The Ben Shapiro Show


Yes, Democrats Are To Blame For Inflation | Ep. 1551


Summary

As inflation continues to rage out of control, the Biden administration continues to say that everything is going to be hunky dory. By most economists' estimates, it will be well into next year before inflation really starts hitting the rates that the Federal Reserve aims for ( namely, that 2% that the Fed aims for). As we know, the Obama administration has blamed everybody except themselves for all of this. But here is the thing: the inflation is part of the theory the Democrats embraced. They embraced all of the fiscal and economic prerequisites for inflation. And as inflation rages on, we explore just why Democrats have embraced the precise positions that threw gasoline on the fire in the first place. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.org/ProtectYourData/BenShapiroShow. This episode was produced by Ben Shapiro and edited by Alex Blumberg. Please take a few minutes to fill out this brief survey. We'll be running a detailed survey of your responses in the next few days. Send us your responses to this podcast and we'll get them on the next episode of the show. Thanks for your support! Ben Shapiro Music: "Goodbye Outer Space" by Skynyrd, "Good Morning America" by Fountains of America, by Suneaters, "Outer Space, Inc., by Jeff Perla, "The Good Life" by Eddy, Jr., and "The Future of Everything" by John Singleton, by Kaitlyn Hill, Jr. & "AstroTurk & Co., "Bye Bye, Thank You, Maureen McCarthy? -- Copyright 2019? -- "Amberly Thompson? " ? " & "Byeee?" , "Aristotle? ) - "Auntie, " " & Other Words?" -- "No More Than This Is This Will Help You Say So, Thank Me & This Will Make It So Much Better? & So Much So, My Thoughts & So, So, Can I Say This And So, This Will I Say It So, And This Will It And So Much More? & Other Than That So, I'll Say This & This And This So, Am I Can Help You And This & So And So So, In So, That Will It & This & A More Than That And This, This & More So, & So On And So On & So So Much And So & So & A So, A More So So So & And So Amie, & This, And A So Much & So ... # & More?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 As inflation rages on, we explore just why Democrats have embraced the precise positions that threw gasoline on the fire in the first place.
00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:07.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
00:00:16.000 Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash ben.
00:00:19.000 When inflation continues to rage out of control, the Biden administration continues to say that everything is going to be hunky-dory.
00:00:25.000 By most economists' estimates, it's going to be well into next year before inflation really starts to hit the rates that Americans are used to, namely that 2% that the Federal Reserve aims for.
00:00:35.000 As we know, the Biden administration has blamed everybody except themselves for all of this, but here is the thing.
00:00:40.000 The inflation is part of the theory the Democrats embraced.
00:00:43.000 They embraced all of the fiscal and economic prerequisites for inflation.
00:00:47.000 The definition of inflation is too many dollars following too few goods.
00:00:51.000 When you jack up government spending, when you recommend that the Federal Reserve pursue easy monetary policy, the predictable result of this is that you end up with inflation.
00:00:59.000 Unless we believe that this is some sort of like random thing that just happened to Democrats.
00:01:04.000 No, it isn't.
00:01:05.000 This has been embedded in their most cherished ideals for a very long time.
00:01:09.000 One of the weird things about Joe Biden's presidency is that he was nominated based on the fact that he was not Bernie Sanders and that he was not Elizabeth Warren.
00:01:16.000 And then once he became president, he decided to pursue exactly the same policies that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would have pursued.
00:01:21.000 And so to understand what's happening right now, you sort of have to understand what Bernie and Elizabeth Warren were saying way back in the day, meaning like 2019, 2020.
00:01:30.000 So I want to take you in the time machine back to June 12th, 2019, when Bernie Sanders gave a big speech about democratic socialism.
00:01:36.000 Which sounds a lot like Build Back Better.
00:01:38.000 If you listen to what he actually says the government ought to do, it sounds exactly like Build Back Better.
00:01:42.000 So here is Bernie Sanders circa June 2019.
00:01:44.000 This is a major policy speech.
00:01:46.000 The media ate it up.
00:01:47.000 It was covered with sterling recommendations by Fox and the New York Times.
00:01:52.000 Here was Bernie announcing what democratic socialism really meant.
00:01:55.000 We must take the next step forward.
00:01:58.000 And guarantee every man, woman, and child in our country basic economic rights.
00:02:06.000 The right to quality health care.
00:02:15.000 The right to as much education as one needs to succeed in our society.
00:02:21.000 Thank you.
00:02:25.000 The right to a good job that pays a living wage.
00:02:30.000 The right to affordable housing.
00:02:38.000 Thank you.
00:02:42.000 The right to a secure retirement.
00:02:50.000 And the right to live in a clean environment.
00:02:55.000 And that is what I mean by democratic socialism.
00:03:00.000 The right to have a unicorn that craps gold.
00:03:03.000 The right to have one type of pudding.
00:03:05.000 It's not very good, but we'll have a lot of it.
00:03:08.000 The right to stand in a bread line.
00:03:09.000 Many things.
00:03:10.000 Many things.
00:03:11.000 It'll be unbelievable.
00:03:13.000 And the crowd goes wild.
00:03:15.000 Well, the question, of course, is how do you pay for all of these magical rights?
00:03:18.000 Well, first of all, you have to force people to do things they don't want to do, because if you have a right to a service from someone else, they now have a duty to provide you that service.
00:03:25.000 So that is problem number one.
00:03:26.000 But from a fiscal point of view, the answer is somebody has to pay for it.
00:03:29.000 So you're either going to have to radically raise taxes, which is something that Bernie Sanders has indeed proposed, or you're going to have to print an enormous amount of money.
00:03:36.000 And it is no shock that the New Yorker ran a piece, August 2019, titled, The Economist Who Believes the Government Should Just Print More Money.
00:03:45.000 Stephanie Kelton, a senior economic advisor to Bernie Sanders and professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University, is popular in a way that economists almost definitionally are not.
00:03:55.000 Filmmakers trail her with cameras, she goes on international speaking tours, and once sold out a basketball arena in Italy.
00:04:00.000 Kelton is the foremost evangelist of a fringe economic movement called Modern Monetary Theory, which argues in part that the government should pay for programs requiring big spending, like the Green New Deal, simply by printing more money.
00:04:12.000 This is a polarizing idea.
00:04:14.000 This spring at Kelton spoke at the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything Festival, On the day, a journal staffer introduced Kelton as an economist with an idea that will either solve the world's problems or send it into ruin.
00:04:23.000 She made a face and then walked on stage.
00:04:26.000 So, what exactly does she say?
00:04:29.000 Well, adherents of MMT, imagine a world built on MMT principles in which the government provides guaranteed jobs, healthcare, affordable college, launches clean infrastructure projects to replace crumbling highways, airports, and bridges.
00:04:40.000 Kelton, who does at least five interviews per week, plus lectures, speaking gigs, and conferences, is, more than anyone else, responsible for building MMT's digital army.
00:04:50.000 So, what exactly is MMT?
00:04:53.000 Well, it means that we just spend money, and don't worry about it.
00:04:58.000 Hey, so, Kelton hears a lot of concerns about MMT.
00:05:01.000 The basic idea of modern monetary theory is we spend a lot of money.
00:05:04.000 People continue to buy our bonds because we're still the best bet on the block.
00:05:07.000 And until that ain't true anymore, we can just continue to spend money and there will be no effect on inflation.
00:05:13.000 So according to the New Yorker, again, August of 2019, she is the Chief Economic Advisor at Bernie Sanders, quote, Never according to Kelton.
00:05:19.000 concerns about MMT. Most are about inflation. How soon will we become Zimbabwe, which printed so many Zimbabwean dollars that inflation peaked in 2008 at an annual rate of 96 trillion percent. Never, according to Kelton. Under MMT, the focus is sustainable inflation, whereas fiscal traditionalists worry about the deficit and don't consider inflation at all.
00:05:38.000 Doesn't MMT then require accurate forecasting of inflation risk?
00:05:41.000 Yes.
00:05:42.000 And Kelton conceded at the festival the models aren't perfect, but we can do a pretty good job.
00:05:45.000 Anyway, government spending, she believes, is responsible for just a small part of inflation.
00:05:51.000 Kelton believes that MMT is a new framework, but is founded on old ideas buried and forgotten in the work of foundational economists.
00:05:59.000 Okay, so she was pushing the idea that you could just basically spend money, no problem.
00:06:05.000 This is, again, 2019.
00:06:06.000 2019, quote, the current economic conditions look pretty good for MNT.
00:06:10.000 In Japan, where deficits are high and the interest rate is set at less than zero, the economy has met with no calamity.
00:06:14.000 When Congress passed a tax cut in 2017, the CBO predicted there would be a jump in interest rates caused by the deficit.
00:06:20.000 This has not happened.
00:06:21.000 Still, most mainstream economists view MMT as the cult of the magic money tree.
00:06:26.000 Okay, well, even Paul Krugman had thought this was a bad idea, but most Democrats had started to kind of circulate around these ideas.
00:06:33.000 Elizabeth Warren, who was sort of a warmed over Bernie Sanders devotee, she gave a speech in December of 2019 at a college called St. Anselm.
00:06:43.000 And she said a couple of things.
00:06:45.000 One, she said the same stuff that Bernie said, we should spend an awful lot of money.
00:06:48.000 Here was Elizabeth Warren circa December, 2019.
00:06:51.000 Reagan had it wrong.
00:06:53.000 Our problem isn't big government.
00:06:56.000 Our problem is a government that has been captured by the rich and the powerful.
00:07:03.000 Government could help grow the economy, could create opportunities, could support small businesses and entrepreneurship.
00:07:12.000 But instead, we have a government that works only for those at the top.
00:07:18.000 Reagan liked to talk about freedom.
00:07:20.000 But real freedom isn't living under the thumb of a handful of billionaires and giant corporations.
00:07:28.000 Real freedom isn't living deep in debt, one health scare or one broken transmission away from disaster.
00:07:37.000 Real freedom isn't watching while more and more opportunities get snatched up by the rich and powerful.
00:07:46.000 Real freedom comes when a strong government enforces fair rules and when smart investments give every American the opportunity to prosper.
00:07:58.000 But here's the thing, Elizabeth Warren didn't just stop with the warmed over Bernie Sanders rhetoric.
00:08:01.000 She then talked about what you need to do with the Federal Reserve.
00:08:04.000 So the idea was easy money was gonna make all of this possible.
00:08:07.000 You just blow out the Federal Reserve's grabbing of assets on the open market, inject more money into the economy.
00:08:14.000 This will make magic happen.
00:08:15.000 Here was Elizabeth Warren again.
00:08:17.000 This is December 12th, 2019, approximately four months before the economy completely cratered and about a year and a half before inflation became a serious issue.
00:08:25.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren.
00:08:26.000 We will appoint a Federal Reserve Board that believes in full employment, that recognizes that inflation fears have been overblown for years, and someone who is willing to let wages grow.
00:08:41.000 That's unbelievable.
00:08:42.000 That clip is unbelievable.
00:08:43.000 We have Elizabeth Warren, December 2019.
00:08:44.000 We need Federal Reserve members.
00:08:46.000 We're going to explode the spending.
00:08:49.000 We're gonna recognize that we don't have to worry about inflation.
00:08:51.000 Who cares about inflation?
00:08:52.000 And who will let wages grow?
00:08:53.000 Okay, well, the wages have actually declined because of the inflationary policy of the Federal Reserve.
00:08:59.000 That was Elizabeth Warren.
00:09:00.000 The Great Plan person.
00:09:02.000 Remember this?
00:09:02.000 When she was running?
00:09:03.000 I know we've all forgotten about it.
00:09:04.000 We've blocked it out from our memories that Elizabeth Warren was ever a viable candidate.
00:09:07.000 But there was a point where she was actually leading that race.
00:09:09.000 And then everybody realized that she was a charmless hack.
00:09:12.000 Just like Kamala Harris.
00:09:15.000 And then she fell apart.
00:09:16.000 But for a moment there, she was the media's beloved candidate.
00:09:18.000 They loved her.
00:09:18.000 She was the one with the plan.
00:09:20.000 She had a plan for that.
00:09:21.000 Her plan was exactly the plan that brought about inflation.
00:09:24.000 So, Joe Biden enters office.
00:09:26.000 And it was after spending the campaign not being Bernie and not being Elizabeth Warren.
00:09:30.000 And he immediately rams through this quote-unquote COVID relief bill.
00:09:33.000 Now, as you remember, this passed in March of 2021.
00:09:36.000 You'll remember that by this point, the vaccines were already being tranched out en masse.
00:09:41.000 So we were coming to the end of COVID and everyone knew it.
00:09:44.000 It was already gonna be that everybody who wanted a Vax could get a Vax.
00:09:47.000 This is true by essentially April of 2021.
00:09:49.000 And he was bashing through with no Republican support, none.
00:09:53.000 So these are all Democrats who own this.
00:09:54.000 He was bashing through $1.9 trillion in COVID spending.
00:09:58.000 And in the process, not shockingly, he was praising Bernie Sanders.
00:10:03.000 Bernie, whose policies these are all based on, is what happens when you let a socialist run the party.
00:10:08.000 So here's Biden praising Bernie as he passed a $1.9 trillion, quote-unquote, stimulus plan that merely stimulated inflation.
00:10:16.000 I promised the American people, and I guess it's becoming an overused phrase, that help was on the way.
00:10:24.000 But today, with the American Rescue Plan now signed into law, We've delivered on that promise, and I don't mean I've delivered, we've delivered.
00:10:34.000 And I want to say to Bernie, Bernie, stepping up and making the case why this was so transformational made a big difference in how a lot of people voted.
00:10:43.000 And then, of course, Nancy Pelosi came out and declared the COVID relief bill a triumph.
00:10:47.000 Here was the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
00:10:50.000 Let me say this about my members.
00:10:53.000 Our chairs were dazzling in their own work, intellect, integrity, imagination for the American people working with their Senate colleagues.
00:11:03.000 I say their beautiful diversity of our members and I say to them Our diversity is our strength.
00:11:11.000 Our unity is our power.
00:11:13.000 And in this bill, our diversity to protect everyone in our country, to end the disparity in access to everything that the bill presents.
00:11:25.000 Our diversity was reflected in the House and the Senate in that policy.
00:11:29.000 But our unity on behalf of all of the American people is what made this such a triumph.
00:11:36.000 Okay, you own it.
00:11:37.000 You own it.
00:11:38.000 This is all Democrats.
00:11:39.000 There's Nancy Pelosi with the Bain mask on.
00:11:42.000 And she's amazing, amazing stuff.
00:11:44.000 Okay, then Joe Biden went around and he trotted around talking about the magic of the American Rescue Plan.
00:11:49.000 And he talked about how much money he was spending.
00:11:51.000 This was the key component, was how much money he was spending.
00:11:54.000 So he talked about how it was going to generate economic growth for the entire mass of economic growth.
00:11:58.000 It was going to raise wages.
00:12:00.000 It was going to rebuild the backbone of the economy.
00:12:01.000 Here was Joe Biden again, praising the $1.9 trillion plan that was completely unnecessary.
00:12:06.000 The economy was already in a state of recovery.
00:12:08.000 Here was Joe Biden.
00:12:10.000 It will generate economic growth for the entire nation.
00:12:13.000 That's why major economists, left, right, and center, support this plan.
00:12:18.000 Even Wall Street has agreed.
00:12:20.000 According to Moody's, by the end of this year, this law will spur our economy to create 7 million new jobs.
00:12:29.000 And then, he said, you know what's gonna be a big part of this?
00:12:31.000 on rebuilding the backbone of this country.
00:12:34.000 Working families, the middle class, people who built this country.
00:12:39.000 And then he said, you know what's going to be a big part of this?
00:12:41.000 Sending a hundred million checks or direct deposits.
00:12:45.000 You know what that's called?
00:12:46.000 That's called helicopter money.
00:12:47.000 That is inflation.
00:12:48.000 Okay, so the basic rule about inflation is that if we live in a town, and there are only a certain number of goods, and a helicopter arrives at all the houses and just drops $100,000 into everybody's backyard, is everybody rich now?
00:13:00.000 No.
00:13:01.000 The prices of those limited goods just reflect the fact that everybody now has $100,000 in their pocket.
00:13:06.000 That's all.
00:13:07.000 But that's exactly what Joe Biden was praising, was the helicopter cash.
00:13:10.000 Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren monetary policy right here.
00:13:14.000 100 million checks going into the pockets and or direct deposits going into the pockets of Americans on the way to a million more millions of more Americans.
00:13:24.000 That's real progress.
00:13:25.000 By real progress, he means that wages were about to decline significantly over the course of the next year.
00:13:30.000 And so fast forward to, like, May of 2020, 2021.
00:13:34.000 Had they started to pick up on the fact that inflation had already picked up?
00:13:36.000 Nah.
00:13:37.000 Elizabeth Warren was still out there saying, we need more spending.
00:13:39.000 This is nothing, guys.
00:13:40.000 We need our $3 trillion bill back.
00:13:42.000 Maybe more than that.
00:13:43.000 Maybe 7, 8 trillion.
00:13:44.000 Who knows?
00:13:44.000 There's no limit.
00:13:45.000 After all, modern monetary theory says you keep spending until there ain't no spending to be done.
00:13:49.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren circa May 2021.
00:13:52.000 Senator Capito has introduced a bill that's about, I think, $500 or $600 billion.
00:13:57.000 Biden's transportation infrastructure bill is about $2 trillion.
00:14:01.000 Would you be opposed to any sort of compromise in between?
00:14:03.000 $800 billion?
00:14:04.000 $900 billion?
00:14:05.000 I'm not going to start by negotiating against myself, but understand this.
00:14:09.000 What it's going to take to repair the roads and bridges in America, what it's going to take to make sure that not just part of America has access to broadband, but all of America has access to broadband, And what it's going to take to make sure that we have universal child care, child care that is affordable, available, and high quality all across this nation.
00:14:29.000 That is a big ticket item.
00:14:32.000 And we've got to make sure that we put enough resources in to make that happen.
00:14:36.000 I think that the president's budget, quite frankly, doesn't go quite far enough.
00:14:40.000 The budget doesn't go quite far enough.
00:14:42.000 It doesn't go far enough.
00:14:43.000 The president, by the way, had proposed a $6 trillion budget.
00:14:48.000 But it didn't go far enough.
00:14:49.000 Okay, literally the next day, the questions are already happening.
00:14:52.000 This is in May of 2021, well over a year ago.
00:14:55.000 And the inflation already started to set in.
00:14:57.000 So Jen Psaki, who was then the press secretary for the White House, she was asked about inflation.
00:15:00.000 She's like, oh, it's transitory, no big deal.
00:15:03.000 The Federal Reserve, I would point you to them to speak to or provide analysis or speculation on anything.
00:15:09.000 as it relates to inflation or the impact of certain external actions.
00:15:14.000 I will say, as we've said in here before, but we'll reiterate, that of course we take the possibility of inflation quite seriously.
00:15:21.000 As actions that have been taken to date or proposals that have been made, most economic analysts believe that it will have a temporary or transitory impact.
00:15:30.000 But in terms of analysis on current events, I would point you to the Federal Reserve.
00:15:34.000 Transitory, very transitory.
00:15:35.000 OK, by July, Joe Biden was still saying that it was transitory.
00:15:37.000 This is July 19th, 2021.
00:15:40.000 As our economy has come roaring back, we've seen some price increases.
00:15:45.000 Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation.
00:15:50.000 But that's not our view.
00:15:52.000 Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we've seen were expected and are expected to be temporary.
00:16:01.000 Reality is, you can't flip the global economic light back on and not expect this to happen.
00:16:08.000 As demand returns, there's going to be global supply chain challenges.
00:16:13.000 We've seen that in semiconductors, which are used in automobiles.
00:16:18.000 That global shortage has slowed vehicle production, creating a temporary spike in car prices.
00:16:24.000 That's a real challenge.
00:16:26.000 My administration is doing everything we can to address it.
00:16:29.000 It's transitory, though.
00:16:30.000 But again, these disruptions are temporary.
00:16:32.000 Temporary.
00:16:33.000 Transitory.
00:16:34.000 It's more inflation in just one second.
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00:17:38.000 September 27th, 2021.
00:17:41.000 Fed officials say that the transitory inflation may last quite a while.
00:17:45.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, quote, All year, the Federal Reserve's messaging on inflation has been consistent.
00:17:50.000 This year's surge is transitory.
00:17:51.000 Inflation will soon return close to the central bank's 2% target.
00:17:54.000 Yet, look more closely, and it is clear officials are turning less sanguine.
00:17:58.000 And that explains growing eagerness to start raising interest rates.
00:18:01.000 Last September, long before supply bottlenecks emerged, the median forecast by the Fed was for core inflation in 2022 of 1.8%.
00:18:07.000 Every few months since that, they've nudged it up.
00:18:09.000 The forecast released, again, this is September of 2021, they saw core inflation next year at 2.3%.
00:18:15.000 Right now, core inflation annually in the United States is probably going to be closer to 5 or 6%.
00:18:20.000 So they just happen to be off by, you know, everything.
00:18:25.000 And by the way, they wouldn't let go of it.
00:18:27.000 October 6th, 2021, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who had also helped preside over the Federal Reserve before she was Treasury Secretary under Joe Biden, she said inflation was transitory.
00:18:35.000 This is October 2021.
00:18:37.000 We're almost six million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic, which means a lot of people who still need jobs.
00:18:48.000 On the other hand, many firms are finding it difficult to hire.
00:18:54.000 We've had extraordinary shifts in the pattern of demand away from services and toward goods.
00:19:02.000 And I know the Fed is trying to sort through the implications of that.
00:19:07.000 Supply bottlenecks have developed that have caused inflation.
00:19:12.000 I believe that they're transitory, but that doesn't mean they'll go away over the next several months.
00:19:18.000 It's transitory. Okay, so by November 2021, Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, who never should have been reappointed for his position, by the way, he admits that he got the inflation wrong and that they blew it. So while this, but they didn't blow it because they thought that inflation wouldn't jump. They blew it because they had an actual economic dedication to the idea that more spending and loose monetary policy are good.
00:19:39.000 These are good.
00:19:40.000 They're effectively a way to reach the democratic socialist ideal.
00:19:43.000 Here is Jerome Powell admitting he got inflation wrong in November 2021.
00:19:45.000 And here's where the worm really starts to turn because it's kind of amazing that this administration, they could claim it was transitory and we got it, you know, it'll be okay, it'll be okay.
00:19:54.000 But once it became clear that it wasn't okay, that's when you expect them to take their foot off the pedal, right?
00:19:59.000 Wrong.
00:19:59.000 They decide that they're going to ram their foot through the pedal Their feet are now on the ground like Fred Flintstone.
00:20:07.000 It's amazing.
00:20:07.000 So here's November 2021.
00:20:08.000 Jerome Powell now acknowledging that he got it wrong.
00:20:11.000 Here he is.
00:20:12.000 I think it's fair to say that the experts who have been advising you about the future rate of inflation have pretty much the same credibility as those late night psychic hotlines you see on TV.
00:20:36.000 So I think what we missed about inflation was we didn't predict the supply side problems and those are highly unusual and very difficult, very nonlinear and it's really hard to predict those things but that's really what we missed and that's why all of the professional forecasters had much lower inflation projections.
00:20:56.000 Okay, but everybody recognized by the end of 2021 that inflation was now persistent, that it wasn't transitory anymore.
00:21:02.000 And yet in March of 2022, Joe Biden then proposed a $5.8 trillion budget.
00:21:08.000 $5.8 trillion, including massively higher taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
00:21:13.000 So a recipe for stagflation, because again, this is part of the Bernie Sanders agenda, it's part of the Elizabeth Warren agenda, it's part of the Joe Biden agenda, it's part of the Democratic agenda, writ large.
00:21:21.000 More spending, more regulations, more taxation, more Federal Reserve loose monetary policy.
00:21:27.000 And then you wonder why inflation happened?
00:21:31.000 According to the New York Times, Biden's proposed budget, which of course is never going to pass, but it's a wishlist of items, It was essentially designed to raise the spending.
00:21:42.000 And Joe Biden admitted as much.
00:21:45.000 In his State of the Union address, March 1st, 2022, he talked about fighting inflation.
00:21:50.000 And his answer to fighting inflation was, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.
00:21:52.000 More spending, because it's always more spending.
00:21:54.000 Again, it's an ideological thing with these folks.
00:21:56.000 This is why if they get reelected in November, it won't matter what the economic circumstances are.
00:21:59.000 The answer is always the same.
00:22:01.000 You fight inflation by spending more money.
00:22:04.000 One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer.
00:22:06.000 everything by spending more money as it turns out. You have to fight with your wife, spend more, like always everything is fought by by spending more money because you just got to spend more money.
00:22:13.000 Here's Joe Biden in March of 2022 and not all that long ago talking about the way to fight inflation is to spend more money. One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages.
00:22:30.000 That means make more cars and semiconductors in America.
00:22:35.000 More infrastructure and innovation in America.
00:22:38.000 More goods moving faster and cheaper in America.
00:22:42.000 More jobs where you can earn a good living in America.
00:22:46.000 Instead of relying on foreign supply chains, let's make it in America.
00:22:54.000 I call this increasing the productive capacity of our economy.
00:22:59.000 I call it building a better America.
00:23:05.000 My plan to fight inflation will lower your costs and lower the deficit.
00:23:12.000 Right, it lowers costs and lowers the deficit by spending more money.
00:23:14.000 I mean, that's how you fight inflation, is by spending more money.
00:23:16.000 Because again, it's all part and parcel of the broader economic agenda here.
00:23:20.000 I mean, Pete Buttigieg, our much-lauded Secretary of Transportation, whose main contribution has been to not do his job, in March, like two weeks later, he's saying that we have to spend more.
00:23:20.000 And it didn't stop right here.
00:23:30.000 Because of course, if you spend more, it reduces the deficit.
00:23:32.000 Because, you know, that's how spending and deficits work, or something.
00:23:36.000 The government spending is doing the exact reverse.
00:23:40.000 Reducing the national debt.
00:23:42.000 It is not inflationary.
00:23:44.000 How does that work?
00:23:45.000 How would you make that statement in a logical way?
00:23:48.000 Well, I mean, first of all, if you look at our fiscal policy, it is true, and amazingly, a lot of people don't even know this, that the deficit has gone down, and down by a remarkable amount.
00:23:59.000 So I think part of it is an expression of that.
00:24:01.000 I think also part of it is pointing to the fact that some of the investments that we make help with inflation.
00:24:07.000 I mean, that's definitely true with the infrastructure investments, right?
00:24:09.000 Because we know how infrastructure is related to supply chain, supply chain is related to They're still committed to this.
00:24:16.000 It eases inflation to spend more money.
00:24:18.000 More money spent means you ease inflation.
00:24:19.000 You fix all the problems.
00:24:20.000 By June of this year, finally Janet Yellen at Treasury was admitting she got inflation wrong.
00:24:22.000 saying actually this and then the Build Back Better vision, you know, taken together, this is going to ease inflationary pressures.
00:24:29.000 So they're still committed to this.
00:24:30.000 It eases inflation to spend more money.
00:24:32.000 More money spent means you ease inflation.
00:24:34.000 You fix all the problems.
00:24:36.000 Okay, by June of this year, finally Janet Yellen at Treasury was admitting she got inflation wrong.
00:24:41.000 So here she was acknowledging, oh yeah, oops, oopsie.
00:24:44.000 I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take.
00:24:51.000 There have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I, at the time, didn't fully understand.
00:25:10.000 But we recognize that now.
00:25:13.000 But five days later, she was still defending the pandemic spending.
00:25:17.000 Five days later.
00:25:18.000 They're ideologically committed to the idea that reality does not exist.
00:25:21.000 All that exists is theory.
00:25:23.000 Modern monetary theory is still alive and well inside the Democratic Party.
00:25:26.000 Here's Janet Yellen defending the pandemic spending despite the fact that we have had record highs in inflation month on month, pretty much every month here.
00:25:33.000 We're talking like 40-year highs in inflation.
00:25:34.000 And here's Janet Yellen still defending the policy.
00:25:37.000 We're seeing high inflation in almost all developed countries around the world.
00:25:43.000 And they have very different fiscal policies, so it can't be the case that the bulk of the inflation that we're experiencing reflects the impact of the ARP.
00:25:57.000 So was it a causal factor where you say that $2 trillion, when we had a trillion unspent, so do the quick math here, it's about $3 trillion that was put into this economy from December through March.
00:26:12.000 So I guess the way I see it is when President Biden was inaugurated, he inherited an economy with very high unemployment and the Congressional Budget Office and other forecasters were envisioning that this could last for a very long time.
00:26:35.000 And we had to address the possibility that this could be a downturn that would match the Great Recession.
00:26:45.000 Nobody was saying that in the afternoon.
00:26:47.000 No one by January of 2021 was saying that.
00:26:50.000 No one was saying that.
00:26:50.000 They had an ideological commitment to spend more money.
00:26:52.000 So, they failed.
00:26:54.000 And then they blamed everything else, right?
00:26:55.000 They blamed Putin, it's Putin's price hike, and Putin, it's all of that.
00:26:59.000 That's what's created all of this problem.
00:27:01.000 And then you've gotten Joe Biden blaming supply chains, right?
00:27:03.000 Here is Joe Biden last month blaming the supply chains again.
00:27:07.000 It's not the supply chains.
00:27:08.000 It is bad fiscal and economic policy for years on end in the middle of all very predictable supply chain constrictions, given the fact that we had a global pandemic.
00:27:16.000 Bad economic policy generally makes itself felt during crises.
00:27:20.000 And yet they keep pushing.
00:27:22.000 They keep pushing.
00:27:22.000 So here's Joe Biden last month blaming the supply chain still.
00:27:26.000 There are nine, nine major ocean line shipping companies.
00:27:31.000 that ship from Asia to the United States.
00:27:34.000 Nine.
00:27:35.000 They formed three consortiums.
00:27:38.000 These companies have raised their prices by as much as 1,000%.
00:27:43.000 So everything coming from Asia, they get 90-some percent of the stuff coming from Asia.
00:27:50.000 People at home trying to make it, you know, paycheck to paycheck are wondering, like, what in God's name do nine... Understandably, nine shipping companies have to do it.
00:28:00.000 Well, almost everything you're doing, everything from what you're eating, to what you're having to drive, to what you're, what you need in your home, it relates to supply chains and what's coming from abroad.
00:28:12.000 Supply chain, right, right, right, right, right, abroad.
00:28:14.000 Okay, but here's the thing, as Stephen Ratner, the former economic advisor to Barack Obama says, quote, the Boko Haram supply problems are not the product, are the product of an overstimulated economy, not the cause of it.
00:28:24.000 Sure, there have been some COVID-related challenges, such as health-related worker shortages in factories, but most of our supply problems have been homegrown.
00:28:31.000 Americans have resumed spending freely along the way.
00:28:33.000 They've been creating shortages akin to those in a shopping mall on Black Friday.
00:28:36.000 Blaming inflation on supply lines is like complaining about your sweater keeping it too warm after you've added several logs to the fireplace.
00:28:42.000 Correct.
00:28:43.000 Correct.
00:28:45.000 And yet Joe Biden, I keep saying it over and over because it's just, you have to understand this in order to understand why leaving these people in charge of the country is a really, really bad idea.
00:28:54.000 They're ideologically committed to an idea that is likely to result in precisely the thing they said would not happen because that's the way of the world.
00:29:03.000 And the fact that there have been mitigating factors against inflation in the past does not mean that this time there's not going to be a predictable result to very bad, predictable policy.
00:29:10.000 And yet Joe Biden is continuing to argue today that we need more spending.
00:29:14.000 And we're still pushing forward this Inflation Reduction Act.
00:29:16.000 This Inflation Reduction Act is hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending.
00:29:20.000 Joe Biden still wants more spending than that.
00:29:23.000 And Democrats are higher in their own supply.
00:29:24.000 They still believe that this is going to somehow spur the economy and fix the economy and fix inflation and all the rest.
00:29:31.000 When you have only a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
00:29:33.000 And their hammer is spending.
00:29:35.000 And Joe Biden is still arguing today that more spending is going to cut inflation.
00:29:39.000 This bill is fighting inflation.
00:29:41.000 Progressive leaders like Senator Elizabeth Warren said, quote, this bill, this is a bill that truly is about fighting inflation, bringing down the cost for families, and putting our country on a sounder economic footing.
00:29:53.000 It invests $369 billion.
00:29:57.000 Okay.
00:29:57.000 Granted, I call for 500 plus, but invest $369 billion to secure energy future and to address climate crisis, bringing down family energy bills by hundreds of dollars by providing working families tax credits.
00:30:13.000 It gives folks rebates by to buy new and efficient appliances to weatherize their homes and tax credits for heat pumps and rooftop solar.
00:30:23.000 I mean, listen, the simple fact that this idiot is citing Elizabeth Warren as the person who's talking about bringing down inflation, again, I return to the clip in which Elizabeth Warren literally said in December of 2019, we need looser Federal Reserve monetary policy because the threat of inflation is somehow exaggerated.
00:30:39.000 And he's citing her as an economic expert promoting the quote-unquote Inflation Reduction Act.
00:30:44.000 So, when friends and family start asking you questions about, you know, things like...
00:30:51.000 Do Democrats, are they really responsible for the inflation?
00:30:55.000 Why won't we just vote Democrats?
00:30:56.000 I mean, after all, it's surprising.
00:31:00.000 It was unforeseen.
00:31:02.000 None of that is true.
00:31:03.000 This is baked into the cake.
00:31:05.000 They've been promoting this policy position for years.
00:31:08.000 When the effects of the policy position become clear, then they run immediately from those and blame external factors.
00:31:12.000 But they are to blame.
00:31:14.000 People should remember that when they go to the ballot box in November.
00:31:16.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with additional content.
00:31:18.000 In the meantime, go check out The Michael Molls Show that's available right now at dailywireplus.com.
00:31:22.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:31:22.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:31:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, Executive Producer Jeremy Boren, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky, Associate Producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, Editor Adam Sajevitz, Audio Mixer Mike Karamina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Christina, Production Coordinator Jessica Kranz.
00:31:48.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.