America's Talking - Episode 25: Biden's COVID measures lose favor with voters as Senate joins courts in rejecting vaccine mandates

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Experts predict less economic growth, elevated inflation for years to come. Poll: Voters unhappy with economy, Biden’s leadership. Federal judge blocks Biden's vaccine mandate for federal contract workers. 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 and Focus, powered by thecentersquare.com. I'm Cole McNeely. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from thecentresquare.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. 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 the center square.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 thecenter square.com. That's the center square.com. Thecenter Square.com. According to a new poll, the majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and they doubt President Joe Biden's ability to change that.

The Wall Street Journal released a survey showing that 61% of Americans believe the economy is headed in the wrong direction, with rising inflation a key cause of concern. Inflation has increased quickly in the past year, with the consumer price index rising at the fastest rate in decades. To read more about these stories and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now for a closer look, it's Dan McAulb and Casey Harper. Thank you, Cole, and thank you for filling in for me last week. 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 are recording this on Friday, December 10th, this morning. new data was released on the consumer prices. What can you tell us about inflation? Oh, yeah, Dan, it's good to have you back. So this consumer price index is something we've been writing about a lot at the center

square.com. And essentially, the federal government has a few major mile markers when it comes to inflation. And the consumer price index is one of the key indicators. It is one of the top markers of inflation. What it does is it keeps track. of the price of a whole range of the price of a whole range of consumer goods. And what they released today is that in the last 12 months, the cost of those goods has risen 6.8%.

We've seen a 6.8% increase in inflation, which is very high. These are numbers just after the, like, basically the Jimmy Carter administration era coming into Reagan, like 1982. It's the last time we saw numbers this high. So what that means practically for Americans is that when they go to the grocery store, when they go to the gas pump, you know, when they go on online to do shopping for Christmas this year, everything is going to be more expensive than it was last year and actually a lot more expensive. Yeah. So generally speaking, prices do tend to go up. That's just a natural part of any economy. It's more in line with 2% or 3% a year. 6.8% is more than double that.

That's like close to a four-year high, I think I read this morning. It is, yep. Yeah, and a big problem with it is it outpaces wages, right? And so people like to think that, you know, you get a raise every year. You kind of become marginally more wealthy every year. But, you know, Dan, I don't know what kind of raise you're going to give me this year. I think you should take this inflation into consideration, obviously. But, you know, I'll go ahead.

I'll let you take the floor. I'll take that one under her advisement. Casey, we'll see about that. Okay, but the point, so if you have this inflation, if you get a 5% raise, you might feel good about yourself, but if prices went up 6.8%, well, you actually have less money overall, even if you feel richer. So that money that you got the raise on goes less far. And most Americans aren't getting 6.8% raises every year.

So they're going to be feeling it. Now, the Biden administration all year, as inflation has increased throughout the course of his first President Biden's first year in office. The Biden administration has been saying publicly that this is temporary, that it's going to go away sometime soon. But what are economists and other experts saying? Right. This is another big update we covered this week. The word the administration likes to use is transitory, which is a fancy way of saying temporary. And they've been saying this is transitory, this inflation, you know, there's a lot of factors in play here and kind of talk over your head a little bit and say, all you need to know is it's going away soon. But more and more and more,

data has been suggesting that's actually not the case. And so recently there's a survey of, you know, several dozen, there's different surveys like this, but there's 48 economic experts across the spectrum and they ask them a lot of really specific questions about the economy and they aggregate the answers. And this is the National Association for Business Economics. And what this found is that these experts expect that inflation is going to remain high through the second half of 2023, right? So that is, you know, we're talking about two years. This is not, you know, a few, a few months to slow the spread of inflation. This is two years. I see what you did there. I don't know if I like it, but okay. Go ahead. Yeah, well, I'm not, it's like I'm getting a 6.8%

raise. So this is the level, this is the jokes you get with that. So, so. That was a 1.1% joke, I think. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. So this, you know, two years before inflation goes down to like kind of normal levels or gets below 2%, that's really troubling for some of the obvious reasons we've already laid out. But just, you know, I've been covering these numbers and these kind of reports for a long time. And there's a very common pattern of a projection is made and you're supposed to accept it and believe that. And then a year or two from now that a projection is extended. Like that is what happens with government spending. it's what happens when federalists say they're going to get their act together.

It's what happens with corporations. It's always what happens is they set a timeline. And then when it comes close to that timeline, they say they need more time. And so to say that the next two years may elevated inflation, that's what they're saying now. So what, you know, I think is very possible that a year from now, 18 months from now, they say, oh, things are worse than we thought we're actually going to need to add another year. So, you know, I won't get too much in the electoral implications of this, but, you know, that is bumping up against a pretty important date for President Biden in 2024.

So, I don't know, something to watch. Right. And it's also, in 2022 is the midterm elections for every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which has a very, very, very slight Democratic majority in about a third of the seats in the U.S. Senate, which is split 50-50 or up. So this could have major implications in the 22 midterms. Absolutely. I think it's going to be a defining issue if it remains this high. All the polling that we've reported on shows that Americans are very concerned about inflation. Inflation is a leading economic concern. Usually inflation is not even on Americans radar, but it's one of their top concerns. And I think that's why you've seen nearly two dozen Democrats who have actually announced they're not running for re-election in 2022. I think there's often a big wave for a first-term president. You know, you remember what happened? with Obama and the Tea Party, you know, or even Trump's first term.

There's a big wave after the president's election in the midterm. And so... Right, President Trump had control of the presidency, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House for the first two years of President Trump's presidency, but then they lost the house. Right. Right. Same for President Obama as well. So I think that that's, you know, this is what they're seeing in the water, especially with Biden's approval numbers. Numbers are really just kind of dismal. and the economic numbers don't look good.

So unless something turns around, I think they're expecting a repeat of the pattern from the last two administrations. All right, well, why don't we move on, Casey, another topic that we've been talking about fairly regularly on American focus has to do with President Biden's vaccine mandates,

another court dealt the president, another loss this week. What's new there? Sure, and I'd love to have you wait on this. I know you've been covering this issue as well, but the federal court issued an injunction on Tuesday that blocked President Biden's vaccine mandate for federal contract workers. And so this is the latest in a series of big defeats for the president, really.

There's been multiple mandates. There's been this mandate, which required vaccination for federal contractors. There's another mandate that required vaccination for most health care workers. And there's also a further mandate that required vaccination for, employees at companies with at least 100 employees. So you might call that mid-size or large companies. You know, they have 100 employees. Then that employer has to make sure that their workers are vaccinated or face big fines. And all three of these mandates in recent weeks have just been taken down on the courts. They've been lost. They've been overturned. There's a possibility

that this will go to the Supreme Court. I think it's likely, actually. But you never know for sure. but I think it's likely that he goes to the Supreme Court. But so far, you know, Biden has really just taken heavy losses on this issue. I'm curious to hear what you have to add, Dan, and what maybe some themes you picked up on the judge's rulings and where you see this, you know, might be going. Yeah, so I think the one common theme, or I guess there's many common themes, but one of the common themes that almost every single court has said,

in each of its rulings blocking the mandates from taking place is, they cite executive overreach, that this is not within the constitutional powers of the presidency to require individuals to make specific health care choices, in this case, receive a experimental, a vaccine that's proven to work. It's not 100% effective, of course, because there's thousands and thousands upon thousands of thousands of breakthrough cases, of folks who have been fully vaccinated who have gotten COVID-19 and even died from COVID-19.

But essentially, the courts have said it is not within the constitutional powers of the president that this is something that Congress should be doing if Congress decides that it's necessary. Am I wrong about that? Is that essentially? I think you're spot on. And one thing I would add is one quote that really stood out to me was U.S. District Judge, Terry, I think it's Dowdy in Louisiana. He said, there's no question that mandating a vaccine to 10.3 million health care workers is something that should be done by Congress, not a government agency,

which is your point. But then he adds, it's not clear that even an act of Congress mandating a vaccine would be constitutional. So to rephrase that, this is absolutely not the role of the president, as you said. But even if Congress passed this, I'm not sure that it would be constitutional. So I think that's really telling him. I don't think there's any political. will right now to pass a vaccine mandate through Congress. So I don't think we have to worry about the anytime soon. But it's really interesting that they're saying, even if Congress did this, it may still be a violation of rights. We'll get to, we'll get to Congress in a second, because the U.S. Senate also took action on one of the president's vaccine mandates this week.

But just as an update, as you mentioned, there are three different mandates that have been challenged in court that federal courts have ruled, at least initially, on all three of those, blocking all three of those mandates. Today, I know there is a deadline in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court in New Orleans, which was the first to weigh in on the private sector mandate, the vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees. That was the first edict to come down blocking one of these mandates from President Biden. President Biden has until today, President Biden's administration has until today to file arguments with the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, essentially arguing why the court erred in halting that private sector mandate.

Now, these lawsuits, there have been dozens of lawsuits filed across the country. This private sector lawsuits have been consolidated and sent to the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, but the Fifth Circuit is still demanding the Biden, giving the Biden administration a deadline of today to respond to its initial ruling, blocking it. Now, let's move on to the Senate. There was some action taken actually in the U.S. Senate on the private sector mandate this week. What happened? That's right. You know, we talked about the political will in Congress to do this. And it seems that it's aimed against, at least in the Senate, the mandates themselves, which would become very controversial and have hurt Biden's poll numbers, as I think we'll talk about in a second. But the Senate, you know, this Wednesday of this week, basically sent the Biden administration a message. They said that they don't support the vaccine mandates on private businesses. So this is one of the mandates that this is a mandate for companies with at least 100 employees, not the health care one or the federal contractors one, though they've all suffered court losses. So the Senate vote.

voted 52 to 48 to repeal Biden's executive mandate. Now, that might be confusing to people say, well, I thought the president did this. How can Congress do? But there is something called the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to evaluate and repeal executive rules within 100 days of their passage. And so that allows Congress to review some of these things. So, you know, I'd be curious here, Dan, you know, you cover this as well, what you think that the chances is. I heard it's not great that this will really get through,

but what the chances of this look like really making a difference for the administration. This is more of a political message, I think, than any kind of statutor, lawful thing. So let's evaluate it. You mentioned it passed 52 in the Senate. The Senate is split, 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans. So two, essentially two Democrats, joined Republicans, broke with their party, joined Republicans to vote to repeal this executive order of vaccine mandates on private sector workers. Refresh my memory that those two were, those two Democrats were Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and John Tester of Montana, correct?

There you go. Yes, there you go. So in Congress, the way the process works, both chambers, of Congress, both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House have to pass legislation, and then the president has to sign legislation for it to become a lot. Well, this passed in the Senate, where, as we said, it's a 50-50 split. Two Democrats join Republicans in voting to repeal. Now it goes to the House, which the House has a slight majority of Democrats. It's unlikely, to answer your question. It's unlikely that the House will even bring this up for a vote. But let's say the House does,

And there are more crossover Democrats who vote with Republicans and vote to repeal it. Then it would go to the president's desk. And the president's spokesperson has already said that the president would veto this if it ever did get to its desk. It's unlikely to get to his desk, but they would veto it. And then they need supermajorities in both chambers of Congress to override that veto. So none of that, let's just, let's be practical. None of that's going to happen. But what this did is it's not a message to the American people that the Senate is not behind the president on these vaccine mandates.

Don't you think? I totally agree. And I think in this situation where the House did somehow, you know, send something to the president's desk, to have a bipartisan rebuke of an already controversial mandate, you know, takes a lot of steam from Biden, you know, The administration has tried to say that these are just kind of anti-vax Republicans who are crazy who are doing this. But you know, you can easily shoot back and say now, Mr. President, this is your own party who's a great party against you. And so it makes Biden look like the more extreme one. And I think that's why his poll numbers, you know, we alluded to earlier, his poll numbers have taken a hit, especially on this issue of, you know, how he's handling COVID. So, for example, when President Biden took office, you know, 538, which is a group that does analysis on polls and tracks of overtime, especially at the national level, 538 found that when Biden took office, he had 69% approval of his response to the coronavirus.

So I think that's one of the things that help propel Biden to the White House, is his handling of COVID. People trusted him more than Trump on that issue. That was the issue last year. So since then, though, that number steadily dropped from 69%. By mid-July, it was down to 60% favorability, which is around when he's, after that, he started issuing more mandates and his approval dropped even more, which, you know, the latest polling compilation on this issue has him at 47.4% approval on his response to the virus with 44.5% disapproving. And simultaneously, his overall job approval rating, you know, it varies, but it's dropped somewhere in the neighborhood of 42%, which is very, very, very low for, you know, him. First year of office. Yeah, and it's very low for a president in the first year in office. So between these polls and bipartisan Senate, it seems that maybe these mandates haven't been a winning issue for the president. Right. So now you've got courts across the country. You've got the U.S. Senate.

And you've got the majority of the American public, American voters, have all weighed in on this issue. And they've all said no. no to these vaccine mandates. Not that they're anti-vaccine. I am not anti-vaccine. Please go get the vaccine. Talk to your doctor about if you haven't been vaccinated about whether you should be vaccinated. Please consider that carefully. We're talking about vaccine mandates. The Senate courts, the American public say no to these mandates. So why is the president still pushing forward on this? Yeah. I mean, that's if I don't have the magic eight ball. And I think that the base, the Democratic, having base, this is a very important issue. And this is one of those things where it's the base

versus the majority. And, you know, Trump ran into this plenty of times. I think presidents always have to deal with this battle. I think Biden thought he could thread the needle by having these more narrow mandates just for health care workers or just for federal contractors or just for large companies. But I don't think it really worked. He didn't, he didn't do, he could have done more sweeping mandates, right? He could have done all companies or something. I think he you try to find a middle ground by doing that. But overall, you know, for better or worse, Americans don't like being told what to do. And it's, I think, one of our best qualities and sometimes our worst. But it's just how we are. And to mandate, that word mandate on these vaccines,

which obviously vaccines have already been very controversial. I think the bigger thing here, and you're alluded to it with what the judges are saying is that, you know, I know that people are still suffering and struggling with this virus, and that's very real. But it's not, we're not at the level where, you know, millions of people are dying in the streets kind of pandemic, right? I mean, that's kind of, I think the level, the severity of this is in question. The survival rate is very, very high, especially for younger people. And so doing sweeping mandates, requiring, even, you know, talking about kids getting vaccinated when the arguments that have arisen have been, that this is really going too far.

It's anti-science because especially young people are by and large almost entirely fine, you know, after COVID. So one argument I've seen in some national media outlets is even if Biden does lose, which it looks like he's likely to lose, you know, you mentioned earlier, this is probably going to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Every single court so far that's weighed in on each of these mandates have said that it's, executive overreach and it's likely unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, you know, has a philosophical, sort of a six to three split conservative, maybe five, three one, depending on how you, you look at Chief Justice Roberts or whatever. They're likely not to say, okay, President Biden, yeah, you can order Americans to go get the shots, right? They're likely not going to rule that way. So even if Biden loses, just by putting these mandates in place, let's just take, for example, the private sector mandate on businesses with 100 or more employees.

The deadline, or the initial deadline, now it's put on hold because of the court rulings, was to have that put in place in the first week of January. Many businesses, you know, back when this was first put in place a couple of months ago, you're starting heading down that path toward having their employees being required to be in. to being vaccinated. And even since the courts ruled, while some businesses have pulled back on that, some businesses have not. So I've heard in some national media outlets that even if President Biden loses politically and legally, he's still won because some companies are still requiring their employees to get vaccinated. So the vaccination rights are at least ticking up anyway because of these mandates. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, well, it's actually a theme for the Biden administration this year, really putting in place mandates or new executive actions, knowing that they will not be constitutional and they will be overturned, but still wanting the political points for doing it and then be able to say, well, I did, we did what we could. The courts, you know, the courts stood against us. We saw this exact same thing with the eviction moratorium. You know, there was really, it was. It was.

made very clear that the Supreme Court did not support these moratoriums, but the Biden administration extended them anyway, and then they had to go back to the court and get officially struck down. And, you know, people forget that White House Press Secretary Jen Saki clearly said that the administration did not have the authority to do vaccine mandates earlier this year. Nancy Pelosi said that you cannot do vaccine mandates. We don't have the authority to do that. And of course, those quotes and those sound. bites were thrown in the Democrats face when they got behind these mandates. But they clearly said

they didn't have the authority. They did anyway. And I think the, you know, the purpose is exactly what you said is even if this gets overturned, by the time it gets through the courts, many people will have been motivated by it. I, you know, I'm in D.C. I personally know federal contractors who got vaccinated in anticipation of this requirement. And so it did work on them. And I think it works on a lot of people. The question is at what cost, you know, I mean, I don't think, you know, politically there's a cost. I think the hypocrisy thing will be another political cost. And just the overall theme of since the beginning of the pandemic, when governors started shutting down states,

closing businesses that they themselves deemed were not essential, not that anyone else deemed them not essential, that they themselves deemed, you know, personal freedoms and individual liberty, and freedoms in the private sector of conducting businesses, as business owners seem fit, has been a large theme, during this entire pandemic.

And I don't think we've come to terms with what it's going to mean in the long term when it comes to government overreach and government mandates and things like that. So I have a feeling this is going to be a topic of discussion for a long, long time. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court could be weighing in. Are you saying we didn't solve the problem on this podcast? No, but it was a good conversation, I think. It was. It was.

Any last, we're about running out of time. Any last thoughts? Anything we're looking ahead to? I would just say, go ahead. I think this podcast was at least 6.8% better than our earlier podcast earlier this year. That's all I'll say. Well, it was certainly better than last week's because I was back on it. Oh, he's quick.

He got some sleep. He's back and ready for action. He's quick. I am back, baby. I think one thing to look at is a. debt ceiling. You know, that's a big topic of debate. If the government, if the federal government defaults on the debt, it will have catastrophic economic consequences worldwide and domestically. I don't think that's going to happen, but nowadays, you never know. Well,

that may be a topic for next week. Thank you, Casey. That's all the time we have this week. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKaleb, executive editor of the Center Square. We'll talk to you again next week. This has been the America and Focus podcast.