America's Talking - Episode 17: Democrats try to sell $3.5 trillion spending plan as government shutdown looms

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

President Biden made headlines for claiming the bill would cost “zero dollars,” despite media reports and members of both parties commonly naming the bill’s cost at $3.5 trillion for the last several months. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus, powered by thecentersquare.com. I'm John Spataro, and this is the 39th week of 2021. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from the center square.com. And later, executive editor of the center square, Dan McAulb, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week, including the federal government facing a shutdown as negotiations continue in Congress, a shocking report from the FBI on the rise in murder rates in the U.S. and push back to the claim from Democrats that a $3.5 trillion spending bill actually costs $0.

Coming up right after this on America and Focus, powered by thecentersquare.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at thecentersquare.com, the country's fastest growing, nonprofit, nonpartisan, state-focused, news and information. site. We deliver essential information with a taxpayer sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at thecentersquare.com. That's thecenter square.com. Thecenter square.com.

Welcome back. Here are the top stories of the past week on the center square.com. The state of Texas is appealing a recent decision by FEMA after issuing a disaster declaration in response to a surge of illegal immigrants. Texas filed the state emergency declaration in May and requested assistance from the federal emergency management agency on September 20th. The state specifically requested supplemental federal assistance to respond to the exorbitant costs the state is picking up to deal with the illegal border crossings into Texas. FEMA denied the request this week, which would have enabled the state to receive federal funds for a range of services. Governor Greg Abbott says Texas will appeal the denial, arguing the federal government's failure to enforce immigration laws, has created substantial burdens on state and local resources. Over the summer, the Texas legislature approved $1.8 billion in additional funding for border

security. To read more about these stories and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now for a closer look, over to Dan McAulb and Casey Harper. Thank you, John, and welcome to American Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, October 1st. Joining me today, as he does every week, is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, it is now October. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill on September.

That did not happen. After a busy Thursday, when Congress did pass a... stopgat measure to prevent a government shutdown. The Speaker now says there will be votes on infrastructure Friday. I guess we'll see, but my question is, what is going on on Capitol Hill, Casey? Yeah, I'm not sure those on Capitol Hill know what's going on right now. There's a lot of chaos. You mentioned Speaker Pelosi's promise to pass something in September, but it won't come to a surprise to the American people that politicians don't always keep their promises. I think in in many regard as this was out of the speaker's hands.

A lot of Democrats are showing kind of some unusual levels of backbone and standing up to Democratic leadership. You don't often see members of the party go to such links to stand up to the leaders of the party. I mean, this is reminiscent of really when the Tea Party caused a lot of headaches for the Republican establishment a few years ago, or almost a decade ago, really now. Yeah, like you said, this infrastructure bill, is likely going to be voted on today.

We've heard that already this week and it didn't happen. So like you said, we'll see. I'll say really what's happening here in short is that many of the more progressive members of the party were under the impression, or at least say they were under the impression that their vote on the infrastructure bill, what part of the deal was that it would be passed in conjunction with the $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill, which has a laundry list of, you know, more social spending items like paid family leave and that kind of stuff. And so they, they weren't in the impression or at least say they were that those will be passed together. But they're afraid if they pass the infrastructure

bill, then they won't end up getting a $3.5 trillion bill that they want. They're really, trillion dollar bill is going to pass. But that's not really guaranteed right now because there's at least two Democratic senators who are really not impressed with this bill. They want it to be significantly lower. Senator Joe Manchin released yet another statement this week. And he basically said something, he said, quote, how much is enough to the Democrats, to the Biden administration? So that didn't really encourage a lot of the more progressive Democrats that they're going to get a really sweet, favorable deal with this larger human infrastructure bill. So it's kind of a game of chicken, but there's multiple cars coming in different directions. We'll get more into this $3.5 trillion

dollar reconciliation bill here in a minute. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill had bipartisan support. In fact, it's already passed the 50, 50, the Senate, which is split between with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. It's already passed the Senate. The House, which has a Democratic majority, a slight Democratic majority, but a majority nonetheless, is where you would think Democratic. Democratic bills would be able to get passed, but it's still stalled.

Yeah, and it's this group of more progressive members in the House, those like AOC, really people threatening to not vote for it. And it's, you know, the Democrats do have a majority in the House, but it's a very slim majority. I mean, they can only afford to lose a couple of votes, just a few votes, and they're going to be in trouble. So Speaker Pelosi has to keep all the Democrats in line. And she can't, she can't handle a defection of 10 or 20 or 30 Democrats and still pass something. She doesn't have that luxury. And so, you know, the bill also, you know, people don't know as a speaker, he pretty much doesn't bring a bill to the floor unless she's certain she has the votes to pass it.

Right. And so that's why this vote didn't happen because she didn't have the votes. You can, you can almost take it to the bay. And as soon as I say it on this podcast, it'll be the one exception. But the rule of thumb is if she brings it to the floor, it's because she has to, the votes. She doesn't do it if she doesn't. So that's what she just doesn't have the votes. And she hasn't been able to convince these progressive members that as soon as they voted on the infrastructure bill, like they're not going to gut the $3.5 trillion bill and make it a, you know,

a fraction of the size. And then maybe that won't even pass either because Republicans have no intention of helping Democrats out with this other bill. And even some Democratic senators don't want to vote for the larger bill. Right. So let's talk about the $3.5 trillion. bill then that is sort of the sticking point, particularly for progressive Democrats, as you said, who want this extremely large social spending package. Some of the specifics, what's in this $3.5 trillion bill that even the more moderate Senate Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia think is too expensive, all Republicans think it's too expensive, all Republicans on Capitol Hill in Congress think it's too expensive, but even some moderate Democrats

I think it's too expensive. What are what are what are what are some of the items that's in this this measure? Yeah, this has been interesting. So content is that there's even a whole separate issue. I mean the 3.5 trillion has an extremely large bill but then even what's in the bill is almost not even been debated yet because there's been so much focus on the expense. Like this is too expensive even to start debating the provisions and some some of those provisions. I mean there's a lot. It's a 3.5 trillion. So there's a ton of stuff in here. But you know, the progressive Democrats are calling it human infrastructure. So they're trying to say this is infrastructure. This is of a different.

sort. And, you know, there's been this ongoing debate all year about what's infrastructure. So, you know, home health care, beefing up home health care is a big part of it. A lot of money going to that. A paid family leave. That's been a really big thing. So you can see how those kind of initiatives, they would say this is strengthening up the workforce. This is creating the kind of family structures and helping people out in a way that strengthens the whole nation. And that's why they're calling it infrastructure. There's a a lot of just the social spending things like that. And Joe Biden is taking a lot of flack even this week for he put out a tweet on Sunday saying that the $3.5 trillion bill costs quote zero.

And so, you know, you've got all these progressive laundry list, right, of things. First off, this bill includes several tax increases. We talk about what's in this bill that people want to oppose it. It includes a raising the corporate tax. rate includes raising the tax rate on the top tax bracket. Now really people really reacted pretty strong to this and really honestly the tone was a lot of mocking. You know, even the Democrats, Republicans, the media, this the name of this bill shorthand is the $3.5 trillion bill. I mean, there's a real official name, but that's what people call it. And his argument by the spending and that the national debt is going to increase

zero. But one, that's really in doubt because this bill, as we've already talked about, is so in flux. I mean, who knows what's going to end up being in this bill or out of this bill by the time all those negotiations are done. I mean, Nancy Pelosi can't even pass the infrastructure bill, which everyone agreed on. So we don't really know what's going to be in this bill at the end. And even if you did get enough tax increases to fund the bill, a lot of critics would say that's still not a cost of zero. If you have to raise trillions of dollars in taxes, the cost isn't zero. Well, the cost to the economy, I mean, someone's paying those taxes. We are, we've already have massive inflation in the U.S. When business, when you raise a corporate business tax,

someone's paying for that, right? Whether it be higher prices at the marketplace, consumers would pay that lower wages or fewer, fewer jobs because businesses are cutting back to make up for the taxes, the increased taxes that they're going to have to pay. So someone is paying for that when you're particularly when you're talking about $3 trillion in tax increases. And people in the executive editor tax bracket, like you're definitely going to pay for it, Dan. But you're right about the economic and anything, oh, even if the federal government isn't literally taking more money out of your paycheck.

When you go to the store to buy groceries, they're going to be more expensive because these other people, you know, the taxes get handed down. And people, you know, we reported on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which called this bill an existential threat. That's a quote, existential threat to the U.S. economy. And then another way, controversial way that Biden has been talking about funding it is beefing up IRS auditing. So he's going to have way more auditors. He says it'll focus on primarily the wealthy, but it's not going to be exclusively the wealthy. And so you're going to have a higher chance of being audited.

Your goods are going to be more expensive. inflation is going to, you know, is going up. So, you know, maybe, maybe that's worth it to people. You know, and they might be worth it to have those things and to also get, you know, paid family to get, you know, the bill has a lot of climate change provisions. If what's in this bill is really worth it to you, that's, then that's a debate worth having. But I think what people take issue with this is to say it costs zero is probably problematic. Maybe the cost is worth it, but it doesn't cost zero. Right. So you also mentioned this IRS auditing. I want to jump to that here in just a second.

I think what Biden, what his message was, what he was trying to say when he said it caused zero was, it was going to add zero dollars to the national debt, which has ballooned significantly over the past couple of years during COVID. It was already high. It's almost at $30 trillion the national debt is right now. And the reason why he said it was this $3.5 trillion bill was going to add zero to the national debt was because of these corresponding tax increases. But the economy is a very complex thing. When you raise that much in taxes, it affects other things that could drive down other government revenue sources. As analysts have said, regardless of the tax increases in this bill, it will raise the federal debt just because of all these other factors that factor into government revenue and government spending. Let's jump over to this IRS audit.

President Biden, as part of his deal, wants to increase audits, what he says, on major corporations. But there's a provision in the bill that industry folks, not Republicans, a bank of the banking industry, other trade groups have raised alarm bells over. And that's that the IRS would track all bank transactions over $600. Tell us a little bit more about that and what the pushback is on that. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, it's a very simple story and you've laid a lot of it out. But to fund this bill, you have to have auditing in Biden's mind. It's a big part of how he wants to do it. It's easier to enforce existing taxes than to create new ones from political perspective. Creating a new tax is really just really, it's difficult because there's people don't want to be taxed. There's interest groups involved. There's different. You really have to just. find your tax. There's the economic implication. So, yes, he basically would have the IRS tracking all transactions over $600. And the way they track it is the banks would be required to hand over all that information

with transactions over $600, which, as you can imagine, is an incalculable number of transactions. I mean, it's just vast. And so the banks have really, I mean, banks. all kinds of trade groups. We're talking hundreds of businesses have sent a letter to Congress saying, you know, basically don't do this. Don't go along with this plan. Just let just the reporting requirement alone, the number of really like private bureaucrats that the banks would have to hire to, and administrators that they would have to hire to keep track to compile all this information, to file it with the federal government. We know how it is to file your taxes. Imagine filing

just every transaction over $600 with the federal government for all of your customers as a national bank. So the people are really worried about the cost of keeping up with this and reporting it. Obviously, that's going to eat into their profits because that doesn't help your bottom line, all this kind of administrative work. So they're really worried about it. And then there's just the privacy concerns of can the government really just take such a broad swath of data? And then there's just security concerns that people have raised, which is once the IRS has, you know, account information on well over 90% of bank accounts in the U.S., can they really keep it secure, you know, from hackers, from that kind of thing. I mean, I think we've learned in recent years that at least at this point, nobody is really safe from hackers.

And even in the largest companies in the country have been hacked or Wells Fargo, these kind of places that you would think would be unhackable have been hacked. And so putting all our, you know, proverbial eggs in one basket is raising the security concerns. If there's just one big target. So, but I do want to go back. I think I jumped around a bit when you asked what's in the bill. And I do think that's important to people. I just want to add in, you know, universal pre-k is in this in the bill, the $1.5 trillion that this IRS plan would fund and also free community college.

So you've got that. You got the climate revisions. I think that's another reason people kind of roll their eyes a little bit when you say this plan is I don't think it really passed a smell test to say we can have free community college, universal pre-K, all these things without, you know, with the cost being zero. But this IRS plan is a way to fund it, you know, and to hear from people what they think. Right. And President Biden has said, you middle class and lower income families won't be affected by his proposed tax hikes.

Well, if you can be a lower middle class family and have $600 transactions in your bank or $600 in your bank account, this seems like it would affect any American who has even a part-time job, a minimum wage part-time job. Yeah, even journalists make more than $600. So, I mean, this is literally, literally everyone. So. Oh, Casey. Do I pay me too much? Demotion. Oh, no. No, no. More, please.

So, yeah, but you're right. I mean, this, that's an ongoing critique of Biden as well, that basically these provisions are, are hitting people making less than $400,000. And inflation hits everyone. And actually, inflation is a regressive tax. So the less money you make, the more inflation hits you. I mean, if you're a millionaire and you go to the grocery store and your loaf of bread is twice as expensive, you won't even notice, right? But if you are pinching pennies trying to make ends of meat on a budget and your loaf of bread is, you know, a dollar more expensive because of inflation over recent years, then you are going to notice and that's going to add up. You know, your grocery bill is going to add up it.

And it's on everything, your electric bill. The corporate taxes on your electric company will get passed down to you. your electric bill will be passed down, will be increased. And so while. And just, yeah, I was just going to say along those same lines, something we didn't talk about today. I think we have talked about it in the past is higher taxes on tobacco and nicotine products. That would also dramatically affect lower middle income families than it would wealthy families. Yeah.

And it may be that some of these taxes and things are worth what the government. wants to do. I think it's important to be clear that we're not just outright opposing or taking a big stance against it on anything. But I do, I think for what we're trying to tell our listeners and does, you know, just people follow us is that it's not really accurate to say that people under $400,000 income are not being impacted. Right. It's not as plain if you vape or smoke, it's going to be more expensive. All your energy costs and your grocery bills are going to be more expensive, marginally increased over time. The IRS may very well be keeping track of every transaction you make over $600. So these things kind of start to add up. And it's in contrast to this promise of

only the wealthy who are making nearly half a million dollars a year are going to be influenced by this. Don't worry about it. We've spent a lot of time on what's going on Capitol Hill this week. Biden's spending proposals, infrastructure and whatnot. We do need to move on. We have a couple more stories we want to talk about briefly. But follow the center square.com for developments on what's going on in Congress. This week,

Casey, FBI released its crime data nationally. Violent crime is up significantly, particularly in cities. Just tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, so the FBI really has the gold standard of national crime data. It is

very highly regarded. Departments reported. Like I said, it's the gold standard And so they released the crime data for 2020, which was an unusual year. There was kind of speculation about what would happen because it was COVID. So people are at home, but are people more restless? It could be more crime. So this is kind of an unusual year. But the report found there were 21,500 murders reported in 2020, which is the highest figure in decades.

There was nearly 1.3 million violent crimes. And so violent crime rose more than 5%. we saw in the murder murders and homicides rose, you know, nearly 30%. And so it's interesting, just the quick overview is that some property crimes, like burglary or something, those kinds of crimes actually decreased and they have been decreasing over the almost the last two decades. And also last year, people were at home. People stayed at home, right? They worked remotely.

So there probably wasn't as much property crime because. Right. People were staying in their homes and not going to school, not going to work for large chunks of time. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, you're right. But murders rose 30%. And so this is a major increase, obviously. It's very troubling.

It's worrying. And what a lot of, you know, the first thing that came to mind was how much did defund the police, quote unquote, play into this? How much did all the rioting last year play into this? You know, of course, COVID was a fact. But last year was a very unique year when it came to policing when it came, you know, there was riots for several months in 2020. After the death of George Floyd, many of the hands of the police, right? Exactly, exactly. And, you know, there was a, you know, Chas and Chop in Seattle, Portland had riots for months.

And so how did this all play in? And so, you know, I interviewed a major police group, basically a group that represents a lot of police officers and talks to them about this. they've been pretty vocal this year and in their conversations with me that they lay a lot of the blame for this at the fallout from George Floyd's death. And what they mean by that is that these departments, some of them did defund police or cut their funding, right, which had big impacts. But another major concern is that they really stopped supporting the police. And so a little officers felt like if they got in any kind of controversial situation with someone,

maybe even if they did the right thing, in having to unfortunately shoot someone, even if they were in the right, they felt like they wouldn't get the support and they could be kind of a sacrificial lamb. So there was a lot of fear amongst police last year that they were going to make some kind of mistake that they'd become the next viral cop and none of they want to do that. And so we saw a lot of reports. I'm having this all year. Saw a lot of reports that officers just stopped going in certain neighborhoods where they knew that, you know, I mean, we know what neighborhoods based on crime data, have more crime on average. That's just like available data the police have.

So they stopped going to certain neighborhoods because they didn't want to risk it. They didn't want to get into that situation. And so policing in certain areas actually would decrease in a lot of areas of country. And this police group is saying this is a big reason for the rise in homicides because police had to change their behavior out of fear that local politicians and national politicians wouldn't support them if they got in a tight situation or would even kind of use them as a a viral video to make a point about racism in America or something like that. It's a little weird here, Casey.

Just as we were talking about crime data, I got a news alert that said the police force in Austin, Texas, is urging residents not to call 911 for crimes they consider not emergency. And they lump into that, things like home burglaries and stuff like that. Don't call 911 because we can't respond. to those kinds of quote unquote non-emergency. I'm sorry, someone breaking in my home, I consider that an emergency. Granted, that don't have all the details on that,

that just popped up at my phone, but that's some of the scary stuff everyday citizens are facing. Yeah, I think... Go ahead. Go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say, you know, I think sometimes people are a little afraid to speak on this because of the racial, you know,

the very real racial aspect of all And that's why on the reporting, we try to stick to the data, try to talk to actual police officers, not speculate. We have actual data showing a rise in 30% in homicides. We have real police officers changing policies. And we have record of local municipalities defunding or making clear that they have a lot of problems with their local police departments. And so those are just three facts. And then all the other kind of issues aside, those are three facts. and we're seeing a lot of the implications of it.

Thank you. We've got about two minutes, Casey, for one last story. New polling out this week shows that the majority of Americans do not think unvaccinated workers should lose their job. Of course, President Biden put in place a vaccine mandate for companies with over 100 employees requiring the employees to get the vaccine or face weekly testing. Tell us a little bit more about this poll. Yeah, so Convention of State's Action. released this poll this week, found that 65% of surveyed voters, quote, do not believe Americans should lose their jobs if the object to take into COVID vaccine. So it also found 22, roughly

202% believe that those who refuse the mandate should lose their job and 12 or nearly 13% aren't sure. As you alluded to, this really plays into a much larger question about vaccine mandates. When do we stop, you know, we're getting pretty higher and higher on the level, the percentage of vaccination nationwide. And you are seeing people losing their jobs over this. I mean, we've had many nurses who have lost their job, and that's obviously been a problem because we're in the midst of trying to treat a pandemic and we're losing health care workers. But those nurses have lost their job, especially in New York State. I personally know, I mean, this is anecdotal, but I personally I know a couple of nurses who had to fight really hard to get exemptions.

And they ultimately were granted exemptions, but they were very afraid. They were going to lose their jobs. And they were not, I don't think they would have been vaccinated, maybe. But they were pretty intent on not being vaccinated. You're seeing a lot of these major companies. I know of, you know, a major government contractor here in DEC who just sent out a notice to their employees saying that they would basically be terminated if they didn't get the vaccine. this is hitting everyone, but it's clear that while Americans, you know, of course, want the pandemic

to be over, they don't, the majority don't think it's fair for someone to be fired because they object to the vaccine. And we've just gone through a year and a half of elevated unemployment, while the unemployment figures aren't near where they were at during the height of government restrictions in response to COVID-19. They're still elevated way above levels pre-pandemic, and now we're threatening people's jobs if they have an objection to take in the vaccine. Not anti-vaccine. I urge everybody to get the vaccine. But when government is mandating this thing and threatening people's jobs,

there's going to be significant unintended consequences behind that. Casey, that's all the time we have this week. Thank you for joining me as usual. We'll talk to everybody next week.