Deception In The Details: Sarah Westwood Talks to A&G

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I will say this before we get to our reporter.
I did see Larry Summers on CNN this morning, and
he was he's a democratic economist, but he was more
than willing to call out all those other bills as inflationary.
He was warning the White House this is gonna make
inflation worse. He says, this is going to help with inflation.
So right, well, and there was the big Chip bill
as well. To discuss this. Uh my gosh, what a day.

(00:21):
Sarah Westwood, investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, joins us, Sarah, welcome,
how are you. I'm great, thanks for having me. I
can only assume that somebody but Joe manson a yacht.
Is that how he changed his mind or would we
have any idea how that came about. It's completely unclear
how it came about. The win of it is certainly

(00:41):
almost certainly earlier than yesterday afternoon. I mean, I think
Republicans were really burned by the timing of his announcement
that he was going to back this deal, because, if
you remember, Mitch McConnell said, we are not going to
offer support for the semi conductor bill, the chips bill
that you guys mentioned unless you guys, you know, agree
not to move forward on a reconciliation build. Does all

(01:03):
this stuff fund climate change? You know that the Democrats
have been wanting. And he held up that bill until
he was pretty sure that build back better or some
version of it was dead. Then he lent his support
to it, and just a few hours later, Mansion and
Chumor come out and say they have a reconciliation deal.
So I think Republicans feel really burned right now by
that bait and switch. And it's why House Republicans are saying, well,

(01:25):
you may have tricked us in the Senate, but we're
not going to support it in the House. And they
are whipping against the Chips bill. Now, Wow, even though
the Republicans like the Chips bill, they're just using it
as a bargaining chip. If you'll pardon the use of
the word chips too many times, Um, if you'll excuse me,

(01:46):
I'm enjoying some pringles. Well that is kind of from
from a Yeah, that's interesting from a drama standpoint, because
I saw the headlines middle of the day that before
the we're on the I'm on the we're broadcasting the
show is centered on the West coast. So it was
the middle of the day for me that the whole
new bill back better paired down thing was dead. I
saw the headlines that that was dead, and then all

(02:06):
of a sudden, just like Tony Dow the other day,
was not dead. Briefly, Um, you were following that story.
So so some Shenanigans are lying or is it? How
upset are the Republicans about this? Republicans are pretty upset.
I mean, they definitely feel like there was deception involved
in in the way the details of the new Democratic

(02:29):
Reconciliation Bill came out. And it's almost certainly was the
case that Mansion and Schumer didn't magically arrive at this
conclusion hours after the Chips bill passed. It's clear this
deal probably came together in the days or even weeks
before Chips advanced out of the Senate and then it
was announced. Also not clear what part of this bill

(02:49):
would be, you know, anti inflationary. I mean, it's subsidies
for green energy, it's subsidies for solar panels and electric cars,
it's tax increases on businesses. So it's not clear where
Democrats are really getting this idea that it's going to
fight inflation, and it's really bad timing for them to float,

(03:10):
you know, more than three fifty billion dollars worth of
government spending at the same time that we're getting these
GDP numbers. That suggests to all sentient economists that the
economy is now in a recession on top of the
inflation that we're experiencing. So can you we've skipped to
the politics, and the politics are are really interesting actually
this time. But what is in this gigantic fourty three

(03:35):
billion dollar bill just the quick drive by while the
part that Democrats seem most excited about is a lot
of the climate change um UH measures that are in
this bill obviously, like I mentioned, their subsidies for electric vehicles,
for solar panel production, for transitioning more towards clean energy.

(03:55):
There's some new UH carbon emission regulations. I can just
jump in and make These are my words, not yours.
I just I get the feeling, you know. My My
first thought when I hear those words is that's gonna
be a bunch of crap, a whole bunch of useless crap,
A whole bunch of money is gonna get spent. It's
not gonna help the environment in any way people are
gonna get rich. We're not gonna use less fossil field.
But back to you, Sarah, Celinda, right, Celenda is what

(04:18):
comes to mind. Right, That's often been the case is
that it's been a boondoggle for technology that has not
yet succeeded on the free market, that is not ready
for mass production and doesn't impact climate change in any
meaningful way. So you have the climate piece of it.
The Democrats are really excited about. There's an increase in
the corporate minimum tax. That will actually be an interesting

(04:38):
component because UH Senator Kirsten Cinema out West has repeatedly
said she does not support raising taxes on businesses in
any form, and her opposition to tax increases has been
part of what prevented Democrats from moving forward on a
bill like this before. Even though Mansion, you know, has
opposed a whole host of other things, she's been standing
against corporate tax increases. It will be interesting to see

(05:01):
if she's gonna shift her stance now because she doesn't
want to be the one in the hot seat like
Mansion has been. You also have some UH pharmaceutical company
reforms that allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices with
the pharmaceutical companies, the government things that will help lower
prescription drug prices for senior So it's sort of a
grab bag of some of the stuff that Democrats wanted

(05:24):
and build back better. It's nowhere near as ambitious, but
it does in a lot of areas dump money into
the economy at a time when it's already overheated, and
that's obviously going to be the line that Republicans use
against it. Yeah, I just saw one item that it
was I think it was sixty billion dollars given to
disadvantaged neighborhoods who have been disproportionately affected by climate change

(05:44):
or something like that, which having grown up in Chicago
with the corrupt, corrupt money handout system they have there,
I know, a slush fund. When I see just just unbelievable,
just unbelievable that the UM. When I hear the biggest
investment in climate change fighting ever, I just I want
to hold onto my wallet. Maybe I'm too cynical, but

(06:06):
I doubt it. So now, because this is a budget
reconciliation bill, the filibuster does not factor incorrect, and it
will probably pass the House. So don't need any Republicans. Correct,
no Republicans will be needed. But the interesting thing is
they are going to need all fifty Democrats, so they
can use Senator Vice President Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker.

(06:27):
But one issue for Democrats right now in terms of
the timing is that, uh, their members keep getting COVID.
I mean, I believe Senator Dick Durbin is the latest
to be out for at least two weeks because of COVID,
So we can't pably be there. The Senate, unlike the House,
does not have proxy voting, so everybody has to physically
be there, so their plans keep getting pushed back and

(06:47):
push back and push back because members are out with COVID,
and so even though all the details of the bill
seem to have been hammered out, they might not be
able to get it done before August recess, which pushes
this into September because of the COVID outbreak that Washington's experiencing.
All right, Sarah, I'm gonna ask you to not listen
to the next few sentences. This is private to Jack.

(07:12):
The Republicans have to send people into the Capitol to cough.
That's that's stupid that they're still holding onto the you
gotta be there to vote. That's that's a vestige of
the eight hundred. But whatever, that's a different topic. Um uh.
Sarah Westwood, investigative reporter of the Washington Examiners on the line,
and do you want to touch on the giant chips? See,

(07:33):
I suppose we should before we run out of time.
So what's the big deal on the on the chip bill?
Why is this big? Well, chip bill would offer subsidies
to UH semiconductor manufacturing here in the US to sort
of full sort the US of competitiveness against China, who's
also a big manufacturer of semi conductor. And these are

(07:54):
chips that are using basically all kinds of technology that
we use. So it's important bills. But there were also
deficit concerns, inflationary concerns, because anytime you're talking about a
subsidy or a hand out to an industry, you're talking
about the government dumping money into an economy that's already
you know, struggling too many dollars, chasing too a few goods.
And the politics of the chips build were also sort

(08:17):
of surrounded in controversy, I think because of Paul Pelosi,
Nancy Pelosi's husband, making some pretty lucrative trades in the
semiconductor industry on the stock market. So there was a
lot of sort of scandal involved in this bill. And regardless,
I think it's going to have a hard time getting
through the House if all the Republicans are going to
vote against it. But you know, if if if Nancy

(08:39):
Pelosi can get keep all of her Democrats in line
to support it, then you know there's a good chance
that that it does become law. And Republicans are going
to be really unhappy about that. So the Republicans, all
the Republicans are against the chip bill. Also, well, leadership
is whipping against it, which means leadership has sent out
memos to all the hundreds of GOP members and said

(09:00):
the official position of the conference is that we would
like you to vote against this. Now, they don't do
this for every bill. Sometimes they don't whip against things.
They let members vote their conscience, as they say, but
this is an instant when conscience, yeah, saying we would
like you to vote against the spill. That doesn't mean
everyone will tow the line, but most well, But is

(09:22):
that as a leverage against the build back better Light
or is that because they actually are against the chip bill.
I think it's the former, you know, I think there
was a good chance this was honest way to passage
beforehand it had by partisan support. Okay, so I did
have Republicans, right, I just want to make sure I
understand that. So it had Republican support outside of the
whole using its leverage, all right, Yeah, that was pretty

(09:42):
solid bipartisan support. I mean, it was not uncontroversial. But
Sarah Westwood of the Examiner on the line in the
few seconds we have left, Sarah, could you give us
the brief list of government programs that have been cut
to help pay for the giant new one? So I'm
glad we only have a few seconds. So that's the
sort of thing. You are. You are. You are really
good at your job, and most people aren't. I'm not

(10:05):
most people are not good at the jobs. You are
really good at your job. Yeah, it's always a pleasure.
Thanks at Million, You're terrific. Thanks bye bye, farm Strong
and Jetty