America's Talking - Episode 42: Biden approval hits low point, loses youth and minority voters

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Biden approval hits low point, loses youth and minority voters. Amid inflation and worker shortage, small businesses pessimistic about the future. Producer prices rise record 11.2%, fueling more inflation fears. Consumer prices rise 8.5%, highest in 40 years. 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.

I don't know, does it take a long time to follow your taxes, Dan, with all those Cayman accounts? Or do you just leave those off the books? Is that? Oh, yeah. What? What camin accounts, man? Right. Okay, good.

That's what I thought. We don't talk about that. 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 McAelib.

Thank you, Cole, and welcome to the America in Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAleb, 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 America's Talking.com. Joining me today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, we're recording this on Friday, April 15th. A reminder that Monday is tax day. Have you filed your taxes yet, Casey?

Tax Day, America's favorite day of the year. I have filed my taxes. I actually got my state refund back this morning. It calls for celebration. How about your federal? Yeah, no. No, federal is delayed. Actually, this is a very great segue into what I'm writing about today.

You can see at the cintnersquare.com, if you revisit this weekend, which is the federal, the IRS is really backlogged. So tax returns are taking a lot longer. They've had millions and millions of unprocessed returns, especially for businesses. And so that's been a big problem, but we'll be covering that. You know, we've been covering it and we'll continue to cover it. It should be a story out this weekend on it. So I've got my state return, which is great, but I'm still waiting for my federal.

Have you filed yet? Are you going to be burning the midnight oil this weekend? We filed just yesterday, as a matter of fact. So it's behind us. No big expectations with what you mentioned about the IRS's backlog. We're still working on what hundreds of thousands of tax returns from last year. It's in the millions still, isn't it? Well, there's hundreds of thought there's different types of things, different types of returns.

And then there's just communication. So there's like millions of pieces of communication back and forth. And then if you try to call the IRS, they're really backlogged. And so it's just backlogs overall. But I don't know. Does it take a long time to file your taxes, Dan, with all those Kaman accounts? Or do you just leave those off the books? Oh, yeah.

What? What came in accounts? Right. Okay, good. That's what I thought. We don't talk about that. That's right. All right.

All right. Why don't we get into the news this week? Tax Day is news. Today's April 15th. It's traditionally tax days. America's got a brief extension over the weekend. So make sure you get your taxes filed by Monday or you might face some penalties. The Biden administration is taking some heat, Casey, for some seemingly contradictory decisions recently.

One, the administration extended the mask mandate on public transportation at airports, airplanes, things like that, as part of its guidance. over the COVID-19 pandemic, but it's also ending the Title 42 health measures that allows the federal government to immediately expel illegal immigrants who come into the country seeking asylum because of the health crisis. But they're ending that, meaning they will no longer expel illegal immigrants who cross our borders. So what's going on here? Yeah, our listeners probably won't find it hard to believe that we have contradictory policy decisions coming out of Washington.

But that's what critics are really saying. Now, the timelines is somewhat important here. The Biden administration announced that Title 42, which you reference, would be lifted. This was a Trump era policy that really empowered border agents to really expel a lot more migrants a lot more quickly. there's a lot of paperwork, there's a lot of regulation, there's a lot of different moving pieces. It's kind of a bureaucratic nightmare down at the border in dealing with people. And this Title 42 just expedited out of that and said basically COVID is such an emergency that we need to get people out of the country because they're not tested. We have no way of knowing if they're vaccinated.

You know, we don't know. And so, and even just interacting to check if they're vaccinated is putting people at risk. So we're just going to, you know, kick them out. And it really expedited the process. So when Biden lifted it, you know, he, he took a lot of criticism strictly on the immigration front because illegal immigration has absolutely soared since Biden took office. Border Patrol reported two million encounters with illegal immigrants at the border last year. And that doesn't include, and we talked about this a little bit

last week on the podcast, but that doesn't include all the people who get by undetected, which there's absolutely no way of knowing what that number is. So he was taking criticism for the immigration front. But now that is shifted because the administration announced this mask mandate for planes. And so this is like, I mean, people were really hot about this week. You're going to make me wear a mask on a plane. So COVID is so bad that I still have to wear a mask on a plane, but it's not so bad that we can, you know, check illegal immigrants at the door because of it.

So I know that there's been, you know, some things we've been covering about the busing of immigrants, which has become a big issue. Actually, in D.C., you know, we've been, I'm here in D.C. And so all the local news and things have been covering these illegal immigrants getting off on buses, right, at a union station, which is not very far for me. And I've been talking to some sources in the city and everything I've heard is a lot of them, you know, some of them are staying around, but a lot of them are just walking over and getting on buses to places like New York City and Miami. All right. Well, let's talk about that just briefly. last week Texas governor Greg Abbott, who's fed up with the Biden administration's essentially open border policies.

You mentioned the two million encounters that Border Patrol agents had with illegal immigrants last year. With this Title 42 coming to an end next month, that was seen by many, particularly critics of Biden's border policies, as like the last vestige of any effort they had to expel illegal immigrants in this country. And when that ends, they're expecting an even bigger increase in illegal immigrants attempting to get into the country. Governor Abbott last week announced he was stepping up his Operation Lone Star, which he put into effect last year. Essentially, he was because the federal government was taking, was essentially turning a blind eye to illegal immigration, Texas, Abbott had the state of Texas step up and start enforcing federal immigration laws. And one of the things he announced last week was that he was illegal immigrants that crossed the border,

that Texas law enforcement agencies encounter, they were going to put them on buses and ship them to Washington, D.C. This week, the first two buses of illegal immigrants made it to Washington, and C., as you mentioned, and Abbott says many more buses are going to be sent to D.C. with illegal immigrants. So it's kind of, it's sort of a weird thing where you've got the Texas, governor playing the role of the Department of Homeland Security Director, the Secretary of State, because he's also been negotiating. Governor Abbott has been negotiating this week with governors of regions in Mexico that border Texas on security policies.

And that's really not his job. That's supposed to be the federal government's job. Yeah, it's just a really interesting dynamic that's played out because these governors in the South are getting increasingly frustrated, you know, and this idea of like malicious compliance, I think that some of what we're seeing here, you know, whichever administration is in charge, you know, if they're, if they are not immigration hawks, they can say that they want to strengthen the border, they can say, you know, whatever they want and talk about how we're strengthening, we're adding agents, but really the, the system is so fundamentally broken that without a ton of attention, resources in the way that

Trump was trying to, but could never really get the support in Congress, you're not going to fix this. It's such a big problem that it's going to take a ton of focus and support. And even just kind of ignoring it is allowing it to get worse because, I mean, you know, I think Biden has mostly ignored this issue. He hasn't done it. I mean, he's loosened some restrictions, but he's mostly ignored it because I think he wants to talk about other things. But even just ignoring it, it's gotten much, much worse. The Center Square's Texas correspondent this week talked to a border sheriff in a county in Texas. And they say that they've seen all kinds of activity that in recent weeks on the other side of the border,

on the Mexican side of the border, that has them concerned that there is going to be a massive flow of immigrants crossing the border after May 23rd when Title 42 enforcement ends. And he said they're trying to gear up for that. but they're nervous about it because they're getting no help from the federal government. Yeah, and this is, I mean, this is the other thing that makes this interesting, is this such a regional issue. If you live in Washington State, it's not clear how much this issue is really on the fort of your mind. But if you live in Texas or especially one of these border counties,

I mean, I can't imagine living in a county where you just have thousands of people coming in every day. Just, I mean, literally walking through. backpacks. And so I think, you know, that's, that is why Texas and, you know, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been really vocal on this too. He's pretty upset about people getting shipped to his state, too. So I don't know. Governor of Arizona. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see where this goes. It's definitely a story to watch. All right. Well, we'll be certainly keeping a close eye on that at the center square.com, but time to move on, Casey. New polling out this week shows Biden's approval ratings. Is it new lows? Tell us about this. Yeah, I think you'll be

surprised to learn that our 80-year-old president has lost some youth voters. No, so Biden's overall approval, according to Quinnipiac University, has dropped down to 33%. Now, that is very low. Other pollsters have them a little bit higher, but Quinnipiac is definitely reputable. And so it's pretty interesting. Data point. They have 76% of Democrats approve, but only 26% of independence. That's the real, the real kicker. I mean, only having 76% of your own party is not good, but having, you know, three out of four, you know, random independence on the street, not approving of you is pretty bad. And it's the time elections essentially. Right. Yes, yes, very often. You're a hardcore Democrat. You're going to vote Democrat. If you're a hardcore Republican,

You're going to vote Republican. It's the independence that swing elections. Of course, we're in a midterm election year where every member of Congress is up for election and control of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate is up. Yeah, that's right. And these are the kind of voters you can imagine who voted for Trump and then switched over and voted for Biden. You know, that kind of person who's up for grabs. You know, three out of four of them are not happy with Biden right now.

part of this Ukraine, 39% of Americans approve of Biden's handling of Ukraine while 48% disapproved. Now, interestingly, there's a few key demographics that Biden has really lost a lot of credibility with. And it's primarily young people and minority voters, Hispanic and black voters. So, you know. Who traditionally lean Democrat. Yes. Absolutely. And when you think about like how President Barack Obama was able to get big.

wins, you know, back-to-back wins, it was primarily through minority and young voters. That was really a big part of his coalition that helped put him over the top. And so, you know, in early on in Biden's presidency, he had big support with him. So for example, Gen Z and millennials were about 60% support for Biden at the beginning of his presidency. They've dropped down to 40%. So a 20-point loss with those demographics. And then if you look at, you see similar drop-offs with black and Hispanic voters. So, you know, if you look at Hispanic adults saw big drop. So early in Biden's term, he had 87% of black Americans. That's dropped down to 74% in the summer. And now it's down to 67%. So it's almost 20-point drop with black Americans. And then Hispanics have dropped from 73% down to 52%, which is a 21-point drop.

You know, these are the big demographics that Democrats need to wrap. up points with to overcome some of their losses in other demographics that you're going to see like rural voters and things like that. So this has got to be troubling for Biden. And as you said, the 22 midterms are right around the corner. And every indicator that I'm watching shows the Democrats are very worried. So what's driving this then? What's driving these low approval ratings? It's got to be the economy, right? The economy is really big. You know, Gallup has looked is a lot, another reputable poster. With these things, every voter's different.

Every voter has their own motives. But when you look at the trends, the economy is first and foremost in voters' minds. They are very upset about inflation. There's the problems with the job market, the price of gasoline. I mean, that's like, you know, the price that we've talked about this before, but the price of the gas pump is politics 101. You know, if gas prices are up more than usual. whoever's in office is going to get blamed for that, no matter what, no matter whose fault it is.

I mean, that's just kind of how it works. And then voters are actually still seem to really remember Afghanistan. And we're not happy with the way that Afghanistan was handled. It made it, you know, it made it in their minds look like we lost after, you know, 20 years. The way it was handled, it looked like a retreat. It didn't look like a handoff because we really ended up having to flee as people were being killed. It was very chaotic. And the country quickly disintegrated.

after. So it really looked like a retreat. So Americans, serving Americans, we're not happy about Afghanistan, but you're right. The economy is first and foremost. And I think we're going to talk more about inflation. But that is just the thing that's plaguing Biden, that every, you know, every month more inflation data comes out that shows record numbers and he just can't get away from it. Well, let's talk about inflation because there were two more reports tied to inflation that were released this week. The monthly consumer price index was one of, them what's what's going on there is there any relief coming does it look like or what uh no i mean yeah cheer up it's great uh happy tax day uh inflation getting worse uh this is the kind of positive

peppy news covers you come to the center square podcast for but you know um eventually i mean eventually inflation probably will level out i'm not a dooms day on this but it's not expected to stop this year. I'll say that. You referenced a big data point. There's actually two big data points that came out this month, really this week. The producer price index, which deals with more like raw materials, raw materials, wholesale stuff.

It rose 1.4% in March, which is high. We contributed to an 11.2% increase in prices in the last 12 months, which is extremely high. It's the highest on record. You know, inflation is supposed to rise at a level of 2 to 3% every year. That's kind of what's normal. And so to see prices go up 11.2%, and some of the inflation is really hidden. I mean, some of these numbers kind of undervalue, some of the inflation, but that's a really big metric. And then the consumer price index, which you reference, which is more what you see when you go to buy groceries, you know, what the consumers are purchasing.

that's risen 8.5% in the last 12 months. So these are very high numbers. A good way to understand these can seem kind of abstract, but one thing that helps is that what I mentioned, would you expect 2 to 3% inflation? So you compare it to that. The other thing to think about is like, how big of a raise did you get in the last 12 months?

Was it 11.2% or 8.5%? Probably not. So it's eating away at Americans wage gains. Even if you got a raise, you still probably lost money. And so you can imagine if your rent went up 8.5%, or just say 10% for easy math, if your rent went up 10%, what does that mean?

It probably will go up 10% for a lot of people. So these things add up. A lot of critics call it a hidden tax because in a way it is. The federal government spends more money. They print more money. They don't get blamed for politically for putting a new tax in place. But actually you are paying a tax because all these prices going up. you're only you're mostly paying that because of federal policy and federal spending so one way or another

you're getting taxed you kind of reap what you sow with with the economy you can't print more money without feeling the consequences and the Biden administration continues to try to blame particularly gas prices on Russia's invasion of Ukraine but as we know gas prices were rising well last year well before the February war started there. How's that working for them? Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. The gas prices have been rising. They've risen well over a full dollar national average in the last year.

And polling shows that voters mostly don't buy that. About 25% of voters think that gas prices, energy costs going up is because of Ukraine and the sanctions. But that argument, you know, they've coined this term Putin's price hike. Some of the more dutiful liberal media outlets are reporting. Voters aren't buying it. They don't have a majority that say this, but a plurality of voters say that it was Biden's economic policies that are responsible for gas prices. I think it's hard for people to really see why something happening in Ukraine could really raise my gas prices so much. And hey, weren't they going up already before all this Ukraine stuff?

And by the way, don't we have oil in America? Why don't we just drill that? You know, I think that's, that is the common thought process you're seeing. And it raises good points. I mean, there are, you know, a lot of Americans concerned about climate change. But I think what we see in politics time and time again is that the pocketbook trumps all. You know, you want to solve big problems in the country. But if you can't balance your budget because there's something happening in Washington,

that is not okay with voters. Of course, on President Biden's, you know, first. few days in office, he put into place policies via executive order that the U.S. oil companies said hampered their production, their domestic production, stop the keystone pipeline, ban new leases on federal lands for drilling of oil and gas, increased burden, tax burdens on oil and gas companies. And, of course, the oil and gas companies say it's those policies that are driving up gas prices. Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of blame shifting going on here, but you're right.

The oil companies are saying, hey, you know, this is, there's no secret that Biden has been hostile to our industry. That's what they say. And now you're seeing the effects of that. But these energy costs are also being passed on to small businesses. And a lot of, you know, small businesses are raising prices. They're having to, you know, they're feeling the pain of this. Some big companies can absorb more inflationary costs for long. longer. But even some of those big companies now, like Amazon, I think we may talk about Amazon

is raising prices, but small businesses are more pessimistic. They're seeing inflation is a big threat to their business and they're having to respond to it. Well, let's talk more about that because a new survey was released this week. You wrote about it at the centerscore.com, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, surveys its members regularly. And what did that survey find? Yeah, they found that inflation is the number one concern for small businesses. So it said 31% of owners reported that inflation was their biggest concern. That's an increase of five points from February. We also see that they are very clearly just saying they have to raise prices,

that they have no way of doing this. So without raising prices. So let's see, it says that 47% of owners also reported job openings that could not be filled. That's a big number. That's something that we've been reporting about a lot, how the stimulus payments, how the increased federal programs have disincentivized Americans from returning to work, especially after COVID when there was all the disruptions in the labor market. But, you know, it says price hikes were most frequent in wholesale,

so 84% wholesale saying they're going to raise prices. Retail sales, 77% going to increase. So seasonally adjusted, a net 50% of owners plan are planning price hikes, which is an increase from February. So across the board, businesses, small businesses are reporting a lot of issues. It's harder to find good workers because of some of the federal programs that have disrupted the labor market. And then inflation is causing to raise their prices with Americans having to pay more for everything else. You could see why if you were a small business owner, you'd be worried that if you raise your prices, people aren't going to keep buying or not keep buying at the same level.

And now even Amazon, which we reported on this week, has said they're going to, you know, charge third-party sellers and increase 5% upcharge. So a lot of, some people may not know how this works, but just quickly, you know, Amazon sells its own products on its website and you buy directly from them for sure. But a large percentage of what you buy on Amazon is actually a third party, someone who signs up to use the website, but they have their own inventory, their own brand, their own pricing, their own products, everything. And if, so, Dan, if you, you could actually do this thing called fulfillment by Amazon, anybody can do it. So if you wanted to sell your Beanie Baby collection, for instance, I know you have, I would never sell my Beanie Baby Clare you.

Right. So in this hypothetical Beanie Baby, you know, quote unquote hypothetical Beanie Baby scenario, let's say you add a thousand Beanie Babies. You want to open up a store. You can do fulfillment by Amazon, which is Amazon will hold your Beanie Babies in their warehouse. And then when someone buys from you, from, buys from, um, buys from your Amazon store, Amazon will actually ship it to them for you. Now, this makes things a lot easier for you because you don't have to box it up and ship it yourself, um, but you have to pay more for it. But now you're going to be paying a 5% upcharge. And the Amazon CEO explicitly said this is because of inflation and increased fuel cost.

So he's explicitly saying that. So that 5% increases, you know, presumably going to trickle down. So whenever you're buying something online, whenever you're going to the grocery store, you're going to see these inflationary and fuel costs baked in, even to the cost of your beanie baby. Right? I mean, anything, you may not think it's related to gas prices, but it costs more to ship that beanie baby, so it's going to be more expensive. You're just full of good news this week.

I know. If inflation ever gets so bad that I have to sell my Beanie Baby collection, we know times are tough. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's right. I sold mine already. So that tells you, tells you a lot. Then I don't need to give you a pay raise.

That's good to know. Oh, right. All right, Casey. Thanks for the insight this week, but we are out of time. For those of you listening, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at Americastalking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe.

There is no cost. That's America's talking.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKalb. We'll talk to you next week.