| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Fed Chairman Powell's Mistake
00:07:25
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| Upcoming advisory with those details. | ||
| Until then, thank you, and we'll see you next time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, the United Nations Security Council holds an emergency meeting as anti-government protests continue in Iran. | |
| The meeting's happening at the request of the United States, and President Trump weighs options for a possible intervention. | ||
| Watch the Security Council meeting live at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Republican New York Congressman Mike Lawler and Democratic New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer come together for a conversation on the top issues facing Congress as both parties prepare for the upcoming midterm elections. | ||
| Join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| On Saturday, we'll have live coverage of the inauguration of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, along with Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi and Attorney General ElectJay Jones. | ||
| From Richmond, Virginia, watch live at 12 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Our first guest of the morning is Representative John Rose, Republican of Tennessee. | ||
| He serves on the Financial Services Committee, joining us to talk amongst many things, a look into Chair Powell and his actions. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me on the show this morning. | ||
| Well, thank you for coming on. | ||
| What do you think about this attention that's been paid to the Federal Reserve Chair? | ||
| Well, I think it's always good for these organizations, and particularly the Federal Reserve, because of the intended independence of the Fed. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that they're above being watched over to make sure they're being prudent and careful, frugal, even I might say, with their use of the resources that are ultimately really the resources of the American people. | ||
| Is this strictly about building or the construction project at the Federal Reserve, or as Democrats would say, or even some Republicans would say this goes further to limit the Fed's independence? | ||
| How would you say that? | ||
| Well, I think the answer truly is that we don't know because obviously an investigation by the Justice Department, they haven't revealed what the basis for that is at this point. | ||
| We probably wouldn't know about this investigation at this point, were it not for Chairman Powell himself reporting or releasing that he had been notified that he was the object of an investigation. | ||
| So we really don't know what the predicate for the investigation is, but many surmise that it relates to the building project and his Senate testimony about that. | ||
| You wrote on X when talking about this issue. | ||
| You said this GOG inquiry isn't about petty disagreements or interest rates. | ||
| Can you elaborate why you think that is? | ||
| Well, I think, well, I mean, it would be inappropriate for it to be about that. | ||
| So I presume they have what would be an appropriate objective for the investigation. | ||
| And it's yet to see what that is. | ||
| Obviously, every president since the Fed has been created has attempted to influence them either directly or subtly in some way, and this president is no different. | ||
| So that's where the speculation comes from. | ||
| I think that perhaps there's a different motive. | ||
| And I guess history will judge whether that's true or not. | ||
| There may be some problem here, and one would presume that there's at least suspicion of that. | ||
| You serve on financial services. | ||
| How do you think about the tenure of Chair Powell? | ||
| And particularly, do you think he's independent from being swayed by the president or other forces? | ||
| Well, I don't think any Fed chair is fully independent of the influence of the president. | ||
| The president has a lot of power. | ||
| I think, unfortunately, Fed Chairman Powell missed the call in the early days of the Biden administration when the profligate spending of the Biden administration was heating up the economy, ultimately leading to the serious inflation that we had, the worst in my adult lifetime. | ||
| You know, we had the Fed chairman in those days, he has to come and testify before our committee twice annually, and we had him there. | ||
| And many of us were prodding him at the time saying, don't you think inflation is going to be a problem? | ||
| Don't you think it's time for you to do something about it? | ||
| Of course, he can't control what was happening on the fiscal side. | ||
| So all of that government spending was building heat in the economy that was going to lead to inflation. | ||
| And what I think the Fed chairman mentioned or missed at the time was that once that inflation was in place, which is the nature of inflation, we saw it in the Carter inflation of the 1970s and 80s, is that it becomes a psychology. | ||
| And it's hard to then put it back in the box once it's out. | ||
| And so at the time, he described it as transitory. | ||
| And he latched on to the narrative at that time that the inflation was just transitory. | ||
| And many in the Biden administration tried to say that as well. | ||
| What later he admitted is that it was not transitory, and it's still with us. | ||
| And just as was the case in the 1980s, once inflation psychology sets in, it sometimes takes years to completely kind of remove it from the psyche of the populace and to get it out of the economy. | ||
| And that's what we're experiencing now. | ||
| Even though I think the policies of the Trump administration will ultimately subdue those inflationary pressures, and I think have already done a lot to do that, I think it takes time. | ||
| In the 80s, it took most of that decade before we got inflation tamed. | ||
| In this new inquiry, this new investigation by the Department of Justice, your chair, French Hill, said he quoted as saying it's an unnecessary distraction. | ||
| What do you think of that characterization coming from your chairman? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, I think he's talking about the penumbra, the aura around the entire situation, that it's a distraction from other issues. | ||
| For example, Chair Powell should be coming to testify before our committee soon. | ||
| This may delay that. | ||
| I think there's been some discussion that it would delay that testimony. | ||
| And so that's a distraction from us handling the business that we need to. | ||
| The president's right on the cusp of naming a new Fed chair from all appearances. | ||
| He's made it clear it probably will not be reappointing Powell. | ||
| And so I think it just gets in the way of winding down that, this whole discussion. | ||
| However, it doesn't change the fact that if there's the basis for an investigation, then one should be conducted. | ||
| Representative John Rose is our guest. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about matters of Congress, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independence 2027-8002, you can always text your questions at comments at 202-748-8003. | ||
|
House Near Two-Thirds Mark
00:15:42
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| We have some calls lined up for you. | ||
| Our first one joining us is Geno. | ||
| Geno joins us on our independent line. | ||
| He is from Galveston. | ||
| You're on with Tennessee Republican John Rose. | ||
| Geno, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'd like to jump back a little bit, but I think it would apply to this new topic also. | ||
| If I had one thing to an overreaching thing I would ask, if I could ask President Trump, I would say or ask, is it America first, oil slash bad actors second, and democracy third when you're dealing with Venezuela or any other country? | ||
| Or is it America first, democracy second, oil slash bad actors third? | ||
| You know, they're in Galveston. | ||
| Well, I think the president's overall approach to governance has been to put America first. | ||
| I don't think that's really at odds with democracy, the democratic process. | ||
| Obviously, we have a Republican form of government in this country, and the president is a product or a success in that democratic process. | ||
| And I don't think he's attempting to circumvent or overturn that. | ||
| I just think he believes that this country should take care of its self first. | ||
| You know, when you get on an airplane, and I get to fly a lot coming back and forth from Tennessee to Washington, they always tell you in the case of an emergency, the oxygen mask is going to drop down. | ||
| If you have young children with you, you should, they don't say you should put their mask on first. | ||
| They say you should put your mask. | ||
| And I think that's the way I kind of summarize the whole America first policy. | ||
| If we don't take care of America, if we don't have a healthy and strong country, then we're in less of a position to defend the democratic process, to defend freedom and liberty, free trade, and open markets all around the world. | ||
| The president understands that, and I think his policies reflect that. | ||
| Do you think his actions, especially if Venezuela or Greenland or whatever, do they fall into the American First umbrella in some case? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think the president, in the case of Nicholas Maduro, I think he's bringing a thug, a criminal, an international narco-terrorist to justice. | ||
| I think the way that he went about it is probably appropriate because Maduro is going to get a chance to stand trial and get American justice. | ||
| Some of the president's predecessors would have just taken him out, if you will. | ||
| And I think this is probably a more elegant way to do this and to give Maduro a chance and give the United States a chance to make its case against Maduro, who's been responsible through his trafficking and facilitation of the trafficking of drugs. | ||
| He's been responsible for the death of literally hundreds of thousands of Americans over the many years that the Maduro and predecessor regime were in place. | ||
| This is Roger. | ||
| Roger in North Carolina, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you, Pedro. | ||
| I have three quick points I'd like to make, if I may. | ||
| Number one, this investigation of Chairman Powell, we all know, everybody knows that it's just because President Trump wants him to drop the interest rates. | ||
| Point number two, if they're so interested in the cost overrun of that building that Powell's doing, but they don't seem to be interested at all in all that rebuilding that the president is doing in the White House. | ||
| He's laying gold all over the White House. | ||
| He's putting marble floors in the bathrooms and the hallways all over the place. | ||
| Congress is not interested in that. | ||
| Point number three, seems like the Congress is just ceding all its authority to the President. | ||
| They're letting him do things like rename the Kennedy Center when the law says that it's the Congress's role to do that. | ||
| They're letting him dismiss like the U.S.AID when they said Congress only can do that. | ||
| They're letting him do this War Powers Act. | ||
| So when are you guys going to stand up and do your job? | ||
| Okay, Roger, they're in North Carolina. | ||
| Well, I think I would start with the Powell investigation. | ||
| The truth is, we don't know, and that's the way it always is, is the Justice Department doesn't disclose or talk about these investigations. | ||
| We only know about the investigation here because Chairman Powell himself reported that came forward. | ||
| And the motives for that, I think, will ultimately become clear, perhaps, or maybe not. | ||
| But, you know, investigating to make sure that the taxpayers of this country haven't been defrauded or mistreated in some way, I think, is always an appropriate thing to do. | ||
| With respect to the White House, the President has significant latitude, and it's my understanding, and again, we'll see this as it unfolds, but that project is being funded by third-party private contributions to assist in the development of additional space at the White House. | ||
| And, you know, throughout the history, if you study the history of the White House, it has not been a static place. | ||
| We've been in a period when very few changes have relatively been made at the White House. | ||
| The President is attempting to enlarge the space so that he can more appropriately do the job he is doing. | ||
| And he's made the case for that, and I think he has significant latitude. | ||
| The process of getting that approved and having input from third parties, I think, is underway, and I think we'll see that unfold. | ||
| And then with respect to Congress and the prerogative of Congress, just this week we passed the appropriations bills for the current fiscal year, albeit late. | ||
| And Congress is asserting its control with respect to things like U.S. aid and other programs through the budgeting process, which is the way that that was intended to be done. | ||
| So I don't think Congress has ceded its authority. | ||
| President Trump is, I think, in a proactive way leading and signaling what he wants to see happen. | ||
| But ultimately, Congress does have a say in implementing those programs for the long term. | ||
| To that last point, what's your sense of the track that the House is in and perhaps the Senate on passing these appropriations bills to avoid another partial shutdown January 30th? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, we just passed another of those appropriations bills this week. | ||
| So I think we are moving in the right direction. | ||
| The House is nearing the two-thirds mark. | ||
| We've got a couple more weeks to get our work done. | ||
| I think the plan is to try to wind it up here well in advance of the deadline, the current deadline looming at the end of the month. | ||
| And so far, those bills have been passing in a broadly bipartisan way. | ||
| So I think we're on good track to get the job done. | ||
| I hope the Senate comes along. | ||
| The Senate is notorious for dragging its feet. | ||
| You know, we've sent this past year, we sent over 400 bills over to the Senate. | ||
| They've got to get off their butts and get in action and start doing the work they're supposed to do. | ||
| We've sent them a lot of good legislation from the House, and we need the Senate to take action. | ||
| And we hope that they don't have the same problem that they did in the fall when we had the Schumer shutdown. | ||
| We hope that they will get the job done and fund the U.S. government and that we don't see another shutdown. | ||
| Martin is in Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| A couple of things. | ||
| I'm an independent, but I usually vote Democrat. | ||
| Anyways, this DOJ is a joke. | ||
| I mean, full stop. | ||
| I don't have to go into that. | ||
| But in terms of the interest rates, Trump has asked for 75 BIPS, 100 BIPs, bringing down the interest rates. | ||
| That doesn't mean that the long end will not go up. | ||
| So he doesn't understand how it works. | ||
| If you reduce the interest rate, the short end, it will affect your short end. | ||
| It's not going to affect 30-year mortgages if the bond market doesn't think that that's right. | ||
| Secondly, inflation in 2022. | ||
| Yes, it went to 9%. | ||
| It's nowhere near what it was in the 70s. | ||
| And your guest is a little bit older than me, so he should know that. | ||
| But my question for him is this. | ||
| If it was just about Biden inflation, which that was partially it, why did the rest of the world have inflation, some of it way more than us? | ||
| Because it was a COVID supply chain problem. | ||
| It wasn't just Biden and Trump won spending. | ||
| That contributed to it. | ||
| But it was a supply chain. | ||
| It would have happened no matter what because of the COVID pandemic and the supply chain. | ||
| Martin, thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I think the caller is right to an extent that there were factors that were driving this. | ||
| However, if you recall, and I was here at the time, and I lived through the inflation of the 70s, so I do have a familiarity with that. | ||
| We neared 10% inflation under Biden. | ||
| It got slightly higher than that in the late 70s, early 80s. | ||
| I think we inched above 10% at one point there. | ||
| But this inflation for my adult lifetime, as high as it's ever been since I was a senior in high school. | ||
| And so a very momentous thing. | ||
| And many of us, and I was questioning the Fed chair and the Treasury Secretary Yellen at the time when the Biden administration was proposing trillions of additional spending at the time that it was very obvious that the economy had too much stimulus in it and was going to overheat. | ||
| And with respect to the rest of the world, it is not an inescapable thing that we had to experience what the rest of the world might. | ||
| We could have avoided the hyper, the significant inflation that was occasioned by the Biden spending plans. | ||
| And of course, all that spending got added to the national debt. | ||
| So a big part of the reason that we've seen our debt balloon to now $38.5 trillion is because of the unnecessary spending that was a part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which actually ended up being a stimulus for inflation in the country. | ||
| Many of us foresaw what was going to happen when Biden came into office and started pushing spending. | ||
| And so I would submit to you, there might have been an inflationary effect, but it would not have been as severe as it was. | ||
| It would not have been as long-lasting as it is going to be. | ||
| President Trump is like the fireman. | ||
| He's on the scene. | ||
| The fire has now been contained, but it's not fully put out. | ||
| It will take some time to do that. | ||
| And Democrats now seem to be determined to blame the president for the fire that they set. | ||
| And that's pretty rich when the arsonist wants to blame the fireman who's come to the fire to put it out. | ||
| You serve on financial services. | ||
| The caller had brought up interest rates. | ||
| The president floated this idea of a 10% cap on credit card interest. | ||
| What do you think about that idea? | ||
| Well, I think one of the things the caller said that's right is that ultimately interest rates are set by market conditions. | ||
| And so I'm not a big favor of putting in caps. | ||
| Again, I think the president is very good at kind of talking these issues. | ||
| And so, you know, his talk hopefully will beat out a little of exuberance in the market, perhaps. | ||
| Credit card interest rates are high. | ||
| Anyone who has credit card debt knows that. | ||
| And so I think the president's kind of jawboning that issue a little bit to try and encourage the market to work more effectively. | ||
| But ultimately, markets are going to determine interest rates. | ||
| Ultimately, what we want is a competitive marketplace that will drive interest rates to their market clearing rates, and that's what we want. | ||
| That sentiment was reflected by Senator Tom Tillis on the Senate floor yesterday. | ||
| I want to play a little bit of what he had to say, get your reaction to it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Anyone who thinks that President Trump adopting Elizabeth Warren's idea on capping credit card interest rates, it is literally what the president said over the past week. | ||
| It's not the conservative that I thought they were. | ||
| Anybody that thinks this is a good idea will not speak truth to this president to say you can't do that. | ||
| If you want to unbank or underbank people, then not allow interest rates to be set based on the risk. | ||
| And you'll see what will happen. | ||
| The president and Elizabeth Warren on the same idea. | ||
| He's reacting to that. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Well, again, I think the president talks about these things to try to encourage movement in a certain direction. | ||
| The example I would give would be NATO spending, of all things, NATO spending on defense. | ||
| When the President first started talking about this during his first term, everyone thought the way that he went about it was maybe provocative or frightening, you know, some suggesting that he was saying that we might leave NATO. | ||
| But ultimately, the President's rhetoric has led to the exact outcome that he was encouraging, which is increased defense spending. | ||
| The European nations members, our fellow members of NATO stepping up to the plate. | ||
| The president was right. | ||
| That was really underscored when Russia invaded Ukraine, that Europe was unprepared. | ||
| And so the president, I think, in this case, is trying to find ways to relieve pressure on the American consumer. | ||
| And I think that's a good thing. | ||
| Tennessee Republican John Rose with us. | ||
| Let's hear from Rob. | ||
| Rob joins us from California. | ||
| Republican line. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I commend you. | ||
| You get it. | ||
| The only problem is the Republicans need to share, like you're doing this morning, more places ongoing to educate the public what happened to the economy when the Biden administration was on. | ||
| Those four years went up almost 30 percent. | ||
| I'm an entrepreneur. | ||
| And my materials and things went up over 30 percent. | ||
| That's a third, okay? | ||
| That's damaging. | ||
| Eggs and everything went huge. | ||
| Gasoline went up to $5.80 out here in California. | ||
| It's destroyed our economy. | ||
| And we still haven't dug out of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You guys need to educate the people more than ever. | |
| And the other thing, 50% tariff, though, on steel is too high. | ||
| Please tell the president we got to back that off because steel buildings and things like that, we can't absorb the 50% steel tariff. | ||
| I know he's trying to protect the steel industry, but 50% is out of hand. | ||
| And the credit cards at 10 or 15%, that's the way it should be because it used to be called usury when you hit 25%. | ||
| And now to bring it down to 10, 15%, President's right on target. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thanks for watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Rob, thank you. | ||
| Well, I think the caller is right. | ||
| And it's always necessary to be kind of informing and educating the American populace. | ||
| And of course, hopefully they're educating themselves. | ||
|
Regulatory Storm Driving Inflation
00:03:16
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| You know, the ultimate antidote for inflation is productivity. | ||
| And I think if we look at the policies of the Biden administration, they spent too much money. | ||
| Their policies and regulatory approach were restricting production. | ||
| So you had a perfect storm, a lowering of the goods and services available because of an overbearing regulatory environment that the Biden administration created, coupled with a lot of money being put into the system. | ||
| So you drove up demand and drove down supply, and that results in inflation. | ||
| And so the president's policies, kind of the all of the above energy policy, the policies of investing, encouraging investment in plant and equipment in the U.S., bringing production back on shore, all of these things are aimed at expanding the economy, expanding the productive capacity of the American economy. | ||
| And ultimately, it's that which will not only drive down inflation, but will improve economic activity and raise incomes. | ||
| And so I think the president's policies taken as a whole are driving us toward a low inflation, high-growth economy that will be good for working Americans, bringing as much production back on shore as possible, creating jobs and opportunities right here at home. | ||
| The tariffs, you know, a tough pill in a lot of cases, and there are certainly places where those tariffs have been difficult to deal with. | ||
| But again, the president's tariffs have driven a lot of excess out of the economy because a lot of the foreign countries that are supplying us with these goods have been forced to eat part of that in order to maintain market share that they want to maintain, the Chinese as an example. | ||
| And so I think the president's policies are driving us toward a fairer, freer trade for the whole world, leveling the playing field for American producers. | ||
| And I think ultimately that will be good for the U.S. economy. | ||
| John in New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I've worked on several federally funded construction projects. | ||
| And it was my experience that we got thoroughly, thoroughly reviewed when proposing a building renovation or building construction. | ||
| It was a very elaborate review process. | ||
| And then if the project gets funded, it's a line item in Congress in the federal budget. | ||
| And it gets tracked annually. | ||
| I got tracked monthly. | ||
| That hasn't been addressed with regard to the renovation of the Fed. | ||
| I mean, where'd the budget come from? | ||
| What oversight was there before the construction got started? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Well, I think the caller raises some good points, which is that the Fed, because of the structure of the Fed and its independence, doesn't necessarily respond to it, doesn't have the same checks and balances controls that other parts of federal government does. | ||
|
Fed Over Budget
00:05:01
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| So the Fed funds itself through the various avenues that it has through the ability to create money and collect interest and that sort of thing. | ||
| And so they are independent and therefore not subject to all the same oversight that a normal federal agency would be. | ||
| And in this case, this so-called renovation of the Fed headquarters is massively over budget. | ||
| I think it's at $2.5 billion, maybe a billion over budget. | ||
| Not many construction projects. | ||
| I just recently renovated our farmhouse from 1874, and it was over budget, but not 100% over budget. | ||
| And so that's a problem. | ||
| And I think that could be the source of the investigation that's being supposedly undertaken by the Justice Department. | ||
| One more call. | ||
| This will be from Ryan, Maryland, Republican Line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| So born and raised Republican, raised fiscally, socially conservative. | ||
| And just as I hear the talk about my bottom line is how do I feel day to day? | ||
| How does my family feel day to day? | ||
| And we can blame Biden, we can blame whomever. | ||
| But there really isn't much responsibility being taken by the party that's in power now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My life does not feel nearly as stable as it has for the past 20 years. | |
| And if I'm feeling a crunch, I know that most other Americans are. | ||
| And I mean, I also got to say, I mean, is it really America first? | ||
| And I've stepped out of some of the bubbles, and I'm watching sources, and I'm verifying sources with multiple videos. | ||
| Is it really America first to have mass police or energized officers using chemical weaponry against our own citizens? | ||
| I don't care what the purpose is. | ||
| Thank you again. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's Ryan and Marilyn. | ||
| I was talking about the efforts of ICE in some cities across the United States. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So we have immigration laws. | ||
| We had them during the Biden administration. | ||
| President Biden just chose not to honor his oath of office to uphold the Constitution and laws of the country. | ||
| We haven't changed, mainly we haven't changed those immigration laws. | ||
| President Trump, in large measure, I believe, was elected because he promised to the American people that he would get immigration under control. | ||
| And remarkably, really, with the force of his own will as the leader of this country, he brought the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly across our southern border, from a horrendous number down to virtually zero. | ||
| And so I think the president has done a good job. | ||
| I think his policies are to put America first. | ||
| His means are unconventional at times, I grant you that, but they tend to be very effective, as it turns out. | ||
| With respect to inflation, I mean, this is part of the really scurrilous part of inflation is that once those prices go up, they will not come down immediately. | ||
| What we're looking for and hoping for is that the inflation going forward is moderated. | ||
| And that is the case. | ||
| So I think the president's policies, we now see inflation below 3%, moving toward the 2% target that historically the Federal Reserve has had. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that you're going to see prices return to their pre-Biden levels. | ||
| That won't happen. | ||
| Although in some cases it will. | ||
| So this weekend I filled up my car at $2.09 a gallon in Tennessee. | ||
| And if you think about that, $2.09 versus the $4, which was prevalent during the years of the Biden administration, the savings of just one fill-up at the station is a tremendous amount of money in my pocket, in the pockets of Americans. | ||
| And so the president's approach to energy, I think, will pay big dividends down the line because energy is embedded in the cost of everything. | ||
| So we've seen the price of staples like milk and eggs and butter and vegetables and all these things. | ||
| We've seen these things coming down and it is partially a reflection of the tempering of inflation and energy prices in particular. | ||
| Ultimately, the way that we contain that inflation, as I said before, is through enhanced productivity, making more goods and services available, holding the line on federal spending so that we're not encouraging too much consumption in the economy. | ||
| And so I think the policies of the president are on track. | ||
| I think it is an America-first approach. | ||
| And I believe ultimately the payoff will be there. | ||
| What I think the caller's sentiment is reflecting is that it is a psychology. | ||
| And if folks don't feel it yet, then they're going, you know, I mean, and so what you sense there is the cumulative impact of four years of Bidenflation, and it's wearing on the American consumer. | ||