enter into the records a statement supporting bill hr 4695, the inclusive home design act. without objection, so ordered. i would like to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony today. very enlightening. without objection, all members will have five legislative days in which to submit additional written questions for the witnesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response. i ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly as you are able. without objection, all members have five legislative days in which to submit extraneous material to the chair for inclusion in the record. i remind members that written questions and materials for the record should be submitted to the email address provided to your offices. this hearing is adjourned.

>> president biden is expected to comment on the mass shooting at an elementary school in texas. this was expected to start at 8:15 p.m. eastern time. he's running a bit behind schedule. we will get you there live as the president begins his remarks, here on c-span. >> it's been a wild ride recently in the markets. radio's full disclosure program. former long-time writer at bloomberg business and it was at a press conference yesterday in japan where the president got a question, asked if he thought a recession was inevitable in this country. in the weeks and months to come. he answered no to that question. how would you answer that question? guest: it's a philosophical question, isn't it? aren't recessions tphefbgtable? the -- inevitable? the business cycle. i'm not an economist or a businessist, but you have

expansions and kra*bgss. in kr*bgs -- contractions. in contractions ex -- in expansions, you get various things like what is happening right now. what's unusual is you have this idea of inflation. this late 1970's, early 1980's show, where we get persistently higher prices and weakening economic activity. that's really hard for the federal reserve to solve and it's very hard in a scenario where you don't have unanimity over fiscal policy. it's just you're asking people like biden to kind of stick with you and let's wait it out together. host: what is the official definition of a recession? how do we know? guest: if you have two consecutive contracting quarters of economic activity where the economy pulls back. this stuff is routine. we've had mild recessions in the past, we've had recessions prompted obviously by the covid lockdown, where the economy fell off a cliff over days.

tankers were idled, you had suddenly 15% unemployment. really short-lived though, because you're talking about something closer to 4% unemployment right now. various recessions coming out of the dot-com boom. obviously the 2008 financial crisis and the wall street recession and the housing crisis. we came out of that roaring out of it. these are just the fact of the business cycle. so whether you have it later this year or if they pumped it into 2023, i believe it is inevitable. host: the president yesterday again answered no to that question. here's why he said he was optimistic. reporter: is a recession in the united states inevitable? president biden: no. reporter: why not? president biden: look, you're talking about the significant progress we've made and making sure we don't have supply chain backups, about the 8,000

pres. biden: 3000 jobs to the texas and samsung. $17 billion investment. toyota, 1700 jobs in carolina on battery technology. where we've created over eight million new jobs, where unemployment's down 3.6%, so on and so forth. imagine where we'd be with putin's attacks and the war in ukraine if we had not made that enormous progress. our g.d.p. is goinggoing to grow faster than china's for the first time in 40 years. does that mean we don't have problems? we do. we have problems that the rest of the world has. but less consequential than the rest of the world has because of our internal growth and strength. host: roben farzad on the president's comments. he repeatedly said jobs, jobs, jobs there.

guest: yeah, jobs, jobs, jobs. but inflation persists like this and you get reports out of various companies, the stock market you saw target fall 25%. it's not for lack of demand. you're seeing supply chain issues and pricing pressures. it's a very peculiar slowdown or fear of slowdown. so i don't blame him for trying to accentuate the positives. hyundai expanding in georgia. the jobless rate where it is right now. but it's still a vexingly difficult problem to solve, inflation above the economy, the markets, and jobs, this would be a great time to do so. roben farzad joining us until the end of our program today at 10:00 a.m. eastern. phone lines split as usual. democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. roben farzad with public radio's full disclosure program. folks are tuning in to full disclosure, what are they going

to learn? guest: it's a business of culture, the culture of business, the meaning of life. this week we had an episode on dear graduate, there's a lot of stress and consternation. i remember as a 22-year-old going out into the work force. and you think that it's the be all, end all. but in fact you talk to accomplished people out there, executives and you realize when they say it's commencement, you're truly commencing. this is a chance for you to go out and learn and make mistakes and fail and put those lessons to use later in life in your career and build a reputation. host: the meaning of life might be an easier one than the meaning of the swings on the stock market recently. this is a headline from "the washington post" today. dow up more than 600 points. as wall street carves a path out of bear terrain. these ups and downs? guest: you see this volatility happen when you're and at inflexion point for the stock market. we're come outing of a prolong period of easy money. zero interest rate policy.

the p.p.p. loans and everything we had and the fiscal stimulus that congress threw at this unprecedented shock, at this pandemic, this once in a hundred-year plague if you're the federal reserve, at this time last kpwraoer you're talking about transitory inflation. we can take our time on rate hikes. well, they just did a half a point rate hike, which is very uncommon, and the market is pricing in many more this year, and if you're the stock market, what are you going to do? what's your process can tal? what's your reference point if you're anvester? i can park money in a treasury for this much. on to havetop of that, -- on top of, that $4.50 gasoline. it brings back memories of 2008. there are many people who are trying to buy the old fell in may and go away thing. there's a lot of volatility ahead. there's the federal reserve that's going to have to figure out how to do this. and do you hike so much that you snuff out the economy hopefully temporarily to spare it from

inflation? that's a really hard plane to land. also that metaphor -- host: i remember seeing a headline. half point rate hikes are the new quarter point rate hikes after the most recent one. are we going to get to three-quarter point rate hikes or more? guest: there's part of me that wonders how the market would react if you came out and was like, listen, this is a big spoonful of medicine but you need it and you're going to have to take it. everything is so premeditated and intensely tell graphed. the most important metric in the world is the united states' main interest rates set by the federal reserve. it's pegged to everything. currencies, termy, dollar denominated debt, the price of oil, the price of commodities. and so it used to be that there was some mystery or burlesque to this back in the day of alan greenspan. people would look at size of his brief case and try to figure out what was going to happen. the last time we approximate

mated a blind-siding was 1984. the bond market really took a hit. some wall street firms failed that year we don't have an constitutional memory of what it was like -- institutional memory for what it was like for the federal reserve to have a hike that hurts everybody. host: a call for you. an independent from texas. caller: good morning. first-time caller. my question is, yesterday president biden announced that we were in a transition period and that the high fuel prices are a result of that and when we come out on the other end, hopefully we will be less dependent on fossil fuels. so it says to me that it's not the greedy companies. i'd like your comments on my question. thank you. guest: this economy is still

energy-intensive. not as energy-intensive as it was in 2008 when we saw oil go above $140 a barrel. not as energy-intensive as it was during the iran an hostage crisis or 50-plus years ago. 50 years ago in the oil shock. having said, that it's painful, right? you thought that 2008 and that era of $4-plus gasoline would have disabused us of this need to be kind of co-dependent with fuel and it did spike a surge i think in buying of hybrid vehicles. you saw a fracking and schaal revolution, a drilling renaissance in the united states oil patch. we became one of the leading producers on the planet. but consumption has gone up tremendously. the developing markets are still drinking this stuff. you have to contend with china, with india. and then the pressure of decarbization and you stop and think, 2008 was 14 years ago and how much have we progressed? you look at something like a tesla and i don't think that's really being sold on the m.p.g.

merits. it's not like the old geometro or the hugo that you'd have to fuel with austerity. it's very much an aspirational vehicle. the other automakers are looking to follow suit. and wean themselves from gasoline at the same time they're selling enormous gasoline pickup trucks. that's a profit center for them. you had an earlier guest talk about natural gas. natural gas is less carbon-intensive than burning coal, high sulfur coal, but it's still a fossil fuel. and it's preferable to have renewables over natural gas. at a time when you see oil prices and gasoline prices shoot up like this, you see natural gas follow suit. municipals buts are natural gas fired. there are factories that are natural gas fired. the worry is that that in combination with rising interest rates will push the economy into kind of a cry uncle thing. it sews of seed -- sows of seeds

of its own demise. you can only stay above these prices for fossil fuels until the economy falls apart. host: tony, republican, good morning, iowa. caller: good morning. how are you this morning? host: how are you? what's your question or comment for roben farzad? caller: my question is, do you think the jobs that they're getting now come from the trump era or the biden era? guest: i mean, do you want me to say it's coming from the covid era. again, we're coming from 15% unemployment and then a tremendous amount of stimulus. i think the fed's balance sheet, the trillions of dollars of assets it bought on top of bringing rates to zero, on top of payroll forgiveness program and people being at home and not vacationing and husbanding cash and coming out of that, there's a tremendous excess of cash in this economy.

of money on the sidelines. that's still restive. it's looking for returns, looking for investment. there are more and more people staying at home, bidding up wages, you're seeing it with literally every restaurant owner i know, that you can't even -- how much can you pay people to even show up to-to-an interview? can you reasonably say that one president created that job over another? no. it was a peculiar set of circumstances, global supply chain shut down, inflationary pressures right now. it is -- on balance it's hard to get many subsets of workers back. many people, as you know, when we follow are insisting on remote work for ever and the companies said they spend millions of dollars on office space. apple was having a hard time getting engineers to come back so this is a prolonged negotiation and everyone else is

involved. host: the interest rate hike is tied to so much but can you explain how it reduces the federal reserve balance sheet and what that means and why that is announced at the same time and it's an important thing as well? guest: since the financial crisis, you can only take rates down to zero. after that you are pushing on a script -- string but the fed can go out and buy assets to keep rates down. in japan, the situation has become so dire that the central bank is buying equities to help the market. at least in the united states, these things would have been taboo years ago, the idea that the the federal reserve is pulling a couple of levers will go out there and conjure up money and buy bonds. it's not taboo anymore.

when you have the economy absolutely fall off the cliff, think back to the fall -- the fog of spring-2020 stuff you briefly had pres. biden: pres. bd

evening fellow americans. i had hoped when i became president that i would not have to do this again.