(Congressional Agenda) – Martha MacCallum, a host for Fox News, went toe-to-toe with director of National Economic Council, Brain Deese, Wednesday concerning the continual rise of inflation in the United States.
Inflation is making it difficult for Americans to be able to afford the most basic items they need for daily living. If you’ve made a recent trip to the grocery store, you’ve no doubt noticed that the things you usually buy have had a dramatic increase in price. For those who are living paycheck to paycheck, which is a huge chunk of the country, this is having a devastating impact on their finances.
“Deese said the U.S. is in a better position than any other country to combat high prices and solve the issue of inflation, which hit a 40-year high Friday with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increasing 8.6%. He then said President Joe Biden laid out a blueprint to bring down inflation, such as his plan to sign the bipartisan Ocean Shipping Reform Act Thursday to decrease costs for companies to ship their products,” the Daily Caller reported.
“I’m not sure it makes Americans feel that much better that other countries are at a similar level, some of them are below the level that we’re at but be that as it may, David Asman was just here from Fox Business and he’s a long time observer of the U.S. economy…he said what you have to do when inflation is in this situation is increase supply. You need to increase manufacturing,” MacCallum said.
The Fox News host then stated that the American Petroleum Institute is making a call for an increased supply, less regulation, and opportunities to be given more oil drilling leases in order to help ease the problem.
“Why not do that?” MacCallum asked.
“Here’s what we’ve seen over the last 15 months,” Deese went on to say. “545,000 new manufacturing jobs created in America. That’s the fastest rate in 30 years. Companies investing and bringing production back to the United States, building more secure and resilient supply chains at rates that we haven’t seen in a very long time.”
“How come that’s not making a difference in inflation, Brian?” the Fox News host then interjected. “Because you talk about stable and steady growth and your team talks about the transition to stable and steady growth, yet we’ve got 8.6% inflation and you’ve got negative growth in the last GDP and the projection for this quarter is .09%. So when do you expect us to see a meaningful change in inflation or in growth? Give us a rough idea, how many months? How many years?”
Deese once again said that manufacturing is experiencing record highs and prices have stayed high due to the reliance of the U.S. on semiconductors produced by China, before calling on Congress to pass a bill that would decrease the nation’s dependence on foreign-made semiconductors.
“Why not just low corporate taxes to encourage companies to come to America and to open here? Would you consider lowering corporate taxes to stimulate growth in America?” the host then said.
“Deese said the most effective way to fight inflation is to lower the federal deficit and touted national debt lowering by $1.6 trillion. MacCallum said the deficit is ‘obviously down’ because emergency pandemic restrictions were lifted off of the U.S. economy. He then argued that corporate taxes are already low and that the system needs to be reformed in order for companies to be able to freely move overseas,” the Daily Caller reported.
“We need to have a more stable corporate tax system and incentives to invest here in the United States,” he remarked.
MacCallum then repeatedly asked Deese when the American people can expect inflation to start going down. He replied by echoing comments about how the deficit needs to be lowered.
“We’re focused on the policies that will actually accelerate that process,” he responded. “And we know there’s a lot of global uncertainty out there, we know that the price of oil and the price of gas at the pump are being affected by Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine. But we also know if we take the kinds of steps that we’re talking about, we will get to that process quickly.”
“What is quickly? Can you define ‘quickly?’ Give me just a ballpark,” she pressed once again.
“He replied the administration is in the ‘building business’ of implementing policies to ‘accelerate the outcome’ of bringing down costs,” the report concluded.
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