How do you think the economy is doing?

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• Phil Kerpen on the state of the economy

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, what we need is more common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Breaking down the world's nonsense.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
About how American common sense.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
We'll see us through with the common sense of Houston.
I'm just pro common sense for Houston. From Houston Way
dot com. This is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to
you by viewind dot com. Now here's Jimmy Barrett. Hey, welcome.
It is our Wednesday dish of the show you're on

(00:34):
AM nine fifty kPr C. Coming up on our program
from this morning show on KTRH, we will have Lieutenant
Governor Dan Patrick talking about the Texas runways. You know,
I wanted to ask him about the THHC thing, but
I figured I think I figured out something today. I
think the reason why Lieutenant Governor likes coming on at
the end of our show is he knows I'm up

(00:55):
against a hard out. I can't go over because we
have to get news on time so we can get
to Michael Berry on time. So he knows that he's
a radio guy. He understands how this works. So I
always noticed that he takes the longest to answer to
say for the end. It's like he's watching the clock.

(01:16):
I suspect he's watching the clock. I don't need that
Jimmy Barrett asking me about THHC and any questions having
to do with that, So I'm just gonna keep on
talking until he's got to get out of here. I
think I finally figured that out today. Anyway, we'll share
that interview with you coming up in our next segment
here on the show. But first let's talk about things

(01:37):
that are unhygienic. And what got me on the topic
today is how many of us touch nasty services every
day without washing our hands after we do it, and
we don't even think twice about it. This is not
some sort of a pandemic germ phobia. This is just

(01:59):
from the cat of gross. You know things you do
that are gross. Some of them are things that I
never even think about. Some of them are pretty obvious.
I'll give you some examples, and they'll give you some examples.
Our listeners gave us number one touching a sticky condiment
bottle at a restaurant table, or if it's a breakfast
place and they have syrup on the table. I learned

(02:23):
my lesson by the way on syrup at the table.
I've had an I Hoop restaurant and there was a
dad there, a single dad with his with his son,
and he's on the he's on the phone doing something.
He's not paying any attention to his kid. And his kid.
You remember, how Ie hop They don't do it anymore.
They but they used to have all the different flavored
syrups at the table and they would they're lined up

(02:46):
at the table and this kid is picking up the
syrup bottles one at a time and he's licking them
and he's you know, he's putting the syrup in his
mouth right from the syrup bottle. And he's doing that
with every single one of the flame and the dad
has no clue what's going on. So our waitress comes up,
I said, just so you know, that kid is licking

(03:07):
every one of those those bottles. And of course when
they left, they took the bottles and you know, they
you know, emptied the syrup and cleaned and sanitized them
before putting them back out again. But it makes you wonder, what,
I mean, what else, how many kids do that with
ketchup bottles or any other condiment bottle that's at a restaurant.
Those things could be just full of germs licking your

(03:29):
fingers when counting money or turning pages. I do that
all the time because my fingers get dry and I
can't you know, I can't move the paper without it.
Here's an example. I hadn't even thought of pull a
tartilla or a chip out of a bag. Then you
put it on top of the package because you think

(03:49):
you're keeping it off your countertop, right, and that's where
the germs are. But the outside of the packaging is
worse than your countertop could ever be. How many people
hand how many people you know picked? How many people would,
with the cold of the flu, picked up and put
it back because they decided they didn't want it? You
just how many? How many people handled it along the

(04:11):
way everywhere from the factory where it was produced. Now, no,
Germans don't live forever. But you know, there's all kinds
of other gross things that could be on there. Here's
a id a bowl, But here's here's a if you're
a bowler eating while bowling, People think the grossest thing
about a bowling alley is the rental shoes. It's not
as the finger holes in the bowling balls. That's the

(04:33):
grossest thing. Scrolling on your phone while on the toilet guilty.
I've become my father. I used to I used to
make fun of my father because after dinner, when it
was time to do his business, he would take a
bunch of newspapers and magazines, and then he would go
into the bathroom and shut the door and we wouldn't

(04:54):
see him for half an hour. The cell phone is
the modern day version of newspaper papers and magazines. We
take our cell phone into the bathroom and we're, you know,
we're we're answering emails, we're we're looking at news stories,
we're watching videos on X or Facebook or whatever. And

(05:15):
in the meantime, you're in there doing what you're doing right,
and you're using your fingers which you probably just used
to wipe yourself, and you're putting that on your phone.
Then you wash your hands, but what's left on your phone. Anyway,
you get the idea not washing your bedding enough. I
think you should. I think I heard you should wash
your your sheets at least once a week. At least

(05:38):
once a week. That's what we do at our house. Anyway,
here's another one. I never thought of putting your filthy
suitcase on your bed. Think about where that suitcase has
been how many people have handled it, the the the
the if you picked it up in the at the
luggage carousel, you know what happened to it in the
between all those things. You know, it gets thrown around

(05:59):
in the outdoors and outsside. Wearing your outside shoes inside
your house is Maybe that's why the Japanese don't do that, right,
there's certain cultures where they basically take their shoes off
before you enter the home. Maybe that's the reason behind it,
or at least that's part of the reason behind it.
Ice machines and somebody brought Marvin Zendler this morning, you know,

(06:22):
slime on the ice, which I guess is one of
the things he was known for before my time here
in Houston. Jim Matts, Yeah, people sweating all over those things.
And finally, this one's kind of grows people not washing
their hands after either pleasuring themselves or just having sex. Yeah,

(06:43):
just you know, Yeah, you don't mind your own version
of it, I guess, but somebody else is not so much.
And then we got a couple of listener contributions.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, David and Okreach, I'll never forget the time I
was in a restroom when a guy comes in with
the sun and before they leave, rather than washing their hands,
he tells his son, don't touch anything.

Speaker 5 (07:02):
People are slobs, and.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
He proved white people are slobs. Good morning.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
This is Henry from Spring watching people blow snot rockets
in public.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Jimmy, Chris and Cleveland. The worst thing I ever saw
was when I lived and worked in Atlanta. I was
washing my hands in the bathroom at work. Driver comes
out of the saul after doing number two, flies right
by me, goes upstairs. A vendor had dropped off a
fresh box of doughnuts. Krispy Kremes pops up in the

(07:34):
lip grabs one turned me off hont Donuts.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Since then, I don't blame you. I don't blame you
and the snop rocket thing. You know who's really guilty
of that. Jeremy Pinia from the Astros. Jeremy, could you
stop doing that? I see him all the time, you know, Uh,
plugging one nostril and then blown snot out of the
other one at the plate is like, come on, man,
these games are on television. Do that you got it?

(08:00):
Do it? Do it in the dugout, don't do it
out there for everybody to see. Anyway, quickly break. We're
back with more in a moment. Jimmy Verrett show here
a name nine fifty kprc our conversation with Lieutenant Governor
Dan Patrick from this morning. We'll share that with you guys.

(08:32):
All right, the Democrats are still gone from Austin, at
least enough Texas Democrats are gone to prevent a quorum
in the House. They may have enough for a quorum
in the Senate. We'll find out when we have Lieutenant
Governor Dan Patrick in just a moment here that situation.

(08:53):
But they're all talking Nazi Germany. They're making just despicable comparisons.
They just they've become so outrageous. I guess they have
no choice anymore but to continue to be outrageous. And
a Houston representative, Texas State Representative Jolanda Jones basically made

(09:17):
a comparison between Texas redistricting and the Holocaust, the murder
of six million Jews and probably twenty million other people. Yeah,
that's the equivalent to trying to change the borders. I
will say this. Even some liberals are starting to stand up, going,
wait a minute, what are you talking about. JB. Pritzker

(09:39):
was on Colbert's show last night, Not that I watched it,
but I did see a clip of him and Colbert's
give actually giving him kind of a hard time about
the map. He's got the Illinois redistricting map and he's
he's looking at that thing and he's saying, how does
this make any sense? And he finally got JB. Pritzker
to admit that the texts that the redistricting map for

(10:01):
looks like looks like a kindergartener drew it. It's just ridiculous.
All right, here's some more Democrats talking trash and reaction
to that.

Speaker 6 (10:09):
This is a new Democratic Party. We're bringing a knife
to a knife fight.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
We need to get to fair rules across the nation
and not have Democrats showing up with a butter knife
to a gunfight.

Speaker 7 (10:21):
We have shown up to a gunfight with nothing but
good intentions and dull knives.

Speaker 4 (10:25):
Our season rolled up and we're ready to take this fight.

Speaker 6 (10:28):
We are ready to fight fire with fire.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
But we're not running away.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
We're running into the fight.

Speaker 8 (10:33):
We're asking for help, maybe just as they did back
in the days of.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
The Alum Well.

Speaker 8 (10:39):
I believe the nomenclature he was trying to say was
he you bring a gun to a knife fight. You
know you don't bring a knife to a knife fight,
so they well, you know you shouldn't say knife fight either.
None of these is anyone fearing this. Is there anyone going, oh,
you hear what they're saying over there? They're out of control.
Was there a huge mob outside sharing for just do
your job? You did? The people made their choice, the

(11:01):
people voted the numbers they did. You're only losing. You
had seventy nine percent, You're only going down to seventy
four percent. It's not even a big change. This is
just what happens when you have no plan. You can't
say this is the brand new party when it's the
same deflated individuals that has always been. It's embarrassing and
even covering it. It's like, this is why kids would

(11:25):
who act weird get weggies. This is why bullies sometimes
get justified because this behavior. We're going to fight, but
none of them look like in fighting shape. This is embarrassing.
As swallwell when he was talking about bench pressing people,
I'm mean, Huckleberry, I'll play with you, but he doesn't
want to do that. They always disappear. They just say things,
but who is cheering for this. Who is going, man,

(11:45):
I'm so excited. Thank you guys for leaving your job.
Any other job you'd be fired. I was like, I
don't want to come in today because Dana is picking
on my legs today, So I'm not going to come in.
They'd replace somebody and then they wouldn't ask me to
come on the show again. When are we going to
start seeing politicians who refuse to do their jobs have
actual consequences?

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Maybe now, maybe, well at least there'll be an attempt
at consequences. Here is Governor Greg Abbott from last night
talking about potential charges and penalties for these Democrats.

Speaker 7 (12:13):
Texas Prominent of Public Safety officers are on the streets
looking for those Democrat House members to arrest them and
to take them to the Texas Capital and hold them
there until a quorum is reached. The Texas to Prominent
of the Public Safety is also working with officials and
other states to find ways and wish we can try
to arrest the Texas Democrat members in other states and

(12:36):
bring them back to the state of Texas.

Speaker 9 (12:37):
Representive Oliverson has said that both you and aterne Gal
Kim Paxon, though, have looked into whether or not they're
funding these trips or fund raising off of these trips,
which would amount to bribery. Would that open up the
potential for you to go retrieve some of these representatives
who have fled the state.

Speaker 7 (12:54):
That opens up several opportunities. One bribery in Texas is
a felony. Is the type of offense that we can
issue papers to have these Democrats brought back. Another thing, though,
that the Democrats don't seem to know, and that is
taking or receiving a payment like they have to escape

(13:16):
or not take a vote, subjects them to forfeiture of
their seat. It's going to be one of the legal
grounds you're going to see asserted here immediately to seek
the vacation or elimination or abandonment of these House seats
by the Democrats. So we will remove them from office
and call for elections to replace them.

Speaker 9 (13:35):
But what kind of timeline you said immediately? My understanding
is that is a legal process. It would have to
be established by a judge, at least that's the opinion
of the Attorney General, I believe, established in twenty twenty one,
and that would require a judge to discern abandonment. So
that seems like that could take some time.

Speaker 7 (13:55):
So when I say immediately, i'm talking about when all
the paperwork is going to be filed with the Swartz,
which is going to be immediately. Secondly, there will be
requests for immediate responses from the course knowing that they're
dealing with an immediate timeline. You're a lawyer, you know
you can go into court and you can get a
quick resolution for matters that had a short timetable. That's

(14:16):
exactly what we're dealing with right here.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Doesn't mean though, that that's what's going to happen, that
you're going to get a quick resolution. Hopefully all this
stupidity ends before it comes to that. But well that's
wish we'll thinking on my part. All right, what more
voice on it? This is from our morning show today
on KATRH my conversation with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick about
the problems with the Texas House. All right, still trying

(14:40):
to get the runaway Democrats back in Austin seven to
fifty our time. Here in Houston's Warning News, we are
joined by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Welcome back to the show. Sorry,
good morning, Hey, I heard from President Trump not directly,
but I heard him say that maybe there might be
a little FBI involvement in trying to extradite some of
these tech As Democrats.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
I'll let the legal work say in the hands of
those who pursue that for a living. For me, as
President of the Senate, my job is to pass bills,
and that's what we're going to do. We're going to
pass the redistricting map sometime early next week. We will
power it through because it's legal, it's the right thing
to do. You know, when you look at these numbers,

(15:23):
and I was with the Hannity last night, Laura the
night before, we talked about these national numbers, and I
think people are stunned when they see the jerrymandering that
the Democrats have created over decades. For example, Massachusetts, the
president got thirty six percent of the vote. They don't
have one Republican, not one for congress. In Illinois, where
the Democrats from Texas have fled with Pritzker, they have

(15:45):
seventeen congressional seats, fourteen Democrats, three Republicans, even though the
president got forty three percent of the vote. In fact,
if you take the five biggest blue states, or five
of the bigger ones New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Washington State,
and California. President averaged forty two percent of the vote.
And yet of the one hundred and seventeen congressmen and women,

(16:08):
ninety are Democrats and only twenty seven Republicans. They they
are emperors with no clothes. Trust me, they've been doing
this forever. All we're doing is fighting back to be
sure our red state is represented as our voters indicate of.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
JB. Pritzker was on Colbert last night, and Colbert, even
Colbert liberal as he is, was giving him a hard time,
and he finally said, yeah, our map kind of looks
like was drawn by a kindergartener.

Speaker 5 (16:34):
Yes, it was. You know, this goes back to that's
the vice president of the United States got named Elbridge Jerry,
and he was the first to draw a map like
the Democrats have drawn for decades, a map that someone
said looked like a salamander, and they said, well, it's
really Jerrymander. That's where the word came from from our
fifth vice president. And that's what the Democrats have done

(16:55):
for decades. You know, when you see the elections on
you know, the election maps and election nineteenth. Look at the
whole country and it's all red like Texas, and you say,
how could Congress be so close because of that?

Speaker 3 (17:05):
And all we're doing.

Speaker 5 (17:07):
All we're doing is drawing districts in Texas, five districts
that Donald Trump won, And all we're doing is just
making sure that our red state that And by the way, Jimmie,
in the last two and a half years, we've bett
at about three million people in the state, two and
a half to three million just in the last few years,
about eleven to twelve men in the last twenty. The

(17:29):
state has changed. We're much more Republican than we've ever been.
And it's perfectly legal what we're doing. We're just drawing
maps to make sure we have the right representation in
Congress on behalf of a red state.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
I had State Senator Paul Bettencourt on a little bit
earlier on our show, and I asked him if Senate
Democrats were still in Austin, Are they still around you?
You don't better than anybody else.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
Yes. In fact, I'm on the road right now to Austin.
We go in at nine o'clock this morning and we'll
start our redistricting hearings later today than tomorrow and and
bring them after the floor soon. If the House comes
back and gets a quorum, they need four or five
more Democrats to come back. They're very close right now,
they're in the mid nineties. They need one hundred total
votes two thirds of the House to have a quorum.

(18:12):
We have a quorum in the Senate, but right now
I have a number of Democrats who have left and
gone to various cities. I don't know if they're coming
back or not. Here's a question. Are the Democrats going
to stay out of state? Are they going to stay
out of state and kill the bills that we're going
to address the flooding, this terrible tragic storm that we
had on July fourth? Are they going to stay out

(18:35):
and not do that and kill those bills? Now in
the Senate again, I have a quorum, and I'll keep
a quorum. I have enough Democrats with my Republicans to
stay so we'll pass these bills. The question is in
the House. What are they going to do in the House.
Are all of these Democrats going to stay out and
kill another property tax bill? Are they going to kill
the THHC band? Are they going to kill getting rid

(18:57):
of the star test. Are they going to kill all
these bills? There's no here. I mean, there's no endgame.
They have to come back at some time. So the
question is that they want to get back before session ends.
A special session is thirty days. We're halfway through. It
ends on August nineteenth, in two weeks, a little less
than two weeks. And if they don't come back, then
we come back for another thirty days and do it again.
And if they stay out, we do it again, and

(19:18):
we do it again. There is no endgame here. And meanwhile,
the people of Texas are not getting their true representation
and on these bills, they could all die because the Democrats,
and they ought to be ashamed of themselves quite frankly,
with all this focus on the flooding issues, and that's
our number one priority, is to address that we lost
lives here in Houston. And look, you've got almost all

(19:38):
the Houston Democrats, almost all of them to my knowledge,
have fled the state.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
All of them.

Speaker 5 (19:43):
They're the same ones, by the way, that won't pass
Bell Reform to keep murders behind bars. The Democrats in
Harris County and Houston in general, they are a disgrace
to our city and by the way, to Republicans, Democrats
and independence. For example, in ball reform, everybody wants to
keep people have committed murder or been charged with murder
in jail. Not these democrats. These are the same people

(20:06):
that have taken off of these other states. They'll be
ashamed of themselves. They to get back to work and
do their job.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
There we go. That's the filibuster there that took us
to the end of the show and didn't give me
a chance to ask him about why he's hanging on
like a like a like a bulldog to that THHC
band while he just won't let that thing go. All right,
quick little break. We're going to talk about the economy
a little bit with Phil Kirpan. He'll join us. Phil
is the president of American Commitment. We'll talk to him

(20:31):
next year, I think nine to fifty KPRC and the
Jimmy Barren Show. All right, see kind of the in Well,

(20:53):
if you ask Jerome Powell, he's still worried about inflation,
so he's not cutting interest rates. I think it's got
more to do with a personal grudge he's got going
on right now. But we'll get into that we're going
to talk with the President of American Commitment, Phil Kerpin.
What kind of shape do you think the economy is
in right now, Phil.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Well, it's pretty good and I think it's looking up. Basically,
we got a pretty strong GDP report. We got that
three handle that we were hoping for, and that's a
pretty good indicator that we're pointing in the right direction.
We did reach a milestone of swords just in the
past month. The average, the sorry, the median weekly income

(21:33):
in real terms, inflation adjusted, is finally back where it
was under the first Trump term before Biden inflation eroded
everyone's purchasing power, and so we're kind of out of
the hole. We're going to have to grow from there
before people start feeling good about the economy again. But
we're out of the hole in terms of purchasing power,
so that's a big deal. The jobs picture, who knows

(21:55):
it changed raptly with the revision last week, which is wind.
The President sort of wentzy about that, So the quality
of those surveys is questionable. But I think the reason
I'm most optimistic is they got that tax bill cleared,
not at the end of the year like I feared.
In the run up to Christmas, but by July fourth,
the way the President of the Speaker wanted, And I
think that's going to be a race to remove a

(22:17):
lot of uncertainty and fear, bring a lot of capital
off the sidelines. And so I expect the second half
of the year to be a lot better than the
first if we can have some peace on the trade
front and some resolution and no further expalation of the
terror force. And it does look like the President has
got the pieces in place for deals with most of
our major trade partners, so that's looking up also, So

(22:39):
on the whole, I think things look pretty good.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
Yeah, that European Union trade deal is a big deal.
The China thing is, no doubt, will take the longest
and it's going to be the most difficult to achieve,
but I think we're making progress down in the right way.
Let's talk a little bit about the Bureau Labor Statistics thing.
I can I can understand why he's concerned. I don't
think there has been any month and this is not

(23:02):
just a Trump administration thing. This goes back to the
Biden administration as well. I don't think there's any BLS
jobs report that hasn't been changed in a major way.
A month or two later, they evidently they don't. They're
using an antiquated system, they don't have a particularly good
response rate, and nobody has done anything about it. At

(23:25):
least the people in charge at the BLS weren't doing
anything about it.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, the response rate plunged during COVID and it never
came back off, and so they are trying to, you know,
extrapolate numbers from a dwindling sample. And one of the
problems when the response rate goes down also is your
sample becomes less representative. And so I think we've had
some timing effects where, you know, they try to put
this out every month the first Friday of the month,

(23:52):
and sometimes like on Friday that was August first, so
the July data was, you know, just whatever they have
as of the day before. But then data keeps coming in,
and I think, you know, the bad news reporters are
less likely to report in a timely fashion because when
you just had to lay people off, you don't crush
to report that to the government. And so I think

(24:12):
that's why we've had kind of persistently downward revisions. And
I don't know that it was politically motivated the way
the President said. We don't have specific evidence of that,
but we do know she didn't do a very good job.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
That's the bottom line.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Massive revisions, particularly during Biden, and you know, they've created
a very deceptive picture of the labor market, you know,
overstating employment by over a million jobs. And so they've
got to figure out, I think, a better way to
do this, or maybe they should stop doing it and
do a better job, and we should just get you know,
the quarterly numbers that are based on real payrolls instead

(24:45):
of these monthly survey that they can't make them a
lot better than they do.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
I agree with that you can't do it right, don't
do it. Speaking of not doing it right, I think
that it'd be fair to say that the drome. Powell's
kind of in that category, and certainly the President's going
out of here way to let people know him in
particular how upset he is about it. You know, we are.
I certainly believe we're overdue for at least a small

(25:10):
interest rate cut. I don't do you know who Victor
Davis Hansen is. I do, Yeah, great, yeah, yeah, he
hadn't I thought of rather a stute observation. He thinks
that what's going on with Jerome Poll is very similar
to what happened with Merrick Garland when he was Attorney General.
In other words, he had an axe to grind. He

(25:31):
doesn't like the way Trump talks about him. He doesn't
like Trump to begin with, but he doesn't like the
way Trump talks about him. And he still has hurt feelings,
just like Merrick Garland when he went in his attorney
jail said hurt feelings over being turned down for the
Supreme Court. And he's and he's he thinks that he's
just kind of taking it out on the president.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Well, it certainly looks like he's politically motivated because we
got two rate cuts last year when the inflation environment
was worse than it's been this year, and they've basically
just delayed installed and said they're not cutting it all.
And objectively speaking, Powell has failed and his own standard,

(26:11):
and he says that he wants to be in a
tight ranger on two percent PC. He's accomplished that, I
think three months out of the eighties m he's been
on the job. So the guy's batting like twenty seven
or something like that. By his own standard, and so
I think it's pretty fair to say that he failed.
I thought he probably should have been fired when Trump
came in. Trump didn't want to have a legal fight

(26:33):
over that, and the Supreme Court sort of sent a
shot over the bow and they they had a recent
case on whether the president fire members of boards and commissions,
and they said, yes, the president can fire boards and commissions,
and then they just got blue and for no reason.
The case had nothing to do with the sense. They
put a sentence in it that was like, except the
Fed Reserve because that's why he private, and then you

(26:54):
have to scratch himsy. That has nothing to do with
the case. The Court's just kind of saying, don't try.
It leaves Powell alone, which I thought was extremely inappropriate.
But his term is up in may to be replaced.

Speaker 5 (27:04):
Then.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
The only thing out of caution is the President keeps
saying that when we get lower short term rates from
the Fed, federal interest expense is gonna come down and
mortgages are going to come down. And I'm not sure
that's what's going to happen, because last year the Fed
cut rates and long term rates went up down. I
don't think we're gonna get long term rates down unless
cons actually cuts spending, so the long term insflation outlook

(27:25):
is better.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, I think you're right. I think people forget that.
It's it's not the FED rate that determines mortgage interest rates.
It's tied to US Treasury bills more than anything else. So, yeah,
you're the dollar is going to have to look stronger,
and we're gonna have to get rid of some debt,
which which tells me that hopefully that's on the President's
agenda as well going forward. That you know, we're making

(27:48):
all this extra money from tariffs, let's let's use the
vast majority of that money to try to pay down
the debt.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Well, I think we've got to have discipline on the
spending side. I think, you know, revenue is kind of
always around its historical norms. We had this massive run
up and spending. We had some reforms in the Big
Beautiful Bill, but they were pretty limited. They only sort
of partially undid Biden's and greet and medicaid, and over
a long period of time, I really liked Ron Johnson's
idea of saying, let's go to the pre COVID day

(28:17):
point with just the population and inflation adjustment and really
really lop off this huge ratchet up in the side
of the government that we had. And yeah, you know,
I don't want to overstate what nine billion dollars is
in a seven trillion dollar budget because it's microscopic. But
at least they were able to do that recision. If
that is failed, I would have said they never even
to cut anything. Ever, they did get that done. Let's

(28:39):
see if they can have sequels and follow on and
start moving in the right direction on spending, because I
think the main problem is spending. It's not you know,
what we.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Do with the revenue.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
The key The key here and you just hit on it,
Phil Kirpin, is that they're going to have to add
on to that big beautiful bill. The big beautiful bill
needs to be the beginning, not the end. They vindicated
that's what it's going to be. But it's going to
require Congress to act again.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, they're already talking about potentially doing a new reconciliation
bill this year. We be the first time ever they've
done two in a year. Make it, I don't know,
the most productive Congress ever. So I'm a little bit technical,
but Jody Errington, the chairman of the Budget Committee, says
he's going to do another reconciliation build in the fall,
and it does start in this committee, and he has
two great things that he wants to start with. He
said he wants to stop Medicare paying extra when a

(29:28):
hospital system buy the physician's office and said they should
just pay the same rate they always paid. I think
I would stop. Not only would it save a lot
of money, but it would stop this harmful consolidation of
the whole healthier sector. So I'd love to see that.
And he also said he wants to take on the
excessive overmatch in Medicaid for able bodied, working age adults,
where we pay seven times more federal dollars for them

(29:48):
than we do it for children and pregnant women and
the elderly and then disabled. So we could start a
bill with those two things, it would be a really
good starting point.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yead would Phil Kirpin, thank you, sir, Always a pleasure
to talk to you. Thanks for coming on the show
that is you two President of the American Commitment. That
is Phil Kirpin back with Morning a Moment Jimmy Baird Show.
Here an AM nine fifty KPRC. All right, a couple

(30:29):
more pieces of business before we call to Wednesday. Do
you know who he j Antoni is. We've had him
here on our show before. We've had him on the
morning show on KTRH and our afternoon show here on
AM nine fifty KPRC. He's a economist. I'm not sure
if he's still at the Heritage Foundation or not, but
his name is getting mentioned as a potential new head

(30:52):
of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We were just talking
in our last segment here about the firing of the
head of the BLS because theobs reports have been so bad,
I mean not bad that the information's been bad. They've
gone back and had to completely revise them to a
number that's nowhere near what the original number was. And

(31:12):
if you're going to have a jobs report number, it
has either have it be accurate or don't report it.
So here is ej Antony talking about the Bureau of
Labor Statistics and the possibility that people are mentioning him
as perhaps the person to take that department over.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
I can't really consider it because no one has actually
offered it to me. Just to be clear, no one
from the White House has reached out to me, So
I mean, that's the end of that portion of it,
all right.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
So then can we get your take on what happens.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
I'm breday absolutely and real quick jumping on the CPI
component that you just mentioned that fifteen percent of the
data isn't even actually gathered anymore, it's just simply imputed.
I mean, why on earth did we have to fire
all of the data collectors? Are you really telling me
there was no fat to trim at BLS? You had
to cut some of the most crucial employees you have.

(32:03):
I mean that was absolutely not just silly, that was
Malfeasan's Those are the types of Frankly, those are the
types of mistakes that I think are legitimate cause for
firing a government bureaucrat. Now regarding what happened on Friday,
I mean, look, I have been raising the issue with
the BLS data for a couple of years now, not exaggeration.

(32:26):
It wasn't just me, plenty of other folks too observed
that all the way back in the spring of twenty
twenty two. There are severe problems that start to develop
within BLS data, whether it's the non farm payroll numbers
or other things as well, and none of those problems
have been addressed, none of the necessary corrections.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Have been made.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
That's why we continue to see these huge revisions in
terms of the non farm payroll figures. And again that's
a problem, and if somebody is not willing to address
that problem, then maybe it's time to move aside and
let somebody else have a stab at it.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
And hey, I'll vote for EJ. Not the I get
a vote in this. I think you do a great job.
He's a smart guy. And one more topic here, because
here's another one that's worthy of follow up and probably
didn't get noosed by most people. The Health and Human
Services has pulled five hundred million dollars in mr NA funding.

(33:22):
You know, mr NA is how they developed the covid vaccine.
Here is RFK Junior explaining why they have gotten rid
of funding for mr NA vaccination programs over the.

Speaker 6 (33:33):
Past few weeks. Bored a review twenty two mRNA vaccine
development investments and began canceling them. Let me explain why.
Most these shots are for flu or covid. But as
the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don't perform well against
viruses that in fact the upper respiratory truck. Here's the problem.

(33:55):
mRNA only codes for a small part of the viral proteins,
usually a single anigen one mutation, and the vaccine becomes ineffective.
This dynamic dribes a phenomena called anagenetic shift, meaning that
the vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can actually prolong

(34:16):
pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective
effects of the vaccine. Millions of people, maybe even you
or someone you know, got the omicron variant despite being vaccinated.
That's because a single mutation can make mRNA vaccines ineffective.
The same risk applies to flu. After reviewing the science

(34:40):
and consulting top experts at NIH and FDA, AHHS has
determined that mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for
these respiratory viruses. That's why, after extensive review, BARTA has
begun the process of terminating these twenty two contracts totally
just under five hundred million dollars to replace the troubled

(35:04):
mRNA programs, We're prioritizing the development of safer, broader vaccine
strategies like a whole virus vaccines and novel platforms that
don't collapse one viruses mutape. Let me be absolutely clear,
HH has supports save effective vaccines for every American who
wants them. That's why we're moving beyond the limitations of

(35:28):
mRNA for respiratory viruses and investing in better solutions.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
And that is why the COVID vaccine was a bunch
of bs. And we kept saying this, What is the
point of getting a shot to protect you against a
variant that will soon mutate into something else. There's no
point in it. It's the same reason why, at least
at this point in my life, I don't bother with

(35:53):
a flu shot, because the flu mutates every year, its
viruses mutate, they turn into something else. So the shot
you're getting does not necessarily reflect what the new variant is.
You're probably you know you under the best of circumstances,
in the best years, you get about twenty five percent

(36:14):
protection from a flu shot. Now, if you want to
get a flu shot, that's fine. You want to spend
your money on that. Lord knows the pharmacies and the
doctor's offices, We'll all tell you to get a flu shot,
but you'll never hear that coming out of my mouth.
Hey listen, got a run. We're out of time. Have
a great day. See you tomorrow morning, bright nearly five
over at news Radio seven forty KTRH. Hope you tune
in tomorrow afternoon four throughout AM nine to fifty KTRC.