America's Talking - Episode 22: Inflation hits highest level in years

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Inflation hits highest level in years as wholesale prices rise 8.6% in 12 months. Bipartisan infrastructure bill passes, leaving larger Dem bill in limbo. Navy SEALs sue Biden administration over COVID mandate. 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 American Focus powered by thecenter Square.com. I'm Cole McNeely. 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 McAilip, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week. Coming up right after this on American Focus, powered by the center square.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at the

CenterSquare.com, the country's fastest growing, non-profit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site. We deliver essential information with a taxpayer's 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. New federal data confirms the prices of everyday goods are getting increasingly more expensive. The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday released its monthly report on the Consumer Price Index,

a key marker of inflation, which showed that consumer prices rose 0.9% in October and are currently rising at the fastest rate in decades. To read more about this story and many others, visit thecintersquare.com. Now for a closer look, it's Dan McAulb and... Casey Harper. Thank you, Cole, and welcome back to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today, as he does every week, is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief.

Casey, we're recording this on Friday, November 12th. There is a 50% chance of snow today here in the Chicago region. Are you ready for winter, Casey? I'm never ready for winter. As our faithful, as soon as snow, I grew up in East Texas, where it snows once every four years, and they shut down the whole school for a week out of fear. But no, I'm not a winter guy at all. You have to be where you are.

Well, yeah, now that we're empty nesters, my wife and I are talking about new potential new locations, and Texas is one of the places we're talking about, actually. Of course, Texas had a horrible stretch of winter last year. Yeah, yeah, no income tax. So exactly. All right, lots to talk about this week, Casey, including two new federal reports on inflation. It's high. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. What can you tell us about inflation in the U.S.? Yeah, we've been covering inflation pretty consistently all year. And this has become the issue that the Biden administration is no longer able to ignore. So there's several. ways to track inflation, but two big ones are the consumer price index and the wholesale producer price index. So producer price index tracks the price of wholesale goods, and you can probably guess the consumer price index is for consumer goods. So both figures

were released this week, and it just shows the percentage change over the month, you know, every month, and then, of course, over the year. For wholesale goods, the prices increase 8.6% in the past 12 months, which suggests a similar inflation rate. And we saw, you know, not quite as high, but over 6% increase for consumer prices. So both of those figures suggest that the inflation we've seen all year is growing for the consumer price index. It's growing the fastest in 30 years that we've seen. And it's been doing that every month. So, two months ago, it was the fastest in 30 years. And last month, it was the fastest in 30 years. And this month, it's the fast. Because so it's getting faster, even, you know, you could say, or at least, at least staying as fast. And so this is not something that happened in the pandemic and is now trailing off, but we're still experiencing.

And this is something that's actually continuing, persisting, and maybe even getting worse as the longer we go. So let's break this down a little bit. So inflation year over year between October, of this year, in October of last year, has grown 8.6%. Normal inflation is more in the, what, the 2% range to 2% to 3% range? Yeah, I mean, it could be 2 or 3 or 4, but yeah, that's right. So it's significantly higher over the past year. And what does that mean for dumb question, I realize, because certainly our listeners who go out to the grocery store,

who go out and buy gas, they see it and they realize it. But what does that mean for consumers when they're going to purchase goods? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's simple but very important. So it is important that we talk about it. It means the prices of everything are going to be more expensive. They're going to be higher. And, you know, so when you go to buy milk and eggs and to fill up your gas tank, you're going to be seeing the prices go up.

Now, gas is going to significantly, and that's gotten more attention. But part of the reason it's got more attention is because the prices are plastered on the side of the highway and everyone keeps track of it in a way maybe that they don't keep track of the price of bread, even though most people still buy bread, despite your low-carb diet, Dan. I'm getting old, Casey. I've got to watch my carbs. Right. So when you go to buy your keto products at the grocery store or whatever our listeners buy, it's going to be more expensive. and it's getting increasingly more expensive. And when you think about it, a way to think about it is it is a tax by the federal government,

a hidden tax. So if Joe Biden proposed, hey, we're going to put a tax on groceries and all goods. We're going to put a tax on lumber. We're going to put a percentage increased tax on bread and milk and water bottles and everything. And it's going to increase every month slowly over time. people would be outraged by that they would you know they would oppose it they would say no you're gonna you can't do this um but that's basically what inflation is because the federal government prints more money it uses that money to pay its debts and then the the effects of printing that money are passed down to everyday americans through the increase in their goods so it's

really the same as if Biden put a tax on our goods making them more expensive right more print more money more money's out there the dollar the dollar loses value um So prices essentially go up. And now President Biden's administration for much of the year has been trying to downplay inflation, saying things are going to level off soon, sooner rather than later. But all signs are that that's just not the case. Isn't that what economists are telling us? Yeah. I mean, in some ways, you know, you can always get some political cover by making a prediction because it's impossible to disprove a prediction.

So as bad as things are, you can always trot some expert out there to say, don't worry, it's going to be fine this time next year. But you can't prove that. You can't disprove it. So that's what the media will report and say, well, this is what the administration is saying. But, you know, I've looked at a lot of reports. There are plenty of economists who expect that it will level off by next year. But I think many of them didn't expect it to be as bad as it is now that it's increased.

And so what, you know, the way these things often go is it's going to be fine by this time. And then some months go by and it's like, well, we're going to push that back a little bit. And then it's a little bit more time goes by and they push it back a little bit. So if I had to make a prediction, I think that would be my prediction. Again, no one really knows. There's a lot of things the Fed can do. There's different policy changes that could happen. So, you know, it is dependent on those things.

But it very well could be into 2023 seeing these figures. And so, you know, the other thing to think about is as far as, the impact is that this stuff, if you have a savings account with $10,000 in it, your savings account is becoming, you know, 8% less valuable year over year, right? And so if you're just sitting in there getting, you know, 0.5% interest on your savings account, and then it's like you're losing $80 this time next year, or $800,000, spending on how much you have it at $1,000 or $10,000. So that's another way to think about it. But you mentioned. the political applications, Joe Manchin this week, who is a crucial vote on this reconciliation

spending, came out after the data was released and just flat out said, hey, this inflation stuff is out of control. And I think we may talk more about this later in the show, but it's out of control. And it's really causing a lot of headache for the Biden administration. Well, why don't we just, why don't we go, you brought it up? Why don't we just go ahead and talk about it after months of delays, delayed voting, infighting within the Democratic Party, the bipartisan, somewhat bipartisan infrastructure bill did pass over the weekend. Let's talk about that first, and then we'll get into reconciliation. Sure, so that bill did pass.

So a little bit of context, you know, there's been the two big bills, for those who have been paying schools attention, And it's the bipartisan infrastructure bill and then the reconciliation bill. The infrastructure bill is roughly $1.2 trillion. The reconciliation bill, which is kind of the quote-unquote human infrastructure, it's a social spending plan opposed to the infrastructure, which is like roads and bridges. The reconciliation plan started out at $3.5 trillion. Now it's gotten down to where they're saying it's $1.85 trillion,

but some people doubt that and are saying it's actually much higher. It's pretty easy to do accounting gimmicks with this legislation. But progressives, the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party, had been withholding their vote and saying, we're not going to vote on infrastructure until we get a good deal on the reconciliation plan. Now, some Republicans supported the infrastructure bill. So that could have been passed weeks ago, but it was being held up by the far-life progressives.

the reconciliation bill has no Republican support. It's strictly Democrats only, but because it is a reconciliation bill, it's a special type of spending bill that only allows for certain spending measures, but you only need a simple majority to pass it. So that's why basically the strategy of Democratic leadership was to put the more popular items into one bill, the infrastructure bill, it's actually roads and bridges and things that people consider, you know, traditionally consider infrastructure, get some bipartisan support and pass that. And then all the more controversial things they put in this reconciliation bill, which is going to have no Republican support.

And they're going to try to, I think they're going to try to jam it through. And the reason we think they're going to do that is because the only way Biden was able to get those progressives to vote for the infrastructure bill was he personally called a lot of them and made promises to them. We don't know exactly what he said. But he made promises to them. them that made them feel comfortable enough to vote for infrastructure. So thinking that they would get some kind of good deal on reconciliation.

But one of the key, I mean, this puts even more focus on Joe Mention because he is a necessary Democrat swing vote. And really, he has a ton of power over this bill. And he has been pointing to reconciliate or pointing to in inflation numbers for months is a reason for his opposing the bill. And now when these big inflation numbers came out, this. week. He's pointing to them again. He's saying, we need to focus on tackling this problem. I think my sense is that Joe Manchin will be very happy to finish the rest of this year without a

reconciliation bill. But there's going to be a ton of pressure from Democrats and from Biden to make sure that doesn't happen. And if that does happen, though, I think you'll see a lot of progressives felt like Biden portrayed them. So there's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of, you know, strategy and behind close doors, things going on. But this inflation is, issue is right, front and sitter in the middle of this legislative debate we've been seeing going on for weeks and weeks. I want to talk more about reconciliation in a minute, but back to the infrastructure bill, the past the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.

A lot of people have been calling it a bipartisan bill. The Senate passed it weeks more than a month ago, I think. The House just passed the Friday night. It was the vote was 228 in favor, 206 opposed with just 13 Republicans voting in favor. That's why we're calling it bipartisan because it had very little, but some Republican support. But those Republicans who voted for are getting a lot of criticism from conservatives in the party. Is that correct? That's true.

And I will say there were more Senate Republicans who voted for it than in the House. So it did have pretty good bipartisan support in the Senate, less so in the House, but it did have the 13 that they needed. So by today's standards, it's pretty bipartisan in a day and age where getting anything bipartisan seems impossible. But, yeah, I mean, this bill, it's funding high-speed internet, roads, bridges, public transit. Actually, a lot of electric vehicle charging stations. So anybody out there with an electric car, there's potentially going to be hundreds of thousands of new charging stations. all over the country. We'll see if the funding runs out and how fast they're able to do that. But, you know, it's going to airports and rail lines. So all the things that you think of

when you think infrastructure, it's going to be spent, you know, improving things. It was, you know, the Republicans who support it are getting a lot of flack, partially because of some of the arguments we already laid out, which is that government spending is too high. It's out of control. The inflation is a problem. The other reason is just that, you know, Republicans will say Democrats were in this big pinch, and you basically helped them get one step closer to this, you know, socialist social spending plan is how they would refer to it. So they're saying you basically, you help Democrats out getting closer to the reconciliation bill. I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, it's very likely going to increase the federal deficit, this infrastructure bill.

by at least a few hundred billion dollars. It's funny, even Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out that the infrastructure bill will increase a deficit because he's upset with some of the Democrats who are willing to vote for infrastructure, but not for the reconciliation bill. He says, you guys are, he's basically saying you were acting like fiscal conservatives and moderate Democrats, but you just voted for an infrastructure bill that according to the CBO increases federal deficit by $256 billion. So I think part of it is part of it is.

how much it costs part of his inflation. And I think really what it came down to is members of Congress just felt a lot more comfortable voting for hard concrete, rebar, bridges and roads, things that people feel like we need than getting into these more political, dicey, big ticket climate change, spending, you know, social spending issues. Well, let's talk about reconciliation. So infrastructure is done. It's done deals past both chambers of Congress. President Biden's going to sign it. reconciliation is not done. What are some of the more controversial aspects of the reconciliation bill? What does it want to? What is the proposal going to spend money on? Right. And so what I'll preface with is it's changing all the time. So, you know, there was initially going to be, you talk about put like, for example, the initial bill back better plan, which is the name of Biden's, you know, plan that got all of this reconciliation bill started had universal pre-K and free community college.

Tuition free. Tuition free. Yeah, not, I mean, free, and this is the government will pay for it. Your tax dollars will pay for it. So that's not such thing as a free lunch. No. But so, you know, that has been, those have been things that have kind of been toyed with. It could be, I think really could be in or out, like free community college.

was taken out and then I believe it was put back in. And so these things are, it's not set of stone. Yeah, it's not set of stone. There's a lot of money for climate change spending in the bill. There's a lot of talk about home health care workers getting paid. So it's, as I said, it's a lot of, I don't know if people love this term or not what we think of it, but human infrastructure is what Democrats tried to call it back when this bill started.

Because initially they tried to put it all on one and say that they tried to say that, they tried to say that, you know, universal pre-K was infrastructure. And that didn't pass the smell test for a lot of people. Right. So there's a lot of big, there's a lot of big ticket items. And then the other question is what kind of taxes are going to be able to pay for this bill? That has been probably even more controversial than what's going to be in it. Because, you know, throwing a few extra $100 billion for this or that, you know, sadly

Congress, that doesn't make many members of Congress bad or not. But when you're talking about increasing taxes, they know. that that's going to get their constituents attention. So there's talk about, there's been talk about taxing the appreciation of assets on wealthier people. There's been talk about, you know, a billionaire's tax. But so far, nothing has really gotten a lot of traction. Increasing the corporate tax rate appears to be dead in the water. But again, like I said, these things are always changing.

And, I mean, tomorrow somebody could come out and say they struck a deal and everything is wrong. You know, these turns out politicians' convictions on issues are a little bit more flexible than maybe some people's. Well, to reach a deal, they absolutely, you referenced him earlier, they absolutely have to have U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia on board. And at this point in time, everything evolves, obviously. At this point in time, it doesn't seem like Joe Manchin is going to get behind this. No, at least for now it doesn't. And a big part of, he's pretty much opposed, you know, all these different spending measures. He is, or he's opposed to taxation measures.

He hasn't really been happy with a lot of the proposals. And another thing is this idea of a CPO score. So, for example, the Chamber of Commerce just came out and said that they expect that there's, they say there's a lot of accounting gimmicks in this legislation that actually makes it much more expensive than what it purports to be. And there's several Democrats, part of the reason this is. this vote on reconciliation has been delayed is several Democrats have said, hey, we need a CBO score. And a CBO, congressional budget office takes legislation and is, you know, trying to be nonpartisan, I think, and saying this is how much this bill will cost over time. Because, you know, so far we've kind of

just been trusting the Biden administration's estimates or whoever, you know, which there can be a lot of things you can do. They assume they make a lot of assumptions. They may not be true. when getting their numbers. So a lot of Democrats are saying we need to hold out and get this CBO number so we know how much this bill actually costs. that's putting some cover for Joe Manchin. So we'll see. I think it's probably going to be a week or two. I mean, who knows, but I think it'll be a week or two before CBO gets their numbers out and says, this is what the bill actually costs.

If it's about the same as what the administration has been saying, then you're right. All this focus is going to go right on Joe Manchin and he's going to be under the gun. But he's been under that pressure for a while. Now, if CBO says actually the bill is much more expensive, you could see this whole thing really fall apart, I think. because it's going to give cover to a lot of nervous Democrats who are they kind of want to weigh out. They want to step out of this plan, but they're in it now. So if the CBO comes and says, actually, it's going to be $2.8 trillion or $2.3 trillion, they can say, oh, whoa, whoa, I didn't agree to this.

I didn't sign up for this. This is, you know, and they can back out. And it can help make Biden lose a lot of his momentum. So I think it's pretty exciting. Maybe I'm a nerd for that, but I think it's pretty interesting and exciting to follow. And it's changing every day. I'm glad you called yourself the nerd, and I didn't have to. I already picked on you for your fake diet.

And of course, every Democratic vote on this matter is vital. With the Senate being split, 50, 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans, no Republicans saying they're going to support this measure. Just one Democratic defection. Of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has a tie-breaking vote. on any votes that end up 50-50, but any Democratic defection kills the bill. All right.

Okay, we got time for one last story. Another major story, Casey, is these vaccine mandates and President Biden's vaccine mandate on private sector businesses, but he also has mandates on the military, on many federal agencies. The private sector, Details on the private sector vaccine mandate came out were released by OSHA last week, but immediately states and business groups and others filed dozens of lawsuits across the country.

And on Saturday, a federal court in Louisiana granted a stay in one of the lawsuits against the vaccine mandate, meaning it cannot go into place, supposed to go into place January 4th. Give us an update on what's going on with this. Yeah, I mean, Biden's legal team needs some Red Bull because they're going to be up late hours for the foreseeable future. They're getting hit with lawsuits from all angles. As you said, there's essentially three categories of mandates. There's the mandate on federal employees. So if you work for a federal agency or your federal contractor, you have to get a vaccine. If you, the Department of Defense has their own mandate for service members, U.S. service members in the military. And then, of course, there's the private sector mandate, which is being changed. challenged is already getting a really a bad review in court. I think that one is the most in danger for the obvious reason that it's on the private sector and not the government. So, but on the, the DOD mandate, there's actually a group of Navy SEALs that have filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration's COVID mandate saying that they've been denied vaccine exemptions.

So, you know, all of these mandates do allow for exemptions. But the, Navy SEALs, which, of course, are very popular amongst Americans, so it kind of helps the political or the media optics on this whole thing. But they're suing Biden, or they're suing the Biden administration saying that basically, I mean, it's hard to verify true this is without asking every service member, but they're saying that no one is getting these exemptions. And when they apply for exemption, they're just getting a blanket, no, you rejected email. They're not even getting a tailored explanation for why this particular person didn't qualify for the exemption. So they're saying, see, the Biden administration is just rejecting every exemption with this

blanket letter, and they're not doing a good faith examination of whether people qualify. And so that lawsuit is there. You know, all these are, they are separate lawsuits, but they can really chip away at what Biden is doing. And it's really an open question, whether these are going to survive or whether the Supreme court, if it goes to the Supreme Court, we'll end up overturning these mandates and setting a big precedent, really. Right. And Congress has not voted on any of these vaccine mandates, right? This is, this is a, something that's coming down from the president. It's essentially the president

creating law. Yeah, it's like the eviction moratorium. It's, you know, Biden just announced, the Biden administration just announced that landlords can't evict anyone. And so the Supreme Court really took issue with that. But it may, it would have been a different story if Congress had passed a law. It could still, you know, be problematic, but the president just announcing it makes it particularly problematic. Right. And as, and let's talk briefly about these exemptions. Some people say they have preexisting health conditions that the vaccine would be detrimental to them, according to their doctors. Others have religious concerns about it, faith concerns about it, because in the development of the vaccines,

the aborted fetuses, parts from aborted fetuses, were used during the testing process. So there are religious exemptions, but you're saying the Biden administration doesn't care, or isn't granting any of those exemptions. Yeah, that's what the lawsuit is saying. They're alleging that the Biden administration is not granting any exemptions,

which suggests that they're not even taking the request seriously. I mean, you would think that if you have all these servicemeners, at least some of them would qualify. So you're seeing that in the private sector, people are qualifying in other places. People are qualifying. Not everyone is qualifying, but at least some people are, which suggests, okay, they're at least making an effort to do due diligence and be fair. But if literally no one is getting exemptions, then that's more of a systemic top-down refusal to grant people their rights. And so in the private sector mandate, which impacts businesses that employ 100, at least 100 workers or more, businesses would be required to make sure that all of their employees are vaccinated against COVID-19 or require them to get weekly testing.

One of the lawsuits against that, and one of the lawsuits against that, the Fifth Circuit, Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, temporary halted that. that mandate. It's supposed to go into effect January 4th. That's less than two months from now. What's the time frame on this? I mean, obviously, businesses who would have to prepare for this, they're in a state of limbo right now. Yeah, so the DOD mandate is more imminent. I mean, it's already, it's upon them. But yeah, the private sector mandate is in the beginning of the new year. You know, that could be pushed back if Biden gets in a lot of political trouble or just getting, you know, continues this pushback. He could, I mean, it's just an administration order so he could announce today that, you know, it's a different date or he could change his mind today because it's just

straight from the president. But that deadline is coming up on people. The courts called grave, said there was, quote, grave concern, you know, constitutional concern over this mandate, which really, you know, is promising to opponents of the mandate. And, you know, I think there was polling that came out a few weeks ago that they basically said that it was a slight majority of Americans actually didn't think that people should be fired for refusing the mandate. And this is a little bit of, you know, analysis on my part. But I think the majority, probably where we're at right now is the majority of Americans support the vaccine, but they're not so sure about all these mandates and requiring people

to get it and forcing the loser job. And so it's really, I think we're at a place where people, people are pro-vaccine anti-mandate for the most part because they don't like the idea of the federal government taking someone's job for them just because they don't want to get the vaccine. They think people should have the right to do what they, even if they think they're doing the wrong thing, should have the right to do it. And it's important to make that distinction because I think a lot of the national mainstream media does not do a good enough job of making that decision between just because

your anti-vaccine mandate does not mean you're anti-vaccine. There are plenty of people who have gotten the vaccine who are against mandating people to get the vaccine. And I don't think in the national narrative on mainstream media, they make that distinction. Anyway, Casey, that is all the time we have this week. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Join us again next week at the American Focus podcast.