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greta brawner
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stephen moore
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Spending Constraints Needed00:15:48
unidentified
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?
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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