Green Regulations, Continued Harms of Obamacare, & C19 Failures | Phil Kerpen, American Commitment

[00:00:00] They did not in any meaningful way reduce COVID outcomes and they layered a second pandemic,

[00:00:06] a man-made pandemic on top of the viral pen. And Dr. Atlas said that Fauci would walk into

[00:00:12] the White House Task Force meetings and say people aren't scared enough, we need to scare them more,

[00:00:16] we got to panic them. So they were intentionally doing the exact opposite of what leaders are

[00:00:21] supposed to do in a crisis. Keeping our republic is on the line and it requires patriots with

[00:00:27] great passion, dedication and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the

[00:00:33] co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She is an author, a filmmaker and one of Time Magazine's most

[00:00:39] influential people in the world but the title she is most proud of is mom to her boy girl twins.

[00:00:46] She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade.

[00:00:52] Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show. Phil Kurpin is the president of American Commitment and one of the

[00:00:57] smartest policy experts I know. He is an author and a veteran of conservative politics where he's

[00:01:03] focused on health care and economic policy. Along with art laffer, Steve Forbes and Steve Moore,

[00:01:10] Phil launched the committee to unleash prosperity to fight for free markets, lower taxes and

[00:01:14] limited government. Almost every single time Tea Party Patriots action fights against big

[00:01:19] government, Phil is right there fighting with us. When we rallied on the west lawn of the United

[00:01:24] States Capitol and in front of the United States Supreme Court, Phil has always been willing to

[00:01:29] stand beside us as we make our voices heard. Phil, thank you so much for being here with me today.

[00:01:35] You know, the Biden administration really loves government control and one of the latest

[00:01:40] things that they're doing is trying to force us all into electric vehicles. You've been working

[00:01:46] fighting against that, haven't you? Yeah. I mean, I think this is probably the biggest of the regulatory

[00:01:52] issues, the one that's going to have the biggest negative impact on the economy and on people's

[00:01:56] lives. And it's pretty astonishing kind of the, you know, you've got all these, they've issued

[00:02:04] a few different versions of their what amounts to a ban on gas vehicles with different phasins.

[00:02:08] And you know, you've got California now which officially is going to completely ban

[00:02:12] gas powered vehicles in 2035 and 10 other states are following them.

[00:02:16] And is the grid ready for that in California? Oh, no. Within a week of when they issued that,

[00:02:23] when Governor Newsom issued, we're going to 100% mandate. They actually had one of their famous,

[00:02:29] you know, brownouts and power shortage. And they actually issued an advisory saying,

[00:02:34] do not charge your vehicle because we've got a grid advisory. So they didn't see any

[00:02:39] connection between the two, which I found kind of amazing. But that's Biden policy as much as they

[00:02:45] say, oh, it's the state. No, no, Biden issued a waiver that allowed California to issue that because

[00:02:49] it's interstate commerce, the auto market, it's federal jurisdiction. They can only do that

[00:02:53] because Biden gave them a waiver. And then of course he issued his national standards,

[00:02:58] which are basically the exact same mandate schedule as California, but just two years later.

[00:03:03] So if you follow his stand, he'd get to a full ban by 2037. And he's got it in his mandates,

[00:03:09] the national mandates through EPA that Biden issued. He's got a mandate that we go down to only 64%

[00:03:16] of vehicles being gas powered internal combustion vehicles by 2027 model year.

[00:03:22] Then he goes all the way down to 30% for 2032 model year. And that's the last year he shows.

[00:03:27] But if you look at it, it's the exact same phase in that they have in California that takes

[00:03:32] you down to zero, to a total ban on internal combustion vehicle.

[00:03:36] What is the percentage right now?

[00:03:38] It's about 85%.

[00:03:40] So 85 to 64 in two years basically.

[00:03:46] So here's what's going to happen. Even in the early years of this, even in the early

[00:03:50] years of this, because they're limiting by regulation the number of internal combustion

[00:03:54] vehicles that could be sold as a percentage, they're going to become much harder to find.

[00:03:59] And if you do find them, they're going to be very expensive because there won't be an internal

[00:04:04] combustion vehicle available for everyone who wants one. So some people are going to have to go

[00:04:08] without and the people who can get it, they're going to be competing with everyone else who

[00:04:12] wants one. So prices are going to go haywire.

[00:04:14] It's either that or this could also affect it. It could be a little bit different, although

[00:04:20] it may not work financially. I don't think either way it works financially.

[00:04:24] They could wind up just producing even more. So they produce the same number of gas powered cars

[00:04:32] and then they just have to produce on top of it to meet their percentages because people aren't

[00:04:37] buying these electric vehicles, they're sitting on the lot. I mean, I know people are buying them,

[00:04:41] but they're not buying them the same way they bought gas powered ones.

[00:04:45] They were increasing very quickly. And this often happens with the new technology

[00:04:50] that fits some use cases, but not all. Is it can increase very rapidly and then what the advocates

[00:04:57] of this sort of what they call this transition have said as well, if it doubled in a couple

[00:05:02] of years, it'll keep doubling. But that's really not what happens. And in fact, we've now seen

[00:05:07] Tesla actually posted a negative quarter. A year on year their sales went down for the most

[00:05:13] recent quarter. That was the first time that's happened to them and I think three or four years.

[00:05:17] And so most of the people who want an electric vehicle have one at this point.

[00:05:22] And so I don't think you're going to keep seeing this rapid growth. And in fact,

[00:05:25] dealers are saying the exact same thing that you're saying they're saying we've got EVs piling

[00:05:29] up on our lots. Those are not vehicles that people want. We're having difficulty even with

[00:05:34] the current level of federal requirements. And so they basically beg the Biden administration

[00:05:42] to back off and the proposed mandates were a little bit worse than the final, but they

[00:05:46] really didn't change that much. And so they're still trying to really force

[00:05:52] people out of gas cars. And this is, again, we're going to have a Senate vote on this

[00:05:56] in the month of April. It was promised Schumer that in order to get

[00:06:00] Republicans to let the most recent government funding bill go through,

[00:06:04] Republicans had been saying this is the amendment we have to have is an amendment to ban

[00:06:09] the EV mandates and being smart Schumer said no, because he doesn't want to put it on

[00:06:15] a bill the president has to sign. If it does get through the Senate, he wants it to be on

[00:06:19] something that could be vetoed. So they ended up kind of taking it towards the midnight. This was

[00:06:24] on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago. And then the deal that was made was we'll allow the vote

[00:06:28] when we come back in April, but it'll be a standalone vote. And so we are going to have

[00:06:32] a vote. It's going to be a 60 vote vote. I don't believe we'll get to 60 votes.

[00:06:36] But it'll be very interesting nonetheless to see every Senate Democrat put on the record on whether

[00:06:41] they want to stop these mandates or not, especially the ones who are in cycle. And so I'm going to be

[00:06:46] watching very closely a lot of these Democrats. Good. I worked for a paper company when I first

[00:06:52] got out of college and I worked at a paper mill. And the state where the paper mill was required

[00:07:00] a certain amount of air pollution coming out of the paper machine. These are massive. It's

[00:07:05] a factory paper machine is a factory. So coming out of this factory, you can only have a certain

[00:07:11] amount of pollution per paper machine. So the wound up in order to comply with the regulation,

[00:07:20] adding another paper machine, increasing the total output of air pollution, essentially it's air

[00:07:28] pollution, the output from the factory so that per machine on average it was lower. And I think

[00:07:36] that that's why it was like you never know they could wind up still making the same number of cars,

[00:07:41] but you wind up with a whole bunch of cars. Nobody that people don't want sometimes regulations

[00:07:46] have unintended consequences that you can't even imagine until the market forces begin working.

[00:07:53] Yeah, look I mean I think it's very dangerous to have government decide what you can and can't buy

[00:07:58] and what can and can't be produced. We've been fighting that since we met.

[00:08:04] Yeah, I mean look one of the lessons of the 20th century is that central economic

[00:08:07] planning doesn't work. I mean you can't foresee what people's tastes and preferences are going

[00:08:11] to be as a bureaucrat sitting somewhere making these numbers up in a spreadsheet because

[00:08:17] the way markets work is they aggregate information across million preferences with

[00:08:22] million different people and you can't replace that mechanism with you know something. I mean this is

[00:08:27] there's a reason there were empty shelves in the stores in the Soviet Union. I mean you

[00:08:31] can't plan these things it doesn't work and it's very unfortunate that they haven't learned this

[00:08:36] lesson and even more recently on the specific issue of electric vehicles, there was a recent

[00:08:42] pictorial that showed these vast fields in China of subsidized electric vehicles that

[00:08:48] were produced that then had no buyers and they're just sitting in fields now with vegetation growing

[00:08:52] up around them and it seems like we look at that and say oh we want to do that too which is a very

[00:08:57] strange thing to do when you're looking at that. Well and if you care about the environment

[00:09:01] that does not seem good for the environment to have a whole bunch of electric vehicles just

[00:09:05] sitting around with vegetation growing over it. The green groups the environmental movement

[00:09:11] and sort of the the environmental left has actually sacrificed everything that they used

[00:09:16] to care about to their obsession with climate and so they went from like save the whales to hey

[00:09:22] we don't care how many whales are killed by offshore wind projects because all that matters

[00:09:25] is climate. I mean and similarly their obsession with electric vehicles I think is very bad

[00:09:30] environmentally if you care about anything other than climate. Yeah there was just an

[00:09:35] article in the Hill newspaper actually yesterday that up to one-third of the great apes in

[00:09:41] Africa may be killed by EV battery input production there and so I mean it's

[00:09:49] they went from you know they went from the people who love nature to the people who don't

[00:09:53] care if all the whales and apes die if you know they get the green technology they want.

[00:09:57] Which is exactly opposite of what we heard growing up with some of the slogans that we heard.

[00:10:04] You and I have been fighting government control since I first met you. The first

[00:10:10] issues we were engaged in were fighting Obamacare and the government takeover of healthcare.

[00:10:14] Yeah it's interesting the president the president Biden was actually tweeting just yesterday about

[00:10:20] you know his great success in signing millions and more people up for Obamacare and if you look

[00:10:24] at what's happened in the last few years Biden believe it or not made Obamacare a lot worse

[00:10:30] from the taxpayer perspective which is kind of hard to do. How did he do that? Well what he

[00:10:34] did is as part of his COVID response what he did is he changed the premiums that lower income

[00:10:41] people pay for Obamacare from about 2% of their income to zero and so taxpayers now pay full

[00:10:49] freight 100% of the cost for people who are under 150% of the federal poverty level for their

[00:10:54] Obamacare and that's over $20,000 per enrollee. So taxpayers are paying over $20,000

[00:11:01] per enrollee for people to get free Obamacare and the millions of people who signed up were not

[00:11:06] previously willing to pay you know 2% of their income. So they value these plans so little they

[00:11:12] think they're so not valuable to them that they weren't willing to pay you know $20, $25 a month

[00:11:17] for them but they'll take it for free if they're signed up and now the insurance company

[00:11:24] gets you know $20,000 plus from taxpayers and so the insurance companies of course love

[00:11:28] this and they're doing a big lobbying push to extend it but it's a very it's kind of a pathetic

[00:11:35] situation and the president's bragging about it and of course because they style the subsidies as

[00:11:42] tax credits even though no one ever gets a tax credit it goes straight to the insurance company

[00:11:46] he can say oh I cut taxes this is the way they twist language also and so Obamacare

[00:11:53] is not delivered on any of the promises that were made any of them essentially what it became at the

[00:11:59] end of the day was just a massive expansion of taxpayer funded health care for you know huge

[00:12:06] number of people were put on the Medicaid rolls Medicaid the data's not even clear that Medicaid

[00:12:11] enrollment improves health outcomes there's some studies that show it doesn't that's how poor

[00:12:15] the quality of care is in Medicaid and you know most high quality providers try not to take

[00:12:22] it because of the headaches of dealing with it in the low reimbursement rates

[00:12:26] I've been very disturbed at about how our health care system overall performed the last few years

[00:12:34] we had all of these articles about how overwhelmed the hospitals were during COVID and then you look

[00:12:39] at the utilization statistics and they were actually record lows in every metric right and so

[00:12:44] you had people not getting health care you had people dying and not getting health care

[00:12:48] and the hospitals changed their business model to just farming subsidies just getting government

[00:12:51] money getting this is that that's that's the business they're in now um and a hospital would be

[00:12:58] overwhelmed if you shut down everything but one wing of the hospital and you have five employees

[00:13:03] were I know that's a little bit of an exaggeration they had mass layoffs they had mass layoffs on a

[00:13:08] sector-wide basis if you look at what happened in health care employment plunged dramatically

[00:13:12] and they were laying people off and by the way a lot of these hospitals in the middle of a

[00:13:16] pandemic they're laying off healthcare workers a lot of these hospitals did is they laid off a lot of

[00:13:20] their nurses and then when utilization started to come up they had to hire travel nurses they spent

[00:13:27] you know much more I mean just a lot of irrational decisions were made and you know one of the

[00:13:32] really bad trends in American health care is this consolidation trend everything's part

[00:13:36] of a giant hospital system now you got a lot of towns where you know basically if you see

[00:13:41] any kind of healthcare provider it's going to be part of one system maybe two systems and these

[00:13:47] systems are very bureaucratic and so they've got a little the doctors have to go along with whatever

[00:13:51] the you know the the the bosses on hire telling them to do which I think has been very bad for

[00:13:56] the practice of medicine was was very bad during COVID in particular where we got almost

[00:14:01] everything wrong and sort of the official narratives and so people who are employees

[00:14:05] of these big systems weren't weren't going to speak out about any of that and you know they've

[00:14:10] got the clout to have huge political influence in a lot of places they're the biggest employer in

[00:14:15] the town or maybe even the biggest employer in the congressional district and so they are able to lobby

[00:14:20] for you know things like those supersized Obamacare subsidies and big bailout payments and

[00:14:26] I actually think that there is not enough ambition on the right about healthcare I think that

[00:14:33] there is an appetite among our base for basically blowing up all of it you know not just taking

[00:14:40] taking on the big bureaucracy in government but the hospitals the insurance companies the pharmaceutical

[00:14:44] companies they kind of say we're gonna you know I don't think any healthcare reform could be

[00:14:49] radical enough I think we need to be thinking much bigger and saying you know we're gonna

[00:14:53] we're gonna take on these entrenched interests that are driving this consolidation and this

[00:14:59] corruption and get back to independent physicians and paying them out of your own pocket and getting

[00:15:06] that we should be our guys should be thinking very big and I think there would be an appetite

[00:15:12] for it and I fear that we could ever Republicans win the House Senate and White House again like

[00:15:18] they did in 2016 and then not not have a plan not not have anything on healthcare.

[00:15:23] I think that you have that your fear is founded in reality because we've just seen exactly in 2017

[00:15:32] there was no plan. I'll never forget the quote that former senator Pat Toomey had when he was asked

[00:15:38] you know why don't you guys have a healthcare plan and he said we thought Hillary was going.

[00:15:42] It what it it's just it's crazy it's just crazy and one of the things I've been

[00:15:48] sounding from the rooftop is you better be ready because if we are fortunate enough that the American

[00:15:54] people vote for Trump to be back in the White House and for Republicans to control the House and the

[00:15:59] Senate from inaugural day until early voting starts in 2026 it's 20 months that is it 20

[00:16:07] months it's not very much time at all and if you're not ready to start passing let you've got

[00:16:12] to have the legislation ready now so you can bring it bring it up bring it through committee

[00:16:16] do whatever amendments need to be done the debate on it and get it passed and signed into law

[00:16:21] because you can't depend on the time after midterms you have no idea what's going to happen

[00:16:26] happen after midterm elections. Yeah I think that's right I mean look I mean they've got a few

[00:16:31] things that they have to do um I mean we can make the list but you're right I mean they've

[00:16:36] got to have this stuff lined up and ready to go and um you know no excuse you see what

[00:16:42] Democrats do when they get in I mean they just they just push through one thing after another and

[00:16:47] you know if even if it caused them to lose politically they say okay it was worth it we got what we

[00:16:51] wanted and uh what tends to happen when Republicans win is oh I'm not sure we should do that people

[00:16:56] are going to be angry about it and then they end up and and even on the administrative side you

[00:17:00] know even the things that the president can do unilaterally it's going to be a heavy left

[00:17:04] to get things done and their landmines everywhere I mean they just the the Biden

[00:17:08] administration just finalized a regulation out of OPM to prevent the next president from firing

[00:17:14] people who undermine his policy agenda so now they've got an extra layer of deep state protection

[00:17:19] so if Trump does come in he's got to undo that rule first before he can actually fire anyone

[00:17:24] and so they they know they they know what they're doing they're trying to slow things down

[00:17:29] we need to be very aggressive and move very quickly I think uh to the extent we can absolutely

[00:17:35] when we're talking about healthcare one of the things that drives me crazy when I go to a doctor

[00:17:41] is it they'll just look at a computer screen and they're asking you questions on the screen

[00:17:45] and you're basically just an algorithm they just want to know where you fall and then they

[00:17:49] read the screen to tell you what's wrong rather than looking at the patient touching

[00:17:53] the patient feeling the patient and having a real doctor-patient relationship it's some

[00:17:57] computer program that decides whatever it may or may not be it it's just and perhaps that can help

[00:18:07] catch things so I'm not diminishing the fact that that sometimes answering all those questions may

[00:18:13] may give warning systems to what else might be going on with the patient but you can't

[00:18:19] just look at the screen and ignore like a a gaping gash on their arm or something and not

[00:18:25] treat it and sometimes I think they just it's all bureaucratic and there's no real

[00:18:32] there's no customer service there's no doctor-patient relationship they don't care about the cost

[00:18:36] you said people pay twenty thousand dollars for health insurance and then they still have to

[00:18:42] meet a deductible and then they still have to pay for whatever comes after that it would be cheaper

[00:18:47] just to pay a doctor when you see a doctor yeah I mean I think that this is kind of one of

[00:18:53] the interesting trends that's going on right now is we are seeing a big growth of direct primary care

[00:18:57] where doctors say I'm not doing insurance I'm not doing any of the government programs you know

[00:19:02] you'll pay a fee to me and I'll treat you when you need it and a lot of people are doing that even

[00:19:07] if they even though their insurance doesn't cover it and they haven't they're just paying

[00:19:11] extra because they want to have that access and they want to cut that bureaucracy out and so

[00:19:15] one of the things I would like to see is an expansion of health savings accounts and

[00:19:20] you know the eligibility of those kinds of arrangements so that people can use pre-tax dollars

[00:19:24] for that and you know I think I don't think we're ever going to get away from massive amounts of

[00:19:30] tax dollars going into health care I think that's out of the bag but I think we could get so much

[00:19:34] more value for it if it were structured in a way where people control the dollars and they have

[00:19:38] choices instead of the money going directly to insurance companies which is what we have now

[00:19:42] yeah and when it goes directly to insurance companies it cuts a customer out the insurance

[00:19:48] companies to become the customer to the government rather than the people who are paying for the services

[00:19:54] well and they can keep raising they can keep raising their prices and almost nobody sees it

[00:19:58] right you pay it on your taxes right it's you know it's awful uh covid you and I were some of

[00:20:07] the first people outgoing we can't shut down the government we can't do all of these things

[00:20:11] we've got to reopen the government we have to reopen schools what do you think four years

[00:20:16] looking back yeah I actually recently did a pretty comprehensive exercise on this uh paper that I wrote

[00:20:22] with Dr. Scott Atlas, Casey Mulligan and Steve Hankey so I had like three big time heavy hitters

[00:20:30] from like Stanford University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins and I was kind of like the

[00:20:33] earned boy who put all their great stuff together so that was actually um that was a pretty great

[00:20:38] honor being part of that and if people people want to see it it's on committee done leash

[00:20:42] prosperity dot com that's the other group that I work with and we went through kind of all of the

[00:20:47] facts in the data not about the models or the theories of what would happen but what actually

[00:20:51] happened let's go check let's let's see who was right let's see what actually happened

[00:20:56] and the evidence is pretty overwhelming that you know even setting aside the fact you see I

[00:21:03] would be I would have been against the lockdowns and the mandates even if they worked for stopping

[00:21:06] COVID because to me they violate basic principles of civil liberties and choice and constitution so

[00:21:13] I mean set aside for a second the fact I would have been against them anyway but just on their

[00:21:17] own terms in terms of accomplishing what they were supposed to do they failed spectacularly

[00:21:23] they did not in any meaningful way reduce COVID outcomes and they layered a second pandemic

[00:21:29] a man-made pandemic on top of the viral pandemic and that man-made pandemic was one of fear and

[00:21:36] panic and lockdown and societal disruption and that pandemic has killed about 100,000 people per

[00:21:44] year now for four years so we've killed about 400,000 people from our pandemic response

[00:21:51] that's and and we didn't do it's not like we did that but we saved a million people from

[00:21:56] COVID at the same time we had basically no effect on COVID while we layered that man-made

[00:22:01] pandemic on top and that's really really tragic I mean I don't even know it just it's

[00:22:07] and it was foreseeable I think um and you know if you want to say that maybe the lockdowns

[00:22:13] did save some lives uh and the best empirical evidence is that it's maybe something around

[00:22:18] 10,000 lives so you maybe saved 10,000 lives and you killed 400,000 people so that's 390,000

[00:22:24] in a year it's not close it's not a close call it was overwhelming the evidence that this

[00:22:31] response was a disaster and we even have some confessions now I mean Francis Collins who was

[00:22:35] the NIH director there's this video of him that's been been circulating where he says something along

[00:22:40] the lines of yeah we assigned an infinite value to preventing a COVID death and a zero value

[00:22:46] to any of the harm that we're creating you say you know how did you do what and then

[00:22:50] he's like and then he said that and he said that was a mistake so you think so right you know it's like

[00:22:54] it's like you kind of should have been obvious that that's not the correct decision right um

[00:22:59] and in fact if you look at sort of the planning documents the the pandemic planning documents

[00:23:04] before this happened all of them stressed keep society well functioning calm people down

[00:23:10] if they're panic don't stoke panic and dr. Atlas said that Fauci would walk into the

[00:23:14] white house task force meetings and say people aren't scared enough we need to scare them

[00:23:18] more we gotta panic them so they were intentionally doing the exact opposite of what leaders are supposed

[00:23:24] to do in a crisis which is calm things down even had um a pandemic response but prior to 2020 which

[00:23:32] they had modified it like they started to put it out and they modified it and they made sure that

[00:23:37] the response was to keep schools open like you're supposed to keep schools open even in the middle

[00:23:43] of a pandemic unless children are actually dying I remember the original CDC schools document because

[00:23:52] I shared it all the time because I thought it was good yes right and and it was you know it was kind

[00:23:56] of like if you need to close for a couple of days for like deep cleaning or if there's a huge outbreak

[00:24:01] in the school that might make sense and then it was basically like here's why prolonged closures are

[00:24:05] bad and all these reasons right you know it's like the educational harms but also you know

[00:24:10] they're going to be cared for maybe by a grandparent you're gonna have you're gonna have

[00:24:12] other less structured settings we have more transmission it kind of kind of like all the

[00:24:16] arguments that we made right they made right they originally said it wasn't like some secret

[00:24:23] unknown thing they originally said it and you know I'll never forget the sequence of events

[00:24:28] in that summer of 2020 because I actually thought we were going to be in a good place

[00:24:33] for schools in the fall because I remember the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with

[00:24:39] the original version of their guidance which was basically like school's the most important thing for

[00:24:44] kids they need to be in school it's not a high-risk setting don't worry about masks and elementary

[00:24:50] where they probably can't wear them anyway don't worry about six feet distancing it's better to be

[00:24:54] less than that than to have kids sitting at home it was like a really good document it was

[00:24:59] and so I'm sharing that ever hey 60,000 pediatrician the official that's and then

[00:25:04] Trump came out and said the same thing and within a week the American Academy of Pediatrics did 180

[00:25:13] degree reversal in a literal joint statement with the teachers unions they were like we the pediatricians

[00:25:18] and the educators think schools should be closed if there's COVID around and I was like this is

[00:25:23] and that's when I realized this is uh this is going to be exploited politically and then

[00:25:27] Biden started running TV ads your kids are not safe in schools because of Donald Trump

[00:25:32] and then even when Biden came into office remember and and there was this expectation

[00:25:36] that okay Biden's in now they're gonna you know call off the dogs and the schools are all going to

[00:25:40] open again they said they didn't do that instead they ran a play where basically they said we're

[00:25:46] going to shake down taxpayers for another hundred fifty billion dollars of k-12 and we're

[00:25:51] not going to open the schools unless and less taxpayers pay up and they basically held

[00:25:55] kids that were in the blue areas that actually were listening to this guidance

[00:25:58] they held them hostage for another couple of months into 2021 until they could shake down

[00:26:04] taxpayers some kids last said entire school year yeah and the beginning of 2020 the 2021 2022 school

[00:26:12] year was not completely normal there were a few places that even at closures yeah even that next

[00:26:17] year um you and I were at the White House together in July in 2020 with the American

[00:26:25] Academy of Pediatrics and teachers and others the crazy thing about that that with the White House

[00:26:31] schools forum is I brought my daughter to that yes and I brought my kids you know and and so she

[00:26:38] she's at this White House thing and all day long she gets to listen to like 100 experts

[00:26:44] school should the kid should be in school full time it's the most important and then like

[00:26:47] two days after that we got a thing from our principal that was like we're changing from

[00:26:50] five days to two days you're really two days away and so like she was that whole basically that whole

[00:26:56] they never went full time that year they were two days and then they were eventually four days but

[00:27:00] they never got to five uh and so she's like I just heard all this she's like what's even like I

[00:27:06] just went the thing with every single expert and so I mean I don't even know how she dealt

[00:27:10] with that but it was I I thought it was absurd political exploitation of you know

[00:27:18] basically 75 million school children for uh by the basically by the teachers unions and by the

[00:27:25] Democrats who saw this as a campaign issue and it also was a really interesting example of the

[00:27:32] deep state problem because you could watch Trump speak and you could watch Robert Redfield speak

[00:27:38] and they say all the schools should be open it's very important they're going to be the

[00:27:41] harms are going to be massive if they're not and then you go on the CDC website

[00:27:46] and it was like here all the reason school should be closed and you're like this guy doesn't control

[00:27:50] his own agency right I mean it was it was clear that Redfield did not have control of his own

[00:27:56] agency no he didn't well and that's part of why they're passing the new regulations right now

[00:28:05] to prevent prevent firing government employees because they they don't want someone like Redford

[00:28:10] to come in and actually have control of them and and we all learned so much about what

[00:28:15] happened with the bureaucracy during the during COVID that the CDC is an especially problematic one

[00:28:22] because um see normally agency rules and major guidances go through a review process at the

[00:28:28] White House through OMB but CDC doesn't submit any of their stuff to the White House because it's all

[00:28:35] supposedly non-binding guidance right they didn't say they didn't we didn't do any rule making

[00:28:40] we're just suggesting but as we all saw you know all of your local authorities in all of your states

[00:28:47] they basically say we got to do what the CDC says yeah and so they effectively were were

[00:28:52] dictating to the whole country and it was bureaucrats that the political appointees couldn't

[00:28:56] control and they weren't submitting their stuff to the White House they just post it

[00:29:00] there were above checks and balances every everywhere it was a massive problem and

[00:29:05] you know at the same time on the NIH side you've got the guys Collins and Fauci who control you know

[00:29:13] 45 billion dollars of taxpayer funding of all the grant money that funds almost all the signs

[00:29:18] that goes on in this country they're calling the shots on the lockdown narrative and assigning

[00:29:23] an infinite value to a COVID life and a zero value to any other harm and you know who is

[00:29:29] going to disagree with that when they control all the grant money and so that's another huge

[00:29:33] problem that we have where we have sort of publicly facing policy making people who control the flow

[00:29:38] of the grant money that the people who give out the grant first of all I think there's way too much

[00:29:42] about the grant money for a second let me talk about spending you know keep going and then we're

[00:29:46] going to get back to that and first of all there should be a lot less of that and it should

[00:29:50] be decentralized instead of having you know 10 universities that get 800 million dollars each

[00:29:56] it should be much less centralized than that and there should be much less of it period but

[00:30:01] the people who are in charge of giving out grants should not be famous people who are on

[00:30:05] TV taking policy positions it should be people nobody ever heard of who are deciding on the merits

[00:30:10] right and where does the FDA fall is it separate from the NIH as well yeah it's

[00:30:17] it's uh it's sort of its own all of these agencies are technically under HHS but it's

[00:30:23] its own it's its own entity and the FDA gives out grants as well right um or do you know if they

[00:30:31] do I don't know if they do I don't know if they do grant money but you know the the FDA

[00:30:38] you know we've got a big problem with their with their with their in two ways you know it's

[00:30:43] it's and to me the biggest FDA the biggest evidence of how corrupted FDA is was when they

[00:30:53] paused the johnson and johnson vaccine for a week and they said oh no this is causes blood clots we

[00:30:58] need to pause it for a week and then like you pulled up the data on blood clots and it was basically

[00:31:02] the same rate for all the vaccines right like why are they choosing this and it was basically because

[00:31:07] they perceived it as a republican company and you know woody johnson was a trump ambassador and it

[00:31:12] was like you know we can stick into these guys because we can I think you know maybe there

[00:31:17] was some merit to it I think that's basically what they were doing and you know you've got a

[00:31:21] situation at the FDA where you know bringing a new drug to market can cost like a billion dollars to

[00:31:28] do all of the all of the studies and to go through their whole regulatory process and

[00:31:34] they're only a handful of companies that can do it that like can navigate the bureaucratic maze over

[00:31:39] there and so you know you've got to be it's got to be Pfizer right it's gotta be you know it's

[00:31:45] got you've got to be you know you've got to be one of the companies that actually knows how to

[00:31:49] navigate that process and the the FDA became completely politicized under biden they approved

[00:31:57] boosters that their own the head of their vaccine division said that shouldn't be approved on the

[00:32:03] day before she ended up resigning in in in you know she ended up resigning actually their top two

[00:32:11] vaccine officials resigned based on wide-dose interference pushing boosters through and

[00:32:17] it was like a two-day state was like not even a two-day no one cared I'm like if the if something

[00:32:21] like this happened in Republican administration it's would have been like the scandal of all time

[00:32:25] and they just did it and basically no one cared I mean I would like to see

[00:32:31] I think that if you can warp speed this you can warp speed everything I'd like to see that

[00:32:36] bureaucracy cut dramatically I think that we've got to have instead of having you know billion

[00:32:42] dollars worth of crazy testing and all this kind of stuff just do one study do it well be totally

[00:32:48] honest about what it shows and then let people decide if they want things or not you don't have to

[00:32:52] have uh you don't have to have these massive bureaucracies that only a few that only a few

[00:32:57] companies can navigate and then at the end of the day the decisions are made politically

[00:33:01] anyway by someone dictating from the White House so what was the point and we know they were

[00:33:06] political because we've we have evidence of it but even like the six-foot rule or even masking well

[00:33:12] Fauci admitted that the six-foot rule was based on nothing I mean they just think and and the

[00:33:18] and the whole rest of the world was going with one meter which is like half of it's like three feet

[00:33:23] so you're like where you're like did somebody just double it but for fun I mean why was the U.S.

[00:33:28] why was the U.S. twice what what the other countries and in my kids school they did open

[00:33:35] but they did one of the there's so many dumb things I started to see one of the

[00:33:39] domestic I had to just correct it because there's so many dumb things that people did they would say

[00:33:44] oh someone tested positive you tested positive then they get a ruler out and measure whether

[00:33:49] the child had sat near the person or not and my daughter wound up missing her birthday at school

[00:33:56] her senior year of high school because she was within she was five feet instead of six and

[00:34:03] it was all for nothing it was a lie it was a lie do you know what percentage of kids got COVID

[00:34:08] 100% yeah they all did it was it was the idea that you were ever going to prevent that from happening

[00:34:14] or should have even tried and kids were the barrier they helped they well they there's where

[00:34:19] transmission chains tend to terminate because adults infected kids very easily it was difficult

[00:34:24] for kids to infect adults although kids could infect other kids but and they were dying from

[00:34:29] it they weren't dying from it there was essentially no harm from that I mean we had that evidence very

[00:34:33] early we had that evidence from Europe in like April 2012 yes yes so I think it was crazy what they

[00:34:39] did and by the way almost all the transmission was aerosol which means the distance didn't

[00:34:44] really matter at all if you were in the same room you might have breathed it in so that was

[00:34:47] a whole crazy thing it ended up being based on nothing um the I could just my hands seem

[00:34:56] bawling them up and fist because they just get so upset when I think about what you want to do

[00:35:00] you want to get even crazier there was a there's a crazy zero COVID columnist for the Guardian

[00:35:06] newspaper in the UK Debbie Schridar who wrote in her column the other day that she and other

[00:35:12] like-minded experts personally briefed President Biden at the recommendation of Anthony Blinken

[00:35:19] and they told him we need to lock down harder and faster next time that's the lesson

[00:35:24] that is a worse lesson that's a wrong lesson leave everything open it's a lesson

[00:35:29] other than New Zealand which is an island that was actually able to wall itself off from the

[00:35:33] rest of the world which no other country could actually do even if we wanted to

[00:35:37] the country in the world other than New Zealand with the lowest all-cause access death in the

[00:35:41] pandemic period was Sweden and they were the most no lockdown no school closures what they did is

[00:35:47] they gave people the best information they had and they let them make their own decisions and

[00:35:51] by the way social contact went down a lot in Sweden they didn't do it with any mandates or

[00:35:56] lockdowns or orders they just did it with telling people what's happening and people deciding what

[00:36:00] to do acting in their own self-interest at that point um at the event at the White House you

[00:36:06] know how you were talking about what happened with the American Academy of Pediatrics the

[00:36:11] head of it or the doctor who's in charge of it I don't remember her her name I went up to

[00:36:18] her she was there and I said really appreciate this guidance thank you so much and she said

[00:36:23] I couldn't believe how much hate we got from it I've had so many horrible

[00:36:31] calls and emails and then they went and changed it and that they didn't know what to do they did

[00:36:38] not know how to respond when because they're doctors who are not normally in the political

[00:36:44] environment like the rough and tumble of it that you and I wind up being in and and they caved

[00:36:50] they caved to the pressure and I lost so much respect for them I and almost almost all pediatricians

[00:36:57] I lost respect for yeah you know there was a there was a study uh there was a study uh

[00:37:05] I don't know maybe eight or ten years ago now that uh looked at you know like democrat versus

[00:37:10] republican among doctors by specialty yes and the ones that were the most democrat like all the way at

[00:37:15] the bottom of the list there were like 90 plus democrat it was like infectious disease doctors

[00:37:21] and pediatricians oh it doesn't surprise me the other end of the scale were surgeons who

[00:37:26] were actually majority republicans so I thought that was interesting people actually doing stuff

[00:37:30] right um and they have to be the ones who are willing to take the risk and uh

[00:37:35] to respect the doctor-patient relationship because it one size doesn't actually fit all

[00:37:43] government spending grants the government's just spending way too much money it it's yeah you know

[00:37:48] we had um we had what should be an object lesson right because during covid the government

[00:37:54] spent about six trillion dollars above normal just on extra emergency covid response it styled

[00:38:00] that way at least stuff and about 90 percent of that was financed by fed or reserve treasury

[00:38:05] purchases and of course we saw a huge bout of inflation as a result of that so I think people

[00:38:11] should be able to connect the dots in a way much more than they usually can where spending

[00:38:15] sort of over time maybe gradually has an inflation effect but this was huge burst of spending huge

[00:38:20] burst of inflation direct line connection and what the fed was doing it but should sort of

[00:38:24] obvious everyone right so you would think hey maybe this time we'll learn our lesson and uh we'll

[00:38:29] we'll bring spending back down to the pre-covid line and uh of course we didn't and if we were at

[00:38:35] pre-covid spending levels we would have a surplus right now uh based on the revenues that we have

[00:38:39] and of course we didn't go back uh to pre-covid spending in fact we didn't even go back to the

[00:38:44] projected baseline that we went to we went to a new baseline it's much higher than where

[00:38:48] we were before because uh this is sort of one of the stories of of history is usually it's a war

[00:38:54] this time it was a pandemic and a botched response but you know what happens is you have

[00:38:58] you have a crisis and you ever ratchet up in government spending and then it comes down some but

[00:39:02] never it's still much much higher than was before not just spending but power also

[00:39:06] intrusiveness authority and uh so that's what's happened I mean in the last fiscal year uh

[00:39:12] that that just ended though 2023 federal spending was a trillion dollars higher than it was in

[00:39:17] the last trump baseline so even after COVID what we thought it was going to be it's a trillion

[00:39:21] dollars more than that in one year you look at the 10-year and it's more than six trillion

[00:39:25] dollars more so we've got uh sort of from from just the increase in spending under Biden is like

[00:39:31] doing the COVID thing all over again in terms of the increase in spending and so it's over 10 years

[00:39:36] not over two years but why wouldn't it be expected to have the same inflation effect just you know

[00:39:41] you know not not all at once maybe not as obviously uh but I think we're likely to have

[00:39:47] chronic inflation problems I don't think we're going back to 2% inflation like they say

[00:39:50] we are I think we're more likely to be around 3 or 4% for the next few years and uh if we don't do

[00:39:56] anything to get federal spending under control we could chronically be at 6, 7, 8% inflation within

[00:40:02] the next 15 to 20 years because we've got baby boomers that are aging out and we have not

[00:40:08] we haven't reformed those programs and now we've got much more interest expense than we did

[00:40:12] before and so the federal budget outlook is not good and um I don't think they're going to

[00:40:19] do huge tax hikes I wouldn't want them to because that's terrible for the economy also so if you

[00:40:23] can't get spending under control and you're not going to do huge tax hikes you end up with inflation

[00:40:28] there's no free lunch right it it's something my parents taught me from a very early age

[00:40:34] but I think that a lot of people have forgotten that lesson Phil if people want to get involved

[00:40:41] and learn more about what you're doing I I think everyone should sign up for your email

[00:40:46] list and they should pay attention to you you understand these issues you understand the way

[00:40:53] congress works you know how to look for um fulcrums so we can make a difference with legislation so we

[00:41:00] have leverage to make a difference and you I met you when we're fighting Obamacare for the very

[00:41:05] first time and every time there's an expansion of government power it I can look to my left

[00:41:11] and right and I know you're almost always going to be there fighting it yeah I think I think we end

[00:41:16] up in a lot of the same places because we both try to focus on whatever the biggest threat is

[00:41:21] at an even time to you know sort of our freedom and our prosperity and uh there are a lot of

[00:41:26] them so we work out a wide variety of issues unlike some groups they get to you know kind

[00:41:31] of focus on one issue area but I think it's really important to get people focused on the big

[00:41:36] things and the big things where they might be able to make a difference and so that is what

[00:41:40] we try to do and if people want to follow uh I'll give you a few different websites American

[00:41:44] commitment.org is my main website the organization that I run I also work with a group called

[00:41:49] committee on leash prosperity and we do it a daily newsletter that goes out under Steve Moore's

[00:41:53] name so I would say you know go to both of those sites and sign up American commitment.org

[00:41:57] committee on leash prosperity dot com and I'm also an ex addict I'm on there like all the

[00:42:03] time so if you want my up to the second thoughts about this stuff but also you know

[00:42:08] baseball and whatever else uh you can follow me on there it's my last name Kerber.

[00:42:13] Very good well thank you so much for being with me we'll make sure that we put all of your

[00:42:17] links and your xid in the comments for the podcast as well or in the description for the

[00:42:22] podcast as well. Great thank you so much for having me. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by

[00:42:27] Jenny Beth Martin produced by Kevin Mooneyham and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny

[00:42:34] Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information visit TeaPartyPatriots.org

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