated. | ||
| So this technology revolution is going to change America in a big way. | ||
| We better be ready for it. | ||
| James in Delaware, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll stepped outside for a moment. | |
| I am one of six Republicans in my area. | ||
| I am, let's put it like this. | ||
| I sit here and listen to everybody. | ||
| The only people that I see doing anything wrong as far as finances, it seems to be the Republicans. | ||
| And you're sitting up there saying that this health plan, they have a plan, they might have a plan. | ||
| That doesn't work for people like me. | ||
| I set my money out and know what I want. | ||
| They're changing everything. | ||
| Why do I have to pay $400 more because they can't figure anything out? | ||
| You're talking about James. | ||
| So James, it sounds like you're on the Affordable Care Act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't. | |
| I pay. | ||
| I haven't been on the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| I make too much money for it. | ||
| So how do you get your health insurance? | ||
| How do you get your health insurance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I get it through my job. | |
| And I had to leave my job and switch to my wife's job because they was paying too much. | ||
| I would have paid $400 more just for me. | ||
| That's not even for my whole family. | ||
| Well, my whole family, it'd be something like $1,300 more. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| James there with his concerns. | ||
| Just health care overall. | ||
| I mean, setting aside the debate that's happening over the shutdown over ACA enhanced subsidies across the country, whether it's private insurance or ACA, premiums are going up. | ||
| It's a disaster, as we talked about earlier. | ||
| People are going to face, many people are going to face 20 to 25 percent premium increases, which is why it was such a fraud that we passed something called the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| When since we've passed that, we've tripled health care costs. | ||
| I'll try to make this really simple. | ||
| Most Americans are, well, today, the Wall Street Journal just had a headline about a week ago, Greta, that the average family is now paying, I think the number was about $35,000 a year for health care. | ||
| $35,000 a year. | ||
| I mean, so what that is doing is reducing your take-home pay because if you're getting it through the employer, the employer is going to have to cut your pay, you know, if they have to pay all this money for your health insurance. | ||
| And so there has to be a better way to do this. | ||
| One of the things we ought to do that I've recommended is everybody should, you know, why do we have health insurance? | ||
| We have health insurance because we want to protect, you know, if you get, God forbid, you get cancer, you get in an accident, you need surgery, or if you have a chronic disease, those, you know, it's the same reason why you have fire insurance for your house, because if your fire house burns down, you want to make sure that you're covered for it. | ||
| But we don't have that. | ||
| We're covering people for the, you know, doctor visits and things like that. | ||
| So what we ought to do is have catastrophic coverage for everyone so that, God forbid, if you have one of these terrible, you know, hugely expensive health incidents, that you're covered for that. | ||
| But most of the rest of it should be covered out of pocket. | ||
| You'd actually save money because you wouldn't have to pay these huge premiums. | ||
| One of the issues that I've been working on is called health care visibility or transparency. | ||
| When you go to the doctor or when you go to the hospital, do you ever ask, you know, gee, how much is this going to cost? | ||
| It's the only thing that we buy. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| When we buy groceries, when we buy a car, when we pay anything else, we always ask, well, what does this cost? | ||
| The one thing we never ask the hospitals or doctors or blah, blah, blah, how much, because it's all covered by someone else. | ||
| It's the screwiest system that we ever set up, and we've got to move towards a system where people are kind of paying out of pocket, or else we're going to bankrupt the country with these costs. | ||
| How do you pay out of pocket at this point? | ||
| Well, because what I'm saying is you're going to save $30,000 a year because now you're going to, in other words, your health insurance costs are going to go way down. | ||
| Your premiums aren't going to be as expensive there. | ||
| And those savings you'll be using for, but you'll be covered for major expenses. | ||
| You see what I'm saying? | ||
| And so your health insurance costs that you were talking about won't be going up by 20 and 30 percent a year. | ||
| You get catastrophic coverage and you get it directly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You don't go through your employer. | ||
| Here's something people don't understand about this debate that's going on in Washington right now. | ||
| The biggest advocates, I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, Independent, the biggest advocates for expanding all these Obamacare subsidies, you know who they are? | ||
| The health insurance companies. | ||
| Folks, we're getting ripped off by the health insurance companies. | ||
| All this money isn't going to help patients. | ||
| It's going right into the coppers. | ||
| And by the way, I'm a free market guy. | ||
| I'm not anti-business. | ||
| But these health insurance companies are completely ripping us off, and they're making money off of Obamacare, and we're not seeing better health care results. | ||
| Sarah in Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for being a guest at the show. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, you just mentioned the rip-off. | ||
| Medicare Advantage plans have ripped off the federal government by hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 15 years. | ||
| And obviously, they're still allowed to sell or market their products. | ||
| I wish they would address that fraud. | ||
| And in regards to what Mitcha said about affordability, you know what's the best program? | ||
| It is actually Medicare Part A and Part B. You pay $185 a month in premium. | ||
| And if you buy a Medicare supplement policy, the cheapest one is around $50 a month. | ||
| It's a high-deductible G plan, like a George, high-deductible G, limits your out-of-pocket liability to almost $2,900 a year. | ||
| So between Medicare A and B and that private insurance policy, you actually, if you got cancer and it's a $200,000 medical bill, you're all set to go after $3,000, roughly. | ||
| Now, one other comment I would like to make, if you please allow me. | ||
| Social Security is set to have shortages in the not so far future, right? | ||
| I don't understand how in the United States, our government cannot come to a solution like what they have in Switzerland. | ||
| In Switzerland, if you make a million dollars and that's what you make with your job, you pay into the system on that $1 million to support Social Security. | ||
| In the U.S., once you make past $176,000, you don't have to pay into the Social Security tax anymore. | ||
| And I think if we would raise that limit, you know, to however much you make, you're supposed to pay more. | ||
| If you're so blessed that you're making $500,000, you can give something back to this great nation. | ||
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| And I do hope that our government will come to a solution and work something out. | ||
| All right, Sarah. | ||
| Stephen Moore. | ||
| Those are good, good. | ||
| I don't agree with the last part, but I do agree with what she was saying about health care. | ||
| I mean, let me just make this crystal clear. | ||
| If you look at inflation over the last 30 years and you look at where is the inflation, you know, what is rising in price the most? | ||
| It's not computers. | ||
| It's not food. | ||
| It's not, there's two areas where we're seeing massive increases in prices, health care and education. | ||
| Health care and education. | ||
| Now, think, folks, what do health care and education have in common? | ||
| Oh, those are the two industries that are dominated by government. | ||
| And so when you have the government run an industry, the prices go out of control. | ||
| When you say dominated by government, are you referencing the subsidies part of it? | ||
| The whole, if we just got the government out of health care and we got the government out of education, we would see dramatic reductions in costs and we'd see vast improvements in quality. | ||
| Now, on Social Security, look, I've been arguing this on C-SPAN and other shows for 35 years. | ||
| We have to allow young people to take that 12% of their paycheck and put it into a 401k plan and get equity and ownership in America. | ||
| If we had done this when I first started talking about this, because I just turned 65, I just looked. | ||
| Look, the problem with Social Security is not that the benefits are too high. | ||
| They're way too low. | ||
| If I had been able to just put it into an index fund, every American, even if I had been a minimum wage worker, instead of getting $3,000 a month, I'd be getting a benefit of $13,000 a month. | ||
| Let's start this for our kids. | ||
| It's too late for me. | ||
| I'm 65. | ||
| Every single young American should be able to put the money and they own it. | ||
| You talk about American companies doing so well. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Let's have every, let's share the wealth in America by making sure every single American worker, if they want to, can own a piece of the rock. | ||
| I think it would be awesome. | ||
| When you say put it in an index fund, just explain for people who aren't familiar with that, you're saying put it in a fund that is the best companies of the SP 500. | ||
| In other words, you're not letting young people put the money, pick stocks themselves. | ||
| You're just putting an index means you're just buying a plan that owns every company. | ||
| So it includes Microsoft, including every company you have a partial ownership of. | ||
| And if you just let there's an old saying that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. | ||
| And we could make our young people, every single retiree would be a millionaire today if we allowed this to happen. | ||
| People say, oh, no, it's too risky. | ||
| And then now they're getting these crappy benefits. | ||
| So it would be a great thing to do. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Terrell and Owing Mills, Maryland Democratic Caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, I did that back in the 80s. | ||
| I'm 70 years old. | ||
| And I did that back in the 80s. | ||
| And because under Ronald Reagan, I guess you could start a 401k. | ||
| But anyway, what I want to get back to, and by the way, in 2008, that's when a lot of people got ripped off and their money was, you know, they lost money in their 401ks. | ||
| But anyway, what I want to ask you about, Steve, is about immigration. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I know that Ronald Reagan, back in Ronald Reagan was president, he legalized 3 million immigrants. | ||
| He gave them amnesty. | ||
| And what I think, I think that if Joe Biden had gave all 26 million of the immigrants, made them legal, I think it would have been a good thing. | ||
| Okay, here about inflation. | ||
| Okay, you talk about 9.2 inflation. | ||
| That was in 2022. | ||
| And when I got my cost of living in last year, 2024, I got 2.5% cost of living. | ||
| This year, my cost of living was 2.8, which means that inflation was going up, right? | ||
| So. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| Yeah, we're listening to Terrell. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So, but what I'm saying, now, Joe Biden, when he was president, the 9.2 went down to 2.5, and now we're back to 2.8. | ||
| So you're saying that Donald Trump brought inflation down to 3%, and he didn't. | ||
| Okay, we'll take your point. | ||
| I'm just looking at the consumer price index numbers, and they're pretty clear that over the four years that Biden was president, we had the worst inflation since Jimmy Carter. | ||
| I mean, that's just a fact, and prices went up by 22%. | ||
| And it really was the key to the election. | ||
| People were just so angry. | ||
| People hate it when they see big inflation. | ||
| But I want to go back to his point, if I may, about immigration, because it's an important one. | ||
| I am probably about the most pro-immigration person you're going to have on this show. | ||
| I think immigrants are incredibly important and beneficial to our economy. | ||
| And I don't think there's really a big debate about that. | ||
| It's one of our greatest advantages over the rest of the world. | ||
| We truly get the hardest working, the best, the brightest people. | ||
| And all I'm saying, and I think Donald Trump would generally agree with this, is you've got to come in legally. | ||
| You know, we can't have a system where six, eight million, ten million, we don't even know how many people came in. | ||
| I mean, basically, Joe Biden just opened the floodgates, and people were incredibly angry about that. | ||
| So, I think Tom Holman, who's a good friend of mine who runs the Immigration Service, has done an amazing job. | ||
| We've reduced illegal entries into the country by 92%. | ||
| So, now we do have control of the border. | ||
| Now, we can fix the system. | ||
| And I believe we can allow, you know, people want to come in legally. | ||
| If you want to come in this country and work and share our freedoms and be, I don't think illegal immigrants or immigrants should be able to come in for welfare. | ||
| No, we can't provide free housing and free health care and free everything for people. | ||
| You want to come in, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and contribute to this country. | ||
| I am all for it. | ||
| One of the things that's going on in the world that people are not paying attention to, Greta, is most countries, including the United States, have declining birth rates. | ||
| You know, we're below replacement-level fertility in this country. | ||
| And so, we're the one country that has this advantage of being able to bring in people from all over the world. | ||
| And if they want to work and contribute, I'm all for it, I think, most. | ||
| But you got to come in legally. | ||
| You do. | ||
| Stephen Moore is the co-founder of Committee to Unleash Prosperity. | ||
| The website is committee to unleashprosperity.com. | ||
| Thanks for the conversation. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Busy week, I would say. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Great to be with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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