c-spanshop.org, or scanned the code on the right. ♪ announcer: c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including comcast >> you think this is just a community center? it's more than that. >> focus is partnering with a thousand community centers so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast supports c-span as a public service, ong with these other television providers, giving you a front-roweat to democracy. ♪ >> for conversation now on the state of the u.s. economy and bidenomics. duke at the center from american progress. to start the conversation, what are the fundamentals we need to look at now to understand the state of the economy? guest: people might not remember

this but we had a giant recession with historically high unemployment and i remember it was a depressing time a few years ago. we have seen this incredible recovery, better than any other economy in the world and the labor market has recovered and we are back to normal and wages are rising. we had inflation mostly due through the reopening. people wanted to drive. disruptions in the russian war. we are getting on the others of that with inflation falling and real wages going up. we are just on this upper trajectory in the most important things to look at how other countries are doing. we all went through covid and

the u.s. economy is doing better than any other country in the world. host: what is bidenomics and how much did it have to do with the incredible recovery? guest: the best way to talk about it is that it's a decision in the economy that grows the economy from the bottom up and the middle out so focusing on middle-class and low income households and trying to strengthen them. the american rescue plan did that at a time when families needed it. it's their growth, their spending, it's their recovery that i think has brought us forward and has created this world recovery. that's a key part. i think there is a long-term agenda that starting to take shape that will drive down the

cost of shipping things through the chips act which will create more semiconductors in the u.s. and that will bring the price of energy down and bring down the price of health which helps with inflation. those investments are just starting to take hold. we are going from the momentum we hold -- we had from the first year of the biden presidency to a long-term agenda. i think they could build on that extraordinary progress. host: world-class economic recovery you say in the headline from the new york times -- why is everybody so grumpy in these polls about the economy? guest: it's what everybody on my

social media and shows like this are talking about. some of it is we have these surveys in the american public is polarized. it's not a surprise that many republicans don't like the state of the economy because they don't like the president. i think that's part of it when you ask people how their personal economic situation is, they say it's good so that's an important point. another part of it is that we've been really making huge progress over the last few months when you look at wages and inflation. people follow social media closely and americans don't follow those things as closely. over time, as we see wages grown we see inflation continue to fall, i expect it will start to

register with americans that things are pretty good. host: from the same column, he points out an interesting book published a few years ago. guest: we've spent 20 or 30

years with wage stagflation. this talk has been going on for a while. we are starting to see a new economic paradigm start to shift. we are seeing that right now and an example is wage inequality which is falling. we are reducing that and we've seen that since 1980 where low-wage workers are seeing wage gains. we are starting to see progress and starting to make progress against the long-term trends that has stagnated working-class income. we have a couple of more years of progress that will make a huge difference in the lives of americans. host: our guest this morning's from the center for american progress. we are talking bidenomics. you can call us,

(202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001 an independents (202) 748-8002 .we are talking about the progress on wages and inflation. this is senator john kennedy from louisiana on the senate floor from two weeks ago. [video clip] >> if you take all of the average wage increases in the united states of america and you look at the average inflation in the united states of america, we have lost ground. in november of 2023, people are making less per hour after inflation than they were february, 2021. don't let anybody tell you that wages have made up for this.

they haven't kept up with inflation. and don't let anybody tell you that we are winning the war on high prices. we are getting inflation down. no thanks to the biden administration and quite frankly, the united states congress. that's thanks to the federal reserve. they have tightened interest rates which is hurt a lot of people but they have gotten inflation down. they had to do it with one arm tied behind their backs because the other way you attack inflation and the only way we've ever successfully gotten it down is what have congress do it and reduce the rate of spending and debt accumulation but we haven't done that. we haven't done that. in fact, since 2019, the population of the united states of america is up 1.9%. the country has grown 2% since

2019. you know how much our budget has grown? 55%. this inflation is man-made. the man's name is joe biden. host: painting a very different picture of the economy right now. guest: yeah, he's wrong. when you look at before covid, prices have gone up about 20%. that's been hard for a lot of families but when you look at wages for the average worker, they've gone up 22% so a 20% increase in prices, 22% increase in wages. real wages for most workers are higher than they were before the pandemic. if you drew a line from the pandemic and the growth rate, real wages adjusted for inflation or right where he

would've expected based on that line from before the pandemic. real wages have been growing, we been making huge progress there and it's worth pointing out when you talk about the federal reserve that about a year ago, there was about 100% chance of a recession according to many economists. instead, the economy continues to grow we had a gangbusters third-quarter gdp report. i think this recovery is extremely strong and it's just starting to take hold and it comes to real wages and they are starting to accelerate. that's the proof in the pudding. host: why are economists so pessimistic? we talk about a high chance of a recession in the next six month or 12 months. guest: the key thing is that a lot of people did not believe that a lot of the inflation was

because supply chain disruption resulting from covid and the russia-ukraine war and when those things started to unwind, that brought down the rate of inflation without increasing the interest rates. they say is really the economy is too strong in weakening it is how we will reduce inflation when in reality, the unwinding of the transitions of the supply chain from covid of russia-ukraine has been the tailwind that's been boosting real wages and economic growth and it's been a huge game american workers. host: plenty of americans are awaiting to chat with you this morning. first is the line for democrats. caller: i just wanted to tell your spokesperson that he must live in a bubble because in washington, things are good.

they get their two or 3% increase. i am in agriculture where we farm. diesel fuel is the first thing that hits us. that's the absolute first thing. i've gone from filling up my semi-with fuel. it was in the earlier days, 200-300 dollars to fill it up and now it's $800. every time i fill it up i better have $800 on me to do that. everything connects to fuel and oil. that was where i believe biden made his mistake was putting the clamps down on the oil people. if he would loosen the oil interest, it had to go up. it couldn't stay where it was at so long. most people that i know were intelligent enough to lock in long-range. i am ok with that because i have a long-range locked in.

there is a lot of people -- i feel like you are living in an area where they don't get an increase, it's called a budget cut. that's what i have to say. host: thanks for that. guest: thanks for sharing that. a lot of people are continuing to struggle area the american economy has a lot of inequality like farmers and small business earners -- owners feel this. i think president biden has been pretty impressive in terms of trying to boost u.s. oil prices -- production. he use the petroleum reserve in an effort to induce more production. the u.s. is producing higher levels of fuel we are the number one oil producer in the world. a lot of people were struggling

and after a few more quarters of this kind of progress we will see will boost a lot of small businesses and the farmer bottom line as some of those costs go down. and that's while incomes go up. host: a chart from the u.s. energy information administration, a lot of energy statistics there. this long line showing diesel fuel prices going back to 1994. you see this jump in 2022, up even six dollars per gallon and dropped back today but is still well over four dollars per gallon right now. is it likely to go down again? guest: i will not get into speculation. you can lose a lot of money but hopefully that will go down to as the economy improves. host: this is darrell,

republican, good morning. caller: i think we are missing the boat, not talking about the value of the dollar here. with all the spending that was done with the proper backing by being able to sell u.s. bonds has devalued the dollar considerably. the only thing that has brought it back to the federal reserve and them increasing the interest rates to bring back investors into the u.s. dollar from other areas. with all the spending that's going on, sooner or later, that will come up and bite us again. guest: i think the key thing about inflation is that in october, it was 3% in the october before that it was 8%. we are seeing it falling in

prices did not rise at all between september and october. i think we are getting on the others of this inflation. hopefully over the next few months, we will continue to see those kinds of troughs that will stabilize that. when it comes to the deficit, there is a spending and revenue side. u.s. would have no federal budget deficit were it not for the bush and trump tax cuts. when president clinton left office, the congressional budget office was wondering what to do and we did to massive tax cuts and it was piling up. president biden put out a plan to raise revenue, $3 trillion of revenue. it could do a lot to reduce the deficit. host: the other chart to show viewers on inflation, this when going from january, 2020-

october-2023. this is showing inflation peaking at 8.9%. there is overall inflation and core inflation, can you explain the difference? guest: inflation is what consumers spend on and core inflation is when you take out cass. cass and food prices are volatile. they bump around a lot. gas and food prices bump around a lot. when you ask americans what they chart the prices on, cass and food are high up there. host: independent line, good morning. caller: i'm amazed that you can stand there or sit there with the look on your face and mocked the american people. you haven't said one thing that's true yet. the bond market is falling apart.

everybody else is ditching the dollar. we are headed for a crash and you know it. everybody knows it. that's why everybody's buying gold and silver. biden is taking this country into the ditch. take my word for it. host: maybe that comes back to the headline we talked about earlier and why everyone is grumpy about the economy. guest: one thing with the dollar is argentina elected a new president and i don't agree with them on a whole lot but he wants to adopt the u.s. dollar as the argentine currency. when you look abroad, i don't think there's been more confidence in the dollar than there is now. again, over the next few months, we will see wage gains continue to outpace inflation and that will make a huge impact for americans. host: lakewood, washington, line for democrats, good morning. caller: good morning. i wouldn't take that guy's word

for anything. i think there's been a great grifter on the american people. i think these corporations have been gouging us. i am a consumer. i go to the grocery store. i get a bag of doritos and they raise the price but they lower the quantity of what's in the bag. they do the same thing with toilet paper. there is fewer -- there is less toilet paper on each role. these corporations have raised the prices to take advantage of a 3% inflation to make it 8%. the democrats have come out and they do some investigations. i don't think there were supply-chain issues. from overseas, yes but not to

mystically. they have these products sitting in warehouses and are raising the prices. host: how much of the inflation we have seen in the past year and a half has been due to price gouging? guest: we know corporate profits are really high right now. somebody benefits from inflation and in many cases, they are corporations. the biden administration has been pretty good -- pretty aggressive is for his investigating corporate consolidation. there are hospital mergers and those sorts of things and stuff going on online, very big focus. one of the key things is meat processing because meat has gone up a lot. there are essentially four meat processors in the country. it's a real bottleneck and

source of corporate power. the biden administration has been looking to investigate that and clampdown on that. across the board, the federal trade commission and other parts of the biden administration have been very aggressive in going after corporate profiteering and corporate consolidation. host: joe in yorba linda, california, republican. caller: i had a question about the stock market. stock market seemed to be flatlined during obama and almost tripled under trump and now it's flatlined again. this seems to be a push that the stock market is mostly for rich people. to me, it funds many 401k's and pensions and it seems to promote folks from the bottom in the middle up. i bought stock a long time ago.

you buy stock and you think it has the potential of going up, you have a good chance of making a good return on your money i thought. i bought solar a long time ago, under a dollar and it went up to six dollars, 600% on my money. that's my question. guest: the stock market is important to the american people. the one key thing and what drives it going up and down as interest rates. we saw the stock market surge in the last year of the trump administration. that was a terrible year. i was watching netflix all day in 2020. the reason why the stock market went up is because the fed reduced interest rates. that caused stock prices to go up. as we've had this strong

recovery, we've seen the stock market flatlined as a result of that but interest rates are a huge part of that. what matters to a lot of americans the labor market. this president has had historic gains in jobs. that's a key thing for americans living paycheck to paycheck in terms of being able to get a job or get another job and get a raise. i look at the labor market as the strength for the american people. host: what about the homeownership market? there is a chart on the fixed rate average in the united states. today is hovering around 7.5%. guest: yeah, it's high. we hope it goes down more. nobody expects an interest rate hike for the rest of the year. we will see what it does next year but with inflation coming down, if we continue the progress on inflation, we can

probably expect rate cuts in the future which will bring down those costs. host: how soon in the future? guest: i'm not going to give anybody in financial advice but definitely no hikes for the rest of this year and with the continued progress, it might be into next year. host: john, independent, go ahead. caller: good morning at thanks for taking my call. the first comment i have is the word bidenomics. once again, plagiarist tick from joe biden or whoever's running the country, you use reaganomics and put his name in front of it. i retired early in 2019 and i have not gotten any increase at

all in my pension. social security over the last three years has gotten over an 11% increase. when you talk about interest rates, when i purchased by house in the early 90's, i paid 8% and that was about normal back then and that should be where rates stay now. my third, and quickly, with eric yet, we will not be paying any principal at all. all the money from the fed will be used to service debt interest. we will have to pay higher interest rates and i don't understand. i've been paying more for gasoline. it cost $100 to fill my pickup truck it's ridiculous.

my last comment would be -- i hate when economists remove food and fuel from the cost of -- you know what i'm trying to say. host: there is a lot there let brendan duke pick it up. guest: the key thing on the deficit is that president biden has laid out $3 trillion of deficit reduction through asking the wealthy to pay their fair share they does that without asking americans making under $400,000 pay a penny more in taxes. that would make a huge difference in terms of our debt burden. it was stabilize medicare finances. there are plans out there and the president has put out a plan that would address our deficit

while keeping investments in the american people like the child tax credit. there is a way to get a handle on our deficit. by asking the wealthy to pay our fair share and the president has posted and i think congress should take a look at it and get to work on it. host: what do you think about the term bidenomics. guest: many people debated. i think what we will see over the next few months is trump a nomex as well. when we come to an election, it will be a choice in president trump yesterday said he plans to repeal the formal care act. that would cost millions of americans their health care and would give a tax cut to the wealthy. that would be terrible for american pocketbooks. another example is he proposed doing a tariff, a 10%

across-the-board tariff, on the imports americans by which would hit every caller and they would see prices go up immediately. that would be a $300 billion tax increase. he's talked about using that money to reduce the corporate rate, reduce the tax rate the corporations like amazon and google and walmart pay. the key thing about this is that we need to have a discussion about these two visions of the country that we will have going into this election. the trumponomics one can be pretty scary. host: lancaster, virginia, james comer republican, good morning. caller: good morning, i'm sitting here laughing because this guy has done something nobody's done in years. he has unified everybody, democrats and republicans because this president doesn't know what he's doing.

nobody has said the economy is great. nobody. anybody goes back and thinks, trumponomics, i have money might pocket and food prices are low and bidenomics is a disaster. inflation was 11% and 9%. i haven't gotten a pay raise. every month, it cost me 7-800 dollars a month more under this president and if unit take core inflation, look at your meat prices. that's not 30%, it's 40 or 50% price increase. the most simplest of thing in a grocery store i shop has gone up 40%. local bread, dozen eggs, i don't

know where you get this 24% inflation down. inflation is not down. host: we got your point. guest: a lot of americans are struggling. we live in an economy where the wealthy get a large share of the gains and a lot of middle-class people struggle. we've made progress in over the next six months, hopefully we see the progress started to trickle down. when we look at the average wage , not everybody gets it, it's average but the average wage for a typical worker is up 22% which is more than the increase in prices. you have to look at both sides, income and prices. income on average is higher but that means and averages an average and some people get below average. host: the inflation rate is 3.2%

on inflation from october, 2022. that's the overall inflation. some things that have increased the most, sports tickets, car insurance is up 19%, car repair is up 19 -- 50%. steak is up 11%, major appliances are down 10%, smart phones are down 12% and airfares are down 13% and fuel oil is down 21%. it's hard to figure out exactly what we mean we talk about overall inflation? guest: we take samples of the american people and try to figure out what on average they spend on. then we assign weights to those categories. one important thing to note is after thanksgiving is the american farm bureau goes across the country and prices the

average thanksgiving meal and it went down this year compared to years before. we so the prices go down. when you take that as a fraction of a worker's paycheck, goes to paying for the classic thanksgiving dinner and its lower than it was in the years leading up to the pandemic. we are seeing inflation go down while we just -- while wages go up. host: we are taking your calls on the economy and bidenomics. this is done in washington, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i just had a comment and a question. from a somewhat educated look at the world right now, one thing

you notice from the pandemic is the world is all influencing no one everybody. america doesn't have a premier spot in economic for trade. -- for trade. i wonder if we are in a different paradigm and maybe the fed needs to think about it as well. the fed always has this 2% inflation rate as their target. did that figure come down with moses on the stone tablet? why is that used as the benchmark best inflation rate? maybe in the new world for a while, nations are settling out in their pecking order and may be our inflation here might be higher for quite a while. host: what about the inflation target rate? guest: we've had that for a few

decades. they can adjust that if they want. the key thing about the inflation rate is high inflation is hard but negative inflation sounds great but also means a depressed economy which goes into a spiral at me so that in the great depression and that's why they settled on 2% which is a little way of inflation to avoid that. when we talk about america's role in the global pecking order, we've had the best recovery of any advanced economy. more gdp growth, less inflation than japan and the u.k. and europe then canada and all of our competitors now. inflation is actually lower now than it was compared to those other countries. the main competitor people talk about is china. china is arguably in a recession right now.

i think things look pretty good right now it comes to america and the global economic pecking order. host: if we have the best recovery, who is in second and third place? guest: i'm trying to visualize the graph but an example of who's not doing well is the u.k.. they have had wages there lower than 2008. they've had negative wage growth for 15 years. their version of the congressional budget office expects real wages to not go above the 2008 so that's a loss of two decades. it makes us feel better about what we are doing here. host: how much have you studied what's going on there? guest: in europe, they are more exposed to the russia-ukraine

supply chain disruption but when you take have energy and food which is a big part of that, they still have higher inflation. the other part is in the u.k., they tried to do that crazy budget or ago that cost the prime minister her job. it because the u.k. borrowing cost to go up and they are still struggling so they're looking at large deficits and a lack of real wage gains. they are more exposed to the price swings but also, bad economic policy. host: point pleasant beach, new jersey, republican, good morning. caller: how are you? let me say a couple of things and please don't cut me off. the reason why this country is in a mess is no offense to your guest but you have all these economists that go to all these schools that have no idea what's going on in real life. i bet he doesn't do his own

shopping. host: what's going on in real life, tell me. caller: everything is more expensive because the guy in the white house, the first thing he did was he went after oil. this guy is telling me he's trying to produce more oil. he wants to be fossil fuel free in 10 years. he doesn't want to dig anymore. these liberals want to kowtow to their base but then they blame everything on the ukraine war. in 10 or 15 years, they want to get rid of gas and oil but he doesn't want to say that. host: what about energy policy? guest: i do go shopping myself. on gas, the key thing is that gas is lower than it was a year ago. comparing it to october, i expect it will be lower november

compared to october. we are seeing gas down but i think the inflation reduction act by president biden is a good example of a way to do the energy where it doesn't raise taxes on gas at all. it helps these infant energy sources and helps wind and solar get off the ground. it doesn't penalize any energy source. it's pushing toward cleaner and cheaper energy so that's a good way to do things. the president is trying to attack that problem. host: from facebook -- i think it's more than $32 trillion at this point. $33.8 trillion. guest: the key thing is we were

slated to pay down most of our debt in 2000. the cbo said they will have to figure out what to do with this money and there was a huge tax cut to the wealthy in 2000 and most of them were permanent in 2012. in 2017, we did another large tax cut for the wealthy and here we are now. the debt did not go away, it's larger than ever. when you look at production, the projections can be a little bit troublesome. the key thing is president biden has laid out $3 trillion of deficit reduction that would stabilize the debt because the key thing is we will we also -- we also want gdp to grow. you have to look at the income which is gdp. we can stabilize the debt by

essentially asking the wealthy to pay their fair share as president biden has. some of the measures are things like if you are a billionaire, making sure you pay some tax each year. a lot of billionaires don't pay much intact because the gains they get on the stocks don't face an annual tax if they hold onto it. president biden is proposing a minimum tax for those gains for billionaires. reversing the corporate tax cuts of the trump tax cuts is another way he proposes doing that. when you add these things up, you can get the debt on a pretty good trajectory without asking americans making under $400,000 to pay a penny more. host: those cuts were made in 2012? guest: yes. host: barack obama was president then? guest: yes, he signed it. host: was there a pushback from

democrats at the time? guest: it was a vast majority of democrats that were behind it. i'm not here as a democrat or republican. i'm just a policy wonk and making it permanent clearly was a mistake. host: this is patrick in pittsburgh, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. i listen to your guest and it's like listening to the wizard of oz. in a completely rigged economy, it is completely rigged. it has one purpose and that's to ensure the super rich get everything. your guest is acting like he's an advocate of the american people when in fact the entire purpose of the biden onyx is to ensure the super rich. he can lie all he wants about up at the fact of the matter is the system is still ongoing. it doesn't matter what party you are in anymore.

the corporatecabal has managed to ensure their interest is the only interest. guest: president biden has laid out $3 trillion of tax increases on the wealthy and large corporations. that's a great place to start. reversing the tax cuts for corporations and ask billionaires to pay a small tax on their unrealized capital gains, efforts like that will make a big dent in income equality. when we achieve that, we can figure out what's next but it's a great starting place. it makes huge progress on reducing wealth inequality and racial inequality while making progress on the debt. host: this is lakeland, florida, independent. caller: good morning, c-span.

the last call or just proved my point as to what i will say. that's why they want to defund the irs because of the tax cheats getting away without paying taxes and the tax cheats getting these subsidies. that's only one thing. if donald trump test donald trump is not the only tax cheat in this country, there are thousands of them and that's why the economy is not stabilizing. marco rubio called for the e-verify program for corporations but it should be for every business in the united states because there are thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants that are not paying it to the social security system or the federal system which will bring our taxes down. not just that, employers are not paying their fair share of taxes either. all the small businesses that hire illegal immigrants are not paying their fair sure people are just either.

we don't of a spending problem, we have a revenue problem in that last caller proved it. they will keep the cabal going. host: tax cheats, irs either by illegal immigration, what do you want to say? guest: let's take the irs. president biden is part of the inflation reduction act and that's historic after years of a falling budget for that agency. each dollar we invest in the irs in terms of working out tax cheating by the wealthy, that gets us $12 revenue.it's a crazy rate of return. they'd love to make that investment in the stock market. president biden made that investment and we are seeing an improvement for the american

people already. they are announcing efforts to go after the wealthy tax cheats which will make a huge difference in the deficit. republicans want to get rid of that which is a huge tax cut for wealthy taxpayers. they are trying to tie it to aid for israel and saying we will not fund israel if we don't give a blank check on taxes. i couldn't agree more on the irs . it's an important agency and it's a way to fight financial crime. the irs a few years ago made a bust. they bust fentanyl dealers and they are usually important in our efforts to fight terrorism. it's a most ridiculous thing in the world to talk about defunding it. host: we will ended there for today but come back down the road. "washington journal"

continues. host: it's our open form in any public policy or political issue you want to talk about, now is the time to call in. democrats, (202) 748-8000 republicans, (202) 748-8001 independents (202) 748-8002. this headline from the front page of today's usa today --