America's Talking - Episode 40: Majority of Americans report ‘falling behind’ rising cost of living

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Majority of Americans report ‘falling behind’ rising cost of living. Biden to release oil reserves, a move critics say is too little, too late. GOP report: Teachers unions got ‘unprecedented access’ after donating tens of millions to Democrats. Biden unveils $5.8 trillion budget proposal with increased taxes on businesses, wealthy individuals. Critics rally against Biden’s capital gains tax proposal. 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.

This has the potential to be one of the defining stories of Biden's presidency. And that's one of the reasons we cover it so much. And it also, it impacts everyone regardless of what state you live in. Welcome to America and Focus. I'm Cole McNeely, General Manager of America's Talking Network. American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can listen to America and Focus and all of our podcast at AmericasTalking.com. That's America's talking.com.

Now here's your host, Dan McAulb. Thank you, Cole, and welcome to the America in Focus podcast. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire service. America in Focus is brought to you by America's Talking Network, the podcast hub where you can find news, civil conversations, and all of the Center Square's great podcasts. Go to AmericasTalking.com. And once again, that's America's talking.com. Joining me today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau chief for the Center Square. Casey, we are recording this on front. Friday, April 1st. That's right. It's April Fool's Day, Casey. Got any interesting April Fool stories to share with our audience?

Oh, man, I can be a notorious prankster. Well, I'll say one of the most diabolical pranks that I ever partook in was nearly ended one of my best friends' relationships with his girlfriend. Yeah. I'll try to do the short version, which is me and two of two of my buddies conspired together. And what we decided is we would change our name, change the contact names in our phones. So my friend Nick, I changed his name of my phone to the girlfriend's name, right, of this guy that we were pranking. And then he, you know, so whenever Nick would text me, it would come in as Alexa, which was her name. So I'm texting Nick, all these flirty texts and everything, but it's all Nick. And we're just joking with it.

it's funny. And so then all we had to do was make sure that Chase, our friend, the Chase and Alexa are the couple were pranking and Chase is our friend. We just had to make sure that Chase, you know, quote unquote, accidentally found my phone, which was loaded with these, you know, very flirtatious text messages about our newfound love and how we couldn't tell Chase and should we tell Chase and all this stuff. And so our third accomplice friend Brady made sure that, you know, he found, quote unquote, found the phone with Chase together. And, you know, there's a certain point in a prank like this where it kind of gets away from you. It gets out of your hands. And you have this moment where you realize, oh, no, maybe this was a huge mistake in it.

And when Chase found my phone, he just took off sprinting, like at a full sprint. Did he have the phone with him when he took off? Yeah. Yeah. He just took off. And I eventually, you know, found them and they were having a very intense lunch conversation. They did not break up, but they apparently reportedly were on the brink of it. And I did feel pretty bad about that. What, I had a couple of questions here. Okay. All right.

Yes. Follow up. Press conference. So, I mean, what was, how did that affect your friendship? Was he pissed at you? Was he, I mean, did he get over it? What happened there? Yeah, I don't, I think he was mad for a while.

But there's something, there's kind of a resilience to young male friendships where you can just kind of do anything to each other. And somehow it's like you just have to get over it. So you can be kind of cruel to one another. Is he able to laugh about it today? Yeah, we're not friends anymore. So maybe that was part of the fatal blow. But yeah, that's what I was getting at. Yeah.

And the other question I has is, why the heck would he go through your phone text anyway? I'd be upset. Brady, well, yeah, well, Brady was the accomplice. He was like, hey, look, I found Casey's phone. And he's texting Alexa. And so at that point, he had probable cause to search through. And he found everything that he feared, which is me and texting my friend Nick, all kinds of winky faces and hearts.

All right. Well, that's, yeah. You have any pranks? Are you holding out on me? Maybe next week? My best one almost got me fired. Oh, wow. So I don't know if I should share it.

It was many years ago. You definitely should. 20 plus years ago. I was an editor to newspaper in Louisiana. We were a daily newspaper in Lafayette, Louisiana. And there's this weekly newspaper, alternative weekly newspaper, independently owned, that was always criticizing our daily newspaper regular. That's what happens in cities where you have an alternative.

Right. poke fun at criticized the big brother the daily newspaper there well our company ended up purchasing that weekly newspaper that alternative weekly newspaper and the announcement came about i don't know like a week before april fools so they were part of our company we decided i decided that we were going to put a little brief in the paper sort of payback for all those years of abuse and criticism now that they were part of our company. So on April 1st, we just put posted a little brief in the newspaper saying that this alternative weekly was giving away free tickets to the backstreet boys who were playing like two or three months down the road and we printed

their phone number. No way. Well, that was a brief column. So there was a brief on top of brief, on top of brief. And at the bottom brief said, by the way, the top brief about the back three boys tickets as an April Fool's joke please don't call but they got hundreds of phone calls that my gosh that is awesome my publisher was so upset I survived but it was fun that's a good one that's that's a high-stakes prank I mean you're putting that in ink yeah you can't take that back yeah I would never do it again I was a young editor um at the time but you know my staff that was probably the the best thing I ever did in my staff size right right so all right Casey we actually have some news to talk about just sure even though

it's April Fool's Day we promise that what we're going to talk about is not a joke okay we got some serious news all right well we've talked on the show about the increasing out of control inflation and the rising prices of gasoline and everything else a survey came out of this week, Casey, that shows that Americans are really struggling because of these higher prices. What can you tell us about the poem? Yeah. I mean, this has the potential to be one of the defining stories of Biden's presidency. And that's one of the reasons we cover it so much. And it also impacts everyone, regardless of what state you live in, regardless of your job or your income, you're feeling inflation. You go to the grocery store. You put new towers on your car.

And they're a lot more expensive. If you can even afford a new car, you probably can't. because, you know, I don't know if you saw Dave Ramsey advised Americans not to buy new cars or not to buy cars right now because they're so expensive. Right. Yeah. So that's just a sign of the times. Although Dave Ramsey telling people not to buy things isn't too extraordinary. But anyway, this study found that from NBC News found that 62% of Americans say that they are, quote, falling behind of the cost of living, while only 6% said their income is going up faster than the cost of living. the you know well over over 60% of americans are saying hey these prices are crushing us i'm i'm falling

behind i mean that that language is kind of a little dramatic even for a poll but that's what americans said um you know it came as yet another inflation marker there's always this federal data that comes out showing inflation and it showed that the personal consumption expenditure which is just you know it's a key inflation metric um it's heavily relied on by the federal reserve it increased 6.4% in February from a year ago. So, you know, last year it's gone up the most that it's gone up in almost 40 years. Energy prices increased 25.7%. Food prices up 8%.

This is similar to other things, other data we've seen for markers like the consumer price index. So it's, you know, it's following the same trend, but it's just more confirmation. And it backs up this poll that 62% of America. say they are falling behind. We covered last week that the majority of Americans say that President Joe Biden's policies have had something to do with it. So, you know, I don't know if you had something to add or throw in here, Dan, but it doesn't look good for Biden on this issue.

And right now, you know, the majority of Americans are feeling the pain and nobody thinks they're getting ahead. Well, and I certainly can understand it, Casey. I don't know if you do the grocery shopping in your house, if your wife does or if you both do I do most of the grocery shopping in my house. My wife likes to sleep in on Saturdays. I'm up early every day regardless. So while she's still sleeping, I generally go out and go to the grocery store and pick up stuff. And week after week, I'm just like shocked. It's like sticker shot. Just at the grocery store, how things have gone up significantly. So if you're an American living

paycheck to paycheck, yeah, it's going to hurt. And it doesn't look like there's any of relief in site. Yeah. And I don't do the grocery shopping, but, you know, pretty much everybody buys gas. And that is like, you know, one of the most obvious painful, you know, it cost me over $80 to fill up here in D.C. And I don't have a truck or you have just have a car, you know, $80 to fill up a Hyundai. So, you know, that was pretty striking. And, you know, of course, I'm closely watching the price of pizza rolls and Hot Pockets and those have just been. I know those are your favorite. Yeah. Yeah. So, if we talk about things that I'm buying, I'm noticing the prices of. But you know, you got any in the oven for breakfast?

Oh, yeah. The, you got to get the breakfast egg hot pocket. Just be careful because it can easily be 4,000 degrees in the middle. I'll keep that in mind the next time. Yeah. Get my hot pocket out of the oven. Speaking of gas, Casey. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay, all right. President, I wasn't actually going there. Wow. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's April Fool. On April Fool, we've got to have fun. We're off the rails today.

Yeah, we are off the rails. They might take us off the air. President Biden this week announced his plan to try and combat high gasoline prices, and that's by releasing a significant amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. What's going on here? Yeah. So, you know, as we've been saying, gas prices are through the roof, you know, that it's been over, it's increased well over a dollar in the last 12 months, which is, you know, that doesn't normally happen. And so Biden announced, you know, hey, we're going to release basically a million, it's basically a million barrels a day for 180 days. It's not quite exactly that. But that's what it is. You know, six months, 100, 180 million barrels of oil. This, the idea of this would be that, you know, you're adding. to the domestic supply, which should push down prices. You know, Biden banned the importation of Russian oil recently as a, you know, a measure to, you know,

defund Putin's war effort. And, you know, the price, gas prices have been rising very significantly, even before Russia, though. And so there's a little bit of a slide of hand here. And there's a little bit, you know, critics are saying this is kind of too little too late. Biden has really been trying to blame these gas prices on Putin. And it's kind of become a Democratic talking point that this is the quote the phrase you're using is Putin's price hike. I guess it's alliterative, though, so it must be true. But it's, you know, anybody you've remembered them, gas prices have been rising all last year. You can just look, I mean, you can look up the chart. There's a steady, steady incline. Of course, they have gone up more. There's more instability since, because of Russia's

actions. But Biden's taking a lot of heat on this issue. And one reason is, you know, he has done a lot with his regulatory policies to discourage domestic oil production. And so the fact that Russia could even influence our prices so much, they would say, just shows you that we need to, that America should be energy independent. And during the Trump administration, we were much more energy independent. We were energy independent. And we've lost a degree of that under Biden. And so they're hitting him for that.

They're saying he's being disingenuous because Putin is really not the main source of blame. It's his energy policies. And then, you know, I talk to some experts about this. And while 180 million barrels of oil is about a third of our reserves, now you could argue whether that's dangerous, you know, to release that much in a piece time. I mean, that's a whole other question. But 180 million barrels is a lot. Because it's spread over six months, it's not really going to make much of a dent, probably. I mean, it's, it's only about 10 days worth of daily oil use spread out over six months. Right.

Right. So what kind of price impact is that really? If you did that over a shorter period of time, it can make a real difference. But 10 days worth of oil spread over six months. I don't know. I guess we'll see. That's a really, one thing you touched on there is a really big concern in that the strategic petroleum reserve is meant for a massive energy crisis.

right that those those reserves are are are stocked away in case there is a significant impactful i mean yes high gas prices is significant and it's impactful but not to the level of like an emergency crisis situation and what what happens what are people saying that if we diminish what's in the reserve when a true crisis hits the u.s russia attacking ukraine yes that's an international crisis but it's not America, the United States is not at war. Yeah, it's similar to the inflation argument or printing money argument, actually, which is what one of the experts said that I talked to. Maybe I can find the quote here in my notes,

but essentially, you know, printing money, the government printing money to help the economy is really supposed to be used for emergencies, right? It's supposed to be used in dire economic times, but we've made it the norm. And so now when hard times do come, we're just, we're so subject to inflation and kind of this economic disaster because we've printed so much money, uh, just to maintain our baseline. And so there's a fear you can get in the same place here, which is if you start using the emergency reserves, just to kind of make things better when it's not really an emergency, when the emergency does hit, it'll be like, we'll be in the same boat. And so I think there is some parallels to that, to how we're printing money.

Um, and it's become our new normal. And so it's an interesting question, Dana, whether we could, we could have this new normal of, of, oil reserves just being cleaned out. And it's just another way. I think it's, you know, part of the federal government has become really short-sighted, I think. And that's, it's hard because all the politics point you to being short-sided because the election's in November. So everyone's just thinking about the next election. Well, yeah.

And most say that, as you said, releasing these reserves won't impact gas prices that much. certainly more needs to be done. Those in the energy industry say that President Biden needs to ease these new restrictions he's put on production here in the U.S., and that is the only answer to lowering gas prices to what they were a year ago. But we'll keep following that story. Casey also this week, President Biden unveiled his new budget proposal with spending priorities and increased taxes, both on businesses, on wealthy individuals.

What's the news here? Yeah, so President Joe Biden unveiled a $5.8 trillion budget for 2023, which, yes, is a lot of money. And he released tax proposals to help fund that. Now, presidential budgets are interesting, you know, because they don't ever really become wholesale law. I mean, Obama had these, you know, extorbitant budgets. Trump had these budgets that would fund, you know, the wall and all kinds of different things that were his, his wish lists. And Biden is no different. So these budgets in a way can be presidential wish lists, but that didn't ever come true. But at the same time, they tell you a lot about what are the priorities of the president. And they can often be a clue into what is going to actually happen legislatively in the months and years to come. So for Biden, you know, $5.8 trillion, it funds a lot of things. And a lot of things. And a lot of, you know, lot of it is the usual suspects of progressive democratic politics. And we don't have to, you know, dig through all $5.8 trillion. But he does have a lot. It is notable that he has, you know,

funding for the military that's increased because of Russia. You know, pushback from progressives on that. Yeah. Yeah. They're always wanting to cut the defense funding, say we spend too much and they want to put it elsewhere. So that is notable. But what's probably most notable is the tax proposals that Biden put forth because if he has any spending, he wants to pay for it, he will have to increase taxes. And so two of the big, you know, two of the big ones that have really caused a lot of controversy is one, increasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. There's a lot of debate about this. It used to be higher. It is lower than, I would say, quote, unquote, average. It's below kind of what it has been in the past. But

there's a lot of questions about international competition. Right. Under President Donald Trump, the corporate tax rate, taxes across the board were cut. And when President Trump was criticized by progressives in particular for lowering the corporate tax rate, but President Trump and Republicans and conservatives and business owners, it says it makes us more competitive in the global economy. Now, Biden wants to move it back up to it from 21. percent to a 28 percent. Exactly. And, you know, there is an argument to be made about that higher taxes don't always generate more revenue because people can leave the country. And so it's, you know,

would you rather have a- Or stop investing. Right. Exactly. Right. Exactly. So if you, if you markedly lower the profits because of your taxes, then you have less to tax. So you could have 21% of a large pie or 28% of a medium pie. there's another way to think about it, you know. But so that, and it's also worth pointing out that Senator Joe Manchin has really come out against that 28% number. And so that 28% corporate tax rate was talked about last year, Biden pushed for it. But that's one of those, one of those few proposals that Joe Manchin may have single-handedly really killed. You know, Manchin talked about some kind of middle ground number.

And it's just never really come about. So there's that. And then the other tax that has got a lot of attention is that tax on unrealized gain. So if you're like Dan, Michaela, I know you have probably this $100 million stock portfolio. This is really going to. I wouldn't be talking to you right now.

Oh, Dan, you would. You'd be pouring all your savings into promoting this show. We'd have a TikTok and everything. Yeah. Dan, you should get a TikTok to talk about taxes. Dan McAulips taxes TikTok. TikTok. That's a social media thing.

Oh, man. No, Dan, yes, it is. Right. Okay, well, let me get through this capital game tag. We have a couple of stories probably, but then I'll explain TikTok to you out here. But the simplest way to explain this, and it is kind of complicated, but an over simplification would be is that you're taxing. If you have like $100 stock and you own that right now, Dan, normally you would just increase in value. year as a stock market does and then when you decided to sell it then you would you know you would

pay the taxes on the value of what you sold right right but now under this new plan you would have to pay taxes on how much the stock increased in value before you sold it and that's where the unrealized right it's you don't actually have the money yet you just have like an account that says the the values so you know some of the con i mean it would raise money, presumably, but some of the cons of this, it really disincentivizes investment in the stock market and other kinds of investment. If you have a business and you grow the size of your business, any business owner knows that just because you grow the size of your business doesn't mean you're actually making a lot more profit, especially early on in a business.

You might double or triple the size of your business, but you're just reinvesting everything back in. And you don't have that cash on hand. I mean, a good business person is just growing the business, growing the business. Now the business is worth, you know, twice as much. But often, you know, and especially early on in businesses, owners don't even take a paycheck, right? Because all the money is going into the business. But under something like this, those, you know, businesses that grow in that way would be taxed on their growth, even if there's not like cash on hand to pay for it. And so, you know, there's been a lot of vehement, um, opposal to this tax proposal as well, as well.

So, you know, we'll be following these things, the center square.com, but it's pretty interesting to keep track of. Yes. It is. It's just a budget proposal at this point. It has to get through Congress. Democrats have slim majorities in the House tied in the 50-50 in the Senate, but with Vice President Harris having the tie-breaking vote. Democrats have the majority there, but one Democrat. such as Senator Joe Manchin, who's essentially killed some Biden proposals in the past,

just someone like him could have effectively killed. So we'll be following that story at the center square.com. Time for just one last story, Casey, and we have to get through this fairly quickly. Something we knew about, something you reported on last year, but even more evidence that national teachers unions had undue, influence on CDC guidance when it comes to the pandemic and returning to schools. Tell us about this latest. Yeah, so as you said, we reported last year that at the center square.com that teachers unions

gave tens of millions of dollars to Democratic candidates before having an outsized role in influencing the CDC guidance for schools. And so this has been really an interesting story. the CDC's, you know, guidelines have really ruled the roost as far as, you know, these schools are not required to just totally obey the CDC, but they've really fallen back on a lot of these federal guidelines to give them cover because there's so much local politics involved in all these things. So, but it's really interesting. There's more and more emails and things that came out this week and testimony from Republicans. They're really blasting Democrats and teachers unions for this. But, It appears from these reports that just more evidence that teachers unions were able to really guide a lot of the guidance. They were able to even maybe edit some of it and change it. They got, you know, advanced review that's not common for groups outside of the government. And teachers unions were really pushing to keep schools closed, which was obviously controversial.

They wanted really, especially in states like California, they wanted really strict, you know, vaccine requirements for even like, kids and things. And so it's a very controversial proposal. It probably kept schools closed longer and there's a money trail. And so it's old-fashioned, you know, follow the money story. And it's further evidence or further ammunition for those who have said these COVID-19 era policies were more about politics than about actual science and data. Whatever side, you know, you're on on that. This just fuels that argument that science didn't necessarily. necessarily guide, at least all of the reactions to the pandemic. Politics were certainly involved with that.

Right. And there's such a blurred line, too. You know, when you have a, what people consider, like, a scientific group being influenced politically, you start to doubt that group. And the same with who? You know, the World Health Organization, you know, there's a lot of doubt about them because of how they were influenced by China. And so if you look at the polling, actually, these scientific groups have lost, like,

like the FDA as well, have lost a lot of faith from the American people. And it's really not good long term for the country to have these groups lose the public trust. But it seems they've really done it to themselves. Well, thanks again. We'll continue to follow your reporting at thecentersquare.com. But that's all the time we have this week, Casey. Happy April Fool's Day. Try not to break up any more relationships.

If you can, for our listeners, a reminder, you can find all of the Center. Squares podcast at america's talking.com take a look please subscribe there is no cost for kasey harper i'm dan nick caleb we'll talk you next week