America's Talking - Episode 51: Democrats face 'greater-than-average loss of seats' in November

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

Join The Center Square's D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper and America's Talking Network's General Manager Cole McNeely as they discuss: Record high diesel prices threaten domino effect to other goods, Federal Reserve announces interest rate hike, White House faces questions on Biden's mental fitness, 2024 plans, Democrats face 'greater-than-average loss of seats' in November, report says, & Producer prices spike 10.8% in past year as inflation soars. 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.

You may have seen the press secretary. I interview with Don Lemon on Monday. Don Lemon just straight up asked, does the president have the stamina to continue to think to continue on even after 2024? And the press secretary, she got kind of frustrated. Welcome to America and 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 McKalep. Wait, I'm not Dan McNeely. I'm Cole McNeely filming for Dan McAlead this week on America and Focus. America in Focus is powered by the Center Square and a production of America's Talking Network. Go check out all of our great podcasts at AmericasTalking.com. Joining me today, as he does usually Dan on this podcast, is the Center Square's DC Bureau Chief.

Casey Harper, Casey, how you doing today, my friend? Doing well, Cole. How are you? Oh, I'm doing fine. Anytime I get the opportunity. to speak with you. It makes my day better because it makes me feel better about myself. Does that make sense? Yeah, if I had a nickel, coal, I could pay off the federal debt and that's saying something. If you had a nickel? If I had a nickel for every time I heard it. Is the economy hitting you

that hard? The economy is hitting us all a hard, coal. Hey, speak. Let's not be insensitive about the sufferings of our fellow Americans. Hey, that's a great segue. Thanks. You know, we're obviously going to talk about the economy a lot today on America and focus. Things not looking great on several fronts. One thing that Dan McAulb loves to talk about, and I will do my best to give this subject matter, the amount of focus it needs on this. Not hockey, believe it. Cleveland Browns. No. It's gas prices. And gas prices, I think that's felt by every American. But in particular, It has these extrapolating impacts, especially something like diesel gas prices. Casey, what's going on there?

Yeah, Cole, I'm sure you've noticed that your midnight Taco Bell runs have become increasingly expensive from the record high gas prices. Probably the extra three tulipas. Yeah, that'll do it. American Focus brought to you by Taco Bell. No, I'm just kidding. Hey, let's do it. Hey, reach out. Reach out.

Reach out. Yeah, you know, we'll cut a deal. I think a lot of people have paid attention to the regular unleaded gas prices, which have gone up around here, you know, or I'm in D.C. They're well over $5. You know, I went and got gas and wasn't on empty, but still cost me 90 bucks. And so that's, you know, been tough getting used to. But in those, you know, we've hit records this week as well. But there haven't, there was a couple days this week where we didn't hit a record. But what did hit records was diesel gas prices, which I think has gotten less attention. Diesel gas prices arguably are more important because

just about everything in the country is transported on diesel trucks from one place to another. We talk a lot about the ships and the supply chains and the shipyards being crowded or blocked, but all that stuff gets put on diesel trucks and taking all over the country. And diesel gas prices hit another record high this week. If it keeps going at this rate, we could hit $6 per gallon for diesel gasoline, which is also a truck driver shortage right now. So they're having a trucker's more. They're having trouble getting truckers.

They're paying way more for gas. So if you're a business trying to move a lot of goods and goods around the country, you are feeling that pain. And if these prices stay high, you know, I've talked to a lot of experts. And they say this has to be passed down to consumers. I mean, we can get into more of like what this looks like practically. But I think food is a very big one to watch everything. All the, you know, all the equipment that farmers use.

So much of it is. diesel powered. We see that things like, you know, fertilizer is going to be transported on diesel trucks at times. And this is all going to compound. And food prices have risen, you know, over 10% in the last year. Aside from energy, you know, food is the one of the fastest rising, you know, food, you use cars and energy, like some of the fastest rising, you know, prices in the last year. And you can't get away from any of those things. You can't not use energy. You can't not have a car of most people and you can't not buy food. So it seems the most essential things are being hit the hardest. In this story on the CenterSquare.com just digs into how these diesel gas prices are

making goods more expensive and what will probably how they will make goods more expensive for months to come. Because so much of the costs we're seeing now for the farmers have not even been felt in the in the supermarkets and the grocery stores because we're still eating in many ways last, you know, the last harvest. But the diesel cast prices that are high right now are being baked into the costs of food that being, you know, planted and harvested right now when it is harvested and finally makes it to the grocery stores. There will be a lagging impacts, which means this may not be going away for a while ago. Well, and it's a pretty intuitive business thought too, right? So my family was in the public transportation industry for a long time. When you saw gas prices spike,

you raised your base price for your customers because that was something that you couldn't control for your business. That was something that was outside of your control, but affected your day-to-day operations. Exact same thing. I think if this is what you're getting at, exact same thing with transporting vegetables, supplies, merchandise of any sort, really. It's just the cost of getting it there is going to be double maybe what it was previously. I mean, that's kind of where we're at, right? Yeah, chalupa shells in particular. Yeah, I mean, they're so dense, heavy.

Right, right. They might price me out at Taco Bell. They might price you out of Taco Bell, but you mentioned prices doubling. So the diesel gas prices this time last year was $3.22. Right. So we've added, you know, about $2.50 since then. And, you know, there's been people saying it that it's going to start going down now. We'll see.

They might dip momentarily. We've seen them hit record high, so dip, then go back up. There's no way to really know, you know, you can look at the oil markets and all that, but most of it's just projecting. What we do know is we've seen steady inflation, steady high prices. The inflation, the wholesale, you know, producer prices, which let's go into that then, case. Sure point.

So we did see this 10.8% spike in the past year in producer prices. Right. This is more like the Xantham gum that goes in your Chalupa than any final product. but this I don't even know there's xanthum gum. I feel like xanthum gum is in everything. 10.8% spike is a lot. I mean, if you don't have a lot of context for these numbers,

it is much more than normal, right? And it was, it rose 0.8% in May, the producer price index. So, you know, gasoline is part of that. It rose 8.4% in the last year that the index did. So, you know,

we've seen those record high prices. I think that I also look, the food on energy index increased 1.2% and 3.9% respectively the month of May alone. Those numbers seem small because it's one and three, but almost 4% increase in any good in one month is very high. And that's what we saw in energy, a 4% increase. I mean, if that happened every month,

it'd be like a 50% increase a year, right? And any of us got a 50% raise. We'd be very happy, but of course we're not. So 50% increase in energy is the pace we're on every year. So it's unsustainable for sure. But these producer prices really echo what we saw with consumer prices last week, which is the highest in decades. We don't have to get into all the technicals of the difference. I mean, I think some of it speaks for itself just in the names.

Consumers are like more what your consumers purchasing at retail at grocery stores when they about their daily lives and producers. Of course, more producers and business people, what they're dealing with. But either way, no, either end of the economy, it's getting higher. So, you know, I feel we talk about this, you know, almost every week on the podcast, but it is the issue. We cover taxpayer issues. And in my mind, you know, inflation is a hidden tax on regular people that is at least partially, not totally, but partially a result of federal debt spending policies. It's just something to keep in mind next time a politician, you know, Republican or Democrat proposes another trillion dollars in debt. And you think, well, it's a lot of money. or just, you know, our deficits already 30 trillion. What's another trillion? It's like, well, you end up paying for it in different ways. And inflation is a way that we end up, you know, paying the price for that debt spending.

The bill eventually comes due. That's what you're saying. Exactly. Yeah. Well, hey, and we'll keep, we'll keep chugging along on this train of optimism we have going here. Can it be a trolley, a trolley of optimism? A trolley?

Okay. It can be a trolley of optimism. Is that the public transportation your family was in? The trial or in the troll business. Okay. We're not. Unfortunately, that would be much more interesting. duck paddling? Was it the duck paddling?

No, no, no. It was not. We weren't up in the Wisconsin Dells or anything like that. That's what you're getting to, even if you know what I'm getting that. I don't know, but I'm here for you. Classic Southerner. So anyway, let's keep on on our next trolley stop of the U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve has announced a pretty

significant interest rate hike. Go Casey Harper. That's called a lead end. That's where you're supposed to jump in. The best lead-ins are when you stop mid-sentence and just a actual state mail. And you're supposed to say, yeah, they did, Cole. Yeah. They increased it by 0.75, right?

Yeah. Yeah, they did cool. They increased it by 0.75, actually. Who's the journalist here? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. So, this, you know, again, this number, this is another example of a number that sounds small, 0.75 percentage point, but it's actually really high.

they announced this rate hike, they being the Federal Reserve, announced this rate hike on Wednesday, and it's actually the largest rate increase since 1994. The Fed has been pretty clear that this is going to be one of several rate hikes. So, you know, I mean, earlier in the year, they had said you'd be like five or six rate hikes. Now, this rate hike was bigger than was expected. I would talk to a lot of experts and analysts about this, and they're pretty upset with the Federal Reserve. I mean, the Fed isn't to blame for all the inflation necessarily, but for what I've heard, you know, they're, they are saying that the Federal Reserve should have raised these rates last fall

at a more modest pace. But they didn't. They kind of slept on it. And now it's kind of almost too late now or there were so much, you know, we're so behind at this point that they had to do a much higher rate, you know, rate hikes and may have been desirable. Why are they doing this, Casey? I mean, this is, let's get to the to the why here. That's a great question. So it is pretty complicated, but the simplest way to think about it is that raising federal reserve interest rates lowers inflation. That's the common thinking about it. It has bad consequences in other ways. Mortgages are going to be more expensive, things like that. But raising interest rates is a way that the federal reserve is able to pull that inflation number down. And so when the economy,

the way they do is, it's their way of one way of manipulating the economy. When the economy is doing bad, the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates, which makes the economy do better, but it raises inflation. But then when inflation gets too high, they have to say, all right, we need to lower inflation, but it's going to come at a cost to the economy. So that's like the simplest way I can put it. But the fear is now that they've allowed so much inflation to happen. And it's gotten such steam that these rate hikes may not be enough to actually lower the inflation enough for what we need. And at the same time, we're still going to feel the negative economic effects.

And most people are, their most economists say a recession is more likely than not at this point. And probably in 2023. I mean, that's at least what I've seen from experts on this. Interest rates hikes, I think they've gotten up, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're in the mid-sixes now. Is that correct? For mortgages, yeah. Yeah, for mortgages, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this is going to be, we'll see, it's going to be interesting to see how these go.

because obviously historically, that's not an abnormally high number. It's just more of a shell shock jump because typically I think they increase these at 0.5 increments, right? Yeah, they could do. I mean, they said 0.25 earlier this year. And they suddenly came out with a 0.75. But when they've done bigger ones in the past, they've done over two. But so much of, you know, the market is just a predictability and knowing what the Fed's going to do and being able to, I don't know, have a sense of stability in the market and feel like even trust of the feds doing the right thing, if the government's doing the right thing. But I think

they've eroded a little bit of that trust and that confidence with how they've handled this. Hey, well, all I can say is I know where my sense of trust and stability is for DC-based news sources. And that's from Casey Harper. Wow, thanks, Cole McNeillian. We're going to keep up with that story at the social dot com. Check out Casey, right? I mean, there you go. You appreciate that plug, buddy. I do appreciate that. Tip the trolley driver, I guess. That's right. Okay, as we keep going on our optimism train on the trolley. Next stop, obviously the economy has an impact on the political landscape. That's pretty common sense. I think President Clinton said, you know, it's the economy stupid. That's going to have an impact on the midterm elections coming up in 2022, not looking

great for the sitting White House party, the Democrats. Yes, the incumbent Democratic Party is facing a lot of trouble November. Now, it's kind of conventional. wisdom that the incumbent party often takes congressional losses in the midterm election. So we saw this when President Barack Obama, halfway through his first term, was the rise of the Tea Party. And he took major losses in the House. And, you know, that was a Tea Party. And then when Trump was elected, he, you know, took major losses halfway through his first term. And so there is kind of this almost political cadence where whoever's in the White House, their first term midterms are not pretty. It's often a referendum. Anything that bad that is happening in the economy and the nation

gets pinned on that party. I think there's a lot of people who kind of thought about voting but didn't vote or didn't make it to the polls in the last election. And they kind of kicking themselves. So like, oh, I need to go vote this time because it's sort of my fault that we have the president or party in charge that I don't like. So you do see this pendulum swing. And now it's time for it to swing against Democrats, you know, is what you'd expect. It'll be. But what Gallup and other survey data is suggesting is that that swing is actually going to be more than what we've seen in the past. And so Gallup released survey data this week that showed, quote, the current Democratic congressional majority is facing an extremely unfavorable environment.

And they went on to say that predict a greater than average loss of seats for the Democratic Party this fall. So this survey data came from like early to mid-May. of this month. And I'll just go through some quick numbers that are pretty interesting. 41% of Americans approve of the job Biden's doing. Only 18% approve of Congress. 16% are satisfied with how things are going in the U.S. That's pretty low. 32% of point deficit in positive versus negative when it comes to the economy. So people are really negative on the economy. Only 16% think we're going the right direction. So you think, okay, these numbers are bad, but I already knew that.

But this is what's interesting. Each of those metrics is at least 10 points lower than the historical average at the time of past midterm elections. It's to be the worst of such reading. So it's not just that Biden is getting a referendum potentially because of that's what happens to incumbent parties. It's not just that the economy is bad. It's that the American people's perception is that the economy is so bad. the way they perceive the economy could be like an all-time low. And so that's the kind of thing.

It is still early heading in November, but that's the kind of thing that sets you up for the quote-unquote red wave that we've heard so much about, you know, whether or not that happens. There's still a lot of things that can happen between now and November. But if you are a Democrat, especially a House Democrat who is just, you know,

trying to run in a moderate district and doesn't have much control over the economy, you're feeling pretty nervous, right about now. Yeah, and in Casey, I'm going to pull back the curtain here a little bit. Prep for these shows, right? We have these things lined out. I'm going to move the last story we're going to talk about. I think it works better here. There has been talk about the Democrats getting hit pretty hard in midterms, but President Biden has been taken shots predictably from the right on the country, but even from the left in his own party about questioning if he's going to

run again in 2024. I know Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, notably did not commit to supporting President Biden again in 2024. There's some strife internally in the Democratic Party right now looking beyond these midterm elections, probably looking at exactly the stats you just lined out about, hey, we are doing worse than typical. Yeah, it is not good. And it plays into this story of reference. One of the biggest questions about, you know, President Biden, is he there, you know,

mentally? I mean, he seems a lot nicer than Trump. He seems more soft-spoken, which is something. a lot of people wanted. Maybe he's more predictable. Maybe he won't say crazy things on the world stage. I think that was a lot of the appeal of him. But I think there's always been a question about, you know, his competence because of his age, because there's been so many viral moments where he just lost his sentence midway through where he, you know, used the wrong name or stuttered, you know, so much that it came to cream across in a bad way. And so he's been fighting this thing. So what you can't have is

hard data to back up what people's sneaking suspicions or the or hard data to back up your opponents on the campaign trail and what they've been saying is Biden's not there he's not competent mentally the two narratives are kind of meeting right now is the really bad economy and is Biden all there and they're starting to overlap especially with Biden so insistently saying that the economy is doing well he's he's acknowledged some of the pain that Americans are are facing but he's really consistently said no the economy's doing great it's doing great. And I think it just kind of feeds into that out of touch,

like the kind of the old grandpa who's lost it a little bit and is maybe asleep at the wheel. Those are the kind of things you're hearing from his critics. And I think this data is playing to that. And so our intern, who's great, shout out to Richie, doing a great job. He wrote a story this week about some tough questions Biden got on that. And you may have seen the president had interview with Don Lemon on Monday

and actually the press secretary. Don Lemon did straight up ask, does the president have the stamina to, you know, continue to think to continue on even after 2024? And the press secretary, she got kind of like frustrated and kind of this, just aghast at the question. Dawn, you're asking me this question? Oh, my gosh, he's the president of the United States. That's not even a question that we should be asking. But even, you know, CNN hosts who, you know, into the left or lean to your party are asking these questions, it's, it's become unavoidable because economy's not looking good.

Biden's kind of flubs and viral, you know, moments, embarrassing moments are still just coming in at a steady clip. And so it all feeds into that, you know, over-exaggerated pendulum swing against Democrats in November that so many people are projecting. Yeah. And notably, you know, President Biden, not the first president to, I'm going to say have the age card played against him. Obviously, President Reagan faced this similar, you know, idea in 1984 about. his age and fitness, you know, economy in a much different position. And so Reagan had a classic. I mean, this is anybody that's interested in history of presidential debates. He was debating Walter Mondale. And the question was about Reagan's fitness and are you too old to be president. And he said, well, I'm not going to use my opponent's youth and inexperience against him or something

like that. Right. Right. Yeah. A pretty good line. And that, you know, it seemed to settle some concerns. And this is always a tough time, I think, for any first-term president when you're coming up on these mid-term. But with the economy, just where it's at coming out of the COVID pandemic, they pumped, I mean, a bunch of money was pumped it to the economy. This was common. It's just a matter of who was going to be at the wheel when it's coming. And unfortunately, I don't think for his sake, when I say, unfortunately, I don't think President Biden has quite the charisma to bat that off. I mean, he was never known as a smooth-talking, charismatic guy. He's no cold.

I would agree with you. It's really hard to hide in the age of social media. You know, Reagan could just put on a good faith, drink a Red Bull before going on stage, probably. And Biden has had some pretty good debate performances, actually, in the campaign against Trump. But in the age of social media, these daily press conferences or talking reporters on TV on the way to the helicopter, you can't hide in a way that, you know, decades of our president would have been able to do. So that maybe we've had many presidents in this state, you know, but. Well, and, you know, I think president. too, and this has been both parties in modern history, but President Obama and President Bush,

I don't think many of these guys who have been president really, you know, want to be president longer than eight years. That at least has been the modern history because of the fact of how much it takes it out of you and how much it ages you. I mean, it's pretty wild when you look at photos of presidents at the beginning of their term. And then at the end, I mean, it looks like they've age 20 years. I think the stress and everything and it just it plays into it. Listen, this is the same criticism that Reagan got fair, unfair, but it's the elephant in the room and it's hard to ignore. Yeah, it is the same criticism. I think it's a fair criticism. And I think most Americans know that they don't, you know, when I was a kid, you know, you meet these kids who want to be president,

but most people get older and they say, oh, that's the last job I would want. You don't sleep. It's incredibly stressful. Americans know, you know, how difficult this job is. I've often heard. I think the line is being present in the United States is one step higher on the stress scale than being DC Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey Harper, go check out the stories at the center from there. Another block. I'm trying to help you out today. Yeah, you're doing a great book. We've got one more story we want to cover here. We've got to do it somewhat quick as we're running short on time. But I know this is one that that you wanted to cover. There's a bit of a potential scandal, whatever you want to say, but brewing inside of the IRS right now, Casey. Yeah, I mean, so the IRS has been under a lot of attack or a lot of fire from lawmakers. They have had millions of backlog returns. You may be listening and say, yeah, that's me. I'm one of those millions. They've also had, you know, they've been under a lot of scrutiny because it turns out a new inspector general audit found that the IRS actually destroyed about 30 million tax filing documents.

And so this has come out in this audit. it's caused a lot of concern. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Mr. Charles Redding asking about this. It was an intentional decision. You know, they called it part of, you know, quote, the IRS has continued inability to process backlogs. And so, you know, what the, what seems happened here is the IRS is so behind on returns that they've actually just intentionally decided maybe to save time. I mean, you know, I think this investigation that Republicans want may get to the bottom of some of the

reasoning behind it. But if you filed your taxes by mailing something, and there's a, there's a decent chance that it was lost or destroyed. Initially, the IRS so backlogged, didn't have time to file it. So many of them are also working remote right now that it's in, I wonder how you, when you have a bunch of remote IRS employees, how you really do paper filing and, you know, I think I would make it a harder when you can't just walk down the hall and put it in the appropriate filing cabinet to be, you know, shipped off to wherever it goes. But they destroy, you know, tens of millions of these documents. They've been under a lot of scrutiny. I don't think this is going away. Those, those documents are used in audits in the future. They're used to review, you know, performance of IRS

agents, whether they did Texas right. You know, I don't know. There's could be a lot of implications to this. You get audited. Maybe it turns out they lost your documents and you can, when you're on it based on that, I don't know. This I've never seen anything like this, but millions of unprocessed returns. They sent about, IRS sent about $19 billion in improper payments in the last fiscal year. And now they've destroyed these millions. So, you know, there's a lot of questions, a lot of, it's not exactly right to call them investigations because they're not criminal. They're not even, the scandal is even really strong worry. It's just problems are piling up with IRS and the lawmakers are really

demanding answers about it. Well, it sounds like there's going to be more information about that, potentially coming out here soon. And I'm sure the DC Bureau Chief Casey Harper keep us up to date on it. Casey, that's about all the time we have this week. Have you had a good time with me driving the trolley? It's been a joy to be the caboot of the trolley tram, the positivity trolley.

So thanks so much for being our chief engineer. Can we have like go pet a dog? Right. Go hug your family. go. Yeah, actually, the cost you had dogs has risen 9.7. That's it. Since Biden took office.

I don't know if you know that. I actually did not know that. Yeah. Again, things you can only find at this. Right. Right. com. Thank you for listening to this episode of America and Focus.

I'm Cole McNeely, General Manager of America's Talking Network, filling in for Dan McAulb. I'm guessing he will be back next week. As always, Casey Harper, D.C. Bureau Chief of the Center Squares here. If you enjoyed this podcast, we ask you to leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you get it, and make sure you subscribe.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.