Washington Journal (12/10/2025) unpacks the $12B farm bailout, where Mike Strands highlights crushing input costs (3x 1990s levels) and lost markets like China’s soybeans, now at 50% of pre-tariff demand. Jim Costa slams Trump’s tariffs for raising prices while exports stagnate, especially for California’s crops (44–45% reliant on foreign sales), and warns of ACA subsidy expiration affecting 22M families. Meanwhile, Steve Cortez alleges Minnesota’s food fraud and immigration strain, clashing with Tim Walz’s defense of racial profiling-free policies, while callers debate benefits, assimilation, and Trump’s pardons amid Fed speculation—3.6% rate cuts looming. The episode reveals deep divides over economic fairness, supply chains, and immigration’s role in affordability, exposing partisan narratives as both policy-driven and culturally charged. [Automatically generated summary]
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Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Mike Strands with the National Farmers Union talks about the state of the U.S. agriculture industry, the impact of tariffs, and the $12 billion aid package for farmers.
Then, California Democratic Representative Jim Costa discusses Affordable Care Act subsidies, as well as the agriculture aid.
And author and former Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortez on the alleged fraud dealing with food funding programs in Minnesota.
Also, Chris Regeber with the Associated Press previews the Federal Reserve meeting this week and a potential decision on interest rates.
In Pennsylvania yesterday evening, President Trump addressed voters on what he said were his successes on the economy.
In the speech that lasted about an hour and a half, he said wages were up and prices were down.
Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Apiro said in an interview that the president's policies were making energy, housing, and groceries more expensive.
This morning, we want to hear from you.
What is your message to President Trump on affordability?
Here's how to reach us.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
You can text us at 202-748-8003.
Include your first name in your city-state.
And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
Before we get to your calls on affordability and rising costs, let's hear from President Trump.
This is him last night in Pennsylvania talking about tariffs.
True, but then I got a lot of heat from the fake news.
Look at all of them back there.
I took a lot of heat.
I got up early on.
I said my favorite.
It's turning out.
You know, tariffs are bringing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
I just helped our farmers out because they're starting to do really well.
But in order to try and negotiate, some countries played a little cute.
And we just gave them, right out of a tariff money, cost us nothing, right out of the hundreds of billions that we've taken in, we gave the farmers a little help, $12 billion, and they are so happy.
And all they want is a level playing field.
And now it's happening.
And the tariffs are making them rich.
It's going to be, you're going to see, you're going to see what happens over the next two years.
It's like a miracle is taking place, but we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars.
Really trillions.
Scott, we have the great Scott Basson.
Scott, stand up.
And if you add to that all of the companies that are pouring their money to building right now, building plants in Pennsylvania and many other states, auto plants, AI plants, plants of every type, which we would have never had if we didn't put the tariffs on.
If you missed it, you can go back and take a look at what he said.
Here is Forbes with this article.
The headline is: 20 signs there's an affordability crisis in America.
Here's some of the things.
I won't go through all 20 of them, but it says: in 2025, food price increases are outpacing their 20-year average as the Department of Agriculture expects grocery prices to rise 2.4%, restaurant meals to climb 3.9%, and overall food costs to increase 3%.
And then here is the price of major food staples like eggs, sugar, and meat, especially beef, all increased in 2025 and are expected to continue rising in the months ahead, according to the USDA.
Housing costs surge in 2025.
A typical household spent about 23 percent of earnings on a medium-priced home.
Yet in 2025, that burden increased to 25% and has peaked at over 26%.
That's according to the National Association of Realtors.
And that same source says that the median single-family home rose from $392,800 in 2022 to an average of $419,122 in 2025.
A couple of things here.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, electricity and utility gas bills rose 6.4 percent year over year nationwide in September.
There's more.
That's at forbes.com if you'd like to take a look.
Here is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and he was on the Senate floor on Tuesday taking the President to task on affordability.
There aren't enough speeches in the world to paper over the fact that Donald Trump has sent costs up and up, not down.
His tariffs raised the price of groceries, raised the price of clothing, raised the price of energy.
And it's not just his tariffs.
It's his policies that cut out the cheapest form of energy we have, clean energy.
It's his policies that allow food producers to get away with monopoly pricing.
It's his strategy to impose tariffs on the American people and say it's good for you.
The fact is, Donald Trump can do nothing to erase this, that life is more expensive under Donald Trump than it was before he took office.
He'll hate to admit it, but life is more expensive under Donald Trump than it was under Joe Biden.
Just 36 percent of the Americans approve of his job and the job he's doing on the economy.
36 percent of Americans, that's it, approve the job Trump is doing on the economy, according to a poll by Marquette University, which is widely respected.
Even a significant portion of Trump voters, 37 percent, say the cost of living is the worst they can ever remember, according to Politico.
So when Trump voters say it was better under Biden than it is now, whoa, something's wrong.
So no, Donald Trump, affordability is not a hoax.
It's not a democratic scam.
You try to make everything, even the most common sense things, partisan.
The affordability crisis is very real.
It's being felt by everyone, and the American people know it's Donald Trump's fault.
No speech in Pennsylvania or anywhere else can undo that.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and we'll talk to callers now.
We'll start with Tanya in Florida, Independent Line.
Good morning, Tanya.
unidentified
Good morning.
I am calling to definitely approve with the fact that affordability in Florida is off the edge.
Okay, food, gas, housing, you name it, everything that we need to survive on.
Where I live is unaffordable.
Medication can't afford.
And I'm living on a pension, a teacher's pension from New Jersey, where no races have been made, where I thought the big beautiful bill was going to include me, but I'm not of age.
I suggest that I am not, I agree with Chuck Schumer in this case where we used to be able to afford living expenses, but now it's where I live, a lot of seniors and they can't afford it.
And we're right now drilling more oil than we've ever done ever before.
Prices are way down.
We just had four states.
It was just reported that four states had $1.99 a gallon.
Chris saw me.
So I want to just introduce Chris Wright.
Stand up, Chris.
Who would think?
You look at him.
He's a nice looking guy and all that.
Think that's he's rated.
I mean, he's the most talented oil guy.
He can put his nose in the ground and tell you whether or not there's oil.
Other people have to spend billions of dollars on machinery and equipment, and it doesn't work.
So, I want to thank you.
You're doing a great job.
And is it true?
We are right now, energy overall, not only the oil and gas, we are right now involved in more energy and have more energy in the works by far than we've ever had before.
Is that right?
Yeah, not even close.
And I have no higher priority than making America affordable again.
That's what we're going to do.
And again, they caused the high prices, and we're bringing them down.
We're asking for your message to President Trump on affordability and speaking to you about that on the Republican line in Berlin, Maryland.
Mark, good morning.
You're on the air.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm not sure why you would show the video of Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor.
I'm just lying.
I mean, you can show other videos of Democrats challenging Trump on the economy, but he's sitting there basically lying, and you're just showing it over and over to people like your first caller who just don't understand the situation.
She claimed your first caller claims that everything is more expensive now than it was under Joe Biden.
I mean, houses, housing prices have not gone up since Donald Trump took office, but they went up over 50 or 100% under Biden.
It is true that housing costs did go up under Biden, Mark.
But according to the National Realtors Association, just in this past year, so just 2025, housing prices have gone up.
And I mentioned that.
I don't know if you heard me from the Forbes article.
unidentified
I mean, they went up over 100% under Joe Biden.
I mean, you look at health care.
Healthcare is a Democrat scam.
They're the ones that enacted Obamacare.
And I mean, that is a huge cost to the American people.
I mean, just think: if you have a government, a male who's a government worker and a female who's a schoolteacher, they're both getting government health insurance.
They have two kids, those two kids will be covered under their health care.
Getting back to our question, your message to President Trump on affordability is keep doing what you're doing.
Do you want him to change anything?
What do you think?
unidentified
I think he needs to come up with policies other than the policies he's come up with because most of his policies he's come up with are poor and bad, such as $2,000 tariff check, bad.
50-year-old mortgages, bad.
What he needs to do is start taxing people that can afford taxation.
For example, we have a housing crisis, but most of the houses being built are $400,000 or $500,000 houses.
In our area in Maryland and Delaware, we have people moving from New York coming down to Delaware to live or coming into Maryland to live.
They're retirees, but what kind of house do they buy?
So, we've got a lot of callers actually calling now that have called within the last 30 days and are blocking the calls for other people that have not, that want to get in.
So, please, if you could, refrain from calling.
We will be happy to hear from you after 30 days, just to give everybody else a chance to get in and share their comments.
Here's Brent, a Democrat in Cedric Woolley, Washington.
unidentified
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
First, start the last caller.
You know, that's just ridiculous.
Apples and stuff like that go up and down with seasonal prices, and gasoline has gone down because supply and demand has gone down, which probably isn't a good thing.
That probably means manufacturing and everything else is actually slowing down.
You know, but I'm really sick and tired of all you Republicans who constantly get on here and talk and blame Joe Biden for everything miserable.
You know, your rent's gone up.
It's Joe Biden.
You know, you lost your job or whatever.
It's always Joe Biden's fault.
Well, when Donald Trump was running, he said he was going to fix the problem in day one.
Prices were going to go down the day he got voted in.
Well, it hasn't.
And you Republicans all own this.
You know, and one more thing: you know, all this murder on the high seas for drugs is ridiculous.
Donald Trump had the unmitigated gall yesterday to rate the economy an A-plus.
Five times over.
Working class Americans, everyday Americans, hardworking American taxpayers are struggling in the Trump economy to live paycheck to paycheck.
Can't thrive, can barely survive.
Cost of living is completely and totally out of control.
Donald Trump and Republicans have done nothing to lower the high cost of living.
Costs haven't gone down.
Costs are going up.
Housing costs, out of control.
Electricity costs, out of control.
Child care costs, out of control.
Grocery costs, out of control.
And health care costs, out of control.
And about to get worse because Donald Trump and Republicans refuse to do anything to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
The Trump Republican economy is not an A-plus.
Everyday Americans are not confused about that.
And if there's any debate as to the success or failure of this economy related to how it may be graded, the only question is whether the American people would give it a D for disaster or an F for failure.
So your message then to President Trump would be continue and accelerate the deportations to get as many consumers out of the country and thereby lowering the price for everybody else.
First of all, I'm just hearing a lot of lies being speeded just that come from President Trump not to let them but lies every day.
I mean, look, if you're making $35,000 a year, you tell me that price haven't gone up.
I want somebody to tell me a person that's living on the average income, lower income or whatever, that I went to the grocery store on Sunday, bumpy went from, I think, the large can of BOJS went from like about $8 to $16 a can.
It's the terrorists that Donald Trump is putting on the American consumer.
We are paying for those tariffs.
I mean, you all can believe what you want, but reality is staring you in your face.
You sat on that TV meeting and you read exactly what is going on in America as far as high prices concerned.
And these people are steady calling in, not believing what you read.
Don't believe your lying eyes, believe me.
That's what Donald Trump says.
He got on that podium last night.
You're supposed to be talking to the American people.
You are the person of the United States about affordability.
But what you experience is complete lies.
You experience racist hate.
You're not trying to bring Americans together.
So that's my point.
President Trump, stop lying.
Get rid of that ballroom that you're trying to put up.
Stop going overseas trying to peace the Middle Easterners on the king over in Saudi Arabia and focus on America.
And the positives of it are that we're trying to give some control over our own economy by bringing some of these jobs and production back to the United States.
unidentified
So you have to look at what the results are going to be.
Secondly, I think you also have to say that this thing, no matter what Donald Trump says, he knows that things are not going to come down on day one.
I mean, that just makes sense.
I mean, you can't completely reverse a trend overnight.
And I remember under Ronald Reagan, it took, I think, a couple of years before his tax cuts and things like that pulled in, but it resulted in the biggest GDP that we've ever had and lower prices and lower interest rates and all those things.
But it took time.
And I think it's going to take time.
Even a year is not even that much considering what has to be done.
But the things that he's doing, like, for example, to bring fuel costs down, are going to help everybody.
Good morning, Mimi, and good morning to the American people.
I'm sitting here.
I watch C-SPAN almost every day.
And I'm sitting here listening to these Republican callers.
And I have to say, Republicans have short memories.
When Donald Trump came into office after President Obama, the economy was great.
When he left office, the economy was ruined by Donald Trump.
When Biden came in office after Trump, the economy was ruined.
We had food line.
We had immigration problems.
We had caravans of immigrants coming across the board under Donald Trump.
Then the pandemic hit, and immigration was shut down all around the country, all around the world until the end of the pandemic was cleared, the pandemic was over.
And then migrants started running back into America.
And Donald Trump started running on.
We don't need an immigration problem until we don't have to worry about the immigration problem until I get in office.
You're saying that in school systems, in order to teach a different language, so like Spanish or French or something like that, you're saying that they don't have to be an American citizen, but they'll be legal resident, permanent legal residents.
unidentified
No, what I'm saying, no, Fritz, French and Spanish have been taught in schools.
It's the other languages, the Somalian language, for instance.
And you can tell that they, and then the Democratic-run states, they don't have to be U.S. citizens.
But they're legal permanent residents, not necessarily citizens.
unidentified
No, they don't have to be.
And we are paying for them to work there.
And the problem is, because I'm such a child's advocate, when you have people that are in this system that are working with kids and they live by Sharia law, and men think that they can marry girls that are six years old.
Now, who is having access to those children?
And that frightens me.
And nobody talks about, and the teachers' unions, I'm sure, started this.
Paraprofessionals and paraeducators, they really sound really important.
So nobody's going to question that definition of an educator, but they don't even have to be U.S. citizens.
Now, and then as far as the drugs, in Trump's first term, before you get to drugs, let's stay on energy for just a moment.
How long, Sandy, do you believe it should take for that to trickle into lower energy prices, trickling down into, say, groceries and housing and things like that?
unidentified
Well, they passed the Great Big Beautiful Bill.
And as soon as that takes effect and comes to be, which is going to be next year, along with the amount of energy that we are now producing by drilling, he's filling up their strategic oil reserves that Biden depleted.
So he's got to do that so we are safe in case we have a problem.
And at this point, I want to say about the, like the other lady said, about the middle of next year, I think we should start seeing it trickle down to goods and services that are being transported.
That Pennsylvania has the only growing economy in the northeastern part of the United States.
We've secured tens of billions of dollars in investment.
We're producing more energy than ever before.
Our unemployment rate is as low as it's ever been, and I'm really, really proud of that fact.
In fact, I will tell you, we have cut taxes seven different times during my three years as governor, including a new earned income tax credit at the state level that's going to help 940,000 Pennsylvanians who are working put more money back in their pockets.
We've cut taxes to afford child care.
We've cut taxes for our small businesses, for our seniors.
Here's the problem: every time we cut taxes and put money back in people's pockets or create more jobs or economic opportunity, we run into the federal government's economic policies, Trump's economic policies, which make it harder.
I hear it from our manufacturers.
I hear it from our farmers who are doing everything right and who are getting screwed because of Donald Trump's economic policy.
So he can show up in Pennsylvania tomorrow night and he can put a bunch of rhetoric out there.
But at the end of the day, people are a whole lot smarter than that.
They understand that he's misleading them and they understand that Donald Trump is making their lives tougher while here in Pennsylvania, we're investing in people, we're putting money back in their pockets, we're making things a little bit better for them.
And just to circle back to something that Sandy in California said about the One Big Beautiful bill and when it takes effect.
So it, as you know, it was signed into law July 4th.
This is USA Facts, and it says that many of the provisions have already taken effect.
So it says a number of the changes took effect the moment President Trump's pen struck the dotted line.
Your 2025 tax return should reflect some of them.
Others will go into effect in the coming years, with some not scheduled to arrive until 2028.
And this is a visual of that.
So here are the policies that would already take effect.
Here is this would be July when it was signed.
Here is 2025.
So all of these would take effect and others coming in a little bit later in 2026.
Bill in Massachusetts, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Morning.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
I enjoy your program very much.
And I woke up this morning and realized that the only thing we're talking about is no one can agree on whether the economy is good or bad.
And what our choices are at this time, and I was considering what our alternative would have been.
What would be right now if we had President Carmela Harris?
We wouldn't have had the big beautiful bill, as you've just been talking about, with large tax cuts.
We wouldn't have a closed border.
We wouldn't have the changes on the expansion of drilling, expansion of energy, gas prices going down.
Overall, I think we're heading in the right direction.
And the message to President Trump is just try and get the kids from stop fighting in the sandbox and sit down and come up with an agreement, fix health.
Yeah, give us a decent, decent health care and insurance and alternatives.
Like every other country in the world, every other country in the world seems to have acceptable health care alternatives for their population.
And I think we deserve it here.
We haven't had it in a long time.
And I think it's one of his most outstanding challenges.
Yes, I would just like to, my message to Trump is I watch all the major networks, and they point out that Trump doesn't understand tariffs.
He understands tariffs.
He knows exactly what he's doing with the tariffs.
He's actually trying to cripple this country economically and to whitewash everything and say he doesn't know about the president that he just pardoned, the things that he does every day.
So, Michael, why do you think that the president is trying to cripple the U.S. economy?
What makes you say that?
unidentified
You can't stand in front of people like last night in Pennsylvania and tell them, well, just stop buying so much.
And, you know, if you spend less on this and you spend less on that, you'll be okay.
You know, people out there in that audience and at home, you go to the grocery store and you look at that receipt, and you can't just stop buying the necessities.
You can't just stop paying your utility bills.
I mean, you got to live.
I'm 70 years old.
I get a pension and Social Security.
And it's hard to live off of it.
So, you know, he says the most beautiful word in the world is tariffs.
And people keep saying he doesn't understand them.
He understands them.
He knows what's going on.
And people hear him speak, and he thinks they believe it.
I mean, does he think they believe it?
Or, you know, it goes all the way back to the 70s when he was told just deny, deny, deny.
And that's what he's done for the past 50 years.
And he's got everybody in his cabinet deny, deny, deny.
Nobody is held accountable, and he's getting away with it.
And when you hear the Democrats talk, and they're trying to hold him accountable, and on Fox, they laugh at everything the Democrats are doing.
And this has never happened.
And the way he speaks about everybody on the left is scary.
It's just, and so he wants the economy to just keep getting worse and worse and worse.
He doesn't have anything in front of him that says, I got to change the economy.
On the Republican line in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Elizabeth, good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
It's really sad to hear other people have such bad things to say about our president, who I feel like is the only president who's actually done the things that he has ran on and keeping his word and his promises.
But I'll get right to affordability.
I'm a bail bondsman.
I'm going to tell you from the get-go, crime in Oklahoma is lower, and that hurts my business, but I guess I should be thankful for that because that ultimately is what we want in our world.
My message to President Trump is not, I know that you're supposedly working on the credit card interest rates, but I would also look at car interest rates and not allowing banks to go so high on car interest rates.
They only last for so long.
And we all know that cars just aren't built the way they used to be built and they don't last that long.
And so when you have a car that's five or six years old, but you have an interest rate at sometimes 10 or 15%, sometimes higher, and there's people that are using these cars for having to use them longer, but having to finance them for seven or eight years.
By the time you get to the end and you still cannot pay it off, or your car is faulting in four or five years, and you need to trade it in, but you can't because you owe, you're so upside down.
I just think that there needs to be a cap for what cars actually last for.
And I feel like that's kind of been a problem for a lot of people is having these interest rates that are too high on things that do not last.
And so that's one thing that I definitely feel like needs to be changed, though.
Scott in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Democrat, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hi, Mimi.
First time caller, a little nervous.
As regarding affordability, it's pretty much impossible today for somebody on a limited income, which I am.
And I can barely afford anything.
I have to borrow to make ends meet.
I'm very angry at this country in terms of what is happening.
There is a grand plan by the Republicans and Mr. Trump to privatize everything, to bankrupt government and to have the billionaires and the rich take over.
The regular person or the person that's poor is going to be canceled, basically.
And they'll bring in their people or robots to run this economy.
And that's what's happening.
Give me an example.
In my town here, gas prices are around $3.40.
But there are gas stations that are 50 cents lower, like in the high twos.
And you have to find them.
They're out of the way.
But most of the companies, bigger gas stations, are around 340.
So I don't know if it's greedy oil companies or a price gouging, but all of that is happening.
The rich are getting richer, and the rest of us are being canceled.
I'd just like to tell Donald Trump to keep up the great, fantastic work.
He's the best president we've ever had.
Prices are coming down.
It's going to take a little time after the Biden catastrophe.
But, you know, if people would start listening to Fox a little bit of positive news instead of the negative CNM, MS, NBC, ABC, CBS, maybe they will actually learn the truth.
But Donald Trump, he's fantastic president, fantastic businessman, greatest thing that ever happened in the United States of America.
I just wanted to make a comment about the ACA that I hadn't heard anybody mention so far.
When it first came, Obama first introduced it, he had to go on for hours and hours and explain every part of the bill.
And the two things that would have made it work, the Republicans didn't want in there, which was the public option and the Medicare expansion.
And, you know, the opposition to the public option was Republicans said that, you know, it's going to take money away from the big insurance companies, which now they're complaining that all the money is going to big insurance companies.
The public option would have pulled smaller insurance companies together to insure people and make the competition.
As you all know, we're going to have a vote this week on Thursday on a Democrat proposal to deal with the Biden COVID bonuses.
And this is a vote, as you all know, we could have had weeks ago.
It's been on offer now before we had to go through a 43-day government shutdown.
But that's what the Democrats opted to do.
And so at the end of the 43 days now, we're going to have a vote on their proposal, which as it turns out, is really a proposal that just extends the status quo, doesn't do anything to reform these Biden COVID bonuses in a way that would get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse.
And I think the one thing that's clear about this, and I think you all who followed this subject know this, that the way that the program is structured, the money goes straight to the insurance companies.
And the way that we think this ought to work is you ought to come up with a way in which you can deliver the benefit to the patients and not to the insurance companies.
And that you shouldn't have hardworking Americans subsidizing affluent people, people who make a lot of money.
And that's what their proposal continues to do.
There is no income limit.
There are zero-dollar premiums.
There are millions of Americans who don't even know they have coverage.
And they have decided not to do anything.
Zero, zero reforms to this program.
And so the bill that they're going to put on the floor will fail.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a path forward here.
We also will have a vote.
Our members have decided that we're going to vote on a Crapel-Cassidy proposal, which does the things that I mentioned.
It actually does make health insurance premiums more affordable.
It drives down, according to the Congressional Budget Office, premiums by double-digit levels.
It delivers the benefit directly to the patient, not to the insurance company, and it does it in a way that actually saves money.
So to the PAC, to the taxpayer.
That is a win-win proposal.
So that is an alternative that we will put forward and that we will have a vote on on Thursday.
And we'll see where the Democrats come down on that.
But the fact of the matter is that as long as we have been talking about this subject, and again, they drug us through a 43-day government shutdown in order to do this.
18 months ago in Maine, a dozen and a half eggs was $12.
I paid $5.50 the other day for the same eggs.
Fuel 18 months ago was close to $5 a gallon.
I paid $2.75 the other day.
So this rigmarole about the affordability is just foolishness.
It's not true.
Thought on on your other caller from, I think he was Indiana, older fellow.
I think he's doing a great job.
We need to give him time for this stuff to work.
And on your segment, John Thune there the other day, him talking about the Affordable Care Act, and millions of people don't even know they have coverage.
I think that's absolutely true from my own experience dealing with Maine's health coverage system.
Supposedly 30% of Mainers are on Maine care.
I believe there's a large number of those people that don't even know they're covered and the state's getting paid for that coverage that they're never, the patients are never receiving any benefit from.
Something Trump could do, and I found this on a website.
It's called TrumpGolftTracker.com, that he has spent $110,600,000 on 79 days of golf.
Maybe you should build a golf course around the White House, but $110,600,000, and I hear these people calling and complaining about, oh, people are charging too much.
They're getting a handout from the government.
Well, what about that $110,600,000?
You know, he gets $400,000 a year, which he says he gives to a charity, and he gets a tax deduction for that.
But I would gladly give up my $400,000 paycheck if I got $110,600,000 so I can play golf for 79 days or 24.3% of the time of my presidency since January playing golf.
I just think that's a little rich that he can come out there and say affordability.
Well, we're paying for that.
He's golfing on our dime, I'm sorry, on our $110,600,000.
What I want to say on affordability to the President of the United States, I just turned 65 years old.
I graduated high school in 1978.
I paid taxes for 46 years, only to get here at 65 years old to be told that I can't afford anything in the United States.
I am still working a full-time job in the insurance industry that you all are now starting to come after because the insurance industry did not let unions come in.
They are private industry.
So what you're saying to me, President Trump, the 1%ers and the billionaires, you all gonna live good for the next 20 years.
What I want to say to all you Americans having all these babies and all your kids, in the next 20 years, China's gonna take this country over.
They got all their youth military over here going to school on our dying.
And we sitting here and letting this happen.
You're gonna wake up one day and it's gonna be a communist ruled country by China.
Well, anyway, what I would say to the president and affordability is that why is it every time when something is going against what he believes, he call it a con job or ripoff?
And at the end of the day, it's about people affording things.
Yes, I drove by Wawa this morning and gas was 267 to where it normally at three something.
Yes, he had done that.
And yes, he has brought down the price of egg.
But at the end of the day, it's about what about all the other things like the one gentleman said about peanut butter, jelly, this and that.
But Mimi, one thing I would like for you all to do, you know, because every time I sit there and listen to C-SPAN every day almost, and people always call in and talk about, oh, they hate Trump, they hate this.
So why do we give him a pass when he calls out and say he hates people?
He called people dog, call people garbage.
And for people of color, they need to realize that when he said he calling the Somalis garbage, he's calling all of us that are of color garbage.
It's those subliminal things that they put in these messages.
So please ask people, and a gentleman called when John was on, is what is the acceptable language on C-SPAN?
If the president can use all types of F-word to people and this and that, so why can't the callers do exactly the same thing?
So could you please tell me, before you cut me off, what is the acceptable language here on C-SPAN?
But later on the Washington Journal, we'll talk with Representative Jim Costa, Democrat of California, and a member of the Agriculture Committee and Texas Republican Pete Sessions about the economy.
But first, after the break, National Farmers Union's Vice President of Advocacy Mike Strands, he joins us to discuss the state of the U.S. agriculture industry, including the impact of tariffs and the aid package to farmers.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Past president, why are you doing this?
This is outrageous.
This is a kangaroo quarrel.
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c-span democracy unfiltered c-span is as unbiased as you can get you You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watched every morning and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
And the Wall Street Journal has this article about the $12 billion, what they're calling a bailout for farmers.
This was unveiled on Monday.
So wanted to get your reaction to that.
What did you think when you saw that?
unidentified
Yeah, the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program unveiled earlier this week will provide some important financial liquidity and a bit of a lifeline to farmers in this current farm economic crisis that we're in.
About $11 billion of that $12 billion that was announced will be used to help support farmers who grow corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, row crops, and commodities like that.
We're still getting some of the details from the Department of Agriculture about how that program will be structured, but it provides some important assistance in this tough time.
The remaining $1 billion will be used for fruits and vegetables and other commodities, could be dairy, could be beef, could be a number of things that would receive some assistance as well.
So every link on the supply chain between farmers and consumers, whether that's seed or fuel or fertilizer, shipping, oftentimes those are dominated by multinational corporations and those monopolies exert a lot of power.
And farmers as individuals don't have much market power to push back against that.
We're also seeing lower prices right now because of the rather sudden loss of some of our trading partners and destinations.
So a lot has been made about the tariffs and the resulting tariffs that countries are putting on our exports.
That's having a huge effect on the farm economy by pushing prices for soybeans down.
That's gotten the most attention, but that has impacts across agriculture too.
If you'd like to talk to our guest, Mike Strands of the National Farmers Union, you can give us a call.
Our lines are by party.
So Republicans are on 2028-8001.
Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202748-8002.
We also have a line for people that work in agriculture.
So we'd especially like to hear from you.
That line is 202748-8003.
You touched on soybeans, and I want to ask you about that specifically because China buys a lot of our soybeans.
Where do we stand on that?
Have they bought less?
Have they been buying more?
unidentified
So in 2018 and 2019, the first time we went through a trade war in recent times with China, the amount of soybeans that China bought at the time was about one-sixth of our whole crop.
And much of that export market went away because of that tariff debate back in 2018 and 2019.
And it started to pick back up through 2019 into 2020.
The pandemic, of course, had an effect on this as well, but it's languished much lower than it was back seven, eight years ago.
And that lower amount of exports to China certainly hurts the marketplace today.
So there's been promises by the Chinese government to start buying more soybeans closer to where we were back in 2017 or 2018, but they haven't always come through on that.
And we really need to see that in order to have a big change in the current soybean market.
Now, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat of Minnesota, she's a ranking member on the Ag Committee.
She said that this one-time payment isn't a long-term fix.
So what is a long-term fix or are we looking at bailing out farmers every year with this kind of a bailout?
unidentified
Yeah, we would agree with Senator Klobuchar on that because of the volatility that comes with an annual or what seems like an annual rush to provide assistance to agriculture.
We need to have strong farm policy that's forward-thinking and anticipates issues like this.
Certainly, we need balanced trade policies and tariffs so that we're not in such a volatile situation.
Over this last year, especially, we've seen what can happen to markets when there's a tariff one day and then the next day there isn't and the rates keep changing.
That has a huge effect on farmers.
It's difficult for farmers to weather that sort of volatility.
We can have a farm bill, a set of farm policies and programs that balances that out by providing some assistance to farmers when prices are low, but also encouraging additional production or making sure that there's more balance in our supply and demand that helps keep the farm economy more smooth and balanced and less herky jerky like it's been recently.
Would you advocate for no tariffs at all on the ag industry?
unidentified
Tariffs are an important tool to have and that can help protect American family farmers and ranchers.
Countries around the world use tariffs to help protect their domestic production and we need to make sure that our food supply is safe and secure.
Tariffs have a role in that, but we need to have a more strategic use of them and a way to make sure that these aren't just kind of resulting in so much volatility that we've seen this year.
And why do your members think that that's a bad thing?
unidentified
Well, we want to make sure that ranchers are being compensated fairly for what they're producing.
And these higher beef prices are helping out commodity or beef growers, beef producers in the U.S.
And if we start bringing in Argentine beef, that's going to, for one, bring into question the security and safety of beef here in the U.S. That's why we want to see mandatory country of origin labeling in the beef, in the beef aisle at the grocery store.
But it's also pushing down market prices for farmers, but we're not necessarily seeing that for consumers at the grocery store.
About 15% of what consumers pay at the grocery store gets back to farmers.
It's a little bit higher for beef, it's lower for other commodities, but it's 15% on average.
So a lot of that higher beef price we're seeing at the grocery store is not making its way back to farmers.
It's being used up by those in the middle and those big multinational corporations.
So that's why we need to build on the investigations that the Trump administration has proposed or has started into the beef packing industry that can build upon investigations that prior administrations have done.
And we should also enforce antitrust laws to make sure that the monopolies in the middle aren't continuing to squeeze independent producers and consumers alike.
Will the black farmers be included in this quote-unquote bailout?
And how many undocumented workers do you have that Donald Trump doesn't have a problem with, but he has a problem with all of them in other communities?
Thank you.
Yeah, the agricultural workforce is a huge issue and how the effects of some of the administration's policies on workers and on those in the country has a big impact on farmers who rely upon a labor force like that.
And it's an additional stressor on farmers across the country on top of these lower prices for commodities, higher prices for inputs, and great uncertainty about the workforce.
At the same time, the farmer bridge assistance program is available to farmers who've been producing crops, row crops like corn, wheat, soybeans.
All farmers who are growing those commodities are eligible for the program.
The question I want to ask you about the Farmers Welfare Program that's being sponsored by Trump.
How do you feel about the student loan forgiveness program that was put forward by Biden and now we offering taxpayer bailout for the farmer?
So how does that rectify and how does that make it fair for students not being able to get bailouts, but farmers are?
Thank you.
Well, thanks for the question.
And one of the issues that has been a problem this year is the fact that the farm bill, which is now on its third year of being extended because it's been allowed to nearly lapse the last three years, there were some changes to the farm bill in the middle part of this year with the reconciliation bill.
And that did some things to help farmers with higher reference prices, with better crop insurance, with more dollars for farm conservation programs.
But at the same time, that reconciliation bill cut nearly $200 billion from SNAP.
So federal support for SNAP has gone down.
Now it's not student loans, but that sort of choice that was forced upon agriculture or the fact that we need to reduce support for people who need help feeding, having access to food in order to help farmers is the wrong sort of choice to be making.
We can do both of these things, and we need to.
The same goes for student loans.
We need to make sure that people who are seeking higher education have access to it and can afford it.
So there's some connection there, and I certainly appreciate the question.
Going back to the delay in a new farm bill, are there certain things that you would really like to see in a new farm bill, and how quickly would you like to see that?
unidentified
Sure.
And the last full farm bill was passed in December of 2018.
That one expired in September of 2023 and has been extended now three times.
We'd like to see programs that anticipate these sorts of economic downturns or disasters that come up.
I mean, natural disasters are going to occur.
Farmers are going to be impacted.
We need to have programs in place that are there ready to go when disaster strikes.
We also need to make sure we're balancing our production with what our demand is.
And Farmers Union has some pretty strong ideas about how we can help farmers take out some land out of production that's on marginal acres, provide some better conservation opportunities there, while also making sure that the market's in balance a little bit better.
So these sorts of ideas need to be looked at in order to prevent future issues like what we've been facing today.
Jack in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Democrat, you're on the air, Jack.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, guys.
Good morning.
I'd like to ask your guests if this organization supported Donald Trump in this previous election.
And if they did, if they did, how does he and the organization reconcile what's happened since he's been in office?
I mean, they're going to need a second bailout.
Remember, in his first term, the same thing happened.
How do you reconcile his trade policy?
How do you reconcile his immigration policy?
All these things are hurting the ag industry.
So how do you circle that?
How does it make sense?
Like, why does the farm industry keep voting against its own best interests when Donald Trump comes in and he, everything that the ag industry is dealing with now is all self-imposed.
There was no huge thing that happened in this country that caused it other than Donald Trump being elected.
National Farmers Union is a nonpartisan organization.
We work with lawmakers who are going to help family farmers and ranchers from both parties, and we look past party politics as much as we can.
We have been supporting the strategic use of tariffs, and what we've seen over the last year has not been very stable or a very good policy in terms of making sure that farmers are going to be in a secure financial position.
We've also been wanting to see more enforcement of antitrust laws, and we've seen emphasis on that from the Biden administration.
We've seen emphasis on that in the early stages of this Trump administration as well.
So we want to make sure that family farmers and ranchers are protected and that we're using the tools at our disposal, like antitrust laws, like good farm policy, forward-thinking and inclusive approaches towards the next generation of agriculture.
We want to see that happen.
And we are a nonpartisan organization, so we're going to work with who's going to help.
Through the first nine months of the year, farm bankruptcies rose by 50% compared with the same period in 2024.
Why is that?
What's going on?
unidentified
That's right.
So the name of the game this year has been volatility.
And that sort of uncertainty about what's coming next has a really painful outcome for farmers' financial bottom lines.
And when we keep having these uncertainties about whether there's going to be a tariff on this country today or not next week, that starts to push prices down for farmers that they're going to receive and it pushes up input costs.
So that's why we're seeing more farm bankruptcies this year.
And that's similar to back in 2018 and 2019 and into 2020 when we had similarly volatile times.
How much of that is going to Chinese owned land in the United States or foreign countries?
Yeah.
Thanks for the question, Bill, and I hope your snowblower is ready today, too.
The last time we saw some of this trade assistance back in 2018 and 2019, that was called the Market Facilitation Program.
There were tens of millions of dollars that went to foreign-owned companies, notably JBS was amongst them, the Brazilian-owned beef packer, meat packer.
And we can't have that in a future program.
We've raised this, Farmers Union has raised this issue for months knowing that this sort of package was likely coming.
We can't have a repeat of that.
And talking with the Department of Agriculture, it sounds like they're doing what they can to avoid that.
But the other question you raised around the ownership, foreign ownership of land, relatively small amounts, although there are still some acres in the U.S. are owned by Chinese interests.
And we certainly want to make sure that we're helping American family farmers and not foreign corporations or foreign governments when putting these programs together.
We got a question for you on X. Did China go from buying 88 metric tons to less than 12 metric tons in tariff wars of soybeans?
And it says, what happened to all those unsold USA soybeans?
Why didn't that lower prices of food for Americans with this large surplus?
unidentified
Yeah, really good question about the difference in exports and why that doesn't necessarily translate to food prices at the grocery store.
Yes, there's been a big drop-off in Chinese soybean purchases and exports from the U.S. to China of soybeans.
But there's so many links in the food chain between the farm gate and the dinner plate that we don't see that sort of direct correlation between a significant drop like the questioner mentioned there.
So it will push soybean prices down and it has pushed soybean prices down here in the U.S.
But there's still a long ways to go along the production chain, whether those soybeans are probably going into feed for livestock and then the slaughtering and the packaging and the distribution and the marketing all takes up a lot of those issues, all those dollars in between.
This would be the second bailout that they received of $12 billion from Donald Trump.
And why isn't it fair for health care to be bailed out?
And also, you were asked about the black farmers, and you did not answer that question.
Will they be receiving any of this money?
Thanks for the question, and I appreciate the follow-up there, too.
Farmers who are producing corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, any row crops are going to be able to receive these program assistance dollars through the Farmer Bridge program.
So that applies to farmers, black farmers, white farmers, you name it, who are part of the agriculture production system there.
So, yes.
On the other part of the question about the need for a bailout as opposed to health care, Farmers Union also supports extension of some of the tax credits for health care.
We see with the expiration of some of these tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, it's hugely important that we have that be a strong part of the agriculture policy too, because it affects farmers just as much as it affects anybody else in the U.S.
Now, he said this was the second bailout for farmers.
unidentified
That's right.
So, if you're thinking about it in terms of trade assistance, yes, back in 2018 and 2019, the Trump administration provided trade assistance, the market facilitation program.
Jim and North Carolina Independent Line, you're on the air.
unidentified
Good morning.
We know it's a self-inflicted wound that Trump has done to himself twice now, as you're talking about.
And you are touched on a lot of the things that I'm calling about.
Is that we know a farmer, and of course we all think of as family farms.
At what point is the cutoff that truly the money will go to the family farmers who have gone ahead and gone into debt on taking loans out on their land, that they'll be the first ones in line instead of the big corporate farmers?
Well, that's a really good question, and one that farmers union members grapple with on a regular basis because we want to help family farmers and ranchers, and that very definition is tricky.
We've got family farmers and ranchers across the country of all different sizes and production types and arrangements.
You know, we've got members who have a 6,000-acre farm in Arkansas, and other farmers who might be farming a tenth of an acre in an urban area or in Hawaii or elsewhere.
And that can be a family farm.
So it's not so much a size definition as it is who it is involved in the process.
All right, we'll take a call from Dean in Hartford City, Indiana, Republican.
Good morning, Dean.
unidentified
Morning, Mike.
I want to bring up a topic that you haven't touched on.
I live in the second smallest county in Indiana, and it's being destroyed as we speak.
Our farm ground is gone.
What they're doing is they're covering the county in green energy.
We have 73% of our farm ground is going to be in some form of green energy.
They're cutting live trees down by the hundreds of thousands to erect solar panels so the sun can hit them.
Something's got to be done.
In this case, I blame the farmers because if they had said no, we wouldn't have this problem.
But if you research this or put somebody on it, you're going to be shocked what they're doing to this small county.
I appreciate your time.
I hope you can help.
I think it's too late.
Thanks for the question.
And yeah, the expansion of green energy projects certainly has an impact on agriculture and land use.
We've got a lot of, there's a lot of agriculture land in the U.S.
And we're, as farmers union members, hopeful that that can be a resource for helping address climate change.
We do that with how we produce our crops, but also it can be an issue of land use.
And if there's going to be green energy projects, we want them to be on, they shouldn't be on prime farmland if we can help it.
There's plenty of marginal land to look at that might be less productive and wouldn't interfere with the rest of the community.
So we know that there's going to be some forces out there that want to put solar panels or other green energy projects or big development, urban pressure is always a challenge too, on prime farmland.
We'd much rather see productive land be used for productive agricultural use.
Yeah, the President and the Congress and the Senate.
Now, the President, he put all these tariffs on all these countries.
Okay?
Now, when he was doing that, why couldn't the President and the Congress and the Senate set something up ahead of time for all these farmers to get money so they wouldn't be poor right now instead of waiting until how many months has it been?
And now they're finally putting out $12 billion for them when a lot of them went out of business because of this.
Why did they have to wait till the last minute?
They should have already had that set up before they even started these tariffs so these people wouldn't be poor.
This was a prime opportunity for Congress to assert leadership and pass a farm bill in 2025.
Not just parts of the farm bill, but the whole thing, and to make some important changes so that we're not looking at a situation like we are today where there's a crisis in farm country.
We could have had stronger policies that addressed monopolies, confronted them, and made sure that our production matched demand and to help balance out the farm economy.
Congress needs to assert itself in 2026 and pass a full farm bill.
Later on, The Washington Journal, we're joined by Steve Cortez, a former Trump campaign advisor and author of the Substack newsletter.
Steve Cortez investigates.
He joins us to discuss the alleged fraud schemes in Minnesota and other political news of the day.
But next, after the break, we'll talk with Jim Acosta, Democrat of California and a member of the Agriculture Committee, and also Texas Republican Pete Sessions.
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As I said, you are on the Agriculture Committee, and just on Monday, President Trump announced a $12 billion farm bailout program.
What was your reaction to that?
unidentified
Well, it's frustrating.
Let me put it very simply.
I'm a third-generation farmer.
I still actively farm in Fresno, outside of Fresno, California.
And, you know, we've been through these Trump tariffs before back in his first term.
And they are a tax, not only on American consumers that is felt every day when they go to the grocery store.
I always say food is a national security issue.
And as a 21-year member of the House Ag Committee and one of the senior members, I see these difficult challenges that my consumers, my constituents have in the grocery store every week being able to put food on America's dinner table.
And that's what America Agriculture does so well.
This $12 billion support, bailout, whatever you might want to call it, pales in comparison to the $40 billion that we provided Argentina last month and then provided some favorable terms that enhance their ability to sell their agricultural products to China at the expense, the cost of American farmers.
What do you think is the solution then for America's small farmers?
unidentified
Well, I think to recognize that this tariff war is a negative, a very deeply negative impact on American farmers.
Their input costs have increased, inflation's increased, but the price of the commodities that they grow have remained flat or in some cases decreased or more dependent upon foreign markets.
44% of California agriculture, and we're the number one agricultural state in the nation.
It's not even close, 400 commodities that we grow, but approximately 44, 45% we export.
And so if those markets are not available, and in this $12 billion package, only $1 billion of it, of the $12 billion, is segmented for specialty crops, fresh fruits, peaches, prunes, plums, leafy greens.
You know, 20% of the milk industry in America is produced in California.
The list goes on, but none of these specialty crops hardly are covered in the administration's attempt at this point to acknowledge that their tariff policy is turning in the wrong direction for consumers and farmers.
I want to ask you about the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies that expire at the end of this month.
What's the current situation in the House right now?
unidentified
Well, you see me shaking my head.
It's, I think, very frustrating.
There are three proposals that we have that would extend the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, and I am co-sponsoring two of those proposals.
The Senate's going to, I guess, have an opportunity this week.
Senator Thune promised Senator Schumer that the Democratic proposal would be brought up to extend these tax credits.
I don't know if the votes are going to be there in the Senate.
In the meantime, we're trying with our, in a bipartisan effort, to get a framework that would extend for two years, put reforms, caps on the cost of the affordable, who would qualify for the Affordable Care Act, and yet certainty for the 22 million American families that will be impacted at the end of this month if we don't do something.
And we're getting nothing but mixed signals from the White House at this time.
And you also serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee, so I wanted to ask you about the peace talks on the Ukraine war.
The President of Ukraine, President Zelensky, has said he will not give up any territory.
Where do things stand right now?
unidentified
Well, I think that the president, who likes to describe himself as a deal maker, has had numerous opportunities to make a deal on this on terms that are favorable to Ukraine and to our Western allies.
He has leverage, and we have leverage over Russia, that is nothing more than a syndicate masquerading as a country with a mob boss called Putin.
That's what President Putin is.
He's a mob boss.
He kills innocent children, hospitals, bombs schools, and civilian targets.
And yet, I don't know why.
I have my suspicions.
President Trump is unwilling to use the leverage of additional military support to Ukraine with our allies.
He's unwilling to use the economic support, and he's unwilling to place a hold on the sovereign funds of Russia that total over $340 billion that are held largely in Europe and the United States.
Those are all three key pieces of leverage that we could put on Putin, and yet this administration seemingly is unwilling to do so, making all the demands out of Ukraine, which is inappropriate.
Russia is the aggressor, and our European allies, and everyone knows it.
When this happened four years ago, February 24th, 2022, it was very clear on a bipartisan basis.
This was about good versus evil.
It's still about good versus evil, and we need to stand with our allies and stand with Ukraine.
And when you say stand with Ukraine, Ukraine is looking for security guarantees from the United States.
What do you think that should involve?
And how much should that be Article 5 level of NATO?
What do you think as far as security guarantees?
unidentified
Well, I think at the end of the day, the security guarantees, realizing that in the past 20-some years, every agreement that Russia has made with Ukraine, they've broken.
Okay?
They've broken.
They can't keep their promises.
It's because Putin wants to occupy and take over all of Ukraine.
It's very simple.
And Europe understands the threat.
They've waken up.
There are a lot of security guarantees that we can provide.
Article 5 you talked about, joining NATO, you can talk about, putting troops, European troops, with our support in Ukraine.
All of these would provide means of border security that Ukraine must have before they sign a ceasefire or a peace agreement, which they're willing to do.
But again, they need to have security guarantee.
And then the alternative of NATO membership, EU membership certainly should be on the table and be agreed upon.
And finally, Congressman, you know, there was that scandal in Ukraine in the energy sector and some high-level resignations.
Are you concerned that American aid might be getting misused in Ukraine?
unidentified
Well, this issue has come up time and time again over the last four years.
And we've, I think, done a good job of monitoring it.
I think that, you know, corruption in these post-Soviet countries is a lingering effect of what the Soviet Union did in terms of operations and business.
That's how Putin operates, clearly.
And I think you've got to give credit to Selensky and the government to trying to ensure that they clean up their act.
And that's what they're doing.
And so therefore, we're continuing to monitor it to ensure that American dollars and our European support is on a sound footing and that we are not impacted by those lingering effects.
And the dismissal of those people, I think, was an appropriate response.
Well, I think that there are several factors here.
And by the way, I appreciated what Jim Costa said here just before you.
Jim is a sound mind in not just his conference, but trying to move us forward economically.
I think it's important that we remember that the president first saw the dangers against the American economy, which is why he spent several months trying to gain assurances from countries around the world that they would invest in America.
As you know, BRICS, which is this combination of other countries around the world that decided that the American dollar was in trouble, that we could not pay our bills, that we were not a sound investment for not only their future, but for our own.
And the President has rallied up what amounts to, he would have the better number than I, but about $6 trillion of guarantees of people who will invest in America.
They're investing in America because we have a brighter future and a better way to not only lead the world to better outcomes, but in essence, it has translated itself into a stock market, into an investment opportunity for all Americans, not just their 401ks, but our future.
And the President spent a great deal of time on that side of this equation.
The equation that he's now engaged in and that we are quite honestly having to look at, and that is the cost of goods, the cost of goods.
So he's taken care of, by and large, a strong employment opportunity.
Now we have to shift our focus economically to the cost of goods and services.
And Congressman, there was just a $12 billion aid package to farmers announced on Monday, specifically as a result of the President's tariffs and the harms that have befallen farmers for that.
Do you think that the President should just reverse some of those tariff policies instead of trying to bail out farmers after the fact?
And what do you think is the solution, Congressman, on those agriculture workers that we do need for the industry as opposed to balancing that with not wanting illegal immigrants working in this country?
President Bush dealt with this issue many, many, many years ago, and we came up with a good solution for what was known as ICE, and that would be that they would understand what our attempts would be to tackle the issue.
I believe that a worker in this country is important, and a worker as opposed to someone that is drawing government benefits, not going to work, someone who is a criminal, the background checks is important for this administration to focus on.
Focus on the worker.
And we have plenty of people who've come to this country in the last three or four years, not this year, but who are here and they're undocumented and they need to be focused on.
But the worker who is at many of these Agricultural sites, the government needs to come in and Republicans need to be smart enough, including Secretary Noam, to recognize we have to have a way to keep our workers in the system and yet give them the opportunity as a worker for Social Security to still be a part of that equation and the worker so that we're not taking advantage of them.
These are things we're attempting to work with the administration and I think we will.
We need to focus ICE on the activities of those who've come here in the last few years, not upon a worker that is working hard every day trying to make our economy go.
I support that my party still, after all these years, needs to come up with a plan as a member of Congress and people who work for an employer that have employer provided health care receive a subsidy also.
That subsidy comes in the form of receiving their health care on a pre-tax basis.
We do worry about the 20 million people on the Affordable Care Act, but we also care about the other 120 million Americans that need an opportunity to receive similar benefits, and that is to receive their health care on a pre-tax basis.
So the question is about the ACA.
I spent seven years on, quote, the Affordable Care Act.
During that period of time, my contribution and the cost was about $28,000.
And I never used my actual insurance plan because my deductible was $7,000.
We need to make sure that there is an option for people that would see going to a similar model as employer-provided health care, where the health care provider would be reimbursed almost double, which would allow these families, instead of sitting at an office all day or going to a hospital, which is the most expensive, to receive their health care,
they could actually have the benefits like someone who works for the largest companies in America.
And it would require that they, to have this, would receive the benefit of a subsidy that would equal about 40%, and it would give them an opportunity to pay in the other 60.
That would be about $1,000 a month for a family of four.
Now, you'd say, Pete, where does that come from?
It comes from their ability to make sure that they join into the American dream.
I am worried about this.
We are going to find an answer, and that is exactly what House Republicans win the middle.
And finally, Congressman Sessions, on those boat strikes in the Caribbean, do you think the Pentagon should release the full video of that controversial double-tap attack?
The Biden administration, the Obama administration did same or similar attacks against boats.
They just did not let people really know about it.
The Trump administration wants to put them all out where the people can see this.
This has meant that the intelligence committee that has known this has been going on for a number of years, it is now front and center on them.
I think there should be full disclosure by this administration to the intelligence committee to where, on a bipartisan basis, they feel comfortable about not just about the rules of engagement, but the knowledge of what is happening.
I think it's a wonderful, wonderful outlet for the American people to voice their opinions.
There's just three things I want to touch on.
I'm a little confused.
I understand that Donald Trump is a wonderful peacemaker, but this situation that he solved in Cambodia and Thailand is blowing up again.
The border skirmishes are continuing.
Half a million people have been displaced because they're living in what's going to become a war zone.
And the same thing is happening in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What I'm hearing from the BBC is that the M23 rebels, which Congo insists are being funded by our friends in Rwanda, they're at it again in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I mean, I just can't understand how this can be happening.
And what Pete Sessions was saying about protecting workers despite the fact that they may be undocumented, I think that that is absolutely true.
But we need to think about workers who are here from other countries without the appropriate documentation, not just in the agricultural industry, but all throughout the economy.
You know, we talk about all the problems that we have with drugs in this country, but as long as people are using drugs, the cartels will be doing their thing.
And it's the same thing with the undocumented workers.
If businesses are willing to hire them, despite the fact they don't have the appropriate documentation, they're going to continue to be here and try to get here.
I don't understand why ICE can come in and do raids at work sites.
And after they determine that there are undocumented people there working, why doesn't someone from the Justice Department or law enforcement come after these employers?
Because there are sanctions and penalties for these employers that hire these people in the first place.
They ought to be held accountable for hiring the people and helping promote the problem.
This is Reuters just from an hour ago that says, Thailand-Cambodia fighting rages on as Trump signals intent to intervene.
That's what's happening there.
And coming up right after the break, we've got Steve Cortez, a former Trump administration advisor and author of the Substack newsletter Steve Cortez Investigates.
He'll join us to discuss the alleged fraud schemes in Minnesota and other political news of the day.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
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So Cortez Investigates, and if folks are curious, they can go to CortezInvestigates.com is where I put all of my content.
I write a lot, so a lot of op-eds, a lot of articles, publish all of my polling, which I make public.
I poll every month, either a state or a national poll.
In addition to that, I produce a lot of video content, particularly documentaries.
And so that's really the crux of what you'll find at Cortez Investigates.
And my documentaries are when I go on the scene all across the country to investigate issues that are of political pertinence.
By the way, I'm going to be going to Minnesota to do a documentary in the new year in 2026 on this very issue of the Somalians and what has immigration done to the Twin Cities?
What has it done to Minnesota?
Is it working for the United States?
So I've gone to the border.
I just did one on Maha on Make America Healthy again, where I've talked to farmers and doctors and moms about those issues.
I'm filming one right now.
I just filmed it at the University of Illinois on the massive influx of Chinese nationals studying at American universities.
So a lot of different topics, but you'll find that immigration and the economy are kind of my two main lanes.
I was a trader on Wall Street for 25 years.
So the economy is one of my strong suits and a place where I really focus.
And I'm often connecting the economy to immigration, which is also something that I've focused on quite a lot.
So I'll do other topics, but those two are sort of the most prominent in terms of my fields of inquiry.
All right, so let's talk about the Minnesota fraud cases first.
I'll put up on the screen some details because there's a couple of things going on here.
So the centerpiece scandal is the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.
It diverted approximately $300 million of child nutrition funds into luxury spending, real estate, and kickbacks.
This was during the pandemic.
This was a pandemic relief fraud scheme.
The other was the other one discovered in Minnesota's Housing Stabilization Services Program.
It pays to help finding housing as well as the state's autism services program.
So I just want you, before we talk more about that, and we got that from Fox News, if you could talk a little bit more about the details of those cases.
And my understanding is that those happened a while ago and they had been investigated, but only now really rising to national prominence.
And, you know, really, I think it's important too to note the scale of these frauds.
Okay, these were not small operations.
They involved a lot of people, hundreds of millions of dollars, and they went on for many years, even though they started during COVID.
So clearly they should have been uncovered, revealed, and prosecuted much earlier.
So that's a major failure, primarily by Governor Walsh and Mayor Fry there in Minneapolis.
I think that they chose very willingly to simply look the other way because it wasn't politically expedient with their narrative.
They're so incredibly pro-immigrant, even pro-illegal immigrant.
They are allies, of course, of Ilhan Omar, the extremely radical, I view her as an anti-American congresswoman who represents the Somalian community in Minnesota.
So that's the first sort of aspect is massive fraud, you know, on a gigantic scale perpetrated against American citizens, against the hardworking taxpayers of Minnesota.
And for a very long time, they basically got away with it.
But there's also a bigger national issue here: you know, how are we doing immigration?
How are we doing legal immigration to this country?
And when you mass import the third world, eventually you're going to become the third world, particularly if this country, America, does not expect and demand assimilation, does not demand and expect you to live according to our values rather than the values of your third world country where you came from.
And specifically in the case of Somalia, this is one of the most impoverished and violent places in the entire planet.
So I think it's inexplicable to come up with some rationale for why we want to invite hundreds of thousands of Somalians into the United States, not demand that they assimilate, allow them to live in many ways in a parallel culture and almost parallel country within the United States, and think that that serves the interests of American citizens.
Legal immigration can be done very well.
It was done great in past eras in this country.
My own father, legal immigrant here from South America, but it is not being done well in recent years, and that's because it's been primarily directed by globalist radicals in Washington, D.C.
Yeah, well, look, certainly these perpetrators are garbage, right?
When you come to a new country that welcomes you, that is so much massively better than your own homeland, and you decide to become a criminal and steal from us, yes, you're garbage.
Well, again, I don't think it serves the interest of the United States to mass import Somalians into this country.
No, for that matter, any third world country.
I'm not just trying to pick on Somalia, although that is a particularly awful country in most aspects.
But the mass importation of the third world into the United States is a terrible idea and is going to bring about garbage results.
I may not call the people garbage, but it's going to give us garbage results.
It will give us dirtier, poorer, more dangerous cities.
I think we're already seeing that here.
And if we look at Europe, Europe provides a terrific example of where, and a bad example, I shouldn't say terrific, but a very prescient example of where we might be heading.
And when we look at most European countries, they have been changed completely.
I mean, demographically, culturally, economically, have been completely changed.
And I think most folks who are being objective would say for the worse.
Let's not follow that example.
Let's protect the interests of American citizens of all colors and creeds, but American citizens, those who were either born here or who were naturalized legally to the United States.
I happen to believe that we need a pause on legal immigration.
We need zero illegal immigration.
I think it's time for a pause on legal immigration because we know we're not doing it well.
We know, for example, that the majority of immigrant-headed households in the United States right now are receiving some form of welfare.
That means we are not doing immigration right.
You know, 100 years ago, it's sort of the heyday, the golden age of immigration, Ellis Island, into the United States, there were two aspects that were key.
Number one is we demanded assimilation into our culture, our way of life, and our values.
Number two, there was zero safety net, which is one reason why a lot of those immigrants actually left.
They went back to their homelands.
They didn't make it here.
They didn't like it here, whatever it was.
They got no support from the public, from the help, from the government.
That story isn't told very often about the Ellis Island era.
We now have a very, very different scenario.
On top of that, job layoffs for Americans are soaring this year.
AI, for example, has become a very serious threat to American workers.
We have the, other than the COVID panic era, we have the highest layoff year.
2025 is going to be the highest layoff year since the great financial crisis.
So we also have that economic predicament where it makes no sense for us to be importing hundreds of thousands and millions of new workers to compete against American citizens.
So I think for a host of reasons, and I think this Somalian case hopefully is going to wake up a lot of Americans to say, wait a second, is this serving our interests?
Is this making America stronger, more cohesive as a society?
Is it making us more patriotic?
Is it making us wealthier, safer?
And I think if we take an honest look, we're going to say no.
Oh, no, it is definitely not working right now because we don't expect it and because we actually promote differences rather than unity, rather than shared beliefs in this country.
And unity doesn't have to be based, of course, on skin color.
It doesn't have to be based on your last name and your ethnicity.
But unity based on shared beliefs, on patriotism, on shared culture.
And as an example, as a concrete example, I mentioned Ilhan Omar.
Ilhan Omar has been very overt, very open that her loyalty is to Somalia.
Now, she is a United States congressman.
She sits in the U.S. House of Representatives, supposedly representing the state of Minnesota.
She has made it abundantly clear many times on tape, as have her allies, that she is looking out for the interests not just of the Somalian citizens she represents who are Americans, but to Somalia itself, to that country.
Now, that's a particularly egregious example, but there's a lot of other examples.
For example, Miami, which is a city I happen to love.
In whole parts of Miami, English is the second language.
That's problematic.
That means we're not assimilating.
And by the way, on the whole, Miami has done immigration much better than Minneapolis has.
I'm not trying to pick on Miami, but this is another example of a country that no longer demands assimilation in the way that we used to, culturally, politically, and otherwise.
I would also point to, you know, I gave you those statistics on immigrant-headed households in Los Angeles County specifically, and this is from the LA Times, which is not exactly a right-wing publication.
The LA Times says that in LA County, biggest county in America, 10 million people, super diverse, very Latin, that immigrant-headed households, 60% of them, so a super majority, are getting some sort of means-tested benefit, which is really a way of saying welfare.
So, whether it's housing assistance, food stamps, they are getting welfare from the American people.
That means we're not doing immigration right.
If anything, for immigrants, for legal immigrants to the United States, that number should be close to zero or zero, in fact, right?
They shouldn't even be eligible, but if they are eligible for benefits, if we're doing immigration correctly, if we're really getting the kind of strivers and go-getters who love America and want to work hard, want to assimilate into our culture, want to add to the American family and the American story, that number would be way, way lower than it is.
So, again, I think we just have to take a rational look and say immigration in and of itself, and this is part of the problem, Mimi, is that immigration has been sold to us by the radicals and globalists as if it is an inherent good, as if there is something just objectively good about immigration on its own.
And that's just not the case.
America has had periods where we welcome lots of immigrants, and we've done it really well.
We've had periods where we've had almost zero immigrants, and that served the American interest in the 1950s, for example.
Almost no immigration to this country.
And what we should do, though, is just take a rational look, recognize that immigration exists for what purpose?
To serve the interests of the American people, of the existing citizens of our country.
There's nothing noble about taking care of other people until we have taken care of our own, until we have taken care of our own brothers and sisters and neighbors.
Our own American family must be prioritized.
This is simply logical, it's ethical, it's moral, it's right, and it's the way for a society to function and not have what I would call suicidal empathy to say, okay, because someone lives in Somalia, I'm going to invite them into a better life, even though it's going to make my life worse and my neighbor's life worse.
The good news here in Minnesota is a budget that works, smart budgeting over the last few years that led us to a solid position.
We will tackle crime, whether it's drug crime, whether it's fraud crime, and we will do it based on the individual who commits it, not a generalization to a group of people.
And in spite of the headwinds we're up against, Minnesota ranks economically, economic growth, happiness, number of people insured, education levels near the very top.
So I'll tell you what, I have no interest in having this state look like Oklahoma or Mississippi.
And if folks are going to commit crimes here, thinking because our generous spirit and our programs that we have is going to give them some kind of cover, they are sadly mistaken.
Well, interesting that Governor Walls would take a shot at the American South.
I'm a pro resident of Tennessee, so I'm going to take offense at that.
But look, Tim Walz is more responsible, I think, than any other person in America for the carnage that was unleashed on this country during 2020 during the BLM riots, which of course began in his state and largely because of his incredibly ineffective leadership, his unwillingness to enact law and order in Minneapolis.
That started a contagion, a scourge of violence in mayhem that spread all over America.
So he has been a failure for a very long time, even before he failed last November before the national voters.
But regarding his defense of this mass influx of the third world into the United States, the facts on the ground say otherwise.
And anyone, I think, who goes to the Twin Cities with open eyes and with an objective mind will realize that this is simply not working.
They are not adding to the fabric of Minnesota.
They are economically a massive drain.
And to give you a statistic on this, by the way, the country of Somalia, one-third of its GDP is remittances, is people sending money back home to Somalia.
One-third of its GDP, that is the highest of any country on planet Earth.
A lot of those remittances coming from Minnesota.
And we now know a lot of those remittances being stolen.
It's not earned money.
It is taken money.
It is illicit money coming from the honest people of Minnesota going to the country of Somalia.
So we cannot pretend that this is a model that works for the United States.
My issue is that I've worked construction my whole life.
I've owned a roofing company for 20-plus years.
Six years ago, I had a motorcycle accident, and now I have a TBI, which has improved, but is still affecting me.
And then I also have enough titanium in my body to fill Trump's golf bag.
My problem is I've been denied disability six times when we've been supporting illegals and them stealing billions from us.
Now that Minnesota is saying that they're throwing away all disability applications, leaving me where while they steal billions.
Now, now they're raising our property taxes in Nashwak, which is a nothing town, to fix their screw-ups.
While Tim Walz sits there and says that Minnesota's doing good, yeah, he's doing good because he's sucking the money from us.
And I have a statement for the caller that said that Republicans have a short memory.
The reason gas prices haven't gone lower than what they are is we're filling up our reserves that Biden emptied to bring down gas prices for his campaign.
Well, first, I'm sorry that you're in this awful situation.
That's terrible that you've been denied disability, but it does bring up a much bigger policy point, which is that we are not prioritizing American citizens like Chris who deserve our assistance.
Instead, our resources are flowing in large part to illegal aliens and other and even legal immigrants.
And particularly on health care, one of the reasons that we are in such dire straits regarding health care in this country is that we know factually, okay, because Gavin Newsom, for example, in California doesn't even hide this.
We know factually that millions and millions of illegal immigrants are getting U.S. government-funded, taxpayer-funded health care in this country.
They are getting both Medicare and Medicaid on mass, I mean, on a massive scale.
And again, if you Gavin Newsom actually brags about this, that yes, healthcare in California is open to illegal aliens, many of whom, of course, are in his state.
Same thing is happening in Minnesota.
If we solve that problem, it's not the only answer, it's not the silver bullet, but it would be a big answer toward getting back to a place where we can actually afford health care for American citizens, especially people who need it and deserve it, like Chris.
And I just think also it brings about just a bigger point: who are we prioritizing?
Are we prioritizing foreigners or do we want to take care of our own people?
Let's look at the other end of the spectrum because a lot of healthcare tends to be older folks.
Let's look demographically at the youth at schools.
We know that in many of these places, for example, I did a documentary in Whitewater, Wisconsin, small Wisconsin town that really has been overrun with immigrants, mostly from Guatemala and Venezuela.
The schools are full of the children of illegal aliens.
Now, I'm not blaming these children.
It's not their fault, obviously.
But the point is, American children, young children from Wisconsin, from small town, Wisconsin, should not have to go to school that is full of illegal aliens who don't even speak English, who in many cases aren't even literate in their home language.
Because guess what?
The education of those young Wisconsin boys and girls is suffering massively, not to mention the financial resources, the toll it takes on the fiscal situation of that town, that county, that state.
So, again, we need to prioritize our own people.
That is the actually compassionate thing to do.
It's the intelligent thing to do.
And President Trump, I think, thankfully is drawing a lot of attention to this.
If there's a positive from this awful scandal, and it's terrible in Minnesota, I think it's that it's waking people up.
And, you know, my look, here's the danger.
If we continue down this road, is again, we're going to be where Europe is, but eventually, worse than that, we're going to be where Somalia is.
I only got about three hours' sleep last night, but I figured you were due for rotating in Mimi, so I had to get up and listen.
For Mr. Cortez, I have a couple of questions and a comment.
One, when your parents immigrated to this country back in the 30s, I wonder how many people were saying the same thing about Somalis, about your people.
Number two, I find it interesting that there are now 29 Fox employees now employed by the White House.
unidentified
I find it interesting that there's been great inflation, obviously, since the 1970s when I was in school.
We were warned about that: that people were getting grades that they shouldn't have, were being promoted when they shouldn't be.
So maybe that's where the lack of understanding on many of these issues comes from.
I find it interesting that When you were running the helping run the campaign for JD Vance in Ohio that last election, were you a part of the they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats lie?
No, Vance, that issue had not yet surfaced, you know, regarding allegations about, you know, what was being committed by those immigrants.
So that issue did not come up.
We talked immigration quite a lot, and I'm certainly, you know, JD Vance, the vice president, is largely where I am on immigration.
Regarding Fox News, I don't know really what the question is there.
I used to work for Fox News.
I don't work for the now.
I don't work for the White House.
But I think probably the more important issue you bring up is regarding my parents coming from other countries.
And of course, for almost all of us, our parents came from somewhere else.
And this is a very valid question, okay?
But because our ancestors, whether we ourselves immigrated or it was your parents or grandparents or it was 400 years ago on the Mayflower, whoever immigrated, it does not mean that this country must then have a wide open, continuously open door to welcome any and all immigrants without serious filters and serious vetting upon who should come in, who is going to make our country better and stronger.
That's just simply illogical.
You know, just as we don't have to live with the sins of the father, right?
If we had bad parents, we also don't have to live with the consequences of the fact that my parents came from somewhere else.
And that means that we must welcome everyone into the United States.
That just doesn't make sense.
That's an inherited sort of guilt pattern that I reject totally.
We as American citizens, I was born in this country.
My father was legally naturalized into this country.
I was born here, raised here.
This is my land.
We have every right to say we're going to take a rational look.
We're going to take a dispassionate look at immigration and figure out what works well for this country.
And again, at times, we've done immigration really, really well.
I would argue that when my dad came over here, we were doing it well and demanding assimilation, for example, at that point.
And not doing very much immigration either.
When my father came here, that was pre-1965.
Everything changed in 1965 with the massive immigration bill.
And then things changed even more dramatically in the 1980s after Reagan, a man who I really admire, but Reagan instituted an amnesty, which then ushered in a wave of illegal immigration, which we suffered with for most of the last 40 years.
So immigration has changed dramatically in the last 60 years, really, in this country.
Previous to that, I think we did immigration on the whole really, really well.
And I think we largely need to go back to that era.
To me, the smartest way to do that is to take a pause, to say, hey, we have more immigrants, both numerically and by percentage.
We have more foreign-born people in the United States than we have ever had.
We have more than 50 million people in the United States who are foreign-born.
We had the highest percentage we've ever had.
Is that serving us well?
Is our country happy?
Do we have patriotism and cohesiveness that is palpable?
Do we have prosperity across the land?
I think if you take an honest look at all those, you say, no.
Now, I'm not saying that's only because of a lot of foreigners, but that is part of the equation.
And to me, it makes sense to say we're going to take a pause.
We're going to take care of the American family.
We're going to figure out how we want to open up ourselves to immigration again.
Let's do it in a really sensible and I would argue much more restrained fashion.
Let's be really careful about who we bring in.
And I think if we are careful about that, probably we won't want a whole lot of Somalians.
Now, are there some outstanding Somalians?
Of course.
And we might want some of them to come here.
But do we want mass migration of a community that is going to operate as its own community within the United States?
And Janice is waiting to talk to you in Dalton, Illinois, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Janice.
unidentified
Hi, I have two points.
One is on the language.
I think that the hallmark of a successful nation is a basic form of communication.
That's why English should be made the official language.
And no citizenship should be granted to anyone unless they can speak English.
And the second point is for those who think ICE is targeting people based solely on race and not any crime, ask yourself this.
When you see a cop in your city arresting someone or chasing someone, putting somebody in handcuffs, do you know why?
Are they supposed to stop and tell you why they're doing this before they do it?
Of course not.
This is what cops have private detectives in plain clothes, and they're arresting somebody.
They have their reasons.
So that's ridiculous for people to say that.
And remember, being here illegally is a crime in itself.
They're talking about all major crimes of killing people, but that's a crime also.
And the status of this should be raised to felony so that the federal police have more ability to get warrants to enter these houses where these people are hiding.
Yeah, I will tell you, unfortunately, I have not looked into either one of those cases, and I'm not trying to avoid the question.
I just don't know the details.
The Christley one seems very puzzling to me.
I don't think there's a good explanation, but maybe the White House has a great one, but I'm sorry you'd have to ask them.
But to that point of English, which is certainly pertinent to what we've been talking about here, English is the language of the United States.
I think it's absolutely crucial.
I mean, from a practical standpoint, but even more importantly, from a cultural standpoint, that a nation should share a lot of things, including language.
And let me give you a very tangible ramification of people not knowing English.
There have been terrible truck accidents lately because there are a lot of illegal immigrant truck drivers.
They're getting CDLs, commercial driver's licenses from renegade states like Minnesota, by the way, Minnesota, California, Illinois.
These radical governors are making a point of giving away CDLs like candy to illegal migrants who have no business behind a truck, who aren't safe, and who can't read English.
And if you cannot read the road signs correctly, you are far more likely to get into deadly accidents.
And we've seen horrific examples of this lately.
I'm sure all the viewers have at least heard about or perhaps seen some of the awful dash cam videos of these trucks that are killing American citizens.
So sometimes the consequences of not sharing a language, it's not just annoying, it's actually dangerous.
It can be deadly.
I actually just met yesterday in Washington, D.C. with Transportation Secretary Duffy, who is all over this issue and trying to crack down as much as he can on these renegade states.
But that would be a practical ramification of people not knowing English, being allowed to come into this country illegally, and then on top of that, actually being granted privileges, privileges that should belong to American citizens who want to make a good living driving a truck, who do speak English, who are legal, who are here the right way, who are safe behind the wheel.
And, you know, again, that's just one example of, I think, a broader concern.
Of course, everybody to be an American citizen, to be naturalized into this country, you should absolutely be proficient in English.
The lines are Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
unidentified
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Okay, so the last Fed meeting of the year is wrapping up.
Today, can you remind us about what the significance of the meeting is and the possible impact to interest rates?
unidentified
Right.
Well, the significance is that it should be the third interest rate cut this year, a cut to the Fed's short-term rate.
And it comes after a lot of different debate among the different members of the rate-setting committee.
But people think that Chair Jerome Powell is going to be able to bring together enough votes for a third rate cut.
It could bring down over time mortgage rates, auto loans, credit card rates, although some of those are determined by the financial markets, so we'll see.
But it will give us a sense of where we should also get a sense of where the Fed thinks the economy is going in terms of hiring and inflation and things like that.
And remind us of where inflation sits right now and also unemployment in the economy and how the committee will weigh that data.
unidentified
Right.
Well, so you have inflation is still above the Fed's 2% target.
The gauge that the Fed watches most closely came out last week.
It's a little bit delayed because of the shutdown.
So it showed that in September, the Fed's preferred gauge had inflation at 2.8%.
That's certainly a lot lower than what we had a couple of years ago during and after the pandemic, when inflation had spiked to a four-decade high of over 9% back in 2022.
But now it is, so it's come down a lot from there, but 2.8%.
Again, it's above the Fed's target and certainly still higher than, again, what we saw before the pandemic.
And so in that sense, the Fed would usually try to keep rates higher to sort of push that inflation back down.
But at the same time, there's been some weakening in hiring.
The companies shed jobs in August, according to the government data.
Then in September, there was a bit more hiring, but the unemployment rate still rose.
Unemployment's now risen for three straight months.
It's at its highest level in four years at 4.4%.
It's still, you know, still historically low, but there's a lot of concern at the Fed that this slow hiring could turn into layoffs and a big spike in the unemployment rate.
And so that is one reason that they are likely to cut to try to shore up the economy and companies' willingness to add jobs.
Now, Chairman Powell's term ends in May, and this is what President Trump said to reporters on Air Force One yesterday.
He said, quote, we're going to be looking at a couple of different people, but I have a pretty good idea of who I want.
Who do you think that is?
unidentified
Well, the broad understanding is it's certainly that it's likely to be Kevin Hassett, his top economic advisor in the White House.
And he recently, not long before that comment, made a comment about there being a potential Fed chair in the room.
And at that point, Kevin Hassett was the one in the room.
He's also, of course, said, though, that he would love to have his Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, as the Fed chair.
Of course, Besent has said he doesn't want the job.
So I guess that's certainly less likely, to be sure.
And then there are a few other people in the mix.
Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, who is the son of a big donor to Trump and who's been a Fed critic for some time.
He's in the mix.
And there are even some current Fed chairs, excuse me, Fed officials, such as Governor Chris Wallace, Chris Waller, and Governor Michelle Bowman, who are also in the mix, but seen as a lot less likely.
That's Christopher Ruegeber, economics reporter for the Associated Press.
Thanks so much for joining us.
And coming up later today on C-SPAN 3, we have the Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell giving an update on interest rates and the U.S. economy.
That is going to be at 2.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
You can also watch it on the app, C-SPANNOW and online at c-span.org.
That is the news conference for Chairman Powell after that meeting.
We're an open forum now, so let's talk to Luann in Portland, Oregon, Republican.
Hi, Luanne.
unidentified
Yeah, I don't know if I'm a Republican.
I think that I'm independent.
Somewhere in the middle.
I'm responding to Steve Cortez.
I thought everything that he said made total sense to me.
And I'm just wondering if people are seeing how it does make sense of what he's seeing.
And I guess mainly that when he was saying 60% of the people that come in here are collecting some kind of benefit.
And I think that, you know, in the old days, it was just meant to be a temporary thing.
And now it seems like that's their way of living.
And then I just happen to shop at stores where I'm the only one that seems to be paying for my groceries.
Everybody has an EBT card.
I can spot them a mile away.
And then I follow them out to their cars and they have these beautiful cars.
And I'm working hard.
I never had children because I thought that financially it would suck me dry.
And I wanted to keep my life good.
And kids, I knew what my financial situation was.
And it seems like a lot of these people that come in are always pregnant.
Now, I don't know if I sound insensitive, but why isn't it brought up that it seems like everybody says they get more chill or more money the more children that they have?
And I'm sorry if I'm offending a lot of people, but I just feel like Steve Cortez makes sense.
And I do feel like it's going to turn into a third world country.
I'm on the plane a lot, and these LA and New York, half the time, I can't understand any of the languages.
English seems to be becoming a second language with a lot of these states.
And I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but I'm going to have a few points that I want.
Darrell, Clemington, New Jersey, Democrat, you're on the air.
unidentified
Yeah, I have two things.
People complicate simple things.
A simple truth is a strong truth.
So if Trump is supposed to protect you from drugs and keep your women safe, please explain to me why would he then, out of his mouth, he's called these people narcoterrorists.
He had a narcoterrorist in jail with a sentence of 45 years for being responsible for distributing some 400 tons of cocaine.
He's in jail.
Now, if he lets this guy go, please explain that.
But he's blowing up little boats in the Caribbean.
Oh, they're responsible.
They're narcoterists.
Well, why would you let the top guy go?
That's number one.
Number two, why is he protecting a pedophile?
And why are we acting like it's okay?
How many times do these women have to relive the trauma, trying to get some justice to people in Congress, those that are responsible for protecting us, so-called protecting us, and they're not doing a damn thing about it?
All right, Daryl, and to your earlier point about the pardons from the drug traffickers, the Washington Post does have an article about that from yesterday.
Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric.
It says the president has granted clemency to about 100 people accused of drug-related crimes during his time in office.
This is according to a Washington Post analysis.
And you can see that article if you'd like to read it in the Washington Post.
Emma is Emma in St. Louis, Missouri, Line for Independence.
Good morning, Emma.
unidentified
Good morning.
I would like to make a comment about the whole world situation.
First of all, I'm a Christian.
The first words of the Bible say, in the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.
Not just the United States, the heavens and earth.
God did not give you a country.
God gave you life.
And that life is determined by who you were born to, okay?
And you are a direct product of your environment.
Racism is taught.
No anybody born in the world is not racist, okay?
But they are taught racism from the time that they're born to the time that they're adults.
And a lot of people take this information and this upbringing.
You are a direct product of your environment.
You should be able to go anywhere in this world and live according to God's book, the Bible.
So I feel like if anybody can prove me wrong, prove me wrong where God gave you a country.
Good morning again, beautiful woman down the television box.
First and foremost, thank you for being a wonderful American.
And the young lady's point, in Genesis, though, when God provides Abraham a son, Bimelech is a Philistine, and God denotes language as well as country of origin.
But I call it because the young lady before that talked about how she couldn't afford to have children, all those other things.
She's a bad American because our grandfathers and grandmothers had children, many children.
They came from Italy, they came from Ellis Island, they came from around the world.
So by you not having children and deriding the young lady from Central South America, from Asia from doing those same things and not picking up the pieces, all you're doing is leaving a spot.
And I will also comment on what she is saying.
She is 100% correct about immigrants getting benefits.
I am a white-collar attorney, and I can tell you most of my clients who are married to immigrants are married to beautiful women who are American-born and who are all on their EBT cards, who are all utilizing the benefits.
I actually don't know too many people who aren't college graduates on EBT cards because they think it's a game.
So I think that they're 100% correct, but casing someone, following someone from a store, that's a crime, by the way.
I would be very cautious.
The young lady, and wherever she called, said that she spots EBT cards from a mile away and then goes to their car.
That's the foundation of a crime.
So they can do whatever you want to.
I think the young man who aids with the senatorial campaigns, I did that in a past life.
First of all, Mr. Cortez was so disturbing to listen to.
First, he said, my parents and my grandparents came here, but that was them.
That was for them.
Either America is a land of immigrants or it's not.
You cannot have this idea of bringing me your tired and you're weary and then shut it off.
And what Mr. Cortez and most of our Republican friends failed to do when they lauded the good old days when the good folks from Europe came and it was great was they failed to talk about the racism that was in the federal code around immigration.
And let's just call it what it is.
They don't want these people, and Trump doesn't want these people because they're black and brown.
Just as he has said that the Afrikaners can come however they want to, it could not be more clearly racist.
And I think that these little soft arguments that people are peddling without being clear about racism is very, very problematic.
So, Ted, sorry, what do you think of Steve's argument that it's a lack of assimilation that he's worried about?
unidentified
Of course it is, man, because how do you think people assimilated in 1930?
They assimilated through whiteness, and they created this idea of whiteness.
And my people have been here for 400 years and have not been able to fully assimilate because we are not what people have believed to be the American dream.
And trust and believe, I am middle class.
I have three degrees.
I've got kids in private Christian school, by the way.
And so I have worked my entire life to assimilate, but I'm not a fool.
And I understand how this country works.
And so we have to be a place of immigrant.
For the woman who called to say, I'm so upset because I go on planes and people don't speak English, what do you think America is?
The evolution of America is a land of immigration.
I do believe in assimilation.
I do believe the Somali folks that we're talking about, we've got to figure that out and we've got to try to help them become a part of it.
But you don't do that by isolating them.
You do that by inviting them into the American experience, not being a racist and using false arguments that they use in Nazi Germany, that they used when the Italians came here and the Irish came here.
You know, I would like to discuss this whole notion of affordability.
It really seems like they have pushed this one down our throat.
I live on a very modest income, and frankly, the affordability factor hasn't really affected me greatly differently between the Biden administration and the Trump administration.
In fact, under the Trump administration, it seems like it might be a little more affordable.
But what I noticed, and the point I want to try to make here, is that about three or four weeks ago, I heard the word affordability.
And all of a sudden, within that first week, I heard the word affordability on the news broadcast probably over 300 times.
And I felt like, what is going on here?
Now, I was a speech major in college, and of course, speech 101 says persuasion, repetition.
But what was amazing to me was that the Democrats came up with this word, and then all of a sudden, the mainstream media latched onto it, and they were part of it.
And it was like the Democrats got to the mainstream media and said, you know, said, say it loud, say it proud, say it often.
And they forced it down our throat.
Now, affordability, which I never really saw as a problem before this, is now the big issue.