A (17:51)
I read from Politico, quote, the conventional wisdom is sound. The twin crises of disease and recession boosted support for government intervention. Let me just stop right there. The crisis is not the crisis of the virus. The virus is a separate problem that therapeutics social distancing. People acting with their own agency and liberty and taking the virus seriously of how it impact their own livelihood was something we understood since May of last year. And Florida opened restaurants in May of last year and never closed them again. They had schools open and they have the lowest rates per capita in the entire region and some of the lowest in the entire country. With the second oldest population in the country. The crisis is not a crisis of the disease Politico. It's a crisis of the lockdowns. This is a self inflicted crisis. This is a self inflicted problem. We did this to ourselves. The virus was done to us by China. How China has been allowed to get away with this is a moral outrage. It really is. They should pay. They won't. The only thing they're going to pay is Joe Biden's family boosted support for government intervention well beyond what has been tolerated for decades. Donald Trump and the Republicans own support for the last two bills depolarize the fight over this one. I do agree with that. That is a very good point. Politico. It is the fact that Republicans did not fight on the prior stimulus or at least making it more targeted or doing it in bite sized form absolutely made this bill easier to pass. Politico is exactly right. But Biden's opposition was distracted by internal divisions. January 6th, impeachment, McCarthy versus Cheney, Trump versus McConnell. And the conservative media was distracted by juicier fare than tax policy. I think Politico's not wrong here. I think they're wrong with their description of this being a crisis of the disease, it's a crisis of our own making, of the lockdowns. But I think Politico actually makes some two very good points here. So I'm going to build that out. But I want to complete the point that I teased with in the last two segments, which is why are Democrats doing this? Many people email us, they say, don't the Democrats know better? Don't they know the laws of economics? They know this is gonna cause inflation. They know this will not create a stimulus for the economy. Why? So the Democrats know this will create inflation. What is inflation? It's when the amount of dollars in the economy outpaces the production, the growth of goods and services. That is the most basic way I can explain inflation. Inflation and taxes, according to Vladimir Lenin himself, is the best way to destroy a middle class and revolutionize an economy. Inflation is something that almost every single dictator or tyrant uses as a strategy or a tactic to keep themselves in power. Inflation is something people fear. America played with inflation back in the late 70s under Jimmy Carter, where we famously had stagflation, low economic growth, and very high inflation. As a response, you must adjust interest rates. What is interest? Interest is the price of money. It's the price you pay to borrow. So you must adjust interest rates to make it more expensive to go borrow money. Back under Jimmy Carter, do you know what interest rates were? 22%, 22% and got high as 26%. At certain times, inflation was so bad that in certain parts of the country, when you went and bought, let's say, a bag of fertilizer that would sit on the shelf for a month and a half, it had a longer shelf life, there would be five or six prices written on the side of the bag of fertilizer that were crossed off, prices were changing so quickly that when you would go to a Home Depot or the equivalent of such back in the 1970s and you bought a bag of fertilizer, there would be six numbers listed and five of them crossed out because the price of the price of fertilizer or the money supply was increasing so dramatically to keep up with it for the Home Depot or the equivalent to make money, they had to keep on crossing off the prices. So inflation is a very real threat. Now. We've changed the way that we tabulate inflation in our country. And Oren Cass from American Compass does a phenomenal job. In fact, I would love to have him on our podcast and talk to him about this. He's been terrific. Where he argues we're already living through an inflation cycle. And I completely agree with that. But even under the tabulation or the methodology that is used by the current economists, we are going to hit inflation. The Democrats know this. So how do you solve inflation? Well, you can solve inflation by raising rates or you can solve inflation by producing more, growing your way out of an inflation cycle. But there's one other way that you can keep inflation in check. More human beings, more people. And no, that doesn't mean that the Democrats are going to go on a big plan saying that we want to limit abortions and we want to expand family creation. Instead, the multi trillion dollar push that Democrats are making right now justifies in their mind a loose, open and porous southern border. They are going to make an economic argument very soon. And you've heard it here first. And Senator Dick Durbin will do this and no one's talking about this and how they will keep inflation in check. If we just allow another 5 million people from Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and El Salvador to come in our country, you might say, how is that going to keep inflation in check? The more people that are trading with dollars, all of a sudden it dilutes the potential of money velocity. So you have 330 million people that are trading with dollars and 335 million people that are trading with dollars. Basic supply and demand will tell you that that should keep inflation at least a little bit in check. Now, of course, what they're not talking about is will those 5 million new people be consumers, producers or takers? Studies show that more times than not, they will go on government dependency and they will take low wage work. And this is where the corporate class comes in. This is why the Chamber of Commerce is thrilled to see a $2 trillion stimulus bill, because the chamber and this is the way that we have reconfigured our economy. Is that almost all? And this is why I think we're on the verge of a very, very dangerous economic trend where almost all of our value is in highly speculative app development, Silicon Valley and then low Park Based technology, pipe dreams and consumer driven push delivery services. And very little of our economy is in hardware production development. President Trump famously hit a nerve when he talked about this, when he talked about reinvigorating a manufacturing class. And he was exactly right. If you are not making physical stuff as at least a part of your economic pie, then you are nothing more than participating in a massive labor arbitrage. So you let's say we bring in 5 million people from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico in the next year. It's probably a high number. Let's just play it out. Why does the Chamber of Commerce want that? Well, first of all, wages don't have to go up. What better way to keep inflation in check? By having 5 million people who are willing to keep a black worker in Philadelphia or a blue collar worker in Erie, Pennsylvania from getting $35 an hour and instead someone who is willing to cut the wages, therefore keep us against inflation. That's the wrong way to prevent against inflation. Wage growth is a healthy price index increase. It's how middle class families are able to get ahead. So instead we have the worst possible pressure. Here's what you're going to see. Rising prices and stagnating wages, when in reality we should see lowering prices and rising wages. And we are actually seeing that for a brief moment under the Trump presidency we saw a blue collar boom short lived obviously because of our self induced worst mistake in the history of western society lockdown. But the Democrats are now saying we'll spend a bunch of money we do not have which will be a massive bailout to the blue states. All of our crony donors are going to be very happy. All of our corporate interests are going to be thrilled. All of the blue states that we represent, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut are going to get the money they need. Illinois especially to subsidize their unsustainable pension model which is a gift to the public sector, teacher unions, the SEIU and APP scammy. And then all of the potential downside can be solved by their actual pipe dream which is the southern border is nothing more than a suggestion. And we must bring in millions of people a year because we have all these problems. The only way to solve it is is with a steady stream of foreigners coming into America. That's their game plan. Why? Because those people are more likely to vote Democrat. It's that simple. We are living through a massive Democrat power grab. All roads lead to the Democrats desire to control this country permanently. And a couple of questions I want to explore is where are The Republicans, why are they so silent on this? And what can we possibly do about this? The Democrats want one party rule, $350 billion going to the states. But the Democrats are actually creating a problem intentionally. They're trying to solve a crisis by creating a crisis that will make them more important and accomplish their true desire. Control everything, always. Where are the Republicans? We are living through the most massive increase of a welfare state in our country since Lyndon Baines Johnson. Multiply bigger, exponentially. Bigger is the better way to say that than anything that Obama even TR Do. And yet where we are is we have a demo, a Republican Party that is sort of indifferent to the idea of spending all of this money, at least go through the motions of trying to oppose this. Now, the counter argument that is made, and I spent some time with some members of Congress recently, is that, well, we're on. They're not even passing this through committees. We don't get to have any markups. We get to have no say whatsoever. And there is some truth to that, by the way. Where the conservative think tanks have gone wrong is they think that we're still in a policy debate. They think that this is some form of a Socratic seminar where you can present your arguments and the best ideas will win or the Democrats will give you some form of a platform to air your grievances to. None of that is true. Instead, this is brute force politics. This is, we have more votes than you do and it's going to pass. Sit down and shut up. Now, the Democrats are participating in a very risky bet. And Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell should be saying this on television every single day. This is what they should be saying. The Democrats know they're going to lose in 2022 unless they change the rules of the game so dramatically that they think they're never going to lose again. That's what HR1 is all about. That's what this stimulus is all about. That's what every single piece of legislation is. They're trying to cement all of their priorities in power, permanently turn the entire country into the state of Oregon, California, where there really isn't much of a contest when it comes to elections. The Democrats know under normal and regular circumstances, they are going to lose big in 2022. They're going to lose massively. Members of the House that I have talked to, that I've been texting with, the Democrats are all but admitting this. And so they're saying, you know what? We are going to set the table in a way that will basically say, you must have permanently open borders. We are not going to allow anything but mail in voting and automatic registration for every single human being out there. Go through the Bureau of Prisons, go through the dmv, register everyone to vote, and if you dare challenge it, we're going to get in your way. And so the Republicans are really nowhere to be found. And this is a great opportunity, in my personal opinion, for Donald Trump to hit the road now. I believe this is a great opportunity for Donald Trump to start doing public rallies again. The leaders in Congress have demonstrated they cannot command any form of a stable media narrative in the midst of this Democrat power grab. I know a lot of people have Trump fatigue. I know a lot of people are tired of seeing and hearing him. I thought his CPAC speech was excellent. He's all we got right now to reinvigorate the American grassroots against this unprecedented power grab of HR1, HR5 stimulus. He has got to get back on the road now. Go to West Virginia, invite Joe Manchin to your rally, have 50,000 people there and say, joe, we're going to be your biggest fan as long as you hold the line against reconciliation on HR1. So people say, what can we do? The best thing we can do is get Donald Trump back on the road to be a foil to this leviathan of a Democrat party. This power grab like we've never seen before. If he hits the road, he could stop a lot of this. So the Democrats are currently going unchallenged. Thanks so much, everybody. Email us your questions freedom. Charliekirk.com if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com thanks so much for listening, everybody. God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.