Steve Moore and Bill Walton: Bank Bailouts, the Economy and the Debt Ceiling on Jenny Beth Martin

John F. Kennedy (00:02): We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Ronald Reagan (00:11): Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Donald Trump (00:17): Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country. Speaker 4 (00:27): Congress, President Obama, can you hear us now? Jenny Beth Martin (00:34): I, for one, am bound and determined to keep this republic. And I know you are too. I will never give up. We can never give up. Speaker 3 (00:46): Patriots, stand with us and fight for freedom. Fight for our constitution. Fight with us for the rights endowed by our creator, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Fight for a better future. Jenny Beth Martin (01:10): We’re going to keep fighting. We will not stop until we get to the bottom of this. Speaker 9 (01:15): The battle for America’s soul rages on. A wide open southern border, crippling national debt. The constant onslaught of wokeism and creeping socialism, and the weaponization of government agencies against the people. Keeping our republic is on the line, and it requires patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She’s an author, a filmmaker, and one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of, is mom to her boy/girl twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America’s core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin (02:01): You’ve seen the headlines lately. Inflation is on the rise, banks are being bailed out, and we face a looming dead ceiling fight in Congress. But what does this mean for you? In this episode, I’m joined by two very important guests that bring a lot of insight into how we got into this mess and what we can do to get out of it. (02:19): Steve Moore is a former Trump economist, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. And Bill Walton is a host of The Bill Walton Show, and the former CEO of a $6 billion private equity investment firm on the New York Stock Exchange. Both of them have decades of experience dealing in finance and the economy. I think you’re really going to learn a lot from this episode. (02:48): Well, Steve and Bill, thank you so much for being with me today. I asked you to join the podcast so that we could talk about two very important topics. One is what we just saw happen with the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. And then also we’ve got a debt ceiling battle ahead of us with Congress, and I wanted to talk about that. And how the economy is affecting the banks and how the debt and the spending and the printing of money is affecting the economy. Just small little topics. Bill Walton (03:21): Just a small short topic. Jenny Beth Martin (03:23): Yeah. And so you both have experience. You are a former Trump economist. And you were the CEO of a $6 billion financial fund that was on the New York Stock Exchange. Bill Walton (03:38): Yeah, private equity, venture capital, real estate. Jenny Beth Martin (03:41): You both have a little bit of experience. Bill Walton (03:42): I’ve done [inaudible 00:03:44]- Jenny Beth Martin (03:44): A lot of experience with the economy. What did you think when you first heard about what was going on with Silicon Valley Bank? Were you surprised? Steve Moore (03:52): Go ahead, Bill. Bill Walton (03:55): I was surprised it was Silicon Valley, because it’s one of the most politically favored banks in the country. It’s very woke. And I was surprised that was the target. But I’m not surprised because what we’ve seen in the last 2, 3, 4 years is trillions of dollars of federal spending, which has been financed by the Treasury issuing bonds, and those bonds were purchased by the Federal Reserve and commercial banks. And they bought them when rates were one or 2%. And what’s happened, the spending caused massive inflation. And now the Fed’s moving to raise interest rates pretty aggressively. And those bonds, which were worth 100 cents when they bought them, are now worth 80, 85 cents. Massive losses in the balance sheet. Regional banks, banks probably sitting about $600 billion of losses. (04:46): Interestingly, the Federal Reserve bought half of the bonds, the banks bought the other. The Federal Reserve is sitting on almost a trillion dollars of losses because they’ve got a bigger balance sheet. And so we have this very strange situation where the bank balance sheets have been crushed by bad fiscal policy and by monetizing the debt. And the thing that’s exacerbated the Silicon Valley case is that I think it was a $400 billion bank, and almost 90% of their deposits were uninsured. Jenny Beth Martin (05:20): Right. Bill Walton (05:20): And so when the bank- Steve Moore (05:23): Did you say uninsured or insured? Bill Walton (05:24): Uninsured. Jenny Beth Martin (05:24): Uninsured. Steve Moore (05:25): Uninsured. That’s- Bill Walton (05:26): 90- Steve Moore (05:27): You mean over two… I think there was one- Bill Walton (05:29): $250,000 cap. Steve Moore (05:30): There were some depositors that had [inaudible 00:05:32]- Bill Walton (05:32): Some depositors had two, three, $400 million in the bank. Steve Moore (05:35): It’s incredible. In a savings deposit. Bill Walton (05:37): Well, you think of who their customers were, they’re all the big venture capital funds. And when the venture capital funds invest in a company, it’s cash, and it could be 100, $200 million of capital raised, that goes into the bank. Silicon Valley got hit by the fact that with the venture capital business it deepened this pond in the last year because there’s been no initial public offering market. Those companies needed to start with drawing cash, and so they had a lot of pressure on them to raise cash. They tried to raise some cash in the bond market. I think it was Peter Thiel got wind of it, who was probably their only conservative depositor. All the rest of them are major Democrat donors. Then there was a run on the bank. Jenny Beth Martin (06:23): Steve, you and I, as the world shut down three years ago, we were urging for the reopening of the country right away. And we warned that we were going to see severe financial consequences with massive government spending and an economy that was actually not even functioning at the time. Is that part of what has contributed to what we’re seeing right now? Steve Moore (06:46): Yeah, this is called the chickens have come home to roost. It started in 2020 when we spent a couple trillion dollars to deal with the shutdown of the economy during COVID. And then Biden came in and spent 6 trillion on top of that, and all of that was borrowed. And so it was as sure as the sun rising in the east eastern setting in the west that you were going to have a massive inflation problem. Washington got it all wrong. The Biden administration got it wrong, and the Federal Reserve Board got it wrong. This was when they were talking about transitory inflation. And another thing that people should recognize, are you familiar with the term modern monetary theory? Jenny Beth Martin (07:28): I am familiar with it. Maybe I’m not an expert on it, and maybe our audience has not heard it. So explain to them. Steve Moore (07:35): It’s okay if you’ve never heard of it, folks, because it’s just this ding bat left wing theory that we used to laugh at. And the idea is that because the United States is the world reserve currency, we could just borrow and spend as much as we want and then all these other countries would lend us money, and we could just borrow and spend our way to prosperity. Well, that hasn’t worked very well in, let’s see, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia, Zimbabwe. And yet we’ve really tried this really crack pot idea. And so the inflation, as Bill just said, soared. And that forced the Fed to raise interest rates, what, eight or nine times or something? Bill Walton (08:14): Yeah, eight or nine times. Steve Moore (08:15): Raise 0.5%, a year, 14 months ago. Now we’re at five. And they may have to do another rate increase. Now, why was the Fed raising rates? Because inflation was getting out of control. And so we have the worst of all worlds, right? Now we have rising interest rates. Inflation is still pretty persistent. I think it’s coming down a little bit, but it’s still bad. Americans’ finances, their family finances, nobody talks about that. They talk about the banks. What about our finances? The three of us sitting here, except maybe Bill, you and I are too big to fail. They may think that Bill is too big to fail. Bill Walton (08:49): That means I get bailed out. [inaudible 00:08:51] I don’t think I’m in the [inaudible 00:08:54]- Steve Moore (08:54): I doubt many of the people listening to this show are too big to fail. And so what worries me about this big picture, is now you’re getting this incestuous relationship between big business, big banks, and big government. And I worry that you’re going to see, as these bailouts continue, it’s already cost us $20 billion as taxpayers. I love this idea that, did you see Joe Biden said, “Don’t worry, this isn’t going to cost the taxpayer a penny.”? Where’s the money going to come from, Mars? Of course it’s going to come from taxpayers. What worries me, and I’d like your thoughts about this Bill, you’re more an expert on this than I am, but you have four banks right now. You got Citi- Bill Walton (09:33): Wells. Steve Moore (09:35): You got Wells. Bill Walton (09:36): Bank of America. Steve Moore (09:36): Bank of America. And what’s the fourth one? Bill Walton (09:40): JP Morgan. How could we forget [inaudible 00:09:42]- Steve Moore (09:42): JP, they’re the biggest. Yeah. Those four banks probably control, what, 70% of the market already. Bill Walton (09:49): Yeah, yeah. Steve Moore (09:49): And I worry that the sharks are going to swallow up the minnows here. And we’ve all seen the wonderful movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart. And he has this little building and loan, and it’s a neighborhood bank, and that’s how America, small businesses get finances through. And I’m really worried that all those little banks are going to be like Potter, just buying up all the banks. And that’s really, because then they become public utilities. They don’t even become private sector entities any longer. Bill Walton (10:20): I think that’s exactly what we need to fear, because we now have about 5,000 banks in America, four, 5,000. And we used to have 14,000. Jenny Beth Martin (10:30): Wow. Bill Walton (10:31): [inaudible 00:10:32] If you look at the source of entrepreneurial finance, it’s not the big banks, it’s not the four banks that Steve just mentioned, it’s all the community banks. And it’s like they provide almost 60, 70% of the lending for small commercial real estate. And so if you’re an entrepreneur, those 5,000 banks are your lifeline to capital. And just as we saw with the lockdowns, where they shut things down and they drove tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses out because they declared some essential. Mainly the big companies, none of the small ones. And essential, they all went out of business. (11:14): And if you care about freedom and our self-reliance and ability to get ahead as entrepreneurs, having a robust small business entrepreneurial community is essential to the freedoms in America. And this banking crisis, I think, yes, it’s a financial crisis. But I think we also have to be worried about them saying, let’s not let a good crisis go to waste. And by that I mean, they could use this as an opportunity to snuff a lot of the small businesses out, drive that capital back into the bigger banks. And I think that’s the next step to a central [inaudible 00:11:54] digital currency. Steve Moore (11:55): Think about what happened with Silicon Valley Bank. Look, I’m a pretty libertarian guy, but I do think we should have deposit insurance, that prevents runs on banks. And that was created in 1933, or something like that. And the idea is you can feel safe as a mom and pop investor that your money in your bank is going to be insured. And that’s a good thing. And so by the way, people listening to the show, you don’t have to worry about your deposits if you have less than a quarter million. But now what the government is saying is these companies that didn’t have a quarter million, but a quarter billion dollars in a bank are going to get federally insured. Jenny Beth Martin (12:33): You got almost a half a billion dollars. What- Steve Moore (12:35): Some as high as that. And how is that? At some point, if you’ve got a quarter billion dollars in a bank, shouldn’t you have some skin in the game about whether they can actually pay you back? Bill Walton (12:49): Well, and these guys are smart enough to know that- Steve Moore (12:52): They should be. Bill Walton (12:53): … that it’s uninsured and they’re taking a lot of risk. But then the thing that’s troubling about this is we’ve seen all our institutions become partisan. We’ve seen everything weaponized and become politicized. The FDIC, when they did what they did by declaring Silicon Valley a systematic risk, and it wasn’t, it was too small for that. What they were doing was explicitly bailing out these big depositors that were big Democrat donors. And if you look at the depositors of First Republic Bank, which is another bank in California, or Signature Bank in New York. Signature Bank finances all the taxi medallions, and it’s also a big bank for Democrat donors and the Democrat Party in New York. And so what’s happening is they’re beginning to bail out politically favored institutions. And the concern of course is that if you’re East Palestine Bank or review some bank in Dallas that’s financing oil and gas, you won’t be politically favored and you won’t be bailed out. And so we’re seeing a privileged few that are protected, and all the rest of us not. Steve Moore (14:02): Yeah. The way I put it is, they bailed out Silicon Valley Bank, do you think they would’ve bailed out Shenandoah Valley Bank? I don’t think so. [inaudible 00:14:09] That is a problem. Bill Walton (14:12): I live in Shenandoah, so I- Steve Moore (14:13): Exactly. Bill Walton (14:15): They weren’t going to bail me out. Steve Moore (14:16): Meanwhile, the national debt continues to accumulate, but he wants to really talk about it. But we’ve seen just in the two years that Joe Biden has been in office, our national debt has risen already by about seven trillions in two years. And now you’re probably familiar with this number, but in 10 years now the national debt will reach 50 trillion. When I came to Washington in 1985, do you know what the debt was? 1.5 trillion. Now we’re going to be at 50 trillion. And here’s my warning to your listeners and viewers. There will be a financial crisis of a big magnitude if we don’t do something. It’s an overused metaphor. We’re on the Titanic and the iceberg’s right over there, and we better turn this thing around before we hit that iceberg, or you’re going to have blood in the streets. Bill Walton (15:08): How do we turn the Titanic? Steve Moore (15:10): Well, you’ve got to have what we’re going to talk about. You got to use the debt ceiling as leverage to get spending cuts. I’ll give you one example. One of my favorite senators is Rand Paul of Kentucky, and I’m pretty libertarian and he is too. And he makes a really good point. Balancing the budget isn’t really that hard, all we have to do is go back to the pre-pandemic budget. If we just restore, it went back to 2019, because pandemic’s been over for two and a half years. And so let’s just go back to the 2019 budget. We spent a crap load of money, but we don’t have to keep spending that anymore, the crisis is over. (15:46): And this is very historically accurate, that every time we’ve had a crisis in America, as you start with the Revolutionary War and then the War of 1812 and the Great Depression and the Civil War, the government would borrow. And then when the crisis was over, it would actually start paying down the debt. Joe Biden is the first president in history who comes into office when the crisis is over and he loads up with more debt. We should be paying down or debt right now, not loading up more on it. So that’s keeping me up at night. Bill Walton (16:15): But Steve, don’t you think this is not the plain vanilla financial crisis we’re in now? And this spending’s not the plain vanilla for social program spending. If you look at the $6 trillion of $7 trillion, there’s two or $3 trillion of that that went into climate. Steve Moore (16:32): Of course. Bill Walton (16:32): And subsidies for wind and solar. And who benefits from that? I guess the question with all the spending, it’s not like the old time social programs. This is for very wealthy investors. They’re getting tax credits for wind farms and for power lines [inaudible 00:16:53] and things like that. Jenny Beth Martin (16:53): Solar panels. Bill Walton (16:54): And panels and stuff like that. And so this spending is especially egregious because it’s also aimed at a climate agenda which is benefiting these wealthy people. But Steve’s written 19 books, I think, on energy. We can’t live with wind and solar as our energy. Steve Moore (17:11): This is a really good point Bill is making. I’m not against borrowing. Look, borrowing to finance things that will actually provide a return- Bill Walton (17:24): Something productive. Steve Moore (17:25): Yeah. In other words- Jenny Beth Martin (17:26): Wait, that’s why those banks were important in the first place, the community banks, because people are borrowing against them to start their businesses. Bill Walton (17:32): [inaudible 00:17:32] business, develop real estate, all that [inaudible 00:17:34]- Steve Moore (17:34): So with the $6 trillion we borrowed, what have we gotten for it? Windmills, really? Solar panels, income redistribution programs, things that… It’s not like we’re building the interstate highway system or something that’s going to pay off for years and years, just the opposite. Bill Walton (17:50): And the climate piece is a huge national security component, because all the components for wind and solar are made in China. Batteries. Steve Moore (17:58): And instead of building weapon systems that we may need to deal with the China-Russia access, which now exists thanks to Joe Biden, we’re- Bill Walton (18:08): Yeah. So in this instance, it’s not just the massive spending. You and I have been talking, yelling about that for… I don’t know, when did we meet each other? A long time ago we’ve been concerned of that. But it’s the nature of the spending now, and it’s going into wholly unproductive purposes. And yeah, we all want clean air and clean water, but we’ve already solved that problem in America. Jenny Beth Martin (18:29): Right. Bill Walton (18:30): And- Steve Moore (18:31): Well, let me give you an example. There’s $350 billion green energy slush fund that was passed as part of the… What do they call it? I call it the Inflation Acceleration Act. $350 billion just sitting there in the bank. Do you know who’s running that program? John Podesta. For the people who don’t know John Podesta is, he’s just a smart political guy, he doesn’t know anything about business. How much of that money do you think is going to go to your group? My group? Your group? You know where that money’s going to go. Jenny Beth Martin (18:57): Well, I can tell you right now there would be none going to ours, because we don’t take government money like that. Steve Moore (19:01): Yeah. Well, even if you did, they wouldn’t give it to you. My point is, we know where it’s going to go. To the Sierra Club, it’s going to go to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Bill Walton (19:09): He doesn’t know anything about energy, but he knows a lot about who the donors are. Steve Moore (19:11): Exactly. It’s going to go to all of the groups that gave. This is a cash in, cash out, corrupt system we’ve created in Washington. Jenny Beth Martin (19:18): Well, and then the money is fungible for those non-government entities and non-government organizations. So you give them money that they wouldn’t otherwise have to raise, and that means that they can- Steve Moore (19:31): And then they make donations to the politicians, and then the politicians appropriate more money. And then it’s a vicious cycle. Jenny Beth Martin (19:36): It’s a very vicious cycle, and it empowers them and strengthens NGOs, it strengthens the politicians, and it strengthens their issues set. While our side- Steve Moore (19:48): We pay the taxes. [inaudible 00:19:50]- Jenny Beth Martin (19:49): We’re paying the taxes for it. And Nobly, we’re not taking it in Tea Party Patriots action, we’re not taking government money. Or our foundation, just to be clear. We’re not taking government money in any of our entities. And they’re using our tax dollars against us. It’s so [inaudible 00:20:07]- Steve Moore (20:06): I’ll give you another example. A good recent example. If you read the Wall Street Journal, you’ve seen this story. But basically a lot of Republicans voted for this absurd semiconductor bill, the CHIPS bill. Which is just a corporate welfare program for Samsung and Intel, and so on. And so the first thing that people do with the money is say, “Oh, by the way, if you get that money, you have to use all union labor.” Gee, okay. Then have you built the daycare centers you need? Wait a minute, is this the CHIPS bill or the daycare center bill? And now the companies are complaining. It’s like, wait a minute, this was supposed to be [inaudible 00:20:41]- Bill Walton (20:41): … better than that are diversity, equity, and inclusion [inaudible 00:20:44] programs, and critical race theory training. And then all the social agendas also built into that money. Steve Moore (20:51): Exactly. Jenny Beth Martin (20:51): Right. Steve Moore (20:51): So that’s the CHIPS bill for you. Jenny Beth Martin (20:52): Right. Of course. Of course. And that’s what happens when you let the government get involved in things that shouldn’t be involved in the first place. Steve Moore (20:59): And shame on those businesses who lobbied for this, because you get in bed with the devil and you start doing really bad things. That’s what’s happened here. Jenny Beth Martin (21:07): That’s exactly right. I want to go back to something and just be very specific about something that you said. First, you said inflation was increasing, and so therefore they had to raise interest rates. Explain why. How does raising interest rates hope slow inflation? For those who don’t remember E-com 101 and 102. Steve Moore (21:30): By the way, the [inaudible 00:21:31]- Bill Walton (21:31): … theory I don’t subscribe to, but anyway. Steve Moore (21:33): Yeah. But look, it was almost like government was taking hundred dollar bills and dropping them out of helicopter windows. All this money was spraying in the economy. And of course, as Milton Friedman taught us, inflation is just too many dollars chasing too few goods. And that’s what we had, so the prices went up. Now the logical solution to that would’ve been what? Cut government spending. [inaudible 00:22:00] Way too much government spending, so they didn’t want to do that. So the Fed wanted to suck that money out of the economy by raising rates. We could have an argument about whether they did the right or wrong thing there, I’m agnostic about it. But the fact is that we’ve had this massive increase in interest rates. (22:14): This is the other thing, look, I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for these banks. I wrote a piece three years ago in the Wall Street Journal that said, “Hey, the federal government should be locking in these low interest rates. Let’s just shoot 30 and 50 year bonds because we have the lowest interest rates we’re ever going to have.” Everybody knew. You knew it. Interest rates were going to go up, they couldn’t stay that low. I don’t get this. Why didn’t the banks understand it? They were sitting on all of these billions and billions of dollars of bonds that were going to lose money. Why were they so stupid? Bill Walton (22:47): Because 14 years of not paying zero interest on deposits, they forgot to learn how to be bankers. They forgot [inaudible 00:22:54] to learn how to manage their balance sheet. Steve Moore (22:56): Unbelievable. Bill Walton (22:57): Silicon Valley Bank- Steve Moore (22:58): Here’s the thing, I’m angry about this because then what we do is we bail out the people who make bad decisions. Bill Walton (23:03): Let me go back to the interest rate question though, because we at McChesney Martin, one of the Fed chairman. Great name. I wish I had a name that fancy. He said the Fed’s job is to take away the punch bowl when the party’s just getting good. And so the theory is that if the Fed starts raising rates, it’ll slow down the economy, and slowing down the economy will somehow cause inflation to go down. But I don’t necessarily subscribe to that, because what do rates do? It basically prevents people… They borrow less money to finance manufacturing and buy inventories and stuff like that. (23:45): Right now our inflation is in services, and it’s not clear the raising interest rates is going to do much to that inflation. So I’m really concerned. And instead I’m sitting with the champion of supply side. What they ought to be doing is thinking how to increase supply, increase work on the supply side. [inaudible 00:24:05] Instead, they’re trying to kill demand by raising rates and punishing us. There’s this incredible punitive thing they’re doing, and we’re all paying the price. And then if you’re Silicon Valley Bank, they bail you out. Jenny Beth Martin (24:16): Right. That’s right. Bill Walton (24:18): So this raising rates is their old time theory. I don’t think the Fed is going to succeed in ringing inflation out just by raising rates. Steve’s right, we got to cut spending. Jenny Beth Martin (24:29): We do have to- Bill Walton (24:30): Massively. Jenny Beth Martin (24:30): We have to cut that spending. And there’s still… Hold on, let’s go to that. Hang on just a second, let’s go to that. But let me go back to one of the other things that you said just so that we’re… Because we’re glossing over big terms and big ideas, and I want to make sure if people aren’t completely familiar, they understand. You said, and I just completely agreed, when Biden said that it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers any dollars to any money to bail these banks out. Of course it’s going to, right? And I completely agree with that, but explain why, just in case people don’t understand how it is actually- Bill Walton (25:09): Well, what they’re telling us is that the Fed, the deposit insurance money is technically funded by fees that banks pay. And so banks are charged a fee based on their deposits to how much they gtt to pay into the fund. And so what they’re trying to tell us is that all these bailouts are going to just come out of that fund. Well, that fund’s $180 billion, and there’s $17 trillion of bank deposits. And there’s no way that fund can begin to cover that. And then if you did charge enough fees to amp that up to billion, $2 billion, or whatever it was you needed, these little banks that are already suffering, they’re going to get clobbered. And so the taxpayer, the little guy pays regardless of what Joe Biden says. He’s clueless about it. He’s lying to us, in fact. Jenny Beth Martin (26:03): Well, and the money does drop out a helicopters when the government keeps spending money. But at the end of the day, it’s us who is paying. Steve Moore (26:13): Well, inflation is a tax, let’s not forget that. Inflation is just a tax on every dollar you have in a savings account or a retirement account, or in your wallet. Bill Walton (26:20): This year you got two or $3,000 less than you had last year. Steve Moore (26:23): Exactly. Bill Walton (26:23): Because of inflation. Steve Moore (26:24): This is a really important point, I want to amplify that. Virtually every month that Joe Biden has been in office, the middle class has gotten poorer. Did you know that? Jenny Beth Martin (26:36): Yes. Steve Moore (26:37): Maybe one or two months not. But the average middle class family, because this is not complicated, inflations run at 6%, and wages and salaries are growing at about 3.5%. So that means month after month after month there’s a compounding effect of that slower rate of wage growth than inflation. And so now the average family is down somewhere between $3,500, $4,000 a year in purchasing power. Well, if you’re making $70,000 a year, that’s a big, big dent in your… Well, the irony is, one of the things I was proud of under Trump was that we had a $6,000 gain for middle class families. Almost all of that has been eroded in Biden’s first two years. Sad. Jenny Beth Martin (27:20): It is. It’s very sad. Now let’s talk about what we were talking about with the debt ceiling, and the money that is continuing to be spent and how that contributed to the problem. One of the things that I’ve heard Republicans on Capitol Hill talk about is that they want to… As part of the debt ceiling negotiations, they’re talking about clawing back the unspent COVID funds. And I just sit there hearing that and I think, that is such a no-brainer. Of course. Why are we even arguing about it? If it hasn’t been spent yet, why are we possibly going to reward people for not working, or whatever else it might be used for? Just stop that. Just stop. [inaudible 00:28:10] That’s part of the problem in the first place. Steve Moore (28:11): Let me just respond to that. You’re of course right, it’s such a logical thing. And I love what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, we’re for common sense, they’re for crazy. And so they’re for crazy. Look, let’s be very clear about this. When Biden came into office, what did they do? Well, they exercised their mantra and their theme, which is a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. So for the last 30 years that you and I have been fighting these street wars against the left, they had this Pandora’s box of things that they wanted, all these spending programs. And now they have the opportunity. It’s like, oh yeah, we’ll do all these crazy lunatic programs and we’ll say this is COVID relief. And so it’s all the climate change crap and all these things. Jenny Beth Martin (28:55): DEI. Steve Moore (28:57): That’s what they did. The last thing we needed when Joe Biden came into office was $2 trillion more spending. We were already in a recovery, for goodness sakes. Bill Walton (29:06): Yeah. The economy was only [inaudible 00:29:07]- Steve Moore (29:07): They’re devious. Bill Walton (29:07): All eight cylinders were hitting. Jenny Beth Martin (29:10): And so now as we look at… You were saying that the way that we can solve part of the problem, because Bill asked, how do we turn the Titanic around? And you were alluding to that with the debt ceiling and the negotiations. Go into- Steve Moore (29:24): No, I feel very strongly about this. I’ve been in this town a long time, 35 years. The only time we’ve ever made progress on getting the debt down and our deficit down. And actually in the Clinton years we had balanced budgets. Was by using the debt ceiling as the leverage to get Congress to agree to cut the budget. And that’s exactly what the Republicans in the House are saying. Let’s keep this really simple. You’re running a business, and let’s say you have a bad year and you lose a million dollars. So you have to go to your bank and you have to say, “Hey, you know what? I need a loan. Or I need a [inaudible 00:30:06] letter of credit.” What’s the first thing the banker is going to ask? “Okay, what’s your plan for getting out of debt?” Right? That’s all we’re saying. Joe Biden, you want another, essentially the credit card. What’s your plan for getting out of debt? Oh, no, I don’t have a plan. That’s right. I mean, come on. Really? That’s his stance, I don’t have a plan. Bill Walton (30:27): What should Congress ask for? What’s the trade here? What’s the negotiation? If you want an increase it, we want these three things. What are the three things? Steve Moore (30:36): Number one, we cannot live with $80 billion for 87 thousand new IRS agents. No, absolutely not. We saw what happened, how they politicized and weaponized the IRS. That’s my condition, number one. Absolutely not. Or else I guarantee you they’re going to be knocking on your door and your door and my door, and everybody listening to the show, because we’re conservatives and that’s what they do. Number two, there’s a $350 billion green [inaudible 00:31:01] resource what I made reference to. Zero. Nope, that money is gone. We’re not going to spend that money. (31:07): Number three, there was over $400 billion of COVID fraud. We have to find these people. We have to put them in jail. They stole money, they ripped… This is the biggest heist in the history of mankind what happened, and we have to get that money back. Number four, get rid of all these corporate welfare programs. Look, this isn’t really that difficult. There’s so much excess government spending out there. And then grow the economy. Why don’t we produce as much oil and gas as we were doing under Trump? That would create jobs, that would reduce our dependence on OPEC, and it would raise revenue for the government. Those are just some ideas right off the top. Bill Walton (31:47): The IRS agent problem is even worse, because I talked with a couple of my accounts, and they said there’s nobody out there qualified to do these jobs. And so you not only have somebody- Steve Moore (31:56): That’s a good point. Bill Walton (31:59): … who’s viciously coming after your money, but they’re going to be incompetent. And so we’re flooding the zone with more incompetent people. Steve Moore (32:09): They will be leftists. Bill Walton (32:10): Maybe we need to hire these people as COVID corruption cops. Jenny Beth Martin (32:14): That wouldn’t be a bad idea. Of course, they’d find a way to use that against us as well. Bill Walton (32:18): But the corporate cronyism, Steve, I think we need to put a real face on it. And I think the face is the climate lobby, the climate change lobby. Because the people who benefit from that, they’re already wealthy billionaires that are… Look at John Kerry, and look at all the people in these funds in Silicon Valley. And Tom what’s his name from San Francisco? Tried to run for president. Steve Moore (32:45): Oh, I don’t [inaudible 00:32:45] forgot. Bill Walton (32:45): This is a really unattractive cast of characters. And I think if we want to go after cronyism, corruption, I think the biggest single place we ought to focus on is climate change. Because the dirty little secret about climate change is none of the things they’re proposing are going to work. And they’re going to impoverish us. And you think you’re middle class and have trouble now, wait. They’re already trying to eliminate the gas in our stove in the kitchen. Jenny Beth Martin (33:13): Yes. Bill Walton (33:14): But then they’re going to start doing things like rationing how much propane we can buy to heat our houses. That’s coming. Jenny Beth Martin (33:23): By the way, just so that people understand how many consequences there are with the things that they just throw out like it’s no big deal at all. I spoke to my heating and gas guy a few weeks ago, after the gas ban on stoves had been talked about. He said, “Did you know they’re thinking of banning these gas stoves?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I happen to know that.” I got an oped on and it caught [inaudible 00:33:52] action. He didn’t know who I was. But anyway, so I’m like, “Oh yeah, I kind of know something about that.” And he said, “Well, did you know that if they ban that stove in your house, we have to replace the electrical box in your garage?” [inaudible 00:34:06] They have to do that because you don’t have the proper wiring in your house right now to handle the increase in the load for the electricity that would come from changing your gas stove. (34:18): And he said in a lot of places, maybe not where I live, but especially in the northeast in older houses, that they may very well have to change the electricity coming from the street to the house. So you have to run another wire from the street to the house, then you have to change your breaker box, and everything that goes with that. Then you have to run the electrical wires to your stove, remove the gas lines, and then the cost of your stove on top of that. And I was like, wait a minute. So if you buy a stove, let’s see it’s $2,000. And that may not even… I haven’t shopped for a stove, so that may not even be right given inflation right now. But let’s see it’s a $2,000 cost. And you’re thinking $2,000, maybe it’s $500 for installation if you’re someone like me who can’t do it themselves. We’re talking about a 10,000, $15,000 change to my house. That’s insane. Steve Moore (35:13): But there’s more. Hold on, there’s more to this though. Because what they’re going to do is they’re going to be able to then monitor how much electric power you’re using and there’s no ration it. We’re seeing this in a lot of areas now. You can’t set your temperature in your home below 74 in the summer and above 68 in the winter. They are going to start rationing your electric power. It’s really- Bill Walton (35:44): Isn’t that the mantra from Davos, the World Economic Forum? Steve Moore (35:47): Yes. They’re even making… They’re not even [inaudible 00:35:49]- Bill Walton (35:49): You’re going to learn to live with less and be happy about it. Jenny Beth Martin (35:52): Right. We’re going to own nothing- Bill Walton (35:54): And Klaus Schwab in charge, own nothing. Yeah. Jenny Beth Martin (35:56): So the same heating and air guy started sending me all sorts of links and telling me more. Because he was saying- Steve Moore (36:05): He seems like my kind of guy. Jenny Beth Martin (36:05): He was great. Wow. Can you do more research for me? Because he’s encountered… And he said they also have changed how you can cool your refrigerator. So the coolant in the refrigerator now is more explosive than it used to be. And the freon that you might need to use for your air conditioning, it costs way more. Because since Biden went into office, what used to be a $2 is now a $25 can, or something like that. Okay. Steve Moore (36:39): Can I just say one thing about this? I have to be non-partisan here. All this craziness about energy efficiency, do you know when this started? Jenny Beth Martin (36:47): I’m sure that it was under- Steve Moore (36:48): Under Bush. Jenny Beth Martin (36:49): Yeah. Yeah. Steve Moore (36:49): He passed the worst energy bill ever. And it was all about every appliance you buy has to be energy efficient. And now of course it’s times three under Biden, but the Bush people were- Bill Walton (37:02): Well, we all supported Bush, and now we wonder why. Steve Moore (37:05): Yeah. Well that was just, look, Bush did some [inaudible 00:37:07]- Bill Walton (37:06): Better than the alternative. Steve Moore (37:06): That was ridiculous. Jenny Beth Martin (37:09): I think the Bush caused the Tea Party movement because we had the bailouts and TARP under him, and then stimulus was just a continuation of those other bad problems. And we got rid of incandescent light bulbs under a Republican. Steve Moore (37:24): Was that under Bush? Jenny Beth Martin (37:26): Yeah. Well, I don’t know if it went into effect under Biden or not, but it was Republican senator. Bill Walton (37:31): Well, that is real cronyism, because GE, Philips, and Erickson couldn’t make any money on incandescent bulbs. And so they put their arms around the climate lobby and said, or the energy lobby, and said this is what we need. Because they couldn’t make any profits. And now they can make profits on these newer bulbs that everybody hates. Jenny Beth Martin (37:50): Well, and I reached out to someone in Washington DC, either about the refrigerator or about something else, from my heating and air guy. And I just was like… It’s an expert who he happened to know Myron Ebell. And I said, “How in the world did this happen? How did it pass?” And he sent me some information, and basically it was a crony deal. Republicans were signing on to some really- Bill Walton (38:13): It’s a crony deal. Jenny Beth Martin (38:14): … crazy bad deal [inaudible 00:38:16] because a corporation, I think in Louisiana, thought it would benefit them. I guess because they could go replace all of our equipment in our house. Steve Moore (38:24): One thing that every- Jenny Beth Martin (38:24): Which is craziness. Steve Moore (38:25): One thing that just a practical tip to your listeners, everybody should have a generator. You’re not going to be able to depend on the electric grid system any longer. Do you have one? Bill Walton (38:38): Mm-hmm. Steve Moore (38:39): Yeah. It’s just a matter of your health and safety. Bill Walton (38:42): You bet I’ve got a generator. Steve Moore (38:43): Because we’re going to see brownouts and blackouts planned, and through just incompetence. And you lose your electric power you’re putting your, as I said, your health and safety at risk. I would urge people, these people are nuts, and they don’t want you using their electric power. And it may be sometime soon. The only way you’re going to get it is from your own private generator. Jenny Beth Martin (39:09): My conversation with Steve and Bill covered so many topics that we’re splitting it up into two episodes. On the next episode of the Jenny Beth Show, we continue with topics like central bank digital currency, how diversity, equity, and inclusion are harming capitalism, and the struggle of small businesses to grow in today’s economy. Be sure to check us out on the next episode of the Jenny Beth Show. Speaker 3 (39:34): The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mooneyhan, and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org. Jenny Beth Martin (39:54): If you enjoyed this episode and want to stop freedom thieves from turning our country into a communist nightmare, be sure to click the thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. 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