The Daily Signal - How America Is Doing 1 Year Into Biden’s Presidency

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

President Joe Biden has been in office for just over a year, and Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., says the nation would be better off without him at the helm.  If Biden “went home, back to Delaware to his beach house … and never came out, the country would be much better off,” Good says. “Everything he's done has been harmful to the country.” As America’s national debt hits $30 trillion, Good joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the greatest challenges facing the nation and how the Biden administration should address rising prices and the crisis at the southern border. Also on today's show: Defense Department press secretary John Kirby announces President Biden's plans to deploy 2,000 troops to Germany and Poland. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calls for state governments to stop requiring masks for children in schools. Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania, is in troubled waters. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, February 3rd. I'm Mary Margaret O'Lahan. And I'm Doug Blair. We are one year into Joe Biden's presidency. How is the nation doing? Are we better off than we were a year ago? Virginia Congressman Bob Good argues that the country is spiraling downward under Biden's leadership. Our colleague Virginia Allen sits down with Representative Good today to discuss the biggest

failures of Biden's first year in office. But before we get to Virginia's conversation with Congressmen, and Bob Good. Let's hit our top stories of the day. American troops are going to Europe. On Wednesday, Defense Department Press Secretary John Kirby announced plans to deploy 2,000 troops to Germany and Poland within the next few days. Additionally, 1,000 troops currently stationed in Germany

will be redeployed to Romania. The troop movement comes on the heels of ongoing tension between Russia and Ukraine. During the press conference announcing the decision, Kirby stated that the troops would not be in Europe permanently via ABC News. These are not permanent moves. They respond to current conditions. We will adjust our posture as those conditions evolve.

Russia currently has around 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling for state governments to recognize that COVID is here to stay and to stop requiring masks for children in schools, according to the Washington Examiner. Democratic governments in California and Illinois are still mandating that school children wear masks while other states are leaving the decision up to the parents. McConnell said, across the country, bureaucrats are still forcing young children to wear masks to participate in society when neither kids nor vaccinated adults are remotely likely to get gravely ill.

What exactly are we doing here? Where are the goalposts? What is the end game? The senator added that the virus appears to be heading endemic, and, emphasizing that it's time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives. Disturbingly, whether or not we should trust the science and reclaim normalcy is somehow becoming a partisan question, McConnell added. Millions of Democrats have decided that organizing their lives around COVID is core to their identity as progressives. Transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Leah Thomas is in troubled waters.

On Tuesday, USA Swimming released its athlete inclusion, competitive equality, and eligibility policy. The policy comes on the heels of Thomas's controversial participation in the university's female swimming team. Thomas, a biological male, has drawn fire as he continues to dominate in the pool. USA Swimming's new policy distinguishes between elite and non-elite competition. On the non-elite level, the policy reads, An inclusive process has been established by which an athlete can elect to change their competition category in order for them to experience the sport of swimming in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and expression. For the elite level, however, the organization created a new set of guidelines for transgender athlete participation.

The guidelines rely on science and medical evidence-based methods to provide a level playing field for elite cisgender women and to mitigate the advantages associated with male puberty and physiology. It is unclear whether Thomas will meet the new criteria to compete as a woman as he began identifying as a woman after he went through the male puberty process. Now stay tuned for Virginia's conversation with Representative Bob Good as they discussed the first year of Biden's presidency. Conservative women. Conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist.

Allen and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are particular interests to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts. We are one year into President Joe Biden's presidency. How is the country doing under Biden's leadership? Well, here with us to answer that question is Congressman Bob Good of Virginia. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Virginia. Great to be with you. So we're a year in. How is President Joe Biden doing?

Is America stronger today than we were one year ago? You know, it's really incredible. His poll numbers are historically low, and you'll see numbers saying he's maybe 35 percent approval. Who are those 35 percent? I was in a meeting with a group of Republicans and Democrats from my home state not too long ago, right before the Virginia elections, and I asked my colleagues across the aisle, what would you point to, where are things going well, what policies are working, how would you validate the November 20 election, and they had no answer. They looked at me quietly, silently, just like you're looking at me now, and didn't try to persuade me that there was anything that was going well under this administration.

Many of us thought he would be a bad president. We didn't know how good he would be at doing a bad job. And this is a president that makes Carter look competent and Obama look moderate, which is really incredible. You know, when it comes to the issues that Americans are really concerned about and focused on, there was a Pew Research study done in 2021 that asked Americans that question. What are you most worried about? And among those top three, one of the answers that Americans gave was the deficit. People are really concerned about our national deficit.

That's just hit $30 trillion. That's right. Now, where are we improving on that? What are you seeing from the Biden administration? Are they taking any action steps to get that deficit under control? No, they're doubling down and they're spending, and you're right. We crossed $30 trillion threshold that just announced yesterday, which equates to $91,000 per American citizen.

So, say, a family of three, that's $273,000 that they owe their share of the national debt. It's already the third largest budget item with these artists. officially low interest rates just to pay the debt. It's crushing us. It is going, and it's growing at a rapid pace, as we know. It's mortgaging or bankrupting our kids' future. And the Democrats are showing no concern for it. Matter of fact, we just came from a conference reading this morning, and I won't call them out and let him speak to himself. But one of my colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus called out our own party, on the leadership. What are we going to do about the national debt? Because we all talk about it being an issue. And when I ran, I identified as one of the three greatest

threats to the country with our national debt. That's why I wanted to be on the budget committee. But our Republican Study Committee, I'm the task force for that. We put out a balanced budget a year ago. We'd like the whole conference to adopt that as our official Republican position. It would balance in five years. We've got to be honest with the American people and preserve Medicare and Social Security, quite frankly, by reforming it so that it saves it for the future. Well, and that honesty with the American people, I think that's key.

Because right now it seems like from those on the left and even maybe some on the right, there's this sense of, oh, it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal to keep on spending, but I'm sensing that it is. At some point, you know, the shoe's going to drop, right? Yes, and every increase in by one point in the interest rates, the Fed is talking about increasing interest rates now because try to head off this massive inflation that the Biden policies are causing. Every one point increase in the interest rate, rather, it costs an additional $300 billion a year just to service the debt. So it takes a bigger bite out of the apple that causes the deficit to grow even further because we're not even, we're obviously borrowing to pay the debt to begin with. But it is crushing, it is serious, it is a great threat to the country.

And we Republicans have to come together and agree to balance the budget, make the tough decisions, earn the trust of the American people that we're being honest with them, and we're going to save them the country fiscally. Well, and you mentioned that you serve on the budget committee. I know spending is important to you. It's a big deal. Of course, inflation, as you say, it's on all of our minds right now. Every time you go to the grocery store, every time you fill your car up with gas, we're all feeling that. can we blame President Biden for that inflation or was he just dealt a bad hand when he entered

office amid the pandemic and the labor shortages on and on? Well, quickly, the answer is that we didn't have inflation before he became president. This is 40-year high. This goes back to the Jimmy Carter era, these inflation levels that we're seeing. And it's gas prices, as we know, which is a direct reflection of his energy policies or lack thereof. Gas prices are up about 60 percent since he took office, which crushes low-income, middle-income Americans fix income folks, they fill up the gas tank. But as we also know, everything is shipped. So it drives up the cost of everything else. Housing prices are way up, auto prices are way up,

and of course grocery prices are way up as well. And this is a hidden tax on the American people because of the policy of Joe Biden. Is there light at the end of the tunnel for inflation? There's light in the fact that at least in November we can take back control on the legislative side of this government because the Democrats are doubling down on it. I fear they will say, hey, we're going to do as much harm as we can for the time that we have left. There is no recognition on their part that they need to reverse cars. Some will say, oh, we need to message better and explain to the American people how well our policies are working.

Well, you can't tell the American people, whether it's crime, whether it's the border, whether it's inflation, whether it's energy costs and are diminished standing on the national stage. You can't fool the American people. So, of course, there's so many issues that we could talk about. But just big picture, as we look back over the past year, what do you think, are maybe one of President Joe Biden's successes? And what do you think is his biggest failure? Honestly, I can't point to any successes.

I know sometimes I'll get asked that when I'm doing a town hall type discussion or a meeting with folks. Hey, where do you agree? And I'll say, well, would you point to the issue where you think he's doing well or we think we ought to compromise and help him? The truth is he is doing very poorly on every issue. The country would be better off if on January 20 he went home back to Delaware to his beach house and Robbins, Delaware, it never came out. The country would be much better off.

Everything he's done has been harmful to the country. None of it's working, and it's all going poorly. You wonder about this State of the Union address that's scheduled for about four weeks out now. They're saying they're going to give each party 25 seats to be in the House chamber for it. I bet the Democrats are not lining up to be identified with Joe Biden there in the House chamber. Hear this speech. Well, I know one of the issues that you are consistently speaking out on is the issue of education. You serve on the Education and Labor Committee.

talk a little bit about this moment that we face in American history. I know so many individuals have pulled their kids out of public schools because they're nervous about what is my child going to be learning. What is your message to the American people and how are you serving your constituents in Virginia on the issue of education? How are you promoting a strong education future for our kids? Yes. And when I ran in 2020, I identified the three greatest stretch of the country where our immigration border situation, our national debt and our spending, and then education, how we were losing generations philosophically, ideologically, culturally because of our failures in education. The one positive from the China virus situation and the shutdowns the government mandated

with schools being closed and remote learning, let's call it remote learning, is that parents saw what was happening. Parents saw what's happening in these government schools and what's happening, whether it's CRT radical ideology, whether there's radical transgender policies going on, or whether it's just the general shutdown and putting teachers ahead of kids. We will be judged harshly in history by how we sacrifice children during this China virus situation, during this health situation. And we put teachers and teachers unions ahead of kids. We put government ahead of kids. How do we ever make up two years of learning? We have been to numerous, numerous school board meetings to try to encourage those

parents who are showing up and making their voices heard, encouraging parents to take back their school boards. we saw in our district some conservatives win and beat incumbents to take back control of their school boards. We're encouraged by Glenn Young, and we encourage him to do that to rescind the mass mandates in the schools. We need to also stop vaccinating, forcing vaccinations upon children who are at almost no risk for the virus. We need to have accountability on what's taught in the schools, how the teachers are trained. I'm on the Ed and Labor Committee, and the Biden administration is trying to tie federal dollars to the teaching of 16, 19, project. and other CRT-type ideology in our schools to indoctrine to our kids with a view that is dishonest,

it's divisive, and it does not recognize the progress that's been made. We also have our choice bill, which would allow federal dollars that parents receive, allocated for their education with their kids in the public schools, to be given, to be allocated towards the private school or the homeschool expenses or the public school outside of their area of their choice. And it would be particularly helped weighted towards low-income, middle-income families that really need help to put their kids in the best educational situation. Yeah, that option of school choice is critical.

It's something we talk a lot about. Our folks here at the Heritage Foundation talk a lot about have done so much research on. And when you look at the information, it just sort of makes sense that those dollars should follow a child. It's an 80% issue. All parents just about are in favor of school choice. And we have almost no school choice in Virginia. I'm glad that new Governor Yonkin believes in that, and he's going to fight on that in the state level as well. Absolutely.

Now, of course, one of the other issues that has been on the minds of many Americans in recent years, is that of election integrity? And you have recently introduced a bill called the One Citizen One Vote Act. Talk a little bit about that piece of legislation. What's in it? Why it's important? You know, everybody ought to want election integrity. Everybody would should want to, that should be bipartisan that we want to store faith and trust in our election system, the integrity of election system, which we know has come under scrutiny and challenge and has been a divisive issue for the past couple of years. But our bill, One Citizen One Vote Act, would say that the federal dollars that are allocated to states and localities, that they would not be

eligible to receive those funds if, there's five things, if they don't have voter ID, everybody should be in favor of voter ID. Again, that's an 80% issue. Everybody wants to make sure the people who vote or who they say they are. Secondly, it would not allow them to get funding if they allow unsolicited mass mail balloting. So in other words, you have a mass mail ballot sent to anyone who's ever been registered to that address. So you could have a college kid who's moved away, someone who's deceased or someone who used to live there, what have you, that is fraught with opportunity for fraud. Also, if there's ballot harvesting or drop boxes outside of polling places, and then finally, if they allow non-citizens to vote like they're trying to do in New York

City. So out of all these different issues that, you know, we've covered today and that I know you're working on in the House, if you had the opportunity to sit down with President Biden this afternoon and have lunch with him. And he said, Congressman, what do you think I need to be focused on? What would you say to the president? Well, I've signed on impeachment articles last year because of the border alone. Never in the history of our country has our own president done more harm intentionally to the United States than he has done with the border. The two million illegal border crossings in the last year, all of the resources that he has applied to the border situation has been to facilitate more illegal crossings. They're flying individuals from 160

countries in the dark of night all over the country without even a requirement to have a court date to report. They're not stopping them based on criminal record, based on health situation. It's a national security issue. It's a health security issue. It's a social services issue. It's an education issue. If schools are required to take in people who don't even speak English and to educate him in our schools, it is a travesty what he's done. I've been in the border three times. I don't think he's been yet, according. We don't have any documentation. He's ever been to the border. I plan to go again here in the first quarter for the fourth time in my first year because it's such an important issue. It's an invasion on our southern border.

These are unregistered Democrat voters, and these are also trying to transform the country. They are globalists who don't believe in American sovereignty. Others have said, hey, we care about the sovereignty or the border in Ukraine, but we don't care about our own southern border. So how can you do this to our own country, President Biden? How can you do this? It's doing irreparable harm to our country, and it's a travesty, and he deserves to be impeccable. for it. During those trips that you've taken to the border, what have you seen? Well, I've met with ranchers who live on the border and suffer from immediacy of the invasion.

You know, the policies, again, are making every town, every city, every state of border city, border town, border state. But those who live there, local law enforcement, we've met with border patrol who are not allowed to do their job. They're essentially daycare workers. They're essentially processing citizens into our country along with ICE and they're not stopping them. The morale of the border patrol is extremely low. We met with a rancher. family that lost a family member to murder from an illegal alien who came across. We met, or while we were there, the last time I was there, we had a shooting that took place between border patrol and illegals coming across. You learn and see that everyone and everything that

comes across the border comes under the control of the Mexican crime cartels. They're making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit a month from sex trafficking, human trafficking, child child trafficking. Everyone who comes across comes as an indentured servant that owes thousands of to the Mexican cartels who will kill you at home, kill your family, I should say at home, if you don't pay the debt that's owed to you. Or instead of owing the debt, they can traffic drugs across for the cartels, and because of the profit that they're bringing of the cartels, that's how they pay the debt that they're owed. It is unbelievable.

And then the last time I'll just end with this, when I was flying from McAllen, Texas, last time I was born back through Dallas, on my flight from McAllen to Dallas, we had dozens of illegals on the flight who, again, I saw up front and personal who were being flown without ID, by the way, as a congressional member, I have to present ID to get on the flight, just like every other citizen does. That's how it should be. But these illegals don't even have government issued IDs and they're flying at taxpayer expense wherever they want to go without a requirement even to appear in court. So when I hear these kind of things, it is a little bit discouraging. And you think about the future of our country. Are you concerned for the future

for the future? Very concerned. Whether the border policy, you just carried that over four years. We're one year in with two million. You take. You know, this president has assigned the vice president to be the borders are, and she doesn't go either. And she said, oh, she's trying to figure out root causes. I'll tell you what the root causes. The root cause is America is the greatest country in the world. Everybody wants to come here. Well, so then she's going to visit other countries, see what the root cause is.

We cannot elevate those countries to the United States. We cannot make them as prosperous, as freedom-loving, as Democratic, the Republic that we have here. We can't make them like us. But what their policies will do carry to its conclusion over four years and then beyond. would be to take, reduce America to make it like the rest of the world. And I think that's their goal. So I believe the American people rejected that in Virginia here back in November. And you saw a reaction to brutal, raw, unchecked Democrat control here in Virginia. And people are going to reject it, I think, from across the country here when they get to the ballot box in November. That is the right light.

Congressman, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Congressman Bob Good of Virginia, thank you. Thank you. Great to be with you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find The Daily Signal Podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review in a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.