America's Talking - Episode 58: Democrats push IRS auditing, but Americans say agency is too politicized

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb & ATN General Manager Cole McNeely as they discuss: Monkeypox outbreak declared national public health emergency. Flight canceled? Major delay? Rule change could net refund from airline. More Democrats question Biden on 2024 ticket. Dems push IRS auditing, but Americans say agency is too politicized. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus. I'm Cole McNeely, general manager of America's Talking Network. American Focus is powered by the Center Square Newswire Service. You can check out all those great stories at thecentersquare.com. American Focus is also a production of America's Talking Network. You can find all of our great podcast at Americas Talking.com. Joining me today is the Center Square's executive editor, Dan McAulb. Dan, how you doing, sir? Cole, I'm doing well.

Thanks for joining the podcast this week. Casey Harper, who usually records with us, is recovering from COVID. I have some mild symptoms, so we decided to give him the day off so he could recover fully. I appreciate you filling in. We'll do our best Casey Harper and big shoes to fill for sure. I'm filling in Casey's shoes, but I'm sitting in Dan's chair. So it's kind of a weird combination of a case. And I'm sitting in Casey's chair.

So you are, you are. Dan, you're traveling this week too. So if it sounds a little different on your end, that's probably wide or a listener. So overall, we'll get through this thing. We'll try to make it as listenable as possible for you good people at home. Well, let's get things rolling. Starting on a high note to a degree, right? There's all sorts of things and implications.

New jobs report came out. And July showed some surging hiring numbers as the economy added 528,000 jobs. I believe that was significantly above estimates. What's going on there, Dan? Yeah. So first, let me say we're recording on this on Friday, August 5th, and this morning, the U.S. Labor Department issued its July jobs report and it surpassed economist's expectations.

U.S. added 528,000 jobs in July, which is good news. Of course, there's all kinds of conflicting economic news out there. Inflation remains at 40-year highs. gas prices remain elevated. The Fed trying to dampen the inflation, trying to hold it in check. It has been raising interest rates at significantly high levels, which has hampered the stock market. But at least the jobs report from last month is positive. Most industry sectors added jobs in July. including leisure and hospitality, of course, restaurants and other leisure industry, hotels, and others suffered most during the pandemic as travel slowed, screeched to a hall at the beginning of the pandemic, but then it's been slow to come back. But that sector added a lot of jobs, professional and business services added 89,000 jobs. The health care sector added 70,000 jobs.

jobs. The construction industry added 32,000 jobs. Manufacturing added 30,000 jobs. So generally, the job report is good, but that does not mean the U.S. is not in a recession. Of course, we've also had two consecutive quarters, six consecutive months of negative growth. And that certainly had its impacts on the stock market as well. But for once, we got a little bit of good news today. And that's something that, you know, not time to celebrate, not time to say that the economy is turning around. But at least a little bit of good news among all the bad news. It makes me a little bit of hopeful. Let's put it that way.

Yeah, I know the jobs numbers in general, meaning unemployment numbers, people seeking jobs, how many more job openings, is a big argument of those saying that we are not in a recession. and saying in, and if we are in a recession, then it's not like any other recession we've seen, only because apparently, I'm not an economist, but that those numbers tend to go hand in hand, right? I mean, usually you see restricting job numbers and a recession, and we're not seeing that right now. Dan, we haven't really talked about it too much on American focus, but we're seeing the weird fallout from shutting the entire economy and really the entire world economy down. and we're just seeing a weird fallout. And I'm not sure anybody really knows what it's going to mean.

I'm sure that these numbers will give the Fed some more leeway or feeling that way to increase interest rates, which will be interesting to see if they keep hiking those up to try to combat inflation. But, yeah, as you said, good news today. So we'll take our small victory that we've gotten here in the last two years and move on. And this jobs report, you know, in some ways, it contradicts what I'm saying. seeing just anecdotally. You know, I'm, I live in the suburbs of Chicago, but as you mentioned, I'm traveling this week. I'm out in the Pacific Northwest, visited the state of Washington. I'm now currently in the state of Oregon. And, you know, the businesses that I've visited out here similar to back home in Illinois, they still have a hard time filling jobs. Because I'm on the road,

don't usually eat out very often at restaurants, but every restaurant I visited, every grocery store I visited out here. They say they still have jobs that they need to fill, and they're having a hard time filling those jobs. That's been ongoing for a year. So while the U.S. economy added jobs, U.S. employers still need to add more jobs to fill the vacancies that they continue to have. So it's an interesting dynamic. And economists are unsure what it's going to mean going forward. They don't expect inflation to decrease anytime soon, despite the Fed's hiking interest rates regularly and expected to hike them additionally.

We're going to just have to keep paying attention and see what happens. Yeah, I think it'll be interesting, and we'll move on after this. But I do think it'll be interesting to see if the Fed does decide to increase interest rates again, the industries that rely a lot on borrowing money, the industries that interest rates would really impact their operations, how much that will shift the jobs report looking at August and September and things like that. So we'll move on from that point and move on to a slightly less happy story. A lot of flight cancellations and delays happening across the nation right now, Dan. what's going on at our airports here in the old USA?

Yeah, it's been a summer of disruptions in the airline industry. Tens of thousands of flights canceled, delayed, destinations changed. And this in large part is due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel changes in the industry that happened. Of course, in the early months of the pandemic, Travel was almost non-existent as governors across the country. It should stay-at-home orders. The industry was impacted greatly, lost billions of dollars, laid off employees.

And now finally, there's this huge increased demand in travel in the industry itself, which was practically shut down. hasn't been able to keep up with the demand. So not enough pilots, not enough airline staff or whatever. And that's resulted in this huge summer of delayed flights, canceled flights, et cetera. And of course, that upsets or that disrupts the passengers who are trying to get to their destinations. I had not gone wood and did not have any disruptions coming out to the Pacific Northwest. I travel back to the Chicago suburbs, go to Chicago on Saturday, knock on wood.

Hopefully I don't have the same disruptions. But yeah, but it's been a tough summer for the airline industry. And now the federal government, but the Biden administration wants to impose new rules regarding the airline industry, even though the federal government and state governments caused some of these disruptions because of their shutdown orders. But they want to make airlines reimburse passengers when there are significant delays or when there are cancellations.

I don't know how you strike the balance. The airline industry has struggled, of course, during the COVID pandemic. Lost billions of dollars, did get federal bailout dollars during the pandemic, they probably should have because it was government that is essentially caused the disruptions. And now that they're having a hard time staffing up in meeting this new current demand, the government wants to force them to essentially pay out to travelers.

So I feel for the travelers, but I also feel for fuel, excuse me, for the airline industry. So I'm not sure what the right balance is there. It'll be interesting to see. I mean, this will be such a fascinating time period for people to look back on, I think, economically and just say, hey, how long are we going to see these, what we'll just call COVID shutdown and COVID-related issues? How long is that going to last? Yeah. And, you know, I just mentioned Casey Harper, who usually records the podcast with us for the American Focus podcast. He's got COVID.

We've got at least two other staffers at the center square with COVID. Now, there's been a new, really, outbreak of COVID cases across the country, although it does seem that the symptoms are less severe. Hospitalizations aren't skyrocketing. Deaths certainly aren't skyrocketing. They're remaining flat. But COVID-19 is still here, even though most Americans, I shouldn't speak for most Americans, many Americans have moved on from it and want to move on from it. It's still with us. And so the lingering impacts of the pandemic, we just don't know what that's going to mean.

Of course, within the airline industry, many airlines imposed vaccine mandates. You had the mask travel mandate, which affected consumers, travelers, decisions. So a lot of factors weighing into this. The industry itself is not fully recovered. Certainly hope they can. We can all get past this and get to pre-pandemic levels sooner rather than later. but let's face it, it's still with us. There is another national public health emergency that has been declared.

So we'll stick in that lane of sorts. The monkeypox outbreak continues to be an issue, an increasing issue. We're seeing increasing numbers. And it has officially been declared a national public health emergency, correcting. Yeah, the Biden administration on Thursday, as I said, we're recording this on Friday, August 5th, on August 4th, yesterday, the Biden administration declared the monkey pot. outbreak of public health emergency nationwide as case counts rise. Monkeypox is not considered, you know, a deadly disease as COVID was, at least for certain

populations in COVID. More than 6,000 cases are reported nationwide. And that's, of course, in a population of 3,300 or 331 million. So that's not a huge number, but they have been rising in recent days and recent weeks. weeks. One thing that kind of goes underreported is that this is mostly affecting the gay community, particularly gay men. And, you know, as we should have learned, or we at least should have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we should have learned, you know, 30 plus years ago during the AIDS epidemic, we should be sharing as much information as possible. So individuals can make smart decisions for themselves. And the fact that this has largely impacted the gay community, particularly gay men.

You know, we just want that community to be extra cautious because they're the ones right now who are most vulnerable contracting it. And you just don't hear a lot of conversation about that, unfortunately. It's not technically an STD or STI from my understanding, but it is being transmitted a lot through sexual acts of some sort. So I think kind of what you're trying to get at there, which is, okay, it's primarily affecting the gay community, but that's because it's been largely contained between men who are sleeping with men, and it has nothing inherently associated with the fact that they are gay or something.

Oh, it has nothing yet. Thank you for clarifying that. That's information that everybody should know about. So you know that you need to protect yourself just in case. So you don't contract monkeypox. This is a public health thing. This is not a political thing. Right.

Don't care if you're heterosexual or homosexual or whatever. The facts show that it's largely affecting gay men. Gay men need to know that. And as you said, through sexual activities. So be aware of that. and just be smart. Let's try and attempt this thing out. Be aware and be smart. I like that, Dan. That's a good mantra for life, I think. Be aware and be smart. All righty. Well, we'll move on from that. One of the underlying conversations that have

been happening in the political world, President Biden and questions of him running in 2024. There were some reports a couple weeks ago. Democrats wouldn't commit to supporting him in 24, now even more are kind of questioning President Biden being on a 2024 presidential ticket for the Democratic Party. Yeah, this has been really a strange story when it comes to political history, political context. We've got a midterm election coming up here in November. President Biden is not going to be on the ballot.

He's only about halfway through his first term, halfway through his second year in office. And there's been a lot of this focus on. whether President Biden is going to run again in 2024, more than two years from now. And a lot of it does have to do with his, you know, the gaffs that he makes when he speaks, his stumbling when he's walking or riding a bike, things like that. There have been questions about his, of course, he's 79 years old. He's advanced in age. There have been a lot of questions about his.

competency right now. And even though we're months away from the midterm elections, where control of Congress is at stake, and many people, many political pundits expect Republicans to retake the House, where Democrats currently have a slight majority in the U.S. House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi rules. Many experts expect the Republicans to retake the House. The Senate is a little more iffy. Of course, it's 50-50 in the center right now, but with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the deciding vote that gives Democrats the majority in the Senate. So political observers are, I think the advantage is to the Republicans, but not as much as it is the Republicans in the House. House. And despite this very important election coming up in November, there's a lot of focus on

2024. And whether President Biden will run again, there's even speculation now about who might run in 2024, assuming Biden does not run. California Governor Gavin Newsom's name has been put out there. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's name has been put out there. Of course, you've got the current Vice President, Kamala, Harris, is. name, former vice, well, this would be on the Republic side, former vice president, Mike Pence is considering running. But if you notice, too, with the midterm elections this year, President Biden isn't out there stumping for a whole lot of candidates. And that's because his approval ratings are below Trump, President Trump's ever were before, below what President Obama's

ever were. And he's not even finished his second year. So his, because of what's going on in the economy, because of inflation and other factors, Americans disapprove of Biden more than his predecessors, more than they ever did of his predecessors. And that has Democrats sort of running away from him. They don't want President Biden stumping for them in 2022. And many of them are hoping he doesn't run again in 2024. Yeah. And it's a bit of an anomaly.

I'm not a presidential historian betting stretch. So I'm sure if you go back in early American history, you will see plenty of this. But in recent times, a bit of an anomaly to not operate under the assumption that the sitting president in a first term would not be the party's nominee, almost de facto. I mean, you can leave the door open and say, oh, well, you know, the people might run. We can see. But that there isn't an understanding that the president would be the nominee. I mean, that's a very interesting situation to have. Part of it, I think, is he the oldest president in Right now, Dan, do you know off top of your head?

That's a good question. He's certainly up there. I think he might be. If he were to run for a second term and win, he definitely would be during that second term. But, you know, let's face it. You and I and our listeners, I'm sure, have all seen President Biden at the microphone being asked questions, stumbling over the teleprompter, saying some incoherent things at times. This is not a criticism of him.

He's 79 years old, for goodness sake. But the United States, the leader of the free world, you know, we need someone who's, who knows what's going on is decisive and can make tough decisions based on the evidence or whatever. And there's questions about whether President Biden can do that. The real reason I bring that up, at least from the political aspect, to look at that, is to say, okay, well, I think President Obama would have been around 50 when he was running for, or maybe late 40s even, when he was running for reelection.

You're the younger president, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, this is, you know, in George Bush, I mean, was a younger president of broadstroke. And so Reagan was probably the last president in terms of age where the age issue really came up. You can't have a factor, right? Yeah, and his reelection campaign. So, we have a fascinating thing to watch. I mean, we're just unprecedented times on several fronts, but that's a little bit

of an unprecedented political story to watch in at least recent times. So we'll move on from that. Another concern happening for a lot of Americans, and I believe this is tied to, and I could be wrong again, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think this is tied to the, quote, inflation reduction act, or at least it's included. The Democrats are pushing a lot more IRS auditing. And a lot of Americans have concerns about that. You know, what does that mean?

Yeah. So it's currently tied to this latest inflation reduction act. But President Biden, even during the campaign before he was president, one of his platforms was to beef up auditing within the IRS, to staff up at the IRS and to go after what he said were businesses that were through loopholes in federal law, were not paying their fair share of taxes. So this has come up again during his administration. He once to, he again wants to increase staffing at the Internal Revenue Service to increase audits, particularly on businesses that he seems to think aren't paying their fair share of tax. But a new poll came out this week,

that it says essentially a majority of Americans don't trust the IRS and other federal bureaucracies in Washington, in D.C., and don't want to increase their spending, to increase their staffing, and in the IRS's case, to increase their audits, because there's just a lack of trust, and I get that. In recent decades, these federal agencies that are led by unelected bureaucrats have been making rules and doing things that Congress, our elected officials in Congress, haven't approved through votes, and Americans are getting sick of the new regulations. And they're talking about expanding the amount of IRS agents being high. hired and claims that it won't mean more audits for middle class Americans. And independent of that, if that's true or not, what you're getting at is ultimately, well, middle class Americans, the average American doesn't believe them. I mean, that's, you know, they don't trust them,

as you said. So one more story here. Then we'll wrap up, Dan. There's a bill to expand social security benefits that's nearing the house floor. Let's chat about that a bit. Yeah, of course, inflation impacts everybody, impacts you and in facts me and it affects younger workers and impacts older workers and of course it impacts retired folks. Prices on average have increased more than 9% year over year in the month of June, the last month that we have statistics for. I expect to see the same thing for July month numbers. When they come out, I think That's next week when inflation, the new inflation figures come out. So retired Americans who are on, you know, a fixed income, don't have the opportunity to earn more.

They're being impacted by inflation. The value of their monthly retirement checks, Social Security checks, isn't as much as it was a year ago. So there are efforts in Congress to essentially, they would do is repeal certain offsets that would put in the social security benefits. Of course, Social Security, an entitlement program, is hurting right now. As the baby boomer generation is retired, there's more people on Social Security now than there ever has been. There's fewer people in the workforce paying for Social Security benefits. it's squeezed. So this is one of those things where there's really no easy answer. Yes, retired

Americans probably deserve a significant bump because of inflation, but who's going to pay for it? And that comes down to current taxpayers. And inflation has largely been caused by increased government spending during the COVID era. We need to rein in spending. But where do you rein that spending in? Do you put it on the backs of retired folks who worked their entire lives to earn the benefit? Now they're seeing this record inflation. So they're spending power has decreased. It's tough situation all the way around. Well, and Dan, you know, the thing I'm really looking forward to, I'm sure there will be no politicization of this very serious, you know, financial issue that the country's. Yeah, it's never about politics. It's always about finding real good solutions that

make sense for everybody. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure there at no point will there be considerations about the, you know, the, oh, the short-term, mid-term elections or, you know, 2024 about what they're going to, they're going to solve this issue, Dan. I'm sure about it. They're going to do it this time. If I were a gambling man, Cole, if I were a gambling person, I would bet hard against you.

Well, maybe that's how we can, maybe that's how we can cover the social security benefits, Dan. There you go. All right. Well, we'll wrap up. there. Dan McAloaf, the executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. You can check out all of these stories and many, many great stories and your own state houses at thecenter square.com. American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can check out our

great podcast at America's Talking.com. Dan and Casey will hopefully be back next week, but one way or another, America and Focus will be back next week. Make sure like, subscribe, and we'll see you then.