The Ricochet Podcast - The First 100 Days

Episode Date: November 11, 2016

Yeah, yeah, there was an election earlier this week, but we’re all past that now. What will the first 100 days of the Trump administration look like? For that we (along with guest host Mona Charen) turn to the great Larry Kudlow, who has been a Trump supporter and advisor since the beginning of the campaign. Who will be, who will be out, what policies will be advocated, we cover it all. Also... Source

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Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South American. All the ships at sea, let's go to press. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met.

They're terrible. One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems. I don't know why that's funny.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Mona Charan sitting in for Rob Long. Want to know what's going to happen in the Trump economic world? Let's ask Larry Kudlow and let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to this, the Ricochet Podcast number 328. It's brought to you by our newest sponsor, Indochino. Indochino makes it easy for men to get a great-fitting, high-quality suit and shirts at an incredible price. Go to Indochino.com and enter the coupon code RICOSHAY at checkout and look like a million bucks. And we're brought to you by Texture.

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But no, of course, we're brought to you in a sort of tautological sense by Ricochet itself. And usually this is where Rob Swan's in to tell you why you should join. And he's not here. And I know how much Peter is chomping at the bit to become a pitch man. It's a dream of his. But I'm just going to get this out of the way because you know what's coming, right? Oh, first of all, first of all, hello to all of our new listeners on Slate's Panoply Network. I don't know what you're listening to before you got to this, but this might be different.

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Join. Join. And I'm joined now by Peter Robinson. Hello, Peter. And Mona. Mona Charon, who's joined us in the stead of Rob. And I'm just going to say, I know nothing. I have nothing to say. Obviously I know nothing. Uh, so Peter,

take it away. Well, no, I will tell you how much I know. Listen, I'm going to pull a Rush Limbaugh, but only for a few moments. And I know that my friend above all Mona won't let me get away with too much gloating. And in fact, I'm not I'm not gloating overall about the the elect. But I went back and checked the last five minutes of last week's podcast. And yours truly said that he expected, say, two out of three chances Hillary would pull off a fairly narrow victory. But I thought there was a one in three chance that Donald Trump would lose the popular vote narrowly, but win in the electoral college. And it happened. I also, I have to say, I went back to check this because I couldn't quite believe it. I also predicted that Republicans would be

at 51 seats at the Senate in the Senate. They are today after the Louisiana, uh, re-race, uh, runoff election, they'll be at 52 seats. So I was pretty close. And I also predicted quite what came over me. I don't know, but I also predicted that the number of seats the GOP would have in the house after the election would be 241. It's a 239 today,

but after the Louisiana runoffs, it'll be at 241. So there. So there. Yeti, can I go back and cut the last podcast too okay so good for being prognosticator exceptional mona would say you james was a never trumper and mona was a never trumper uh plus and i was a trumper so mona what are you you know what they're all saying on the news, what are you you know what? They're all saying on the news shows, what are you feeling?

Don't mess with Mona about her feelings. What are you thinking? Oh well, first of all I do want to say something about feelings First I want to say congratulations to everybody who was right Great, wonderful Good for you. Where is Rob

when I finally get a chance to gloat? Where is the man? Yes, yes. He's he's got a day job. But but and it is tone is so important. And one of the things that has been, I have to say, quite a relief over the last 48 hours is that everybody has struck the right tone of democratic, as what our friend Pete Wehner called democratic race. So it started with Trump, who in his acceptance speech was gracious and did not take any shots at anyone, didn't go the low road, he was good. And then Clinton gave what I thought was a very gracious concession. And then the president, Obama, also. So everybody's been behaving themselves the last

few days. And honestly, it's more than just a matter of style. It's a matter of reassurance for the country and the world that things are going to be smooth, that things are under control, that we're not going to have wild gyrations. So I applaud. May I add two names to that list of people who behaved with surprise and grace who might not have? The two names I would add are Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan is a man of deep decency, but he's been put in a difficult spot during this campaign. And I thought he was extremely gracious. And then the other is Mitch McConnell

and Mitch McConnell can be a prickly fellow. And he let it be known that Trump was not, again, he was in a, he wasn't in as difficult a spot, I don't believe as Paul Ryan was, because Paul Ryan has the House caucus, which is frantic. Exactly, the Freedom Caucus, right. That's exactly right. Nevertheless, Mitch McConnell was himself very gracious. And frankly, for me, another, I just put this to you to see if you agree, James and Mona, but for me, another aspect of this that's been very reassuring is that there have been all kinds of signals. We'll ask Larry Kudlow about this when he joins us. But there have been all kinds of signals, if I'm reading them correctly, that the transition team is already working very closely with the Republican leadership in the Senate and the House.

And there was a story in The New York Times. I think they put it up overnight. So it would have been the day after the election, and I suspect it may have contributed to the Dow setting a new high yesterday, in which there was an interview with Kevin Brady, the Texas congressman who's chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and he just said, we've been in touch with the transition team. We have a tax reform we've been working on for months. It's ready to go. It will contain this and this and this and this. And boy, it looked good. And boy, was it reassuring to have the feeling that we know that in the House and the Senate, both Republicans have been working on policy, well, throughout the Obama years, but in

particular in the last few months, and suddenly there's a chance. These are level-headed professionals. So that's the best case, if I may. That is the best case scenario is that we now have Trump as president and he ceases to be the flamethrower and just becomes the Republican president who is happy to sign into law all of these fantastic reforms that have been waiting on the back burner in Congress for eight years. But of course, there's a lot we don't know, and including the fact that Trump did not campaign as a traditional conservative Republican and may not want to implement those policies. So there's a lot that we don't know. That's for sure. But my point is everything's gone beautifully for the last 72 hours. So if you don't mind, I'm going to stop looking at the news right now. Yeah, pull down the blinds. What are you thinking, James?

A variety of things. One, yes, it's been nice and peaceful and transition-y in Washington. Out here, we had protesters swarming onto the highway, which is always sort of a strange thing to do. I am going to show my fury by putting myself in the path of a vehicle moving at 60 miles an hour. But of course, it backed up at inconvenience to everyone. But that doesn't matter. Think of the LBGTQ people who are going to be inconvenienced by this. I've heard this so much as if Trump himself had run on a platform of internment camps like Cuba or something. He doesn't care. He doesn't care in the least bit. I mean, so yes, my daughter was texting me questions that were obviously coming from the

school lunchroom conversation. Is he going to overturn gay marriage? It's like, yes, my daughter was texting me questions that were obviously coming from the school lunchroom conversation. Is he going to overturn gay marriage? Well, he can't submit a bill to the Supreme Court. You may think he can, but he can't. So, yes, the usual fantastic eruptions of fury from the people who, if it had been the other way around, would be insisting that the brown shirts were marching and refusing to take the legitimacy of the election. The second point about the people in Washington saying nice things and the people who've been put in difficult positions. Well, yes, I mean, but when news to the Senate comes that Caesar has crossed the Rubicon, there are a lot of people who will put their convictions into a cedar chest and have the, you know, sent to the villa with the slaves. I mean, of course,

there's a new order to be bad in DC and these people are going to line up behind it. I don't fault them for that. And I don't call Trump Caesar, but it is interesting that the, the idea that he's been installed into this machinery that will help things, good things happen. I thought we were supposed to burn it down. I thought we were supposed to drain the swamp. And instead of draining the swamp, he's surfing on a crocodile with a big grin, which is fine to me. I mean, if good legislation comes from this, I don't care the means by which it was done as long as it's constitutional. Third, conversations- Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Third, how many points? You may proceed to third as long as

it's third of three. How many points are you queuing up here? Simona, we get a little rough with each other on this show sometimes. I'm going to have to get used to it. Oh, no, no, no, no. After you, my dear Alfonso. No, no, after you, my dear Gaston. That's the Jay and Mona approach. I know.

It's really not. This is just what people have said, that Trump and his supporters, by winning, will be emboldened. And Peter is being that emboldened Trump right now. I've never in my life heard him say anything as uncivil as, how many points do you have? The Peter that we know would lean back and gently caress the cashmere of his knotted sleeves of his sweater rather than say something like that. But the ascendancy of Trump has made Peter a new man. This is extraordinary. I only have three points.

The third point, I had all these people at the office who know I work in a newspaper. Most of them are liberal, and they regard me as the not insane conservative guy. And so we've had great conversations. They've come up and they've asked me, they're curious. And I sort of reassure them, you know, what's going to happen, what my concerns are. But the thing we always come back to, the lesson that I always say is classical liberals, people who love the constitution, who don't regard adherence to the constitution as a fetishistic worship of vellum, believe that these rules are there for a place.

And we've been complaining and warning for years about the erosion of separation of powers, about the overreach of executive action. And just because you like what's being done doesn't mean it's a good precedent to set. Well, here you are. All those things that you thought were great because they were achieving wonderful things for the world

are now in the hands of this guy that you don't like and you don't trust. Is there a lesson here? And of course, everyone's talking now about the glories of checks and balances and federalism. I'd like to think it's a lesson to take, but it won't. Well, James, actually, let me make the alternate case. Look, those of us on the right said to the left, you know, these special prosecutors are out of control.

They don't report to anybody. They're abusing their power. They have railroaded innocent people. We really should get rid of them. And the left said, oh, no, no, they're very, they're great. We love them. Until they turned on the Clintons. And then suddenly the left saw the light and said, you know what? It's true. Those special councils really have to go. And they did. So it's possible that liberals will now suddenly discover that when we were talking about executive overreach and the problems with executive orders and ruling by fiat, now that their oxes may be gored, they may see the beauty of it. We'll see. That's entirely possible. It's possible. In the meantime, however, you got to worry. You got to worry about a lot of things, including exactly whether or not your cell phone bill money is going to causes you don't support. And I know that that's a sort of really an elegant transition that Rob would have hooted at were he here, but he's not. Point is, you don't know whether or not the company that you give your cell phone money

to could be funding some causes you don't agree with. Well, you know, every time you make a call or text, you could be supporting something that you just want, you know, they want to grow the size of government or expand the nanny state or fight what's coming. Well, Patriot Mobile is helping you take a stand. Patriot Mobile is the nation's only conservative cell phone company. There is such a thing. Patriot offers exceptional coverage and service at comparable or even lower prices than the other cell phone carriers. And the best part is 5% of your monthly bill goes to the conservative organization of the... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you.

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$350 or free iPhone 6 with a $60 TalkText data plan or a free Galaxy phone with $70 TalkText data. Call 1-800-APATRIOT today or visit patriotmobile.com slash ricochet. That's 1-800-APATRIOT today or visit patriotmobile.com slash ricochet. That's 1-800-APATRIOT or patriotmobile.com slash ricochet. And now we welcome to the podcast somebody who from the very start

was telling us that this was going to happen and that great things were going to happen from it. We bring back Larry Kudlow, columnist, CNBC, and analyst host of the nationally syndicated radio show and co-host of the Money in Politics podcast with Tim Poletti my favorite Minnesotan guy right here on Ricochet and you can follow him at Twitter at Larry underscore Kudlow

welcome back tell us about the Trump administration to come and are you going to be secretary of the treasury Larry that's what I'm to know. I appreciate that, Bona. I honestly don't know the answer to any of those things. I mean, I can tell you some of the Trump policies that are likely, but regarding my own fate, I have no idea. Larry Peter here. Listen, I like this. I already like this. You haven't said anything yet, but you sound like a man who's eating at his desk. And that's exactly what we expect of all the transitions. I hope you slept under your desk as well. Flat out, baby. Flat out.

I haven't slept in days. Good. Okay. Larry, I have a question. Okay, go ahead. No, no, no, no. I want to hear. No, Mona, listen. Okay. Here are the rules of engagement. Larry, you're talking to Mona, who is A, the most charming woman in the planet, and B, was a ferocious opponent of the man who's just been elected president. I now release her to go after you to explain why she should regret her earlier position and embrace the new reality. Mona, take him on. We should all temper our enthusiasm with caution, Peter. The only reason I say that is because I have abundant evidence

for why you should be extremely cautious about this guy. His essential nature hasn't changed just because he won. But let me ask Larry this. And of course, I do hope for the best, very much so. And I'm a little bit excited about some of the possibilities. elect said on election night, what did he say his first action was going to be? A trillion dollar stimulus, excuse me, infrastructure plan, and, you know, to build roads, bridges, airports, and so forth. Now, Larry, how does that differ from what Obama did when he was first elected, a big government stimulus program, which we all said at the time was a huge waste of money. There's no such thing as shovel ready, et cetera, et cetera. Actually, the only difference I can find is that Trump's is bigger. It's huge, right? It's huge. Everything is huge.

Okay. Yes, well, I don't know what to say. Okay. He's going to have to conform to certain budget constraints, and they're going to have to be offsetting spending to deal with that. I don't frankly think any of those numbers, so far as I know, have been really put together in any sort of coherent budget framework. If they were, I'd probably know about it, to be honest with you.

So I don't know how that's going to work out. You're going to see probably the first order of business, despite what Donald might have said regarding infrastructure. I think actually you're going to see a big tax reform plan. You're going to see a big Obamacare reform. Let's just call it repeal and rewrite for the moment. Those are going to be the two biggest plans. And then you're going to see, as you must, the budget exercise. The budget committees are going to have to come up with some numbers. The administration will, of course, weigh in with their own ideas. And somehow it's going to all get worked out. Now, mind you, the trillion-dollar plan that you referred to doesn't mean it's going to all get worked out. Now, mind you, the trillion dollar plan that you referred to doesn't mean it's going to

happen all at once. That trillion dollar plan could be stretched out over 10 years or even over 20 years. So the differentials may not be as scary as you think they are. And Larry, Larry, Peter here, you're the economist, Lord knows, and you're working out the transition. But is there not an argument? Actually, I know there's an argument because I just had this discussion with our mutual buddy, John Taylor, in the last 48 hours here at the Hoover Institution, that infrastructure spending, it wouldn't be any rigorous economist's first choice,

but there is infrastructure on which you can spend money that would do good things. You could pull, if we need to spend money on highways, infrastructure could, depending on how you count, you're the budget guy, but infrastructure could mean naval ships, things that get built, capital outlays for things that are genuinely useful in and of themselves, if you bring some of that spending forward, or indeed with regard to highways, you could view some of it as deferred maintenance, that might not do too terribly much harm. The problem with Obama's stimulus was that although they were talking about shovel, it went to one boondoggle after another. So if there were discipline,

it might not be that bad. Is that fair? Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Look, I'm going to have John Taylor and Michael Boskin on my radio show tomorrow. And these are, you know, this is one of many issues we're going to talk about. Now, Mike Boskin wrote a good piece in the paper in the journal a week or so back. And he said, look, infrastructure spending can be useful. First of all, you have to define what infrastructure spending means. I'm going to come back to that in a second. But it also has to be reformed. OK, things like the Davis Bacon wages, which do become a union boondoggle, things like whether it's coming from the federal government or the state and locals. I much prefer local infrastructure spending, and I much prefer it to be done by the locals themselves. And Trump has never ruled that out. In fact, there have been

discussions, not in great detail, but there have been discussions about moving as much of that from the federal government to the states and localities and have them pay for most of it. And the other part about infrastructure is, you know, you mentioned military spending. That's exactly right. And the other part is energy. We do lack energy infrastructure in this country badly. Now we've had this great boom in oil and gas fracking, which is tremendous and will make us energy independent.

Trump of course wants to take all the handcuffs off of the energy. What we don't have is west to east pipelines. Right. We need them desperately because the northeast. Larry, let me ask you, why don't private companies pay for it? Geez, Mona, give me a shot at this. Peter told me to be aggressive. He chose Peter's fault. As if she needed assertiveness training.

Go ahead. Mona, I've been in love with you for 30 some odd years, but you've just got to. I'm testing it, right? Yeah. Don't listen to these guys. Let Mona be Mona, okay? It's very important here. The other thing I want to say is in the Northeast, we pay higher gasoline and fuel taxes because we have to use imported energy because we don't have these pipeline capabilities. So there's a tremendous overflow, oversupply, over-reservoir of energy.

This is whether it's oil or gas, but it's particularly true for gas. But we can't get it to the northeast in a timely fashion. So gasoline is too darn expensive. And that hurts the economy. That hurts the local folks. It hurts commuters, et cetera, et cetera. We also need to build LNG terminals, liquid natural gas terminals, which are going to be very important for the future. And other improvements, I'll just call them. We want to get as much export capability as we can. When it comes to the energy infrastructure, to follow up on Moni's question, what the Trump administration would do is get off the industry's back. The industry would engage in the capital outlays, correct? Yes. Almost all of the things I'm talking about are going to be done privately

by businesses. It won't cost the federal government a nickel, but it will be scored as infrastructure spending. So you just have to create context here. And the number sounds bigger than it really is. And like I say, let me just give you one more thing, OK? The whole issue of urban mass transportation has bankrupted the Highway Trust Fund, OK, so that needs to be changed. The original Eisenhower model was for interstate highways. OK, not urban, not subways and buses and local commuter trains. And I think a Trump plan will be reformed along those lines. So you might say a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending, but much of it will occur at the state and local level. Much of it will be done privately, and much less of

it's going to be done publicly by the federal government. So when you add all this up, the potential for reforms here, including letting out bids for competition and so forth, it's going to be a lot cheaper. You're going to have public-private partnerships. You're going to have private toll roads. There's a whole laundry list of reforms that are going to make this financially palatable, but meanwhile, will help the country quite a bit. So let's not get too crazed about infrastructure. It's going to be there. It can be helpful. The actual government spending is going to be much, much less. And it's going to make our fuels cheaper.

Hey, Larry, before I release you to Mona again, could you just take a note for the speech writing team? I kept waiting for this to pop up. But on environmentalism, could you just pass this note along? If you look at the countries that supported the Kyoto Accord, we never signed it, of course, but Al Gore wanted us to. If you look at the countries, let's put it this way, that sent representatives to Kyoto to negotiate the accord, only one, exactly one, has actually lowered its greenhouse gas emissions since that conference. And that country is the United States of America.

And it is because of fracking. The free market has lowered greenhouse gas emissions, not the government. I understand. Pass that note along, would you please? Okay, Mona, go get him. So I, boy, there's, I could keep you all day. And I'm trying, I will try not to be too wordy about this. But so one of the things that I would like to run by you and get your response is, it

feels to me like, okay, you know, nobody is sure of anything, right? We don't know whether any particular lever that we might attempt to manipulate through government policy is going to have the desired effect, right? I mean, that's Hayek, right? We don't control things nearly to the degree that we think we do. Okay, so we start with that. But having said, having modestly put that out there first, let me, let me run this by you. I'm very concerned that Trump went around the industrial jobs that have gone. I'm going to bring back the factory jobs and the shipyards in Philadelphia and the steel mills and so on. It's going to be 1955 again. And, of course, that seems to me not possible, that those jobs have gone not just to international competition but principally to automation. And that, okay, that's the first part. Put that on the first part. Put that in a, put that

on the shelf. Second part, in the last eight years, we have seen one of the lowest rates of new business formation that has been the case in decades. And my suspicion, and I'm no expert, so I'm asking you, but my suspicion is that at least part of that is Obamacare. And another part is Dodd-Frank, which has been terrible. It has, it has dried up credit for small businesses and for people who want to start business. And that's where the jobs of the future would really come from. If we got rid of Dodd-Frank, if we, if we, you know, get provided more capital so that people could start businesses and do things, we don't know what the next generation of jobs will be, but people will figure it out if they're not stymied by not being able to get credit.

How do you respond to that? Well, look, Trump has campaigned consistently against Dodd-Frank and wants major Dodd-Frank reforms. And in fact, they've been talking to Jeb Hensarling, who's going to put up legislation to change Dodd-Frank. I mean, you're going to have bank regulations, but we're overregulated. And that's where the credit flow has been choked off. And that's one reason why we've had very little, very little new business formation, which, by the way, is the biggest job creator in our economy. The other point, and this is where I want to get to, the reason that I supported Mr.

Trump initially was his tax reform. I mean, Trump is putting on the table the largest business tax reform in American history, and it includes, for the first time, small business tax reform. So they're going to be eligible. Small and new businesses will be eligible for Trump's 15 percent rate or Kevin Brady's 20 percent rate. And that is going to be the greatest stimulant. It's going to get us to four to five percent economic growth for a whole bunch of years to catch up for the lost ground and is the best single thing that Donald has come up with, in my humble opinion. Larry, Peter here. Listen, I'm already getting beat up by friends who say, oh, terrific.

Donald Trump is a Keynesian. That's just another kind of stimulus. Cut taxes. Cut tax rates. Run up the deficit. So I know you've done this a hundred times since Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, but explain the difference in principle between cutting taxes and federal spending. Why is one Keynesian and the other isn't? Well, first of all, I want you all to go out and purchase my book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution, and I want you all to commit it to memory. That's the first thing. We've already committed everything you've said to memory, Larry.

Well, this is good. This is very good. Now, the difference between Keynesians and supply-siders is two fronts. Let me start with the supply-side approach, which Trump has embraced, okay? Lower marginal tax rates. That is to say, you pay a lower tax rate on the extra dollar earned from work effort, from investment, from risk taking, et cetera, et cetera. That is an incentive that creates an incentive. If you tax something less, you'll get more of it. You get a cash effect, more money in your pocket. That's the Keynesian side. But you get an incentive effect because each and every extra dollar earned is at the lower rate.

So you take home more and that says, well, heck, that gives me an incentive to keep doing this because it's going to be a lot cheaper and it's going to be a lot more profitable to do. Now, Keynesians don't believe that. I mean, I've had this argument with my very good friend, Austin Goolsbee, for years, and I can't get him to come around. But I think the evidence is overwhelming. Now, this is a difference. Tax rates, tax rates versus things like temporary tax credits. The credits don't work because there's no incentive effect.

And people know that it's temporary and so they will not do anything with the new money. This is Milton Friedman's permanent income hypothesis for which he won a Nobel Prize. Now, regarding government spending, what we have learned painfully in the last, I don't know, 100 years is that there is no government spending multiplier. All you're doing is taking from Peter, robbing from Peter to pay Paul. It's a transfer. It has nothing to do with incentives or rewards and does not encourage extra work and investment. It just doesn't. The government just spends money willy nilly on various items and there's no incentive effect. I don't know. You can't be clear on this.

A whole Republican party agrees with this. I mean, Trump has never gotten credit by Republicans, traditional Republicans, never Trump Republicans. It's the single best thing he came up with, with possible exception of his pro-life position. So I'm just saying to you, we're not going to go the government spending route. Trump wants to cut back. He wants to eliminate departments. He wants to eliminate agencies. He wants to have across the board budget cuts. He wants to go after the smaller entitlement programs, which have created incentives not to work. This is what makes a strong economy. This is what John F. Kennedy did and got 5% growth.

This is what Reagan did and got 5% growth out of it. And this is precisely what Trump will do. The only add-on is that for the first time, we're going to have a major incentive tax cut for businesses because we're not competitive anymore. And we've lost trillions of dollars overseas. That money will come back and it will be used over and over again by investors. It doesn't get any better than this, Mona. It doesn't get any better. I sure I I sure hope so.

And I really, you know, I'm praying, really. I do hope so. But here's a question for you. Look, Paul Ryan is for it. I know, I know. Kevin Hart has it all. That's the argument from authority. Look, here's a question for you. Here's a question. A sincere question. Some people say, look, the tremendously high tax rates when Reagan took over were disincentives for investment and savings and not savings, but for investment and growth. OK, so Reagan cut tax rates very substantially and you had a boom. But George W. Bush, everyone forgets about him. He also cut taxes and it didn't have that effect because the tax rates were already way lower. And so he cut them a little

bit more. And the fact is it didn't have the same stimulative effect. What do you say about that? Actually, I don't think that's factually the case. Bush made some very big mistakes on his tax cut plan. When that thing was first passed in 2001, it was deferred over a period of many years, and therefore people did not take action and put the new incentives into place. Anytime you delay or defer, then you're going to delay or defer the economic effects. That was a big mistake that W made. Second thing I'll say is the best part of George Bush's tax cut program was the substantial reduction in the capital gains tax and the dividend tax. And that did work.

I mean, you had whatever, you know, a five-year boom, large job creation during that period when the investment tax rates kicked in because they kicked in immediately. And by the way, Bush finally, in 2003, moved forward the dates for the personal income tax. He got a boom out of that. The problem is no one will ever give him credit for that boom because of what happened in 2008. And then the next problem is the Democrats have made the most utterly ridiculous argument. They blame Bush's tax cuts for the meltdown, the financial meltdown in 2008. And no economist in his or her right mind believes that. I mean, even Democrats don't believe that. So Mrs. Clinton used that, but that's just utter nonsense. Now, I will say this, because tax rates are lower today than they were in 1981 or they were in 1961 when the top rate was 91 percent.

However, and so there will be less of a stimulative impact because of that. I agree with that. OK. However, the key to Trump's plan is not the personal income tax cuts. It's the business tax cuts, because those are very high historically, and they're also very high internationally. And that's always been, look, I have argued for years that we have to slash the corporate tax rate and that that was more important than the personal tax rate. Look, I'd love to have a 20% flat tax, but we're not going to get there.

But it's the business side. That has been my argument. That remains my argument. That is the reason why I gave Donald Trump help way back last winter when I realized that he was very serious about cutting business taxes. And that's the key to his whole program. If Hillary Clinton, if Hillary Clinton had put forward a decent corporate tax reform, which she never did. I mean, even Obama had a

corporate tax reform. It wasn't fabulous, but it was something. If she had put something like that forward, this election might have turned out differently, to be honest. And here's the last point I want to make. The biggest beneficiaries of lower corporate tax rates are not rich people. They are middle-class wage earners. Go to Kevin Hassett and AEI. Go to Mike Boskin. Go to John Taylor. They'll tell you the same thing. Why? Because businesses don't really pay taxes. They collect taxes, and then they pass the cost on to the wage earner in the form of lower wages and benefits, to the consumer in the form of lower consumer prices, and finally to the shareholders in the form of better stock prices. This has the most far-reaching impact that we've ever done. And we tried to get Reagan to focus more on that. But in those days, it was much more about the income tax and

so forth. So this is a big change. Trump has very much, in the tradition of JFK and Reagan, proposed highly stimulative, incentive-oriented tax rates. but his wrinkle is it's business. It's business. And I go back to my great friend, Calvin Coolidge. I knew him well. I helped the tax cuts. The business of America is, in fact, business. You can't have good jobs with good wages unless you have healthy businesses, and you can't have a healthy business unless someone invests capital into it. But if you harass the investor and you harass the business with high tax rates and burdensome regulations, that is going to cut off the jobs and the wages. Now, Trump wants to deregulate. Hold on. Let me finish. I agree completely with this. This is great. You want the whole he he's a firm deregulator and he's a firm tax cutter.

And so is the House. And so is the Senate. And finally, we have an opportunity to get something through that will be truly stimulant to the entire economy. So give them a little slack on that. Absolutely. No, no, not slack. Absolute applause for that part but here's the here's the here's the other question this is like this is this really is listening to two people who've loved each other for 30 years larry is saying in effect mona will you get off my back please so here's the final question from me, because I won't. OK, so. challenges facing this country everyone agrees or at least everyone who is honest I think agrees is our is our huge spending and debt and that is powered

two-thirds of it is by entitlements the big entitlements not the little ones that you mentioned a minute ago Larry but the big ones Social Security Medicare Medicaid now Donald Trump said throughout this race that he was not going to do anything to change our entitlement structure. And as you know so well, and as other Republicans have articulated, it wouldn't take painful changes in order to save these programs and make them healthy going forward so that they won't bankrupt us. But you need leadership. And I've seen no evidence during this campaign that Trump is willing to take that on.

Well, OK, that's a fair point. Actually, what he said was he was not going to reduce benefits. He didn't say he wouldn't restructure. He said he wouldn't cut benefits. And that's a very important distinction, especially with respect to Social Security, because I personally don't want to cut benefits. In regards to the structure of Social Security. Because of age, you mean? Well, that's one thing right there, although it wouldn't affect me. It would affect the younger. Special pleading, it's already begun. Go ahead, Larry.

Yeah, listen, I'm not against all special pleading. But I think that you're talking about people who are younger. They would feel some reforms. Now, there's a lot of things out there. There's a lot of discussions about using different price indexes, for example, looking at retirement ages, for example. These things are not near as hard as they sound. But in the middle of a national political campaign, you just don't want to be too aggressive

on that. Regarding health care, look, Trump wants to repeal and rewrite Obamacare. And that is the heart of the problem right there. Number one, we've got to completely scrap this and basically start all over, maybe keep the exchanges, but we have to privatize this. We have to give consumer choice. We have to end mandates. The whole Republican Party hates, hates Obamacare. So Trump is right on target there with respect to Medicare and Medicaid. Those are naughtier issues. I agree. And we're going to have to work through a whole bunch of options. Some will be more popular than others. This will get worked out. And I don't think he's going to avoid it. He just didn't want to get into that during the campaign.

There's only so many things you can do. So I will leave it there. Entitlements, by the way, entitlements, by the way, are not the cause of our budget deficit right now. I just want to make this is a mildly technical point. The reason we have large budget deficits is because, number one, we have not grown this economy in 16 years. The growth rate per year in real GDP has averaged 1.8 percent since the year 2000 under Republicans and under Democrats. All right. So that tells you the policy mix has been incorrect. But we know that historically the American economy grows at about three and a half percent a year for the last hundred years, by the way, including World War II. Therefore, my point is this. If I can get the economy moving at four or five percent a year, not forever, but for the next five, six, seven years to catch up, we never rebound from the

recession, you're going to see those deficits evaporate. Every one percentage point increase in real GDP lowers the budget deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years. So if I move the growth rate from one and a half to two to four to five, Mona, I'm going to save something in the neighborhood of $10 trillion of deficits. OK. And as Kennedy argued, that's why it's important to memorize my book. If Kennedy argued he was the first supply sider, Kennedy argued that the key to cutting tax rates is to create full employment. And when you get full employment, the revenues come in and the spending by government goes down. And all of a sudden, your debt to GDP ratio will fall back. Give me 10 years. We'll get it back down to 30 or 40 percent, which is fine.

That's all we need to do. Economic growth is ultimately the solution to the budget. Well, Larry, I'd say we'd have you on the next time the budget comes up for a vote. But I don't know what's the point. It's so hard to get anything out of you. I mean, it's just like. I've just given you the entire blueprint. I've just given you economic theory.

I've just given you Kennedy and Reagan. There's nothing left in my arsenal. This is it. I just give it. But this is the day after. This is the day after the Dow set a record. If I'd had it 48 hours ago, I could have traded on it. Well, actually, if you had read my column, which was published at about 3 p.m.

Tuesday afternoon, then you would have done what I said. I said, if Trump wins, buy the dip. OK, the dip at that point was about 800 points. And if Hillary wins, sell the rally, because I knew even the dummies on Wall Street would finally figure out that Trump is a pro growth candidate. And therefore, stocks are going to soar and the economy is going to soar. And with three Republican houses, even as dumb as the GOP is, and it is dumb, if you've got three houses and you've got blueprints for tax reform, my guess is it's going to go through. Well, let's hope. Thank you, sir, for coming on the podcast today, and we'll see you the next time there is economic news that needs to go back. Go back to lunch. Go

back to lunch. Actually, it's been a long podcast. Go down to the street and get yourself a fresh knish. Will you please? This is the most fun I have ever had. Really. Thank you so much for that. And Mona, I love you and I adore you and I always will. I love you too, Larry. Always will.

Ladies and gentlemen in the, in the Ricochet audience, you know that Mona's taken some some some slaps and some broadsides for her position on Trump. You just heard one of the biggest Trump advocates there express love and admiration for Mona. So let's let's remember that the next time that people want to cast her off of the ricochet island. There have been some sore winners, haven't there? Well, there's sore everything. And I understand that. As I said on the night of the election, it's just all of the things that I felt about the guy, that's over there now.

That's on the other side of that day. Take the Etch-A-Sketch, turn it upside down, give it a good shake and move on from here. But of course, at this point, there's all of these hopes and these dreams. And you were mentioning the steel industry. A lot of people are thinking about the textile industry, for example. Is that going to come back? I was looking at a 1976 Sears catalog today, as is my won't, and I was looking at the prices. There was a price of a sundress, just something you wear to the beach, and it was 20 bucks. If you put that into an inflation calculator, it's $85 today.

There's a lot of money. Yeah. You were, you were thinking that you were, you were dressing, you were buying clothes for the cruise. What I don't, this is. No. One of the sites that I have coming up at lilacs.com next year is an examination of the 1976 bicentennial Sears catalog. Oh, that sounds, that actually sounds wonderful. I can't wait.

The spirit of Stokely sucks, as I called it, because the fashion is just, for men, is just appalling. So it was $80 now. And of course, if you went to the store to buy it, you could find a place that sold it for $80, but more or less it'd be half that or a quarter of that. And that's because of imports. And a lot of us are still worried exactly about a trade war.

But he also said something interesting. He talked about robbing, taking from Peter to give to somebody else. And I don't think he meant Peter Robinson. But if he did, let me just be on record as not taking from Peter. Because Peter, as you know, is a sharp fellow, but he could always use a new suit. What man can't? But do we have the time to shop? We don't.

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Again, get ready to look like a million bucks. And we thank Indochino for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Hey, James. Yes. Is Indochino spelled C-H-E-E-N-O? C-H-I-N-O. Sorry, C-H-I-N-O. Because it really reminds me of, then this shows my age. It sounds like something from the Vietnam era. I know. Indo-China. I know it does. And I thought the same thing too, because some of us just are used to that term,

you know, Indochina as being something you saw on the news and made you nervous because there was war and Cronkite was on the half. Exactly. But this must be a whole new meaning. It does indeed. It does indeed. Now, when they start coming out with, you know, if you have a bad suit, you're offensive. You're Ted offensive.

I mean, then you know they're going for it. I don't think so. All right. We've got a couple of things from the member feed we should talk about because from Ball Diamond Ball saying, no reconciliation. To Publius saying, it's time to retire. Never Trump from Jamie Lockett saying, Hey, I was spectacularly wrong. And I hope I continue to be. There's been exactly what I sort of expected and hope that Ricochet would do after the election, whichever way it went. Um, so let's, uh, let's talk about Publius's retire. Never Trump. He says it's time to retire

the label. It was useful during the election cycle because it was a clear way for the center right to identify as people who had made these still reasonable decisions then not to vote for Trump. However, he says, I see a variety of problems with its continued use. And I do too. I think it's the, the label has no use anymore whatsoever. Cannot imagine why anyone would have use for the label anymore. But I would say that, you know, so much has changed since the election. It's like the whole world has been, you know, shifted on its axis. We thought we were going to have a huge debate and even civil war within the Republican Party about whether we were going to be a Trump-like party or not. And now it seems like there's this, you know, this new dawn that is broken and perhaps, you know, it'll all be OK.

We'll see. But I think there is still going to be some tension for sure between people who are traditional conservatives and who take traditional conservative views on many issues that Trump does not, and the Trump people. And there will be a tendency now, because he has won, there will be a lot of former conservatives who will become Trumpites, and there will be some who won't. And so that will continue to be a tension and a competition. And it doesn't necessarily, I hope, that it won't be as bitter and there won't be as many recriminations as there were before the election. But I think, I do expect that there will continue to be debate on those matters because these are matters. What are those matters? As far as I can tell, at this point, he seems, he strikes me as pretty thoroughly conservative, except on trade. Okay, so that's the biggest thing. Well, but even there, there's movement. If you look at the transition team's website, as of about this hour yesterday, they have listed, I think it's eight points or so, how they're going to proceed on Donald Trump's

campaign promises and the campaign promise about the bad trade deals, how they're going to proceed. Every bit of that so far is talking about making America a more attractive place for businesses to remain. There's not a word now, unless something's been added. And of course, I don't know what's going on in the inner councils. If we'd kept Larry for another hour, we could have gotten to this, but there's not a word on the website about tariffs or punitive measures to keep Ford from relocating to Mexico, all of that. So the tone on the website, the tone of the transition has already changed, I think. Well, and so if he goes back on all of those campaign promises, that would be good.

But we'll see. That has been one of his consistent positions that he has held since the 1980s. He's been very anti-trade and sees it as a zero-sum game where there are winners and losers. And he thinks we've always been the losers. And that worries me a lot because this is an opportunity for him to create a worldwide depression. And, of course, that's exactly the opposite of what we all hope. This gets to something a little. Who was it?

Somebody. I think a liberal, actually. So I ought to be very careful to give them full credit, but I can't remember her name. Somebody wrote somewhere that Donald Trump's opponents take him literally, but not seriously. Of course, everybody takes him seriously. And it was a nice formulation. His opponents take him literally, but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously, but not literally. So supporters take him seriously, but not literally. So, you know, my own reading, this is my own feeling, and we will know this is all an empirical

matter. He will do what he will do. The policies will be what they will be. My own feeling is that this is a guy who, because he came up in a, in a bricks and mortar business where he was dealing with union people, all the guys who put together the steel girders and pour the cement and drive the trucks into Manhattan from New Jersey, all of that. He's especially attuned, especially sensitive to the blue collar working side of American life. And he goes to central Pennsylvania and sees towns that used to have work, coal mining work, steel mill work, and so forth. And I myself read him as feeling for these people and understanding that something terrible has happened and we need to do something about it. I don't, I have to say, I don't actually take seriously. I don't, I never did quite take him seriously when he said, I'm going to impose a 45%

tariff on goods coming in from China. Actually within about 10 days of saying that he'd backtracked and said, I don't mean that that's just an opening bargaining position. So I'm, you know, and this is the other thing about this, the strange pattern of Trump, unlike most politicians who will begin reasonably. And then as they, as they recognize they're not getting the attention they, they think they need, they'll become more and more extreme. Trump starts with the extreme position and then backs down. He's a negotiator.

He'll say something that gets people's attention. And in other words, what am I saying? I'm saying, I'm saying, Mona. You want to believe that we have the confidence that you cannot rely on what he says. And that gives us great hope. Robinson is the Fox Mulder of Hoover with a I want to believe sign up poster up as well. I understand what I'm saying. I'm arguing something a little bit more robust than that. Frankly, not much more robust, but a little more robust than that, which is that I think is a matter of actual reality. If you watch the guy's operating mode, you don't

take seriously everything he says. That's just actually a mistake in dealing with him. If you want an accurate reading of him, it's a mistake to take seriously everything he says. Okay, I'm done. I understand, however, driving around to these rural areas and seeing the desolation, the economic desolation. And again, this is going to sound like the strangest thing of saying I was looking through a Sears catalog today, but I do this for my website every week. I go on Google Street View

and go to a small town somewhere in America and look at the downtown. Sometimes they're actually thriving. Most times they're not. There's a hollowed out feeling to so many of these places which were so important to America. These are the little laboratories in which small town values are inculcated into people who are then dispersed

into the greater bloodstream of America. These are good places. And it pains you to see block after block of fine old stores where once people went down to get school clothes and the bank and all of these things. In many instances, what happened is that somebody put a Walmart somewhere and people went there. It was an act of free will. It was an act of volition for these people to go to these places and save money and get it at Walmart. And it hollowed out the core of so many towns. If things come back, it doesn't necessarily mean, I mean, Mona said before,

we were talking about resetting everything to 1955. As much as we love that idea, it's just not going to happen. These small towns aren't necessarily going to flourish and bloom again, as much as I would love that to happen. Things change. I mean, it used to be, I would go down to the store and there would be an entire wall, you know, at the grocery store, practically half of an aisle of magazines. And now it's shrunk to a little sliver and they're thin and they're few and they're every other month instead of, and if you loved magazines, you'd say, I miss the variety. But on the other hand, there's so much great stuff to read on the internet. And, you know, if I really did have a tablet that was connected to the internet i could also read the magazines that i do love and the magazines that you love can be found in the

texture app oh my oh yes but it's true i mean i think i mean everything i said before i'm just sort of trying to get to the ad because it has to be done but i mean what i'm saying what i'm spilling it up and it's true i do love. I got the offer the other day when I bought some new glasses. $100 for free magazines. And I thought, I love magazines, but don't send them to me. They pile up on the toilet tank, and then I feel guilty when I move them out. The virtual versions that you have on your laptop or your phone are just, they're incorporeal, but they're just as good.

It's not like you're getting the text. You're actually getting the layout. So the sense of serendipity, the positioning of the ads, it's the true magazine experience and Texture has done it for you. They've completely re-imagined what magazines are and that in the physical virtual sense, they give you the articles and the stories

you really want in one place. And there's interactive features, videos and recommendations just for you. You can bookmark things, you can set them aside. It's great. The app Texture lets you tap into the world's most popular magazines anytime anywhere i'm not i mean i mean real magazines not you know like car and dowser you know or farbs magazine i mean real magazines you can breeze through hundreds of them too including the back issues and you can pick the articles that interest you the most now textures made it

easy for you to find an article you care about. I regularly read, for example, National Geographic is in there, and you can just read it, save it. Pictures are beautiful on your screen, and the Texture editorial team recommends content for me every day if I want so I can dive deeper into other places with personalized collections instead of just staying on the same path that I usually travel. Sign up for Texture right now and get insider access to all the content from the world's best publications.

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That's texture.com slash ricochet. Well, we have anything more. Yes, Mona. James, you remember the woman who was on one of the most famous National Geographic covers ever as a young girl. She was, I think, 14 when the photo was taken. She's in the news again. Yeah.

She, I think she was expelled from Pakistan, and I don't remember why. And now she's in Afghanistan. She's been welcomed by the president. But in any event, there's a two-shot now of the way she looked then and the way she looks now. And she still has an incredibly arresting face. So interesting story. That's true. And, you know, the other day that the president-elect Trump, I think before he became president-elect, saying that our effort in Mosul against ISIS had been done by losers. And it's been a hard fought battle. And from what I

understand, progress has been made and people have been liberated. You want before and after pictures? Find the before and after pictures of the guys who are walking around sullen wearing, garbed themselves with the mandatory ISIS beard. Around these parts here, you've got all these hipsters who love their well-manicured, oiled, manly beards for the lumberjack style. But I don't. And if the government came in and said,

now you must wear facial hair, that's the sort of oppression that people here in America think is going to follow from a Donald Trump administration. But again, before and after pictures. Are you going into a Harry shave commercial? Mona, that was Rob Longworth. It really was because I got to get it in. And yes, it really was.

But that's how you can tell that the forces of goodness and decency have liberated a place because prior, a lot of straggly beards before shining guys, happy faces holding up their orange Harry's razor, because that's the sort of thing that we should just airlift over there and drop by the millions. Now, Harry's, as you know, and I'm sorry, it has to be done. We love this. And if you haven't had a Harry's blade, listen to me. This is necessary because you probably buy the big razor blades that, you know, they upcharge you every time they fix something. Oh, look, we've added a 19th blade and a lubricant strip and it's $7 more. And now,

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That's Harry's.com coupon code ricochet. And we thank them as ever for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast. I'm done. No more ads. There we are. Let's end with this. Well, lots of panic and convulsions on the left. What I find interesting, fascinating is that all of the postmortems were going to be about how the Republican party is shattered and destroyed. And now you see at Vox, you see at Slate, you see all these pieces talking about how, you know, actually, no, it's the Democratic Party that's in pieces. They've lost.

When Obama came in, they had all of this. The state legislatures, the governors, it's gone. Are they just reacting with the usual as the Republicans would have? Or is there something there? Oh, I think it'll take them a while to, for the magnitude of the loss to sink in. For that matter, I'm still absorbing the magnitude of the democratic loss. 99 state legislative houses in this country. Every state has a lower chamber and upper chamber except Nebraska, which only has one, which is why there's 99. Republicans hold a majority in

69 out of 99. Republican governors, 33 out of the 50 states. Republicans in a year in which they were supposed to suffer serious losses in the Senate, 52 seats after the Louisiana runoff election. House of Representatives, again, supposed to suffer serious losses, 241 seats. I'll close with this last statistic. This to me is the statistic of statistics, and it suggests that the new president is not going to have all that much trouble getting his judicial nominations through. We'll see, but it suggests that in two years, the number of Republican senators who will be running for reelection in a state that Hillary Clinton carried one, the number of democratic senators who will be running for reelection in states that Donald Trump carried 10. The, the Democrats are,

this is just, I, I I'd have to check the statistics, but this may be the most Republican dominance. Now we can argue whether they're genuinely conservative, but if you simply go by the simplest measure, party label, this might be the most dominant Republicans have been since Calvin Coolidge and the first term of Herbert who in eight decades. Who'd have thunk? So it's all it is is quite, quite remarkable, especially considering that we thought we were about to enter a really very, very bad patch. So but let me add one other statistic, if I may. And that is that, you know, the left has they really have just one prism through which they view the world. It's all race, class, sex, you know, and discrimination. And so they're trotting that out again. You know, they're saying, well, the fact that Trump won was evidence of, you know, that we just didn't realize how great the sexism and xenophobia and racism was in the United States. Now, I'd be the last to deny that Trump

brought out some bad elements on the right. There was some of that. I think it was a very small percentage, but it was there and it was disturbing. But it is impossible, it seems to me, to argue that Trump's victory was a victory for racism, for example, because if you look at the number of counties that voted twice for Obama, one third of them voted for Trump this time. So the very people who were happy to vote for Obama twice switched or a significant percentage of them switched over to Trump. So it doesn't have anything to do with race. Nothing. switched over to Trump. So it doesn't have anything to do with race. And, you know, that is something that the left really needs to grow up and learn to learn to take a loss and, you know, and look at something else other than blaming your opponents for and calling them names.

I'd even add to that because this is such an important point. The data does not in any way support the notion that there was racism involved in this outcome. Nobody accused Mitt Romney, his worst enemies never accused Mitt Romney of being a racist or a bigot. These are the terms that are used against Donald Trump. Donald Trump won 29, this number, they'll still be, they'll have to adjust this, but it looks as though he won 29% of the Hispanic vote, much more than Mitt Romney won. The black vote- Two points, just two points. Hold on, let me finish the point. Let me finish the point. That Donald Trump also won more of the African-American vote than did Mitt Romney. So the notion that Trump won because of racism

simply is not tenable. Right. No, I agree with that. I agree with that. So I guess. Go on, Mona. No, closing statement. Go on.

All right. I have a closing statement on the work we still have to do. I'll toss. I'll set this up for Mona. While we're talking about data, here are the two points that suggest this is no moment for crowing. We need Mona to keep this whole operation honest for the next four years and then some. And here are the two statistics. One, the Republican candidate for president has now lost the popular vote in six out of the last seven elections. And the second, here at Stanford University, the student newspaper published a poll showing that 85% of the students supported Hillary Clinton. On the far other side of the country at

Dartmouth College, where I have a couple of boys. They reported to me that the student newspaper published a poll. It was exactly the same percentage. Eighty-five percent of students supported Hillary Clinton. We're losing the popular vote, and we have no traction at all with millennials. Those are both true. And let me add also what my colleague at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Henry Olson, has pointed out. And he, by the way, had a fantastic piece right before the election where he called it almost on the nose when he was one of the few who did. voters are dying off at large in large numbers and they're being replaced by minority voters. That's just a that that demographic reality is true. And it is the case, despite this 2016 year, it's still the case that Republicans should for for prudential reasons and also for moral reasons, reach out and try to persuade more minority voters, more young voters, more women, that they are the party that's best. And it's something that is going to be, for now, on the back burner. But those demographic changes are underway, and they are not going to change. And I'm grateful to you, Peter, for pointing it out.

And I have to say, I think I've been really good about not taking any shots at our new president elect throughout this podcast. So now that we're finishing up. Wrap it, wrap it right now, James. Wrap it now. Thank you very much, Mona. We'll talk to you again soon. Well, I'm going to go off and study Article 12 of the Constitution, which he told the Congress was his favorite one. So basically in the future, after eight years of booming prosperity, everyone will feel as though they have the luxury to indulge in a Democrat again who will do nice things and be sweeter. And then we'll have a recession which will be blamed on the economic policies of the previous eight years. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. We've been there before. Anyway, whether or not we have a trade war, unless we have a trade war, I know, or, well, I was going to say war with Russia, but no,

I'd probably just hand over the Balkans anyway. Oh, I'm sorry. We're all supposed to behave here. Look, if you want to talk about these things and argue and throw sticks and stones, go to some Breitbart place. But if you want to talk about it in an interesting and civil fashion, go to Ricochet. Also go to the Ricochet store, by the way. You can get lots of swag in there. And go to iTunes and give us a nice review because if you do, it helps other people find us and keeps the show going.

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I don't know if I have a little, you know, imagine if Rob was here, what he'd say. Do it for Rob. Mona, thank you for showing up. Peter, thank you for showing up. My pleasure. Alright, guys, we'll see you all in the comments. Ricochet 2. What is it now? Is it 2.5 or it's 3?

Doesn't matter. It's Ricochet. We've taken all you give It's getting hard to make a living. Mr. President, if pity on working men. We ain't asking you to love us. You may place yourself high above

Mr. President, the pity on the working man I know it may sound funny But people everywhere running out of money We just can't make it by ourselves. It is cold and the wind is blowing. We need something to keep us going Mr. President The pity on the working man Ricochet

Join the conversation Maybe you're cheap Maybe you're light Maybe you have lost your mind Maybe you only think about yourself Too late to run Too late to cry now Time has come for us to say goodbye now Mr. President Thank you.