>> from the fox studios in new york city, this is maria bartiromo's "wall street." maria: and happy weekend to all. welcome to the program that analyzes the week that was and helps position you for the week ahead. i'm maria bartiromo.

restoring america's energy security, republicans are fighting to stop the administration from releasing any more oil from our already depleted strategic reserves to sell to places like china. texas congressman dan crenshaw on the new vote in congress and the president's latest attack on the gop over spending cuts. plus, president biden is taking a victory lap on the economy as we saw fourth quarter economic growth slow and more companies announce layoffs. mark tepper weighs in. plus this: ♪ stick your progress where the sun don't shine ♪ maria: country music star and fox nation host john rich will be here to tell us about a brand new venture he's banking on. but first, republicans are voting on a bill to restrict president biden's control over the release and sale of our nation's emergency oil supply.

joining me right now is texas congressman and member of the house energy committee dan crenshaw. congressman, thanks so much for being here. critics say biden tapped that spr as an election stunt to bring down gasoline prices right before the midterm elections, and now we're sitting at historic lows. you're trying to prevent that from happening again. tell us about it. >> right. well, the spr act that we passed, it does a very simple thing that shouldn't be controversial. if you're going to take out of the spr, you've got to have a plan to replenish it, you've got to have a plan to actually lease federal land for drilling, a plan for production so that we can refill it. this should not be controversial. the democrats are acting like this is the craziest thing ever. they're the extremists. they want to deplete the spr which is meant by emergency -- meant for emergencies, by the way. he's wrong about using it, he's wrong about selling it to china, and he's wrong about threatening

to veto this bill which is a good bill, it should be bipartisan. we're just trying to solve problems here, to replenish spr, the strategic petroleum reserve, which is designated for emergencies when we're out of gas. maria: well, i don't understand why we are selling emergency oil to china, our number one adversary. do you have any answers on that? >> well, it goes into an open market, and so they'll buy it up. but to your point, it's foolish to sell it in the first place. and what we see from the chinese is that they've been piling up their stockpiles of oil and gas, because they're not big producers of it, so i understand why they're doing that. but we shouldn't be giving it to them. we shouldn't be enabling that kind of behavior. we need to be producing more. and, by the way, republicans back in 020 said -- 2020 said we should buy at record low levels. if we had done that the, if we had done the republican plan, if democrats had been onboard, the stuff they'd be selling now would be at record profits for

the taxpayers. they've screwed this up in so many ways, it's hard to fathom. maria: congressman, meanwhile, you've got the president and democrats using scare tactics in a new push to raise the debt ceiling. watch this. >> they want to cut your social security and medicare. now, this is the god's truth. it's the almost unbelievable. and beyond that, they're actually threatening to have the us default on the american debt, a debt that's been accumulated over 230 years. what in god's name would the americans give up the progress we've made for the chaos they're suggesting? not on my watch. i will veto everything hay send me. [applause] [laughter] maria: wow. we know for a fact that house speaker kevin mccarthy said there will be no cuts to social security and medicare. should biden be taking this victory lap on his economic plans? >> i mean, he's just lying. there's a couple lies to parse out here. first of all, we're not going to

default on the debt. that's not the republican plan. the republican plan is to say, okay, let's raise the debt ceiling, but we have to have some spending measures in place that put us on a sustainable debt trajectory. that's just responsible spending, right? if you've got a bunch of bills at the end of the month and you're like, whoa, i isn't way too much on my credit card. okay, i'm going to pay off my credit card, but i've got to rein in my spending. that's what a normal household would do. that's the republican plan. biden's bringing up social security and medicare? no, that's not even on on oury dane. who's going to cut social security and medicare? it's democrats. when those practice go insolvent, automatic benefit cuts occur. that's on biden, that's on democrats. let's be clear, in the early 2000s if we had take then up george bush's social security plan, social security would be solvent right now. people wouldn't have to worry about it. but democrats told us we were going to throw granny off of the cliff.

they used scare tack -- tactics. he's lying on multiple fronts, and it's only going to hurt american seniors and the american people. maria: yeah. congressman, i want to get your take on how you're going to figure this out and come up with solutions because your colleagues have said that you want to go back to 2022 spending levels. if you go back to 2022 spending levels, that's a consistent in defense spend -- cut in defense spending. do you really want to cut defense spending right now while china is rising and russia is so aggressive on ukraine? how do you square this circle in terms of raising the debt ceiling but also i putting boundaries in place for the next fiscal year's spending? >> you look at nondefense discretionary spending, and it's increased double-digit percentages over the last two years. it's the very easy to find cuts there. i personally do not want to cut defense spending. it doesn't immediate to increase in this exorbitant manner, but you don't need to cut it either. it doesn't necessarily mean that in the particular budget plan if

means cutting defense spending, it just has to go through regular order. it will go through the committees, through each appropriations bill, and we'll fight it out as it goes. i'm not as worried about it. these supposed rules that we've talked about are, they don't necessarily pertain to just defense spending. so i think we can get on the right track here. maria: well, alexandria ocasio-cortez yesterday or week said that she wants a wide open border, she wants this administration to overtake and reverse title 42, and she also is blaming the trump tax cuts and donald trump on all of this debt can. watch this. >> reporter: congresswoman, quickly on the debt limit, democrats have been in charge for the past two years. do you think democrats have spent too much money? >> i think the largest contributor to the debt ceiling or deficit has been the trump tax cuts, but i got that go. maria: congressman, your thoughts. >> she's very confused, we all

know in. -- can know this. so right after the trump tax cuts, the federal government received a record amount of revenue year after year after year after year. [laughter] maria: that's right. >> so she's just wrong. it's just wrong. [laughter] i mean, it's just not true. maria: yeah. >> the majority of our spending comes from mandatory spending, about 70% is from medicare, medicaid, social security and interest on the debt. the rest of the 30% is the discretionary stuff that we argue about every year. about half of that is defense spending. so you do have very little to work with. if you don't get our major practice on a sustainable trajectory, well, then you're going to put our country on an unsustainable trajectory when it comes to debt. maria: yeah. >> it really is that simple, and we do need to do a better job educating the american people on really what the problems are and have adult conversations on how to fix them. maria: all right, we will leave it there. we'll see if those adult can conversations take place. thank you so much, sir. good to see you. texas congressman dan crenshaw joining us in washington.

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unlimited free delivery. walmart plus. dad, we got this. we got this. we got this. we got this. life is for living. we got this. let's partner for all of it. edward jones >> and i'm not sure, and i mean this sincerely, the news could have been any better. economic growth is up, stronger than expert expected at 2.9%, we're growing. prison -- [applause] jobs, jobs are the highest number, the highest in american history. and wages are up, and they're growing faster than the inflation. maria: oh, yes, joe biden painting a rosy picture of the economy. unfortunately, it's not true. wages are not growing faster than inflation right now. take a look at the data. wages are up 4.5%.

inflation is up 6.5%, so inflation is still cutting into our ability to spend and save. we are continuing to see large companies resort to mass layoffs as well to offset near record high inflation. joining me right now is strategic wealth partners' ceo mark tenner. mark, thank you so much -- mark tepper. mark, thank you so much for being here. what is your assessment of the macro story as joe biden tries to paint a positive picture of this really steep inflation that is still pretty elevated. >> it's still a problem. and despite the rhetoric you hear from joe biden, the economy is softening, and someone's going to have to tell him when you live by the sword, you're going to die can by the sword. it just seems like they're too busy popping. champagne bottles trying to celebrate the fact that, yes, we're past peak inflation, but that core pce number is still 4.4% which is still double the mandate, and the sticky

components -- wage, rent, food -- that's still running sky high. and for him to take a victory lap on this 2.9% gdp number, most investors don't understand how that number's actually calculated. so that is actually the quarter-over-quarter number times four. it's annualized. so you have the third quarter versus the fourth quarter, you multiply it by four. what we really need to look at is the year-over-year number. no one talks about that number, and that's how every other country looks at gdp growth. in fourth quarter9 of '22 versus '# 1 was up 0.9%, president biden. not 2.9. and that's down from 1.9% the previous quarter. so that is a completely different story. we are slowing down, and i'm expecting, maria, the next three quarters of gdp prints to actually be negative. maria: yeah. well, yeah. and there's a debate on how severe the recession will be, not necessarily if there will be a recession. mark, what's going on with these

markets, and how are you allocating cappallal right now? look at what's happening. the backdrop is clearly a slowdown in the economy. the backdrop includes major corporations from, you know, melt that and ibm -- meta and ibm to dow chemical cutting jobs, and yet the market is up. we're talking about potentially one of the best months since last july for some of the averages. nasdaq, double-digit, 10% year to date. why are we seeing this big pop in stocks, and are you buying into itsome. >> it's very interesting, and it's up super strange. it seems like every single day we're hearing about these big companies cutting head count, and we're not talking support staff, maria. we've talked about before. microsoft is cutting software engineers which are mission critical people, and min who's ever run a business before knows when you have key talent, you keep those people no matter what. you do everything you can to keep them. so that's certainly not good for the economy, and it shouldn't be positive for these stocks.

i think investors want to look at everything through rose-colored glasses rights now, and they want to look at as a positive because costs are coming down, maybe earnings go up. but the reason you're seeing key employees getting consistent is because demand is waning. and, you know, my personal perspective on this is you want to stay defensive right now. one of the things we've seen happening recently is consumers, while still spending, we know they're kind of leaning on their credit cards and things like that, but they are trading down. so that whole trade-down effect is happening. and i think if you can identify defensive companies that allow you to participate in that the trade-down effect like, as an example, a bj's wholesale club, right, where you can buy a bunch of groceries in bulk, right? those are the kind of opportunities i think investors should hide out in right now. maria: okay. mark, give me a word about the week ahead. not only do we have a two-day federal reserve meeting tuesday and wednesday where we're going

to get a fed hike in rates, but you've got the majors in tech the reporting earnings, apple, amazon, you know, google parent alphabet all reporting in the week ahead. what's most important? >> most important is guy dance coming out of -- guidance coming out of these companies. look, i think the fed is going to hike higher and longer than most people are anticipating the right now, so that's certainly an important story. but when we look at the stock market, earnings estimates for this year, for 2023, are still way too high. so the most important thing that we can kind of read into is what these big tech ceos and cpos are saying -- cfos are saying about what they foresee happening the rest of this year. earnings estimates are still way too high. i think analysts are pricing in, like, 4% earnings growth this year. i think it's more likely -10%. so that's what we'll keep our eyes on. maria: wow, ma's a big negative -- that's a big negative number.

mark, thank you thank you so much. >> thank you. maria: mark tepper joining us. from country music fame to finance, john rich is with us. he's got a brand new seventure celebrating and promoting traditional american values. john rich will join me next. ♪ and everybody's getting down in your record label is taking off. but so is your sound engineer. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire

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♪ maria: welcome back. well, you mow him as a country music star and one-half of the famous due the woe big and rich -- duo big and rich. now the he's a founding member of a new bank that touts its support for patriotism and customer freedom. gold glory bank -- old glory bank has never other big name founders including ben carson and larry elder, and now john rich joins me now to talk about

it. john, thank you so much for being here. i love the name of the bank, and i love the whole idea. tell us about it. >> well, so we just saw some really disturb thing things happen to our north up in canada when that are trucker protest broke out that we all watched. and justin trudeau's final move on those truckers to break them up was to freeze their bank accounts and basically weaponize their own bank accounts against them. unfortunately, that worked. they had to go home at that point. we see to the south of us down in brazil that government's doing the same thing to the protesters in brazil, they're freezing bank accounts by the tens of thousands. and so in america if you don't think that that's a possibility in the future, then you're not paying attention, because it's absolutely a possibility. so myself, dr. carson, larry elder and a lot of guys that come from the world of finance and banking, you know, we had a discussion of what are we going to do if that ever happens, because right now there's no great alternative where there's

a banking platform that would pledge to not cancel your account or freeze your bank account. and so we built old glory bank. it's a physical bank in oklahoma. it goes live in march. we're taking reserve accounts right now at old glory bank.com. tens of thousands of accounts, maria, have already been reserved, and it's an exciting thing. i think people feel like they want to run for the hills sometimes like we're surrounded, you know? there's nowhere to go. and in a lot of cases, that's true. so we're in the business of building new hills for people to run to. that's what old glory bank is. maria: i love the idea, i really do. but do you have a confidence that you'll be able to have the infrastructure in place in this bank to get the trust of the american citizens to put their money there? >> yeah. so the way you go about it is you build slowly and me nodically and tearfully. this is the savings accounts, small business accounts, checking accounts.

we've had some large businesses reach out to us and say we would like to move our business to old glory bank, and we said you're going to have to wait just a minute, you know? we're building this thing the right way and building it slow. but people ask me, hey, what would keep you guys, keep the government from shutting my bank account down at old glory bank. they don't realize that happens government can tell a bank -- that the government can tell a bank to freeze somebody's account can, and the bank has the opportunity to tell the government take go of these and call me in the morning, you know what i mean? i don't think so, it's not gonna happen. our credo at old glory is if you're exercising your constitutional freedoms and rights, you will not be canceled, you will not have your money in jeopardy. as long as you're not breaking the law, you're going to be just fine as a old glory bank. maria: well, that is just terrific, and you're starting with just plain vanilla banking which is what most people want from their bank anyway. john, real quick before you go, you've been very outspoken about

who you would like to see lead the republican national committee. well, ronna mcdaniel has been reelected. you wanted her out. reaction? >> you know, i think there's a crisis of confidence with conservatives around this country when it comes to the rnc. we've seen our donations be squandered and spent like rock star living out there. we've seen them promise to do things and not do it. so there's a lot of work ahead for ronna to try to rebuild that confidence. there's the millions of us out here that have zero confidence right now, so i'm really curious to see what she does in the future to try to build that back. maria: john, it's great to talk with you this weekend, thanks so much. john rich are. >> yes, ma'am. maria: all right. we will see you soon. i've got one important thing you need to know about ahead of next week. don't miss it, it's next. ♪ muck

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maria," weekdays 6-9 a.m. eastern. do join us for that. and i'll see you this sunday over on the fox news channel for "sunday morning futures," i've got interviews with senators ted cruz, mike lee, former secretary of state mike pompeo. and she ran for rnc chair, harmeet dhillon will be with us along with trey gowdy. that'll do it for us for now right here on "wall street." thank you so much for being with us, and i'll see you again next time. ♪ ♪ hello this week on the wall street journal at large. everyone it seems, ha