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May 22, 2023 - Sean Hannity Show
29:48
Failing to Protect Our Future - May 22nd, Hour 2

Steve Moore, economist and author of  “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy” and EJ Antoni, Research Fellow, Regional Economics, Center for Data Analysis discuss the debt ceiling and the potential default for our nation in the hands of the Biden administration.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is an iHeart podcast.
All right, hour to Sean Hannity Show, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, 11 days left until we hit what is being called by Janet Yellen, the drop-dead date on the debt ceiling.
Only 24%, according to the AP, say that the Biden economy is good.
The House, of course, we went through the timeline, the many times opportunities, Kevin McCarthy reaching out, begging, pleading with Joe Biden to meet with him to discuss the debt ceiling.
97 straight days Joe Biden was missing in action.
Now he has to end the G7 early and some of his foreign travels early.
I'm sure it's just an excuse to deal with the debt ceiling.
This country has never had a default.
If there is a default, it'll be the Biden default.
The current size of the national debt is $31 trillion.
And 60% of Americans believe that spending constraints have got to be a part of raising the debt limit.
And this is simple stuff here.
The Democrats say just raise it while the Republicans want to put in spending restraints.
Anyway, Steve Moore is with us, economist, author of the bestseller, Trump Anomics.
And E.J. Antonio is with us, research fellow, Regional Economic Center for Data Analysis.
So with 11 days to go, now it's power panic politics.
And in a lot of ways, I would argue, Steve Moore, that Kevin McCarthy has played this masterfully.
He asked pretty much on a daily basis for Joe Biden to meet with him.
Joe Biden said, no negotiations.
No, we won't meet.
Waited 97 days.
I think he took the bet that Republicans would not unite in the House with a debt ceiling increase that was this responsible that simply takes us back to 2022 spending levels, which is COVID era spending levels, and reduces the baseline budgeting number to only increasing the numbers 1% a year, which is fiscally responsible and allows for some more energy production nationwide.
To me, it's pretty basic, pretty fundamental, pretty simple, and a few work requirements if you get government handouts.
Well put.
And I would just remind your listeners, because the media doesn't report on this, that there is really only one game in town right now, Sean.
The Republicans control the House.
The Democrats control the Senate.
The Republican House has passed the debt ceiling bill.
They passed the debt ceiling bill.
Maybe Joe Biden doesn't like it, but they did extend it.
Meanwhile, why isn't the media focusing on Chucky Schumer, who runs the Senate?
They're nowhere.
They can't get anything passed in the Senate, and they're trying to blame it on the Republicans who don't run the Senate.
So if I sound a little frustrated, I am because the media just isn't reporting what's really going on here.
Now, I should say, Sean, I agree with you.
I think Kevin McCarthy has done an amazing job as Speaker to get those 218 votes to pass a debt ceiling bill.
That was not easy.
You're also right that Joe Biden completely politically miscalculated.
They made a bet that McCarthy wouldn't be able to do it, and he did.
And I'll make one other quick point.
You know, this bill would go back to 2022 spending levels, which is fine.
I mean, that would be an improvement.
But look, I'm with Rand Paul.
I think we should go back to the pre-COVID before we spent that $7 trillion.
We should go back to the pre-COVID baseline.
We could balance the budget next year if we did that.
So my point is, this is not some kind of radical plan that Kevin McCarthy has put out there.
What is your take about the Democrats waiting, E.J., so long?
Number one, and number two, this insanity that somehow he thinks he can bypass spending and Congress and the Constitution and rely on the 14th Amendment.
Well, in terms of their strategy, Sean, I think when you listen to people like Janet Yellen, when you listen to the president, other people in the administration, they keep throwing out the word default, default, default, default, as if that's going to happen.
What does default mean?
That means the United States can't service its debt.
In other words, we can't pay the interest on the bondholders, et cetera.
Well, the Treasury actually has seven times, get this, seven times the revenue it needs to be able to service the debt.
In fact, we have so much revenue right now we can pay to service the debt.
And in the current fiscal year to date, we can pay for Social Security, Medicare.
So it's not like all of a sudden Social Security checks are going to stop going out.
We can pay for VA benefits, the entire bloated defense budget, and there's still half a trillion dollars left over in the current fiscal year.
So the idea that somehow we don't have enough money to pay for the essentials is just nonsense.
The idea that we're going to default is nonsense.
It's part of the strategy.
The Democrats are trying to run out the clock, wait until the 11th hour, get everyone in a panic so they can get their way.
But as far as the 14th Amendment goes, I'm so glad you asked about that because that's another thing that Biden keeps throwing out there.
He clearly has no idea what that amendment means.
He probably hasn't even read it.
The 14th Amendment deals with after the Civil War, there were two debts.
There was a debt acquired by the Union states and a debt acquired by the Confederate states.
And that amendment said that the debts acquired by the Union states were valid debt and are assumed to be part of the national debt, whereas the debts of the Confederate states are invalid and therefore will not be paid.
That is what the amendment actually says.
It has nothing to do with the debt ceiling, which didn't even come into existence until about a half a century later.
You know, I'm looking at all this, and I agree with everything E.J. is saying, Steve Moore, but in reality, Janet Yellen is saying, no, after this hard date of June 1st, it's game over.
America will officially be in default, and they're predicting every bit of doom and gloom, et cetera.
Well, if they felt that urgent about it, why did Joe Biden go missing in action for 97 days?
Passed a debt ceiling bill when they had control of Congress.
Remember, it wasn't that long ago, you know, that the Democrats controlled every leverage of power.
They could have passed a five-year debt ceiling if they had wanted to.
This point about the 14th Amendment is an important one.
There's a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal that explains this further, which points out that, yes, the United States government has a legal obligation to pay the bondholders.
It doesn't mean that the president can just pierce through the debt ceiling and borrow whatever he wants to.
Those are two different things.
So if we get past the day, if we don't have a deal on time, it means the first thing that has to be paid constitutionally is those bondholders.
One other quick thing here.
If you look at the kinds of conditions that Republicans have put out there, Sean, things like, yeah, you have to work, you get a job if you're going to get welfare benefits.
That's something 80% of Americans agree with.
The idea, no, we're not going to give $150 billion for people who didn't pay their student loans and require working-class Americans to pay those bills.
No, we're not going to do that.
And the other big one is, you know, let's have the drilling.
Let's go back to the drilling and create jobs and produce revenue for the government.
Sean, why?
I don't even understand why the Democrats are opposed to those things.
Let me ask you both.
What impact does this have?
The polls show that Americans are in overwhelming numbers, E.J., wanting fiscal responsibility.
So what impact does that have politically?
Well, I think it is definitely another thing in favor of McCarthy and the reasonable measures he is trying to put in place here.
You know, I think it was Churchill, Winston Churchill, who said that you can always count on the American people to do the right thing after they've tried everything else.
Well, over the last several years, we've tried everything except fiscal restraint and fiscal responsibility on the part of the government.
And what has that gotten us?
It has gotten us 40-year high inflation, falling real wages.
We had an economy that already had two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
That's a recession.
We're getting ready to go into another recession probably later this year.
That makes it a double-dip recession.
I mean, we can see the results of the catastrophic results of excessive government spending, borrowing, and printing of money.
And I think the American people are recognizing that and they're saying enough is enough.
It seems like over the weekend, things took a dramatic turn for the worse because those negotiating on behalf of Biden seem to be giving into the left-wing climate alarmist religious cult that have been pushing back hard internally, Steve Moore, for more spending.
So they want more spending.
They don't want fiscal responsibility measures.
And now that then also causes a risk to McCarthy.
You know, McCarthy won this vote in the House by two votes.
He's got a four-vote margin.
Now, he doesn't need every Republican to go along with some type of compromise deal.
But if he compromises too much, I would argue that it could trigger a vote to vacate in terms of his speakership.
Yeah, I think McCarthy should not retreat at all here.
I mean, he really has Biden in a bind.
He has the only game in town.
You mentioned the Green New Deal.
You know, there's I don't think a lot of people know this, but there's a $300 billion.
Now, I didn't say $300 million, $300 billion green energy slush fund that's being run by John Podesta, who's a political, Democratic political hack.
And that money, where do you think that money is going to go, Sean?
Do you think it's going to go to all these left-wing interest groups?
$300 billion.
That's like 3,000 Heritage Foundation.
So Republicans are smart to say, no, we're not going to fund that.
We're not going to fund 87,000 new IRS agents that are going to come after people like E.J. and me and you, Sean, because we have conservative voices.
And we know that because they did under Obama.
They politicized and weaponized every branch of government.
Well, in every single department, they have money put aside for green initiatives, E.J., and this country can't afford it.
And by the way, nor does the technology exist.
This is the biggest problem that the climate alarmist religious cult has.
They don't have any replacement for fossil fuels.
Even their precious electric vehicles, you have to pillage Mother Earth to get the cobalt and the manganese and the nickel and the other minerals that you're taking out of the earth.
Number one, number two, 90% of our electric grid, when you go to plug in your electric vehicle, is based on fossil fuels.
So, you know, tell me how that is that differentiates itself from the combustion engine, which is $15,000 to $20,000 cheaper than an electric vehicle car.
And not only that, Sean, but they don't want us to actually get any of those minerals and any of those resources here, which means we're going to get them from places like China and India, parts of Africa and the Middle East, and even Southeast Asia, where they have nowhere near the environmental protections that we do.
And so it's catastrophically damaging to the environment when they take those things out of the ground in such an environmentally unsafe way.
Whereas here, we can do it in a much safe way, but unfortunately, the regulators won't let us get to those things at all.
But even if you did actually convert everything to electric, whether it's your stove or whether it's your car, et cetera, you still haven't answered the problem of how on earth do you get the grid up to speed, the electrical grid, so that it can handle that much of an increase in load.
You're talking about a thousand-fold increase in our requirements for things like copper and aluminum just to get the grid up to speed, not even including what you need to build all of these electric devices themselves.
And you're absolutely right.
They have no answer as far as how on earth we're going to do any of this.
Quick break more on the economy.
Steve Moore and E.J. Antoni is with us.
800-941, Sean, our number.
If you want to be a part of the program, Larry Elder at the top of the hour.
Many of you may not know that Larry's running for president himself.
We'll get to him.
We'll get to your calls.
I 25 to the top of the hour.
800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Before we get to our calls, you got to love any moment that Peter Doocy gets to question Joe Biden.
This is Peter asking him about the debt ceiling.
Joe, again, you know, missing in action.
No negotiation.
The same guy as we've played many times before in 2011 saying it can't be my way or the highway waits 97 days betting that there's no way Republicans pass a bill in the House.
Well, they passed it.
And it's actually fiscally responsible and raises the debt ceiling.
So if we have a default, it's going to be Biden's default.
Period.
End of sentence.
Anyway, here's him saying it's not my fault.
I did everything I could do.
President, I'm telling you, you said already.
I need direct part.
Do you think that if there's a brief, nobody's going to blame you?
Of course, no one will blame me.
I know you won't.
You'll be saying Biden did a wonderful job.
I know you.
Would you be blameless?
On the merits, based on what I've offered, I would be blameless.
On the politics of it, no one will be blameless.
And by the way, that's one of the things that some are contemplating.
I actually had, well, I got to be careful here.
I think there are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage that it would do to the economy.
And because I am president and president's responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame.
And that's the one way to make sure Biden's not re-elected.
The worst thing you could do is continue to spend money you don't have.
This would bring fiscal responsibility into Biden's life, which would be good politically for him.
He gets to say, oh, I cut the deficit $4.8 trillion.
When meanwhile, it's the House Republicans that did it.
All right, let's get to our phones.
Ron in South Carolina.
Ron, how are you?
What'd you think of Tim Scott's announcement today?
Hey, Sean, I would say right now, if we were playing the game 21 with Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, we'd have a king and a queen running.
That's a nice compliment, I think, right?
Yeah.
Well, it's like I look at it the way I would vote right now, if I could give you my top four real quick, it would be Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Nikki Haley.
And I just feel like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis has given us examples of where they haven't compromised at all.
And when I look at Tim Scott, my mind goes back to January 6th.
And when they were in the process of rejecting the election or protesting the election because of January 6th, all the senators came.
And there's some things when Nikki Haley was governor with all due respect to her.
There were just some things she did that troubled me that she said she wouldn't do.
But that's kind of where I'm standing at on that perspective.
Listen, I think there's something about every candidate that everybody could say that they'd like to change.
I'm sure there's things about me that if you could tell me, Hannity, if you do this, I like your show more.
What would you tell me that you want me to improve on in the show?
I'll take any criticism you have.
Honestly, I can't think of it.
You're one of the few guys out there that I listen to on a consistent basis.
Well, I appreciate that.
That's very kind.
But you know what?
We're all open to look.
Nobody's perfect.
Number one.
Let's start with that.
Number two, I would argue today, and it is May 22nd, and we're heading into Memorial Day weekend, that nobody knows what issues are going to really be in play when we get to November 2024.
I would argue that part.
Now, that's why I'm saying in the interim, Republicans need to get their act together, and they've got to get out with a campaign to get over people's reluctance, resistance to early voting, voting by mail, number one.
And number two, they've got to get involved in legal ballot harvesting efforts and match the efforts of the Democratic Party and hopefully even surpass their efforts.
I know I sound like a broken record, but it's not getting done yet.
And until it does, I'll keep squawking about it.
I agree with you 100%.
And I would add this one, too.
We need to reduce the number of candidates that we have running in the national election after the primary is over.
We need to see all of our guys, our gals, get behind whoever the candidate is.
Like, I mean, you take away all those running in Pennsylvania and Arizona and Georgia, and we have a different president.
Yeah, look, I think a lot of mistakes were made in 2022.
I think Democrats have figured out that they've taken the way they approach elections is so different than Republicans.
It's night and day.
And we didn't really see it.
We didn't understand it.
And COVID certainly accelerated all of this.
They don't shake hands.
They don't kiss babies.
They don't take selfies.
They don't do town halls.
They don't do press surveillance.
They don't even want to debate.
They run hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads, and they ballot harvest legally based on what their state law is.
And that's how they've been successful.
And Republicans have allowed them to get away with that.
And they've not gotten into that arena yet.
And I'm saying, get in the arena.
It's not the system I want.
I want paper ballots, Election Day to be a national holiday.
I want partisan observers in every precinct watching the voting all day.
And when the polls close, the counting all night and a winner declared.
That's what I want.
I agree with you 100% on that because I said there's four things that got us beat in 2020 and you just hit on all four of them with the exception of complacent and compliant judges and politicians.
Well, I tell you right now, the one thing Republicans do have, we have a good bench.
We have a good group of people that I think that, you know, can lead.
And especially as time goes on, that's going to be important.
Anyway, let me run.
Ron, appreciate it, buddy.
Glad you're out there in South Carolina.
Joe in the free state of Florida.
Joe, we expect your governor's going to announce this week.
How are you, sir?
Just fine.
Thanks for having me on your show, Sean.
Well, I'm glad to have you.
What's going on?
Oh, I just wanted to say, you know, I'm in Jacksonville, Florida.
I voted for Ron DeSantis twice, and I voted for him to run the state of Florida for eight years.
You know, Florida's not a stepping stone for your political ambitions, you know, to run around the country for the next year and a half and run for president.
And I believe that all the rhinos and all the never Trumpers are going to line up behind Ron, and it's going to be political suicide for him.
And he's not going to be able to run for nothing else after this.
You know, look, people have said this in the past.
Anytime a sitting politician runs for an office, there's always going to be those saying, why don't you focus on the office you have, et cetera.
I get it.
I understand it.
You know, I think he's done a great job for the state of Florida.
I really do.
I think he was the right guy.
I think Trump supporting him was the right thing to do in 2018.
But then he did the job the people of Florida needed.
And that was evident by the 1.5 million vote margin that he had in the last election in 2022.
So, look, they're going to be critics of everybody, but you've got to see how this process unfolds.
I am telling you right now is one thing I can say with certainty, whatever issues we're voting on, the political conditions are going to be very different than they are today.
That I can tell you.
And, you know, this system, it may not seem like, you know, we're only 520-some-odd days away from the 2024 November election.
It's not that far away.
It's going to go fast.
It'll go in the flash of an eye.
Next thing we'll know, it's the end of summer.
I know we're heading into a Memorial Day.
I'm talking about Labor Day already.
And then it's going to be the spring, and then it's going to be the fall.
And I'm sorry, not the spring.
Then it's going to be the fall, and then it's going to be winter.
And here we go.
Iowa, here we come.
And it starts from there.
Well, yeah, exactly.
But another point, you know, they passed a good law here in Florida.
If you're going to run for another political office, you have to resign from the office you have.
Well, they turn around and change the law just to fit Ron DeSantis, you know, and I think that, I just don't think that's right.
The people of Florida will absolutely weigh in on that and decide for themselves.
I mean, that's the way it goes.
I can't sit here and tell people what to think or, you know, you're expressing your views.
And, you know, I just want good governance at the local level, the state level, and the federal level.
And we don't have that in most places now.
You do have it in Florida, which is great for you, but there's a lot of places you don't have it.
Like, I'm pretty convinced that Governor Kemp of Georgia is going to get in, too.
That would be a similar situation.
I think he thinks that he can be a player in this.
We'll see.
You know, time's going to tell.
This will take on a life of its own.
You'll see.
Appreciate the call, my friend.
God bless you.
800-941-Sean on number, Courtney, California, next, Sean Hannity Show.
What's up, Courtney?
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
Hey, Sean.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
Thank you.
What's going on?
Well, with the Durham report out now, it just appears that the people at the very top of a lot of different organizations knew that this from the very beginning, this was just a political trick.
And then they propagated it for years and years.
And a lot of people were damaged.
It ended careers.
It hurt a lot of people besides the country as a whole.
And it just would seem to me that since this was such a hoax, that maybe articles could be introduced in Congress for the expungement of Trump's impeachment because it proves that there was just no basis for that.
There was no basis for it.
As a matter of fact, there was an interesting FoxNews.com piece how Durham's report shows Biden and Obama, they knew the truth of Trump-Russia-Russia collusion being a hoax the whole time, but they kept silent.
And we know because in July of 2016, then CIA Director Brennan, who, by the way, had no problem pushing this himself, rushed to the White House to brief Obama and Biden about alarming new evidence uncovered by American intelligence that the CIA had obtained reliable information, quote, that Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians.
Page 81 of the Durham Report.
Take a look at it.
It's pretty interesting.
And, you know, John Durham inexplicably failed to compel the testimony of people like Comey and McCabe and Strzok and others.
You know, now we're discovering today FBI surveillance abuse, 23,000 searches for January 6 suspects versus 133 searches for 2020s anti-cop rioters.
That's 574 rioters.
You know, the double standard is clear.
Can't be any more clear than it is.
But when you really think about it, their silence is Morally reprehensible what they did, and they kept propagating it.
And that's a very sad thing because these people took an oath to the Constitution and to protect the country.
And they're the ones that instigated it and propagated it and spread this throughout.
And that's what's really sad.
And it's just sad.
It's sad and it's also dangerous.
The danger part comes in.
We're shredding our Constitution and we have a dual justice system.
And we now have had the FBI putting their cinder blocks on the scales of two presidential elections.
And now we know the CIA was involved in putting their cinder blocks on the scale of the last election.
And frankly, I would argue that you could say two presidential elections with them too.
This deep state is pernicious and it exists.
And we better be careful.
Anyway, appreciate it.
Thank you.
800-941.
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Final hour roundup is next.
You do not want to miss it.
And stay tuned for the final hour free-for-all on the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, let's get back to our busy phones.
800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Scott in Florida.
Scott, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hey, Sean, how you doing?
I'm good, sir.
Happy Monday.
Memorial Day is coming.
You've got a long weekend straight ahead.
I'm ready for it, too.
Hey, real quick, real quick, a couple things.
One, I hear when I listen to you all the time, but I hear in your voice exasperation.
And I hear exasperation with two things.
One is kind of how can this administration be so inept, so dumb as to make some of the decisions, just like waiting for the debt ceiling to crash.
You give them too much credit.
They're not stupid.
This is all by plan.
They want this country to break.
They want the constitutional democracy, the republic that we have.
They want it to collapse.
And everything they do is to that end.
It's not by accident.
It's not like, whoops, you know.
Look, the policies that they're adopting are working against the country.
You know, the policies at the border, the policies on law and order, their energy policies, their economic policies, their foreign policy.
There's nothing that I can point to and say that they're making good decisions on.
Do I think they're stupid?
No, I think stupid is the wrong word.
Do I think that this is their radicalism on display?
Yeah.
I think this is the direction they want to take this country.
And it is failing.
It is failing on a spectacular level.
It is impacting every American, and it's only going to get worse the longer it continues.
It's really that simple.
Do I think it is an accident that they have open borders?
No, they can close the borders anytime they want.
Is it an accident that they believe in defund, dismantle, no bail laws?
No, they're pushing them.
Is it an accident that they refuse to be energy dominant and energy independent?
No, they're giving into their climate alarmist religious cult and their insane ideas, which is destroying the economy.
Do I believe that this new Green Deal, everything's free and provided by your government mentality is real?
Yeah, they buy into all of this crap, and it's all ruining the country.
Totally agree.
You know, and another thing is, you know, and I picked up on this a long time ago and been fact check meet.
Everything, everything that I hear left of center politically accusing anyone right of center of is what left of center is doing.
You know, the accusation of collusion, the accusation of cheating, of rigging an election, of all of these things.
Basically, if I hear the left accuse the right of doing something, that tells me the left is doing it.
Do you see that?
Well, in most cases, yeah, they're the ones that were colluding.
It was Adam Schiff that got punked by a, you know, a phony Russian comedian.
Right.
It was, you know, Hillary Clinton's bought and paid for dirty Russian dossier.
Anyway, appreciate the call, my friend.
800-941-Sean, there's only one answer, and that's elections.
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