In this episode, Lisa welcomes back EJ Antoni from The Heritage Foundation to break down America’s affordability crisis and the real-world economic pressures squeezing working families. From rising housing costs and persistent inflation to the impact of immigration and government spending, the conversation examines how political messaging often diverges from everyday financial realities. Antoni explores generational money challenges, cost-of-living pressures, and why many Americans feel left behind by current economic policies. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get
to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we're talking about affordability. President Trump begins his cross country
tour on affordability and battleground states like Pennsylvania. He's going
to be talking about what he's done, what is administration
has done to make life easier for you. We're going
to get into it with EJ and Tony. He is
(00:21):
a chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
He's a friend of the show.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
We've had him on before to talk about President Trump's policies.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Have they made life better?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
We'll talk about deregulation, the tax cuts as well as
the tariffs, and then also what impact does the legal
immigration have on housing.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So we'll dig into all of that and more. Stay
tuned for EJ. Well. EJ, it's always great to have
you on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I want to talk to you about the buzzword affordability.
Everybody's talking about it. I'm sure sure you've heard the
word here or there in the past few weeks. I
appreciate you coming on and talking about it.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yeah, my pleasure, Lisa.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I feel like the rest of the world is playing
ketchup to you and me, were we like the only
two talking about affordability for four stinking years before everyone.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Else realized it was a problem.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Is like, why weren't we talking about or you know,
obviously we were, But like, now the media all of
a sudden cares about affordability and the left all of
a sudden cares about affordability after four years of an
affordability little bred shot.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Exactly, it's because they think now it's politically profitable for
them to do so, whereas before it obviously wasn't. Because
the last thing they wanted to do when their guy
was in the White House was draw attention to the
fact that he was failing Americans literally every single day
in terms of the cost of living. And now all
of a sudden, now, oh now it's a concern.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, well exactly how do you think you know, obviously
President Trump's brought to embark on this affordability tour. He'll
be in a Pennsylvania today. How do you think the
White House is doing and sort of messaging on what
they've done and what President Trump's done on affordability.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Yeah, I think they're doing Okay, Lisa, I just don't
think they do themselves any favors when they conflate what
Democrats are saying with the reality that Americans are feeling,
because those two things are not the same. Right When
Democrats say, oh, Trump caused an affordability crisis, okay, obviously
that's ridiculous. The affordability crisis was the whole reason Trump
(02:31):
got sent back to Washington.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
To fix it.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Everyone was so sick of the economy under Biden and
Bidenomics that they sent Trump back because they remembered how
good the economy was in the first Trump term, so
they sent him back to DC specifically because there already
was an affordability crisis obviously before he took office, since
it was before the election. So you don't want to
say at the same time, though, just because what the
(02:55):
Democrats are saying as a hoax, you don't want to
you don't want people to get the impression you're saying
that what people are feeling is a hoax. And I
hope I'm making that distinction clear. There still is a
very real affordability crisis. The monthly mortgage payment on a
median price home literally doubled under the Biden administration. Now
(03:16):
have costs come down a little bit in terms of
home ownership. Yes, but have we by any means reset
the clock as it were? Are we back to where
home ownership affordability was under the first Trump term. No,
not at all. We have a very long way to go.
When you have messaging that I think conflates those two
and says the affordability crisis is a scam. No, the
(03:39):
affordability crisis is very real as it was two years ago,
three years ago, etc. But the Democrats messaging on it
is certainly the thing that is a scam. I do
think the White House is doing a better job of
highlighting the ways in which they are helping to bring
costs down or at least to stop them from going up.
I mean, look at what they've been able to do
(03:59):
with energy, with getting gas prices down to the lowest
level in five years.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Now.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
You have several states where actually a lot of states,
most states where gas is under three dollars. You even
have a couple of states where the average price for
unleaded is below two dollars. It's like a buck ninety five,
a buck ninety nine. So great news, there a great
progress there, and it's not just Lisa from the standpoint
of now, the average American is going to pay less
every week when they fill up their own tank. But
(04:26):
look around, especially this time of year, at all the
Amazon delivery vans, right, Or even if you're not getting
an Amazon delivery, what about when you go to the
grocery store, you grab a gallon of milk, a carton
of eggs, a bag of bread, you know, you name it,
I don't care what it is. You grab anything off
the shelf, off the shelf, how did it get to
the store in the first place on a truck or
(04:47):
some other kind of delivery vehicle that was fueled by oil,
by diesel, by gas. Right. So bringing what I'm getting
at here, Lisa, is that by bringing down these energy prices,
that's going to put downward press hrun prices throughout the
economy because all of those transportation costs are a costs
that a business has to pass on to the consumer
(05:08):
in the final price of a product. And so if
Amazon is paying less for its delivery costs, you're going
to pay lower prices on Amazon. If the grocer is
paying less for his or her delivery costs, you're going
to pay less for your groceries. Things like that are
great news. I think the messaging also will get a
little bit easier in the new year because of some
of the changes with the One Big Beautiful Bill, some
(05:29):
of the tax changes, people will be able to you know,
not only are they going to get some in some
cases a very sizable tax refund, but they're going to
be able to change their tax with holdings, and so
they'll get to keep more of their weeklier monthly paycheck
in the first place. So things like that are really
going to benefit the average American, not just you know,
the Wall Street Titan.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, I do worry a little bit about some of
them in the messaging because it's like if you're fighting
with your partner, you know, your spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever,
and like someone's like, oh, like calm down in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, you're like, don't tell me to calm down.
Like I'm trying to express how I feel, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And so I feel like Americans right now, like they're frustrated.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's showing up in the polling.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
You know, they're trying to tell politicians how they feel
about the state of the economy, and so telling them
like you're fine, calm down, right, Like it's just going
to enrage voters when like they want to feel heard
and understood and that they're struggling exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Li said, Yeah, this I think is part of the
difficulty with Well, let me put it this way. You know,
at some point you can say this is Trump's economy now, right,
But by no means can I think anybody say that
not even a year into this Trump was going to
be able to somehow magically reverse literally everything Biden did,
(06:46):
and it would take even longer than to reverse the effects.
Let's not forget, not even a month into the Biden
administration he signed his first multi trillion dollar spending bill
into law, So the spending started a cent immediately, and
it was on a very grand scale. Again, we're talking
multi trillion dollar pieces of legislation. But when did we
(07:07):
finally get the peak of forty year high inflation. It
wasn't until a whole year and a half later, So
it really took eighteen months for the inflation to really
kick in in a big way. When you got you know,
inflation over nine percent by the CPI in double digits,
looking at the PPI, you have lots of different metrics,
so what I'm getting at here is the fact that
(07:29):
even if Trump started, which he did on day one,
with the regulatory changes, with the executive orders, you couldn't
expect that to have an instantaneous effect. It took even
longer for Congress to act. My goodness, look how long
it took them just to get the tax.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Bill across the finish line.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So yes, it is going to take time to actually
get this stuff done, and unfortunately it's going to take
even longer to.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Have an effect.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Now that's not much consolation for the average Joe who's
really suffering, right. I did an interview the other day,
and I hope I didn't get get too mad at
the person asking the question, because they said, you know, why,
why are the American people so impatient? Why can't they
just give the president, you know, two years or even
just eighteen months. Why can't they give them some time?
I'm like, what do you mean, wait eighteen months? Why
(08:13):
should they have to wait eighteen months? They are right
to be angry because they've been waiting three years. You're
not just asking the American people, you know, to suffer
for a year and a half because they've already been
suffering for three years, So what you're really saying is
not a year and a half but four and a
half years. That's how you have to look at this,
you know, to get the perspective. I think of the
(08:34):
average American what they've been dealing with and what they
continue to be dealing with in this American economy. And again,
it's not the president's fault. I don't mean by I'm
not in any way trying to insinuate that the president
is making things better, not worse. But I don't want
to diminish how bad things got. Things got because of
how much Biden made them worse.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I think the argument in the messaging should be, look,
Biden screwed this up, which is why you elected us.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
We've made improvements.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Here they are, but of course the economy is not
where it should be right now. You're still hurting. We
have so much more to do. Why send the people
in who broke it originally? Well, exactly like an acknowledgment
that we're not where we should be. You have every
right to be hurting, but we have made improvements. We
just need more time. Like it was really screwed up,
(09:26):
you know.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Right, as Lincoln famously said, don't change horses mid stream
right for the election during during the middle of the
Civil War. I think you're absolutely rightly so. The one
analogy I like to use is that the I guess
Biden Biden nomics, you could say, is much like alcoholism.
In other words, the economy just moved from one spending
(09:49):
binge or one drinking binge to the next. And every
time the economy started to sober up and things started
to look bad, they just gave it another shot of whiskey,
another sh out of spending to try to keep the
buzz going.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
As it were.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
You know, if the government spends enough money, that sure
is going to make your GDP numbers look really good.
Then if the government hires enough people, that's going to
make your job's numbers look really good.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
But what's going on.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
In the actual internals of the economy. It's rot it's decay,
it's organ failure, if you will, to continue with the
alcoholism analogy. And what we're seeing this year is the
painful sobering up instead of the hair of the dog
like we've been doing. The Trump administration is saying, nope,
(10:34):
we are going to actually sober up here. So what
have we seen for example, with government purchases, they've been
flat for the year essentially, and that means that it's
been a drag on the GDP numbers. Despite that, the
GDP numbers are actually looking pretty good on average. What
about hiring, Well, it's been a total blow to the
labor market and a blow to the job's numbers that
(10:55):
the federal government is not only no longer hiring people
but laying them off. Federal layoffs have actually been so
intense this year, Lisa, they have offset entirely all of
the hiring by state governments and local governments combined. So
we've really seen the breaks come on hard there. And
that is also just like government spending reducing that is
(11:16):
dragging down the GDP number, reducing government hiring has dragged
down the jobs numbers. But despite the official numbers not
looking good, despite the initial effects appearing negative, this is
not a bad sign. This is a good sign. It's
a sign we're returning to long term economic health. Just
like when you wake up with a hangover, not that
(11:37):
any of us have been there, but when you wake
up with a hangover, you feel lousy, and the temptation
might be to go back to the bottle right, the
hair of the dog. But the path to long run
health is to go through the pain of that headache
of that I don't know, the nausea, whatever the case
may be, right, go through the pain of the hangover.
Let your liver do its thing and clear out the junk,
(11:58):
and that's how you get back towards the path of health.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Got to take a quick commercial break more with EJ
On the other side, how much of do you think
by you know, going through with the tariffs, President Trump
ended up taking more ownership over the economy, and it
makes it more difficult to blame it on Joe Biden
because Americans sort of associate the tariffs with disruption and
(12:25):
like that's coming from him.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
That's a really really good point, Lisa. I think I
think there's definitely merit to that. The more changes, especially
radical changes, that the president makes, the more people are
going to associate the economy with him and with his actions. Unfortunately, though,
tariffs are another example, especially the way this president has
(12:48):
been using them. Tariffs are another case where you get
short term pain but long term gain. To incentivize people
to move manufacturing back to this cory. For example, it
temporarily might result in some imports getting more expensive. But
what have we seen with most of the major car manufacturers.
(13:10):
They're announcing they're going to create either invest to produce
more factories, or they're gonna they're gonna expand existing factories,
whatever the case may be, right, but they're gonna be
building more power trains here, They're gonna be doing more
final assemblies here, They're gonna have battery plants here, et cetera.
All of that is going to take time, but again
it's the path to long term, faster economic growth. And yes,
(13:34):
in the short run you might have some temporary price increases,
but again, short term pain, long term gain For an
American people, though, who have already been suffering under a
lot of pain, even just a little bit right now
can feel like a little bit more, I should say,
can feel like the straw that broke the camel's back.
So I think again that's part of what of the
(13:55):
difficulty that this administration is facing as well.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I also think the long term gain has to be
like particularly pronounced if you are making these sorts of disruptions,
and will we get there in terms of the long
term gain being worth the interim suffering?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Great, great point, and I think I think the way
you determine that is how willing the president is to
stay the course. You know, if the President just kind
of gives up the ghosts right now and says, okay,
forget this whole tariff strategy, what is every foreign nation
going to do realize that?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Oh, I guess every time.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
The president talks now he's just bluffing. And now all
of this international trade stuff is just completely off the table.
All of the investment is going to dry up. I mean,
we have over ten trillion dollars that have been promised
in investment in the coming years.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
That's huge.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
That's more than the typical investment we get in the
United States domestically in a year. Granted it's spread out
over several years, but just for some you know, for
some context here as to the size of the investments,
whether it's investments in it infrastructure or manufacturing plants, or
even if it's investments in things like software development, whatever
the case may be, hard or soft assets, the money
(15:08):
is pouring in. All of that goes away. I think
if the President doesn't stay the course, and so, you know,
I hate to say that, you might be in for
even more pain, But I don't think it's going to
be considerably more than anything we've already experienced. I think
it just may be let's say a few more weeks
(15:28):
or maybe a few more months before we actually get
more of these trade deals hammered out. We already have several, right,
look at the great deal that he got with Japan,
for example, But it will probably be a little bit
longer before we get we get more details, especially like
the one with China, before we get all the details
ironed out on that trade deal.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Why are so many Americans living paycheck to paycheck?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Great great question?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
For a long time, the answer, especially with the millennial generation,
was because they were making bad financial choices. That wasn't
true for everybody, right, but a disproportionate number of that
generation they didn't want to own a home. They were
just like, now, I'll just rent forever.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Now.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Some of that was environmental, right.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
A lot of them were coming of age during during
the mortgage meltdown, and they saw the chaos that resulted
from that. Many of them were victims of it, and
they said, Okay, this whole home ownership thing is a scam.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
It's not for me.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
But then we saw a lot of other patterns where
they just they didn't even want to save, right. They
weren't saving for retirement, they weren't saving for you know,
saving up like a sinking fund. To buy a vehicle,
they would just go out and buy a vehicle, and
they would either lease it, which is the most expensive
way to drive, or they would buy on credit. And
increasingly they did that with a lot of things, even
(16:46):
things that traditionally most people would have just paid cash
or again would have saved up for with a sinking
fund or whatever the case may be. So millennials seemed
to be living beyond their means for a good number
of years. And today we find with like gen z
or the Zoomers, whatever we call them, they're actually when
we look at their spending habits, Lisa, believe it or not,
(17:08):
they're much more financially conservative, which is interesting because I
think that generation, at least, you know, well especially the men,
politically seem to be much more conservative according to some
of the data I've read, But financially.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
They certainly are.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
And so I don't think we can blame especially on
these really young folks by and large, I don't think
we can blame bad financial habits for why they're living
paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
It's not that they're living.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
High on the low now. Of course, just like with millennials,
you'll find exceptions to every rule. I'm sure there are
plenty of gen Z folks out there, you know, who
are total spend thrifts, and you know, I get it.
There are those in every generation, right, But with gen Z,
I think the reason they are living beyond their means
is because the essentials, the daily essentials, the bare necessities,
(17:56):
are beyond their means. For a lot of them, they
can't afford a place to live and food and insurance
and transportation costs. I mean, it's staggering to see the
figures the number of people young people today who have
had to move back home with their parents. At one
point during the Biden administration, if you can believe this, Lisa,
(18:17):
young people were moving back in with their parents at
the highest rate since the nineteen thirties for those playing
along at home. That was the great depression. Among gen Z,
it's something like over half of them are either living
with their parents or living with some other family member,
or they're living with a group of friends. So like three,
four or five people to a place, you know, maybe
(18:39):
they're renting a house or whatever the case may be.
In other words, they just can't afford to make it
on their own. And that's not their fault. When it's
a small portion of a generation, yeah, I'll totally blame
that portion of the generation. But when it's an entire
generation like this, I just don't think we can blame them.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Do they really have it harder than previous generations? Though?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I think they do in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Yeah, And I think the numbers bear this out. We
just mentioned a moment ago, the cost of home ownership
for just a median price home, not a mansion, right,
just the median price home, which hasn't changed in terms
of the home itself over the last four or five years.
That cost today is literally double what it was four
(19:22):
or five years ago. And so we've created this bifurcated
economy where you can basically place almost everyone, not quite
but almost everyone into one of two groups. Either those
who were lucky enough to get a home before interest
rates and home prices exploded.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
In twenty twenty twenty one, twenty two, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
And so it's those who did it before and those
after who pretty much can't afford it and probably never
will be able to afford it. I mean, that's just
that's sickening. And I know interest rates were a lot
higher in the past. I know, I hear that from
boomers all the time. Oh back in my day, you know,
in the early eighties, interest rates were double digits. You know,
I had a mortgage at twenty percent. I get that,
(20:02):
yes you did. But look at the ratio of the
price of the home you bought to your salary. It
was actually lower. And if you look at the cost
of home ownership as a percentage of a salary, it
was lower. And then on top of that, just look
at the price of food, look at insurance. You know,
these are not things that you can do without, right
(20:25):
your transportation costs, et cetera. And if you add all
of this up, for a lot of young people today,
it exceeds their budget. I'm not talking about you know
what are all like Netflix or there's a there's a
Disney streaming service. Right there's these all these non essentials,
these different forms of entertainment that we have today. You know,
I'm not talking about affording the latest iPhone right now,
(20:48):
I'm just talking about the bare necessities here have gotten
astronomically expensive, and I think this is a big reason
why we are seeing so many of the youngest generation today.
Really they're really leaning towards extremes. They're leaning towards the
guys like Mamdanni, you know, but they're they're leaning towards
(21:10):
other extremists as well. Basically, anybody who is willing to
acknowledge the fact that there is a cost of living
crisis and that the hand this generation got dealt is
incredibly unfair. And it's like any politician who's just willing
to acknowledge that fact, people flock to them.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I mean, you.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Had you had almost ninety percent of some demographics of
young people voting for Mamdanni in New York. That is astounding.
That means he was even capturing a sizable portion of Republicans.
I'm not saying a majority of them, but a sizable
portion of them.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Nonetheless, what does illegal immigration impact housing in the country
and the cost of housing?
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Oh, it's huge, Lisa, this is this is a great point.
I'm so glad you raised this. It's something that not
enough people are talking about right now. When we look
at home, home prices, cost of living. It's supply and demand, right,
we a lot sometimes we've fallen to the fallacy of
just talking about one or the other.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
It's both.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
It's supply and demand. When it comes to the supply
of homes, that's not nearly as elastic as the demand
for homes. What can change easier, what changes quicker. What
happened under Biden was we imported over ten million illegal aliens, right,
and the result of that was a huge increase in
the demand for housing units.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Those people got to live somewhere.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
And when you import the population of New Jersey, the
most densely populated state in the country, don't tell me
that's not going to have an effect on home prices.
It most certainly will. Now for better or for worse,
all those people were dispersed throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
I get it.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
But still it represents a significant increase in the demand
for homes, and whether it's homes, apartments, whatever the case
may be, the result of that was a big increase
in the price of housing and therefore the cost of living.
And you just can't dispute that. Again, it is supply
and demand and they both matter.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Quick break.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
If you like what you're hearing, please share on social
media or maybe send it to your family and friends.
Has infleetion improved since President trop took office?
Speaker 4 (23:18):
By some metrics, it has. I would say by most
metrics it has. By some metrics you could make you
could argue that it really hasn't improved. I don't think
there's any way though that you can say it's gotten worse.
But I would say by most metrics, I think it's
clear that it that it has actually improved. Prices are
not going up as quickly as they were before. You
have a few instances like gasoline where because of the
(23:41):
administration's policies, prices have come down. You have a few
other cases where things like eggs that are a bit
of an anomaly, right you know, the Bind administration was
literally paying farmers to kill their egg laying hens. That
was the stupidest thing ever.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
And the Trump.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Administration reversed that, put some other productive measures in place,
and just those simple changes in increase the number of
egg laying hens, which increase the number of eggs, which
obviously brought down the price of eggs.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So you've seen things like that.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
They're also doing similar measures right now to increase the
size of the cattle herd in this country. That'll increase
many months down the road. That'll increase the amount of
cows going to slaughter, which will bring.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Down beef prices.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
So at the end of the day, we have made
some progress. I don't think we've made enough progress, though
there's a lot more to be done. The deregulation efforts
that they've been putting in place this year are going
to start bearing fruit in twenty twenty six. That's positive
news there. The tax changes again allowing people to keep
more of their money. That's going to be very beneficial too,
(24:40):
because even if prices don't go down, if people have
more money in their paycheck, they can still buy more,
right So it's what your weekly paycheck can buy that
really really counts.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
So you think the economy is going to be in
a different place heading into the midterms, I think so.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
I certainly hope so too. But I do think so
for a couple of reasons, some of which we've already
mentioned right, like the deregulation, the tax changes, the energy policy.
All of those are very very positive. But another thing
that I think is big. We just touched on it
a second ago. Is the illegal immigration.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Component of this.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I am so sick and tired of all these I mean,
they're just anecdotes. Really, this whole idea that all these
illegal immigrants came here and we're working in the construction industry,
and if we deport them all, there's going to be
no one to build homes.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Excuse me.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
If that was the case, why wasn't home construction booming
under the Biden years?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Right? It didn't.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
The number of construction jobs did not escalate dramatic like,
they did not accelerate dramatically. The number of homes coming
onto the market did not go up dramatically, or same
thing with apartments, right, housing units. We did not see
the big increase in supply that should have corresponded with
the huge increase in the number of construction workers that
(25:59):
should have happened. And if all these illegal aliens were
working in construction, the idea that deporting all these illegal
aliens is going to cause inflation is ridiculous. Then why
didn't it cause deflation when we imported them all? Spare
me this nonsense. What will happen though, by deporting millions
of illegal aliens, assuming the Trump administration actually does it,
(26:19):
is going to be to put tremendous downward pressure on
the price of homes, but also a lot of other
prices throughout the economy, because again it's supply and demand.
People love to talk about how, oh illegal aliens were here,
and you know they're working all these jobs, providing all
these products and services. Really, then why are so many
of them on government services? Something that we were told
(26:41):
couldn't happen. And then we find out states like California
have been giving them Social Security numbers and enrolling them
in all kinds of welfare benefits, so much so that
the Treasury has now had to start cutting people off
when they find out about it. So don't tell me
it doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
It does.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
These people are not all here working and them removes
all of the demand that they've been placing on all
kinds of public services. Again, these families, they have to
live somewhere, right, so they're taking up a housing unit.
Their kids are in public schools paid for by our
tax dollars. They're using emergency rooms paid for by our
tax dollars.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
You name it.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
They're driving on public roads right paid for by our
tax dollars in so many different ways they have been
putting a strain on this economy and a burden on
the taxpayer, and removing them will remove that strain and
will remove that burden.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
E j Antoni, appreciate you for coming on the show.
Look forward to having you on again soon.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Lisa, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
How is Ejntoni?
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Appreciate him for coming on the show. Appreciate you guys
at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you
can listen throughout the week. I also want to thank
my producer, John Cassio for putting the show together.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Until next time.
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get
to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we're talking about affordability. President Trump begins his cross country
tour on affordability and battleground states like Pennsylvania. He's going
to be talking about what he's done, what is administration
has done to make life easier for you. We're going
to get into it with EJ and Tony. He is
(00:21):
a chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
He's a friend of the show.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
We've had him on before to talk about President Trump's policies.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Have they made life better?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
We'll talk about deregulation, the tax cuts as well as
the tariffs, and then also what impact does the legal
immigration have on housing.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So we'll dig into all of that and more. Stay
tuned for EJ. Well. EJ, it's always great to have
you on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I want to talk to you about the buzzword affordability.
Everybody's talking about it. I'm sure sure you've heard the
word here or there in the past few weeks. I
appreciate you coming on and talking about it.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yeah, my pleasure, Lisa.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I feel like the rest of the world is playing
ketchup to you and me, were we like the only
two talking about affordability for four stinking years before everyone.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Else realized it was a problem.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Is like, why weren't we talking about or you know,
obviously we were, But like, now the media all of
a sudden cares about affordability and the left all of
a sudden cares about affordability after four years of an
affordability little bred shot.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Exactly, it's because they think now it's politically profitable for
them to do so, whereas before it obviously wasn't. Because
the last thing they wanted to do when their guy
was in the White House was draw attention to the
fact that he was failing Americans literally every single day
in terms of the cost of living. And now all
of a sudden, now, oh now it's a concern.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, well exactly how do you think you know, obviously
President Trump's brought to embark on this affordability tour. He'll
be in a Pennsylvania today. How do you think the
White House is doing and sort of messaging on what
they've done and what President Trump's done on affordability.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Yeah, I think they're doing Okay, Lisa, I just don't
think they do themselves any favors when they conflate what
Democrats are saying with the reality that Americans are feeling,
because those two things are not the same. Right When
Democrats say, oh, Trump caused an affordability crisis, okay, obviously
that's ridiculous. The affordability crisis was the whole reason Trump
(02:31):
got sent back to Washington.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
To fix it.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Everyone was so sick of the economy under Biden and
Bidenomics that they sent Trump back because they remembered how
good the economy was in the first Trump term, so
they sent him back to DC specifically because there already
was an affordability crisis obviously before he took office, since
it was before the election. So you don't want to
say at the same time, though, just because what the
(02:55):
Democrats are saying as a hoax, you don't want to
you don't want people to get the impression you're saying
that what people are feeling is a hoax. And I
hope I'm making that distinction clear. There still is a
very real affordability crisis. The monthly mortgage payment on a
median price home literally doubled under the Biden administration. Now
(03:16):
have costs come down a little bit in terms of
home ownership. Yes, but have we by any means reset
the clock as it were? Are we back to where
home ownership affordability was under the first Trump term. No,
not at all. We have a very long way to go.
When you have messaging that I think conflates those two
and says the affordability crisis is a scam. No, the
(03:39):
affordability crisis is very real as it was two years ago,
three years ago, etc. But the Democrats messaging on it
is certainly the thing that is a scam. I do
think the White House is doing a better job of
highlighting the ways in which they are helping to bring
costs down or at least to stop them from going up.
I mean, look at what they've been able to do
(03:59):
with energy, with getting gas prices down to the lowest
level in five years.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Now.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
You have several states where actually a lot of states,
most states where gas is under three dollars. You even
have a couple of states where the average price for
unleaded is below two dollars. It's like a buck ninety five,
a buck ninety nine. So great news, there a great
progress there, and it's not just Lisa from the standpoint
of now, the average American is going to pay less
every week when they fill up their own tank. But
(04:26):
look around, especially this time of year, at all the
Amazon delivery vans, right, Or even if you're not getting
an Amazon delivery, what about when you go to the
grocery store, you grab a gallon of milk, a carton
of eggs, a bag of bread, you know, you name it,
I don't care what it is. You grab anything off
the shelf, off the shelf, how did it get to
the store in the first place on a truck or
(04:47):
some other kind of delivery vehicle that was fueled by oil,
by diesel, by gas. Right. So bringing what I'm getting
at here, Lisa, is that by bringing down these energy prices,
that's going to put downward press hrun prices throughout the
economy because all of those transportation costs are a costs
that a business has to pass on to the consumer
(05:08):
in the final price of a product. And so if
Amazon is paying less for its delivery costs, you're going
to pay lower prices on Amazon. If the grocer is
paying less for his or her delivery costs, you're going
to pay less for your groceries. Things like that are
great news. I think the messaging also will get a
little bit easier in the new year because of some
of the changes with the One Big Beautiful Bill, some
(05:29):
of the tax changes, people will be able to you know,
not only are they going to get some in some
cases a very sizable tax refund, but they're going to
be able to change their tax with holdings, and so
they'll get to keep more of their weeklier monthly paycheck
in the first place. So things like that are really
going to benefit the average American, not just you know,
the Wall Street Titan.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, I do worry a little bit about some of
them in the messaging because it's like if you're fighting
with your partner, you know, your spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever,
and like someone's like, oh, like calm down in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, you're like, don't tell me to calm down.
Like I'm trying to express how I feel, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And so I feel like Americans right now, like they're frustrated.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's showing up in the polling.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
You know, they're trying to tell politicians how they feel
about the state of the economy, and so telling them
like you're fine, calm down, right, Like it's just going
to enrage voters when like they want to feel heard
and understood and that they're struggling exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Li said, Yeah, this I think is part of the
difficulty with Well, let me put it this way. You know,
at some point you can say this is Trump's economy now, right,
But by no means can I think anybody say that
not even a year into this Trump was going to
be able to somehow magically reverse literally everything Biden did,
(06:46):
and it would take even longer than to reverse the effects.
Let's not forget, not even a month into the Biden
administration he signed his first multi trillion dollar spending bill
into law, So the spending started a cent immediately, and
it was on a very grand scale. Again, we're talking
multi trillion dollar pieces of legislation. But when did we
(07:07):
finally get the peak of forty year high inflation. It
wasn't until a whole year and a half later, So
it really took eighteen months for the inflation to really
kick in in a big way. When you got you know,
inflation over nine percent by the CPI in double digits,
looking at the PPI, you have lots of different metrics,
so what I'm getting at here is the fact that
(07:29):
even if Trump started, which he did on day one,
with the regulatory changes, with the executive orders, you couldn't
expect that to have an instantaneous effect. It took even
longer for Congress to act. My goodness, look how long
it took them just to get the tax.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Bill across the finish line.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So yes, it is going to take time to actually
get this stuff done, and unfortunately it's going to take
even longer to.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Have an effect.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Now that's not much consolation for the average Joe who's
really suffering, right. I did an interview the other day,
and I hope I didn't get get too mad at
the person asking the question, because they said, you know, why,
why are the American people so impatient? Why can't they
just give the president, you know, two years or even
just eighteen months. Why can't they give them some time?
I'm like, what do you mean, wait eighteen months? Why
(08:13):
should they have to wait eighteen months? They are right
to be angry because they've been waiting three years. You're
not just asking the American people, you know, to suffer
for a year and a half because they've already been
suffering for three years, So what you're really saying is
not a year and a half but four and a
half years. That's how you have to look at this,
you know, to get the perspective. I think of the
(08:34):
average American what they've been dealing with and what they
continue to be dealing with in this American economy. And again,
it's not the president's fault. I don't mean by I'm
not in any way trying to insinuate that the president
is making things better, not worse. But I don't want
to diminish how bad things got. Things got because of
how much Biden made them worse.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I think the argument in the messaging should be, look,
Biden screwed this up, which is why you elected us.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
We've made improvements.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Here they are, but of course the economy is not
where it should be right now. You're still hurting. We
have so much more to do. Why send the people
in who broke it originally? Well, exactly like an acknowledgment
that we're not where we should be. You have every
right to be hurting, but we have made improvements. We
just need more time. Like it was really screwed up,
(09:26):
you know.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Right, as Lincoln famously said, don't change horses mid stream
right for the election during during the middle of the
Civil War. I think you're absolutely rightly so. The one
analogy I like to use is that the I guess
Biden Biden nomics, you could say, is much like alcoholism.
In other words, the economy just moved from one spending
(09:49):
binge or one drinking binge to the next. And every
time the economy started to sober up and things started
to look bad, they just gave it another shot of whiskey,
another sh out of spending to try to keep the
buzz going.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
As it were.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
You know, if the government spends enough money, that sure
is going to make your GDP numbers look really good.
Then if the government hires enough people, that's going to
make your job's numbers look really good.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
But what's going on.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
In the actual internals of the economy. It's rot it's decay,
it's organ failure, if you will, to continue with the
alcoholism analogy. And what we're seeing this year is the
painful sobering up instead of the hair of the dog
like we've been doing. The Trump administration is saying, nope,
(10:34):
we are going to actually sober up here. So what
have we seen for example, with government purchases, they've been
flat for the year essentially, and that means that it's
been a drag on the GDP numbers. Despite that, the
GDP numbers are actually looking pretty good on average. What
about hiring, Well, it's been a total blow to the
labor market and a blow to the job's numbers that
(10:55):
the federal government is not only no longer hiring people
but laying them off. Federal layoffs have actually been so
intense this year, Lisa, they have offset entirely all of
the hiring by state governments and local governments combined. So
we've really seen the breaks come on hard there. And
that is also just like government spending reducing that is
(11:16):
dragging down the GDP number, reducing government hiring has dragged
down the jobs numbers. But despite the official numbers not
looking good, despite the initial effects appearing negative, this is
not a bad sign. This is a good sign. It's
a sign we're returning to long term economic health. Just
like when you wake up with a hangover, not that
(11:37):
any of us have been there, but when you wake
up with a hangover, you feel lousy, and the temptation
might be to go back to the bottle right, the
hair of the dog. But the path to long run
health is to go through the pain of that headache
of that I don't know, the nausea, whatever the case
may be, right, go through the pain of the hangover.
Let your liver do its thing and clear out the junk,
(11:58):
and that's how you get back towards the path of health.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Got to take a quick commercial break more with EJ
On the other side, how much of do you think
by you know, going through with the tariffs, President Trump
ended up taking more ownership over the economy, and it
makes it more difficult to blame it on Joe Biden
because Americans sort of associate the tariffs with disruption and
(12:25):
like that's coming from him.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
That's a really really good point, Lisa. I think I
think there's definitely merit to that. The more changes, especially
radical changes, that the president makes, the more people are
going to associate the economy with him and with his actions. Unfortunately, though,
tariffs are another example, especially the way this president has
(12:48):
been using them. Tariffs are another case where you get
short term pain but long term gain. To incentivize people
to move manufacturing back to this cory. For example, it
temporarily might result in some imports getting more expensive. But
what have we seen with most of the major car manufacturers.
(13:10):
They're announcing they're going to create either invest to produce
more factories, or they're gonna they're gonna expand existing factories,
whatever the case may be, right, but they're gonna be
building more power trains here, They're gonna be doing more
final assemblies here, They're gonna have battery plants here, et cetera.
All of that is going to take time, but again
it's the path to long term, faster economic growth. And yes,
(13:34):
in the short run you might have some temporary price increases,
but again, short term pain, long term gain For an
American people, though, who have already been suffering under a
lot of pain, even just a little bit right now
can feel like a little bit more, I should say,
can feel like the straw that broke the camel's back.
So I think again that's part of what of the
(13:55):
difficulty that this administration is facing as well.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I also think the long term gain has to be
like particularly pronounced if you are making these sorts of disruptions,
and will we get there in terms of the long
term gain being worth the interim suffering?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Great, great point, and I think I think the way
you determine that is how willing the president is to
stay the course. You know, if the President just kind
of gives up the ghosts right now and says, okay,
forget this whole tariff strategy, what is every foreign nation
going to do realize that?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Oh, I guess every time.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
The president talks now he's just bluffing. And now all
of this international trade stuff is just completely off the table.
All of the investment is going to dry up. I mean,
we have over ten trillion dollars that have been promised
in investment in the coming years.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
That's huge.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
That's more than the typical investment we get in the
United States domestically in a year. Granted it's spread out
over several years, but just for some you know, for
some context here as to the size of the investments,
whether it's investments in it infrastructure or manufacturing plants, or
even if it's investments in things like software development, whatever
the case may be, hard or soft assets, the money
(15:08):
is pouring in. All of that goes away. I think
if the President doesn't stay the course, and so, you know,
I hate to say that, you might be in for
even more pain, But I don't think it's going to
be considerably more than anything we've already experienced. I think
it just may be let's say a few more weeks
(15:28):
or maybe a few more months before we actually get
more of these trade deals hammered out. We already have several, right,
look at the great deal that he got with Japan,
for example, But it will probably be a little bit
longer before we get we get more details, especially like
the one with China, before we get all the details
ironed out on that trade deal.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Why are so many Americans living paycheck to paycheck?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Great great question?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
For a long time, the answer, especially with the millennial generation,
was because they were making bad financial choices. That wasn't
true for everybody, right, but a disproportionate number of that
generation they didn't want to own a home. They were
just like, now, I'll just rent forever.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Now.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Some of that was environmental, right.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
A lot of them were coming of age during during
the mortgage meltdown, and they saw the chaos that resulted
from that. Many of them were victims of it, and
they said, Okay, this whole home ownership thing is a scam.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
It's not for me.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
But then we saw a lot of other patterns where
they just they didn't even want to save, right. They
weren't saving for retirement, they weren't saving for you know,
saving up like a sinking fund. To buy a vehicle,
they would just go out and buy a vehicle, and
they would either lease it, which is the most expensive
way to drive, or they would buy on credit. And
increasingly they did that with a lot of things, even
(16:46):
things that traditionally most people would have just paid cash
or again would have saved up for with a sinking
fund or whatever the case may be. So millennials seemed
to be living beyond their means for a good number
of years. And today we find with like gen z
or the Zoomers, whatever we call them, they're actually when
we look at their spending habits, Lisa, believe it or not,
(17:08):
they're much more financially conservative, which is interesting because I
think that generation, at least, you know, well especially the men,
politically seem to be much more conservative according to some
of the data I've read, But financially.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
They certainly are.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
And so I don't think we can blame especially on
these really young folks by and large, I don't think
we can blame bad financial habits for why they're living
paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
It's not that they're living.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
High on the low now. Of course, just like with millennials,
you'll find exceptions to every rule. I'm sure there are
plenty of gen Z folks out there, you know, who
are total spend thrifts, and you know, I get it.
There are those in every generation, right, But with gen Z,
I think the reason they are living beyond their means
is because the essentials, the daily essentials, the bare necessities,
(17:56):
are beyond their means. For a lot of them, they
can't afford a place to live and food and insurance
and transportation costs. I mean, it's staggering to see the
figures the number of people young people today who have
had to move back home with their parents. At one
point during the Biden administration, if you can believe this, Lisa,
(18:17):
young people were moving back in with their parents at
the highest rate since the nineteen thirties for those playing
along at home. That was the great depression. Among gen Z,
it's something like over half of them are either living
with their parents or living with some other family member,
or they're living with a group of friends. So like three,
four or five people to a place, you know, maybe
(18:39):
they're renting a house or whatever the case may be.
In other words, they just can't afford to make it
on their own. And that's not their fault. When it's
a small portion of a generation, yeah, I'll totally blame
that portion of the generation. But when it's an entire
generation like this, I just don't think we can blame them.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Do they really have it harder than previous generations? Though?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I think they do in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Yeah, And I think the numbers bear this out. We
just mentioned a moment ago, the cost of home ownership
for just a median price home, not a mansion, right,
just the median price home, which hasn't changed in terms
of the home itself over the last four or five years.
That cost today is literally double what it was four
(19:22):
or five years ago. And so we've created this bifurcated
economy where you can basically place almost everyone, not quite
but almost everyone into one of two groups. Either those
who were lucky enough to get a home before interest
rates and home prices exploded.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
In twenty twenty twenty one, twenty two, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
And so it's those who did it before and those
after who pretty much can't afford it and probably never
will be able to afford it. I mean, that's just
that's sickening. And I know interest rates were a lot
higher in the past. I know, I hear that from
boomers all the time. Oh back in my day, you know,
in the early eighties, interest rates were double digits. You know,
I had a mortgage at twenty percent. I get that,
(20:02):
yes you did. But look at the ratio of the
price of the home you bought to your salary. It
was actually lower. And if you look at the cost
of home ownership as a percentage of a salary, it
was lower. And then on top of that, just look
at the price of food, look at insurance. You know,
these are not things that you can do without, right
(20:25):
your transportation costs, et cetera. And if you add all
of this up, for a lot of young people today,
it exceeds their budget. I'm not talking about you know
what are all like Netflix or there's a there's a
Disney streaming service. Right there's these all these non essentials,
these different forms of entertainment that we have today. You know,
I'm not talking about affording the latest iPhone right now,
(20:48):
I'm just talking about the bare necessities here have gotten
astronomically expensive, and I think this is a big reason
why we are seeing so many of the youngest generation today.
Really they're really leaning towards extremes. They're leaning towards the
guys like Mamdanni, you know, but they're they're leaning towards
(21:10):
other extremists as well. Basically, anybody who is willing to
acknowledge the fact that there is a cost of living
crisis and that the hand this generation got dealt is
incredibly unfair. And it's like any politician who's just willing
to acknowledge that fact, people flock to them.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I mean, you.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Had you had almost ninety percent of some demographics of
young people voting for Mamdanni in New York. That is astounding.
That means he was even capturing a sizable portion of Republicans.
I'm not saying a majority of them, but a sizable
portion of them.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Nonetheless, what does illegal immigration impact housing in the country
and the cost of housing?
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Oh, it's huge, Lisa, this is this is a great point.
I'm so glad you raised this. It's something that not
enough people are talking about right now. When we look
at home, home prices, cost of living. It's supply and demand, right,
we a lot sometimes we've fallen to the fallacy of
just talking about one or the other.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
It's both.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
It's supply and demand. When it comes to the supply
of homes, that's not nearly as elastic as the demand
for homes. What can change easier, what changes quicker. What
happened under Biden was we imported over ten million illegal aliens, right,
and the result of that was a huge increase in
the demand for housing units.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Those people got to live somewhere.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
And when you import the population of New Jersey, the
most densely populated state in the country, don't tell me
that's not going to have an effect on home prices.
It most certainly will. Now for better or for worse,
all those people were dispersed throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
I get it.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
But still it represents a significant increase in the demand
for homes, and whether it's homes, apartments, whatever the case
may be, the result of that was a big increase
in the price of housing and therefore the cost of living.
And you just can't dispute that. Again, it is supply
and demand and they both matter.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Quick break.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
If you like what you're hearing, please share on social
media or maybe send it to your family and friends.
Has infleetion improved since President trop took office?
Speaker 4 (23:18):
By some metrics, it has. I would say by most
metrics it has. By some metrics you could make you
could argue that it really hasn't improved. I don't think
there's any way though that you can say it's gotten worse.
But I would say by most metrics, I think it's
clear that it that it has actually improved. Prices are
not going up as quickly as they were before. You
have a few instances like gasoline where because of the
(23:41):
administration's policies, prices have come down. You have a few
other cases where things like eggs that are a bit
of an anomaly, right you know, the Bind administration was
literally paying farmers to kill their egg laying hens. That
was the stupidest thing ever.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
And the Trump.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Administration reversed that, put some other productive measures in place,
and just those simple changes in increase the number of
egg laying hens, which increase the number of eggs, which
obviously brought down the price of eggs.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So you've seen things like that.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
They're also doing similar measures right now to increase the
size of the cattle herd in this country. That'll increase
many months down the road. That'll increase the amount of
cows going to slaughter, which will bring.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Down beef prices.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
So at the end of the day, we have made
some progress. I don't think we've made enough progress, though
there's a lot more to be done. The deregulation efforts
that they've been putting in place this year are going
to start bearing fruit in twenty twenty six. That's positive
news there. The tax changes again allowing people to keep
more of their money. That's going to be very beneficial too,
(24:40):
because even if prices don't go down, if people have
more money in their paycheck, they can still buy more,
right So it's what your weekly paycheck can buy that
really really counts.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
So you think the economy is going to be in
a different place heading into the midterms, I think so.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
I certainly hope so too. But I do think so
for a couple of reasons, some of which we've already
mentioned right, like the deregulation, the tax changes, the energy policy.
All of those are very very positive. But another thing
that I think is big. We just touched on it
a second ago. Is the illegal immigration.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Component of this.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I am so sick and tired of all these I mean,
they're just anecdotes. Really, this whole idea that all these
illegal immigrants came here and we're working in the construction industry,
and if we deport them all, there's going to be
no one to build homes.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Excuse me.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
If that was the case, why wasn't home construction booming
under the Biden years?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Right? It didn't.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
The number of construction jobs did not escalate dramatic like,
they did not accelerate dramatically. The number of homes coming
onto the market did not go up dramatically, or same
thing with apartments, right, housing units. We did not see
the big increase in supply that should have corresponded with
the huge increase in the number of construction workers that
(25:59):
should have happened. And if all these illegal aliens were
working in construction, the idea that deporting all these illegal
aliens is going to cause inflation is ridiculous. Then why
didn't it cause deflation when we imported them all? Spare
me this nonsense. What will happen though, by deporting millions
of illegal aliens, assuming the Trump administration actually does it,
(26:19):
is going to be to put tremendous downward pressure on
the price of homes, but also a lot of other
prices throughout the economy, because again it's supply and demand.
People love to talk about how, oh illegal aliens were here,
and you know they're working all these jobs, providing all
these products and services. Really, then why are so many
of them on government services? Something that we were told
(26:41):
couldn't happen. And then we find out states like California
have been giving them Social Security numbers and enrolling them
in all kinds of welfare benefits, so much so that
the Treasury has now had to start cutting people off
when they find out about it. So don't tell me
it doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
It does.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
These people are not all here working and them removes
all of the demand that they've been placing on all
kinds of public services. Again, these families, they have to
live somewhere, right, so they're taking up a housing unit.
Their kids are in public schools paid for by our
tax dollars. They're using emergency rooms paid for by our
tax dollars.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
You name it.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
They're driving on public roads right paid for by our
tax dollars in so many different ways they have been
putting a strain on this economy and a burden on
the taxpayer, and removing them will remove that strain and
will remove that burden.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
E j Antoni, appreciate you for coming on the show.
Look forward to having you on again soon.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Lisa, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
How is Ejntoni?
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Appreciate him for coming on the show. Appreciate you guys
at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you
can listen throughout the week. I also want to thank
my producer, John Cassio for putting the show together.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Until next time.
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Buck Sexton
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