America's Talking - Episode 49: Quarter of Americans will delay retirement because of inflation, survey says

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss: Gas prices jump in leaps and bounds, setting another new record. Quarter of Americans will delay retirement because of inflation, survey says. New Biden administration rule will tie federal education funding to LGBT mandates. Debate over arming teachers resurfaces after shootings. Air Force service members sue over COVID vaccine 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.

Man, what's happening is your bank account is steadily dwindling down. I mean, the advice is if you need gas, get it today because tomorrow, who knows how expensive it'll be. Welcome to America in Focus. I'm Cole McNeely General Manager of America's Talking Network. If you have not already, we ask you hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes of American Focus. Now here's your host, Dan McAlibe.

Thank you, Cole. And welcome to the America In Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAaleb, executive editor of the Center Square New Wire Service. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can find all of the Center Square's great podcasts at America's Talking.com. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, we are recording this on Friday, June 3rd. And yet again, today, as it's been the case every day this week, gas prices spiked overnight.

You wrote a quick story on it before production of this podcast. What's happening? Man, what's happening is your bank account is steadily dwindling down. I mean, the advice is, if you need gas, get it today because tomorrow, who knows how expensive it'll be. It's been really interesting. If you look at the history of, you know, gas price peaks, they usually will hit a peak and then quickly draw back down. And so you may see seasons of elevated gas prices, but these records are few and far between. You hit a record and you'll go back down.

But what we've seen that's been really unusual about these gas prices, you see. record after record after record after record. In May, you know, we had, you know, record gas price days, you know, more than well over a dozen days just in May alone. And then this week, we've had gas price new record Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And then we wake up this morning and gas prices have risen another four cents nationwide. So we're hitting another record there. I mean, all 50 states are well over $4 per gallon, even big oil producing states where the prices are much lower. My home state of Texas, $4 a gallon. And, and, and, you know, all 50 states. is, or, you know, what they're seeing well over $4 a gallon is very unusual. So there are several

states that are seeing over $5. And of course, California is over $6 per gallon. So everybody is seeing much higher prices. The national average is taking closer and closer to $5 per gallon, which will be a big kind of a big marker, mile marker, and also probably a big political headache for Biden if it does reach that national average of $5 per gallon. Yeah, just looking around AAA's map in California, of course, where it's been the highest for a long time, 625 a gallon. Where I'm at, Illinois is a bit of an outlier in the Midwest, 532 a gallon. I've got my two college-age kids home from school for the summer,

and I'm telling them, hey, you want to go out and about, you're paying for your own gasoline. I mean, some other states, Washington, 531 a gallon, Oregon, 532 a gallon. Just crazy. The question on most people's minds is, when is it going to end? Is it going to end? Are we ever going to see these come back to normal prices? Yeah, that is the question. And I think the tentative answer right now is nobody knows.

You know, the experts I talk to, and we've been reporting on this for months, and it really anticipated these price increases. We were writing on the cindersquare.com months ago that gas prices and energy prices would continue to increase this summer and this year. So I think at least for the summer we're going to see higher prices. We may not see quite the same level of records, but we may actually see those records continue to go up. But we're going to see elevated prices this summer likely beyond that.

There are a few factors. you know, it's one of the big factors is Biden's energy policies, but that also seems the most static. I don't think he's going to, you know, change his ways. It's unlikely that he's going to make a big policy change in the next few months to allow more drilling, more leases. And then, of course, the situation in Ukraine is a big factor in this as well. The oil supply is diminished because of bans on Russian oil. First, the U.S. banned Russian oil, which was just was not, you know, it's like a, a, about a little less than 10% of U.S. oil is coming from Russia.

So it's not major, but it's enough to raise the prices. But now that the EU has largely cut off their supply of Russian oil, it means that the EU and the U.S. are taking from the same pot. So that combination of Biden discouraging the domestic oil production, and then we're cutting off our foreign oil production. The prices can only go up. And obviously, you mentioned it's impacting consumers in a big way. And it's not just the price of gasoline that's going up.

It's, you know, diesel fuel is also at record highs. Diesel is what, you know, truck drivers use to transport food and other consumer goods across the country. We're seeing 40-year high inflation. The cost of everything from eggs and milk to meat products is up significantly. How can consumers handle this? Yeah, I mean, that's the big question. And we've written about this a lot.

on our site, but I will add on that there's, you know, there's other factors that are really compounding on this. Of course, you pointed out that gas prices, you know, if you're driving eggs to market, then it's going to cost a little bit more because gas prices are higher. But there's other things, you know, avian flu has really hit egg prices. You know, we talked to last week about how egg prices have risen so much, but they're also experiencing a lot of issues with avian flu, which has raised those prices. But regardless, all food, you go to the grocery store, everything is more expensive. Some things are a little bit more expensive than others because of different factors, but everything's more expensive.

And Americans are having to make hard choices. You know, energy prices are up 30% in the last 12 months. Food prices are up nearly 10%. You know, we can maybe get in more into this later, but we wrote this week about how many Americans are having to delay retirement. We wrote, you know, last week about how they're canceling their vacation plans. They're deciding to not put their kids in summer camp. And I'll just add that this disproportionately hurts poor Americans. The less money you make, the more you're impacted by inflation.

So if you live in California and you're making minimum wage, I mean, and if you have a long commute, it may cost you your first two hours of work just to cover your gas costs, right? So when you're seeing gas prices that are well over $6, I mean, that's wild. that we use some of these states that have five or four, well over four, nearly $5 gas prices, their minimum wage is less than twice that much. So it can cost you 30 minutes of work just to drive to work for a lot of people. And so this is hitting Americans hard. They're having to make choices. They're thinking about, is this affecting my retirement? Is this affecting summer vacation? And it's not pretty. It's all bad news. And I don't think it's any in the short term looking more

optimistic. Right. And we've talked too before about, you know, there's a worker shortage across the country. Small businesses are having a hard time filling jobs. And you have to wonder, you mentioned minimum wage workers. You have to wonder if the high cost of gasoline, why go to work when you're spending half your paycheck just to get to work and back home from work? That can't certainly can't help that situation. Let's talk about this survey briefly that you referenced about Americans are saying they have to push back their retirement or are making tougher decisions on whether to send their kids to summer camp, things like that.

Tell us about that survey. Yeah, it's a really interesting, really puts a point on what is often just kind of a lofty inflation discussion. But the BMO Real Financial Progress Index, which is a quarterly survey for BMO and Ipsis, It showed that about 25% of Americans will likely need to delay their retirement because of higher prices. So, you know, setting aside how the stock market may be affecting it, just it's going to take more money every month to keep your, you know, to pay your expenses. And if you project that out over five or 10 years, it can really add up. So the survey found that about 60% of those surveyed said inflation has negatively affected their personal finances.

and about a quarter of them said they felt a major impact. So 36% have reduced their savings and 21% have reduced their retirement savings. And the survey found that like I said, 25% will have to delay their retirement. So, you know, again, this is hurting poor or younger Americans. The hardest about well over 60% or over 60% ages 18 to 34 have had to cut their contributions to savings. And so I think this is interesting. Obviously, it's really interesting for those looking to retire in the next few years. But, you know, we've been asking the question every week.

How is this impacting Americans when they're having to make these hard financial decisions? And it seems like the places they're cutting are savings in retirement more than anywhere. You know, there are considerations about cutting vacations and, you know, over a third of Americans say they're driving less because of gas prices. but those are kind of short-term budget tightening, the more long-term personal financially impacting things, are they're cutting their savings, they're cutting what they're putting in retirement, which is going to have effects for them, for them down the road. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's obviously sad, but it makes sense if you, for example, put 10% of your income aside into for a 401k retirement account or whatever retirement savings program you're in, but you're having a hard time paying up paying your monthly bills, yeah, you're going to reduce that 10% because you've got to live now, right? Certainly that's going to have long-term impacts for a number of people.

Well, let's move on, though, Casey. As I mentioned, we're recording this on Friday, June 3rd, on Thursday night, last night. President Biden delivered a speech from the White House in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Duvalde, Texas and Tulsa, Oklahoma, calling on Congress to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Of course, Second Amendment rights supporters are pushing back about that. Tell us more. Yeah, forgive me if you can hear this mower out here. This guy's probably spending $100 an hour to put gasoline in this lawnmower for our listeners to hear the great background. But this gun rights issue has been really thrust at the forefront by these tragic shootings.

And before we discussed the political ramifications you could have, just like last week, my prayers still go out for these guys. While the new cycle may move on, these families are going to be, you know, dealing with this for a lifetime. So there are political implications, but we don't want to breeze by the human impact here. But as you pointed out, Dan, you know, Biden has really doubled down on this call for, for banning assault weapons. First, Kamala Harris, his vice president, called for it. He gave kind of a vague, you know, a vague talk about how certain weapons are bad and shouldn't

be able to shoot a certain number of rounds, but he didn't give anything specific. It raised a lot of eyebrows. And now he's called for this ban on assault weapons. I think it's interesting that he waited so long. I think he's lost some political momentum. You know, he could have given it a day or two out of respect for the families. But I think in some ways, just as, you know, looking at it. trying to look at this objectively. He's lost some political momentum because in some ways the

new cycle moved on. People are talking about inflation again. The jobs report, different things. There's still political capital behind doing something on guns for many Democrats. But I think this was kind of rolled out in an odd way because Kamala Harris came out really strong. And then nothing happened. And then the president said the same thing, but several days later. And so it's interesting because so far up until this point, Biden has really been pretty meek on gun control. He said, you know, he made some big statements, but when he actually rolls out his plans, new White House plans, I've looked them over. And they don't come anywhere close to doing some of the stronger rhetoric we're seeing now. So he's amped up his energy.

But just looking at Congress, I don't think there's enough political will to pass major reforms right now. you know, we'll see. But this is every, every sphere of the gun control rate, and, you know, we wrote up this week about arming teachers, but being re-energized. And I know that it also varies by different states, that they have a different say in this. So it's definitely an issue to watch.

But I just don't think right now they have enough to get over the finish line unless something changes. Right, that would be up to Congress. Well, let's talk briefly about this momentum for arming teachers. at least in some states. Right. You wrote about this this week. Our Ohio reporter wrote about what's going on in Ohio.

Our Texas reporter wrote about what's going on in Texas with this drive to allow teachers to get training so they can carry guns in schools. Tell us a little bit more about that. What we're seeing here, I think, are Republicans trying to be really creative and how to address this, problem because, you know, by and large, most of them don't want to pass, you know, strict gun control measures, which many Democrats are pushing for. So they're trying to come with creative ways to address this problem without just banning assault weapons or banning certain types of guns outright, you know, infringing on the Second Amendment. So we're seeing things like this. In Ohio, the Senate passed a bill that had already passed the House, which would

significantly reduce the number of hours of training that a teacher needs, really just lower the hurdle. It was going to be like 700 hours of training. And now it's just going to be like an initial 24 hours, you know, something more manageable for teachers to go and be able to carry a gun on a school grounds. So you might think, hey, it's illegal to carry. You know, we've all seen the signs when you drive on school campuses. There's no firearms permitted. But actually, federal law allows pretty big loopholes for states. You know, guns are generally forbidden on K-12 school grounds. But actually, states have the exception is that, um, if you have a state issued permit, you can carry a gun.

And so it's really up to states and who can carry guns on school grounds. And then even then, those states often defer to school districts. So while you may think there's just a federal ban, you can never bring a gun on campus. It's actually not the case. It's usually up to school districts and more conservative states or even more lenient. So there's talk about arming teachers. You know, a new poll came out that found that there actually is just among Americans that 57.5% of American voters that were surveyed in this Convention of State action on with the Trafalgar group,

found that 57.5% of surveyed American voters think that keeping teachers from, you know, being properly trained and armed in schools will actually make them less safe, which is higher than polling we've seen in recent years. Now, in 2019, there was a poll that found from Gallup that found that most teachers oppose the idea. but there seems to be maybe it's because of these recent shootings. I'm not sure, but there seems to be a resurgence in saying, hey, maybe this is a good idea. And, you know, Dan, you can maybe talk a little bit about this, but a big reason that this is also being fueled is the response time of the Evaldi police and how, you know, a lot of people were, you know, being critical and saying,

you know, it took over an hour for the police to actually take down this shooter. and maybe a teacher could have done it faster. Right, right. And actually it ended up not even being local police taking out the shooter. It ended up being some off-duty border patrol agents who are dispatched. These are tough issues, tough conversations. I'm not sure how I feel about the arming teachers. Of course, when you get into banning, you know, if Congress would take the step to ban assault weapons,

what do you do? I mean, do you confiscate people's weapons, people who already purses? purchased assault rifles and already owned them. That's a slippery slope there. Right. And the most, I mean, the most common Second Amendment argument is,

do you really think someone who is willing, who has the state of mind that is willing to go and shoot up a school is going to be worried about some federal regulation about guns and being, you know, I mean, if you're the kind of person who's willing to commit a mass shooting, you're also the kind of person who's willing to break some federal gun laws. And so would it actually even do anything? you know, or is it just going to keep it out of the hands of normal law by Americans?

You know, the only person who the law is going to affect are people who obey the law. I'm just bringing it back to the victims and the victims families. As you said, thank you for saying it. You know, our hearts and prayers go out to the survivors, and this will be with them forever. But let's close out this segment thinking about them. All right, moving on, Casey. a new Biden administration rule would tie

federal education funding to LGBT mandates. Some states aren't happy about that, but tell us about this new Biden administration rule. Yeah, I know you worked on a story a little bit with a state lawsuit on this. I'd love to hear more about. But as you said, so there's this new Biden administration rule, which will

basically say, there's multiple agencies and it's kind of technical and Title IX and all but the long and the short of it is Biden, the Biden administration has said, if you don't put in place certain rules on things like transgender athletes, you know, allowing trans students to use the bathroom. They choose, maybe even adhering to the pronoun of their choice, you can actually lose federal funding for different things. So the ways that K through 12 schools are funded are kind of diverse, but a good example is lunch programs. if kids are, you know, getting assistance for their lunch. You know, poorer kids who get free or reduced lunch may get federal funds for that.

Of course, there's a range of federal programs. This would also apply to universities and colleges and not just direct funding, but even if your students take, you know, FAFSA or Pell grants, then if you have a student who takes Pell Grant, come to your school, then you would have to adhere to these new federal mandates. The way it works is they reinterpret, they would change the interpretation of Title IX, which is a non-discrimination clause that's tied to federal education funding. And Title IX originally had banned discrimination based on sex. And they would redefine the discrimination based on sex to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And so

there's been, if you've been following this issue, there's been a lot of debates and controversy and state by state, there's been battles over bathrooms and controversy over, you know, Leah Thomas, who is the most recent, you know, transathlet who go from competing against men at kind of an average level, started competing against women and won, right, pretty quickly. And so that was really controversial. But all these have been playing out kind of a state level. And now suddenly, it's quickly risen to a federal level. And it's kind of make schools have to choose between federal funding or fighting these mandates. I really, my projection is that almost all schools would probably just came in because

they can't give up the federal money or they don't want to give up the federal money or there'll be too much pressure not politically to not give up the federal money. But if they do this and the Biden administration goes through with it, which it seems like they almost certainly will this summer, then it's going to set up the core battles. And those are going to come, you know, fast and hard. And actually, we wrote about that, Dan, if you want to go. Yeah, so South Dakota governor, Christy Noem has already threatened a lawsuit over it. Essentially what she said was the Biden administration would be holding, you know, children hostage to push what she calls their agenda.

one of her quotes is Joe Biden is holding lunch money for poor Americans hostage in pursuit of his radical agenda South Dakota earlier this year banned transgender women biological males who are transgender women from competing

in girls and women's sports and that's the kind of thing we're talking about that the Biden administration would withhold federal funding from states to do something like that. So there's definitely going to be legal challenges to this if it goes forward. And South Dakota is the one we wrote about this week. I'm sure there are other states who are planning similar type lawsuits. In fact, as we've seen, you know, with these COVID mandates, states group together and

filing multi-state lawsuits against the Biden administration. That's probably likely. Right. And, you know, we don't really usually write about, like, LGBT issues or kind of some of these social issues very much at the center square.com. But this one's particularly interesting because it hits on two themes we do cover a lot, which is federal funding to, you know, to the states. And that's what's at hand here, federal education department dollars into the billions of dollars going to states being threatened. And then kind of federal rights versus local and state's rights. And so that has been a big theme of the Biden administration where he has served a federal level of authority.

And then the states have pushed back. And then there's been some kind of legal battle. So we saw it with all the COVID mandates. We saw this like you referenced. We saw it with the eviction moratorium. Biden just issued that you can't evict people in states. We're like, wait a minute, you can't just tell us we can't evict people. So there's a big legal challenge over that.

And then Biden lost that one. And so I think we're going to see that here. So this is a theme so far of the. the Biden administration, he pushes the envelope as far as, you know, federal power or federal, authority over the states, and then the states challenge it. So I think we're going to see that here. I'm really, it's really unclear how this is going to end up. Even Roe v. Wade is a similar thing. It's states versus a federal government. The federal government has a one-size-fits-all rule on abortion. And if Roe v. Wade is overturned, then it will send it back to the states.

And state by state, they will determine their own abortion laws. So this is, I do think this interesting theme. We'll be covering this story at the the center square.com. So, you know, keep up with that for updates. Right. And on the legal challenges front, we have time for one more story just about a minute or so. On Casey, you also wrote this week about Air Force service members suing the federal government over their COVID-19 vaccine mandate. For months and months, we've been talking about Navy SEALs who also filed a suit against the administration. Now, Air Force service members are suing? Several military members have kind of joined together from airmen, really, from the Air Force,

have joined together in this lawsuit. They're suing the head of the Air Force and the Department of Defense. And their basic argument is similar, as you said, to what the Navy SEALs have argued, which is, hey, we applied for these religious exemptions to the COVID vaccine mandate, and almost none of us have gotten, you know, have been, given exemptions, which we would argue when there's so few exemptions, it means that you actually have no interest in giving exemptions. You're not even really taking our concerns seriously. You're just denying us outright. The Navy SEALs argued that and actually won a pretty big

victory. The case is not over, but they've got a Navy-wide injunction. So even though their case was just for them, the court order that the Navy as a whole cannot take action against people on this issue, which is a big victory for the seals. And so maybe that's what emboldened these airmen, but they're filing a similar lawsuit. You know, just read these statistics off to close out to give you some perspective. But 97% of service members in the Air Force are fully vaccinated. When it comes to, you know, okay, how many people are getting their exemption? 6,113 are about there and were denied their religious exemption. And only 68 were granted. So that kind of gives you an idea of the percentages.

They're saying, hey, that's not enough. You have to give more exemptions. And it's unfair that you're making this get this vaccine. So, you know, what we follow in this case, too, it's not nearly as far long as the Navy Seals case. But the Navy Seals case did give a lot of hope to, you know, groups like these airmen. So it'll be interesting to watch.

Thank you for that, Casey. But that's all the time we have this week. For our listeners, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America in Focus podcast, the Casey's Lawnmower Edition. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAlebe. We'll talk to you next week.