Speaker 1: I haven't memorized the various trillion dollar plans the Biden
Speaker 1: administration is putting out because the names don't fit with
Speaker 1: what they are, So I haven't. They haven't stuck in
Speaker 1: my head like I'd be able to remember the I
Speaker 1: don't know, the give kids bicycles plans, if all the
Speaker 1: money was going to give kids bicycles. But we're we're
Speaker 1: calling things, you know, the make sure everyone has comfortable
Speaker 1: shoes plan, and then we're using it to build dams.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's everything is so confusing. By
Speaker 1: a thousand ahead of YAK, it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it, which is why I refuse to use the
Speaker 1: phony names, because they're they're propaganda. To me, they're they're
Speaker 1: evil pr But to discuss that in other topics, please
Speaker 1: welcome Lani Chen David and Diane Stephy, fellow in American
Speaker 1: Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution. The Director of
Speaker 1: Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University, Lonie. How are you, sir? Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm doing fine, great booth you guys again, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you kindly. So we have been talking about this
Speaker 1: enormous kids that is allegedly something to do with infrastructure,
Speaker 1: but indeed reorders, American society and economics and the rest
Speaker 1: of it. And we've been reading from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many op eds they had this
Speaker 1: week about how, Hey America, Hello, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're payingny intention. We're about to change the country drastically,
Speaker 1: like really change the way we operate forever. Hello. So
Speaker 1: what's your thoughts? What are your thoughts on how much
Speaker 1: of this is likely to pass, how difficult it's going
Speaker 1: to be to get it through. Where do you think
Speaker 1: we might end up? Well, I, first of all, I
Speaker 1: think Democrats will have the opportunity to pass essentially a
Speaker 1: good chunk of what they want to because they're going
Speaker 1: to use this process called budget reconciliation, which basically allows
Speaker 1: them to uh to pass things that are related to
Speaker 1: spending or to the collection of revenue with a simple
Speaker 1: majority vote, which they have. And recall, they've already used
Speaker 1: this once to pass that massive spending package, which to
Speaker 1: you at this point was kind of masquerading as a
Speaker 1: COVID night relief bill. You know, I think the challenge
Speaker 1: with all of these things is that there is the
Speaker 1: germ of some kind of bipartisan consensus in all of
Speaker 1: these bills. Right, you talk about the COVID nineteen relief
Speaker 1: as an example what they could have done. What Biden
Speaker 1: Todenta said, Look, we're gonna do a much smaller package,
Speaker 1: somewhere around a hundred and sixty billion instead of two trillion.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna focus it on getting vaccines out there,
Speaker 1: making sure schools have what they need to make changes
Speaker 1: so that they're ready for the fall, YadA, YadA, you know,
Speaker 1: all the things that people could have agreed on in
Speaker 1: the same way. With infrastructure, instead of going for two
Speaker 1: trillion dollars, they could have said, let's do a you know,
Speaker 1: even six hundred billion dollar package, which is a ton
Speaker 1: of money already that's focused on things like roads and
Speaker 1: bridges and airports and physical infrastructure, even water infrastructure, which
Speaker 1: some say, I don't know if it falls in there. Look,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of Republicans would have been totally fine. Thing. Yet,
Speaker 1: let's improve the way that we get water to two
Speaker 1: more of the American people. They would have been willing
Speaker 1: to spend six billion dollars to do it. So in
Speaker 1: each of these cases, there was the germ of something.
Speaker 1: But instead of trying to work together, what you see
Speaker 1: is just an effort to go big every single time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at some point, you know, people grow immune to
Speaker 1: the fact that we are spending you know, six trillion
Speaker 1: dollars over the course of like eight months, and and
Speaker 1: and and people are just immune to it. They just
Speaker 1: don't It doesn't register with them anymore. But that is
Speaker 1: an awful lot of money. Right. What I was driving
Speaker 1: at was, I've heard that they're a handful of moderate
Speaker 1: Democrats who are really uneasy with this a wild I mean,
Speaker 1: like coke binge spending. Well, they might be, they might
Speaker 1: be uneasy with it. And I take you know, Joe
Speaker 1: Mansion of West Virginia is a good example. He's a
Speaker 1: he's a very moderate Democrat, probably in a different life,
Speaker 1: could have been a Republican. And and he said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable spending all this money. I'm not necessarily
Speaker 1: comfortable doing this. But you know, Joe mantions a good
Speaker 1: example of somebody who at the end of the day
Speaker 1: is a pragmatist. And if he ends up with some
Speaker 1: significant boondoggle for the state of West Virginia, which he represents,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be perfectly fine voting for two trillion dollars
Speaker 1: and spending. The same goes for Senator Cinema from Arizona,
Speaker 1: who's another one that people say, oh, well she's a moderate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, look, they're moderates until it comes down to
Speaker 1: the question of what are you going to give me
Speaker 1: in return from my vote? And believe me, Chuck Schumer,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, they're gonna get very creative. They're gonna make
Speaker 1: sure Arizona and West Virginia come out of this looking
Speaker 1: very very nice. And it's gonna give Cinema and Mansion
Speaker 1: permission to vote for these big packages. That is the reality.
Speaker 1: They can cloak their language in in in this sort
Speaker 1: of notion of you know, hey, we really need by
Speaker 1: partisanship and what we actually need is fiscal responsibility that
Speaker 1: or you know, horse manure. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what they really care about is what am I going
Speaker 1: to get for my state? And well, if I'm cursed
Speaker 1: in Cinema, you know what I'm asking for. I'm asking
Speaker 1: for Lake Michigan. I'm gonna say Illinois, Wisconsin aren't doing
Speaker 1: much with it. Arizona needs water. I want Lake Michigan.
Speaker 1: I'll settle for Lake Erie, but I want Michigan. You're
Speaker 1: you're on a bunch of these shows with other Pundit's
Speaker 1: some of the punditry. Punditry that's coming from the conservative
Speaker 1: pundits is driving me freaking nuts because I'm so tired
Speaker 1: of hearing about Well, I'll tell you what, a lot
Speaker 1: of voters are gonna like this, and it really ups
Speaker 1: the chances for the Republicans to take back the House
Speaker 1: because they're stepping on sometimes. And that's sort of a
Speaker 1: view of back and forth. Every two years, Hey, we
Speaker 1: won the House back. Who cares if Joe Biden is
Speaker 1: able to transform the nation in one two year period
Speaker 1: in a way that you know, none of these entitlements
Speaker 1: will go away. If you could give me the reverse,
Speaker 1: if if the Republicans could have a two year win
Speaker 1: where Okay, we shrink the size of government, we reform entitlements,
Speaker 1: we secure the border, you know, whatever my wish list is.
Speaker 1: And you say, but you'll lose the House after you
Speaker 1: do this, I'd say, freaking where do I sign? Well,
Speaker 1: you may recall we we You know, Republicans had that
Speaker 1: opportunity back in seventeen. They had control of basically the House,
Speaker 1: the Senate, and the White House, and they had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to effectuate some of these changes. And you know,
Speaker 1: they did tax reform, which which I thought was good,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really move ahead with anything else, right,
Speaker 1: And they had an opportunity to shrink the size of government.
Speaker 1: They had an opportunity to uh to to look carefully
Speaker 1: at what they were doing, and unfortunately that wasn't what
Speaker 1: came out of it. And I think that's why voters
Speaker 1: now are so skeptical. They just sort of say, a
Speaker 1: pox on both their houses, because you know, what's pretty
Speaker 1: clear is when each side, you know, has what they have,
Speaker 1: they try and do various things. Sometimes they get there,
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't. But the reality is we are in
Speaker 1: the cycle of politics now where we are destined, I think,
Speaker 1: to swerve from one policy prescription or set of prescriptions
Speaker 1: to another, and those changes can be quite violent. Not
Speaker 1: not in terms of like you know, people people picking
Speaker 1: up pitchforks, I just mean the change going from one
Speaker 1: side of the other can be so dramatic and so
Speaker 1: violent because that's just what we that's the period of
Speaker 1: time we're in right now, and to me, that's not
Speaker 1: a great way to make policy. No, it's not. But
Speaker 1: I need to point out that generally speaking, Republican policies,
Speaker 1: a violent swing to the right can be undone very
Speaker 1: quickly and easily by the left, whereas the left will
Speaker 1: institute you know, programs and and handouts and yeah that
Speaker 1: that they are almost impossible to undo without incurring the
Speaker 1: rage of the voter. Lani Chan of the Hoover Institution
Speaker 1: Stanford University is on the line, Um, what the heck
Speaker 1: had just flitted right out of my mind? I had
Speaker 1: something very important. Oh, just long and short of it
Speaker 1: is the United States just plunging toward becoming France with
Speaker 1: two oceans. Journal has been saying, oh wait, well, it
Speaker 1: is the case that if you build a an entitlement state,
Speaker 1: if you build a sort of state of support that
Speaker 1: is large enough. I mean, you guys write a good point,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, folks get used to it,
Speaker 1: and and people's sort of vision of it changes fundamentally,
Speaker 1: and things that were not acceptable before become acceptable. And
Speaker 1: particularly when you're talking about creating a broader and broader
Speaker 1: social safety that I mean, I keep coming back to
Speaker 1: the concept of extended unemployment insurance during the pandemic or
Speaker 1: during the period of the pandemic when the economy was down,
Speaker 1: you totally understood why it was important. We've seen the
Speaker 1: economy coming back very very strong. Growth rates are very
Speaker 1: very good right now, their jobs being created, things are
Speaker 1: coming back in most parts of the country. And we
Speaker 1: hear over and over again that what some of these
Speaker 1: programs have created, frankly is they disincentive to return to work.
Speaker 1: And that is a good example of a situation where
Speaker 1: American society becomes closer and closer to a kind of
Speaker 1: society and state they have in Europe in many parts
Speaker 1: of Europe where there are frankly disincentives to work, and
Speaker 1: then culturally you get a situation where, you know, like
Speaker 1: if you look at Europe, a lot of countries they're
Speaker 1: frankly or less productive because you know, they take three
Speaker 1: hours off in the middle of the day and they
Speaker 1: take three months off in the summer. And you know,
Speaker 1: some would say, hey, that's that's how It's kind of nice,
Speaker 1: but that's not how you create a society where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you have productivity and growth and innovation. All
Speaker 1: the amazing things we've seen in America come because we
Speaker 1: have an industrious society that values work fundamentally, and I
Speaker 1: fear that we're moving away from that A little bit
Speaker 1: and a question. I was going to ask about the
Speaker 1: whole Liz Cheney Trump thing, but I lost interest, lost
Speaker 1: interest in my own head. She's gonna get booted out
Speaker 1: any chance. Trump injects himself into the mid terms in
Speaker 1: such a way that, you know what happened in Georgia.
Speaker 1: Happens you turn off enough people that you lose something
Speaker 1: you should have won. Yeah, I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what his plans are, what his role will be.
Speaker 1: I do know this that the midterm elections are actually
Speaker 1: right around the corner, believe it or not, and it
Speaker 1: is extremely important for Republicans. I've always argued this. I
Speaker 1: think Republicans have to focus on putting forth a vision
Speaker 1: of what are the two or three things you're going
Speaker 1: to do if you take back the House. It is
Speaker 1: enough to sort of argue. It is not enough to argue,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, what the Democrats are doing is bad.
Speaker 1: They're expanding government. We don't like that. You know, as
Speaker 1: as true as that argument might be, if you're unable
Speaker 1: to come forward with, hey, here are the things we're
Speaker 1: going to do to make things better. It's hard. I
Speaker 1: think people want an alternative vision to vote for, so
Speaker 1: so I hope that that's what the folks. But you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't run on unspending seven trillion dollars. Unfortunately, once
Speaker 1: it's spent, it's spent. And if they say we're going
Speaker 1: to repeal and replace Obamacare, I'm moving to Paraguay or Uruguay,
Speaker 1: I can never remember which one. Lanah Chen of the
Speaker 1: Hooever Institution, Stanford University, Lana, he thanks so much for
Speaker 1: the insight. Great to talk to you and have a
Speaker 1: great weekend. Thanks you, guys. I just I just don't
Speaker 1: feel like people are grasping what's happening here. You Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we won, we won the House. Who we're gonna do this?
Speaker 1: Things are changed forever. They're never coming back. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: never go back to the way they were. Seven trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Once it's committed to being spent, will be spent. It
Speaker 1: will be out the door. We'll have to reckon with
Speaker 1: that no matter what. Are