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tv   The Journal Editorial Report  FOX News  May 4, 2024 12:00pm-1:00pm PDT

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♪ paul: welcome to the journal editorial the report. i'm paul gigot.
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violent clashes continued this week at colleges and and universities across the country as police departments from new york city to los angeles moved in to clear pro-palestinian encampments and arrest protesters in scenes reminiscent of the vietnam war era. after more than a week of silence, president biden addressed the growing campus chaos on thursday. >> there's the right to protest but not the the right the cause chaos with. vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations, none of this is a peaceful protest. dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must if never heed to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education. paul: joining me now is former indiana governor and former president of purdue university, mitch daniel withs. great to see you, mitch. thanks for joining us. so when you were president of
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purdue, did you ever have an episode like this where you had to deal with unrest on campus? >> we did. not many, and they were much smaller scale than what occurred elsewhere. but i in 2020 we had a version of it. and, you know, we applied our resolute refree speech policy, let people say what they wanted virtually anywhere they wanted. they the understood the rule, however, which was they couldn't trespass, you couldn't violate the rights of others. finish happily, we didn't have to expel anybody although we were prepared to. and we didn't, as they say, negotiate with anybody. i remember having a conversation with delegation from the student group, they said one of their so-called demands was nonnegotiable. i told them, well, you see, there aren't going to be any negotiations, we do have something in common. [laughter] paul: so what happens when students, a group of fact if all the city and students come and say, look, you must as a school
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with your endowment divest itself from, say,'s israel, which is one of the demands that all of these student groups tend to be make of their, of their universities? if i mean, do you sit down and talk to theming or do you say thanks for your counsel, but now go back to class? >> the latter. [laughter] you know, this -- we all know the absurdity, the complete futility for one thing even if it were an appropriate policy to desert an ally and a democratic country. this wouldn't with do any good. so we didn't a lot of time on that. we didn't have too much of that. the so-called demands tend to focus more on on-campus policies. but that was what the answer would have been. paul: so what's your assessment of why this is happening now, breaking out in such a big way again? and is this something that you think is, goes beyond just the
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students at these schools and is a deeper or kind of movement with some organization behind it? >> yeah. you know, these are ugly incidents, but there's a sunny side to them. it's been what i called a clarifying moment in so many ways. one of them is, first of all, people understand the real motivations here and many of the perpetrators. this is i don't want to say a pretext, but it is simply a part of a much larger agenda summed up in that very appealing slogan to americaing you know? so a lot of americans are seeing more clearly than before who these people are. we know, of course, now that what some of us have known for a long time, much of this comes from off campus, even in the biggest episodes. you know, i think it's been clarifying for jewish americans to understand where the real locus of the most dangerous anti-semitism is.
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it's been very clarifying for a lot of parents and students who are trying to decide where to go to school or whether to transfer. so, you know, we -- it's not pleasant to look at, but it's been a teaching moment in some, i think, fairly helpful ways. paul: now, so when you're the president of one of these universities like columbia and you're confronted with these encampments and then you are -- you know that a big chunk of your faculty supports these students and you have to get along with the faculty, obviously, how -- what advice do you have for a president who's in this predicament? >> they have to act decisively and in the best advice i have is act promptly. don't dither. certainly don't indulge or so-called negotiate with people who are breaking rules which e presume at all these schools were clear there there was no the -- and there was no
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confusion about whether you can camp ott, set up housing of your own, break into buildings let alone intimidate or even injure others. and we always thought if we had an important relationship always a was with the surrounding law enforcement, prosecutors and forchew newtly, we didn't have to call on them -- fortunately, we we didn't have to call on them. we knew if we had to, we could, we would, and they would do their jobs. paul: and what's the role of a board of trustees? all these schools do have trustees of some kind who with, basically, have the ultimate governing responsibility and select the presidents. when do they, should they decide to intervene here in a substantial way? >> this should have, in many cases they should are made those decisions a long time ago. i think this is a really important question. this is not the only problem in higher education that i think
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can be laid at the feet of boards of trustees, present and past, who allowed costs to run wild and get out of control, who allowed monolithic group think to develop on their campuses and who have been far too up dull gent -- indulgent in these past episodes of student misblair. -- misbehavior. so i'm incliented to be a little bit charitable to presidents, at least those who just arrived as the president of columbia did, but much less, i would say, forgiving of boards who have the fundamental responsibility -- read the bylaws of any university, public or private, and you will see that they have full authority over all, they could have headed off all these problems i just mentioned along with others. path. paul: fascinating, mitch if daniels. thanks so much for joining us. appreciate it. still ahead, as protests continue at college cans across
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the country, professional leftist groups are exploiting the campus chaos. a look at what a that could mean for president biden and democrats as november approaches. muck muck muck if you have chronic kidney disease you can reduce the risk of kidney failure with farxiga. because there are places you'd like to be. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract, or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away
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♪ >> there is a movement to radicalize young people, and i'm not going to wait until it's done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it. paul: that was new york city mayor eric adams wednesday warning of what a he called outside agitators infiltrating and exploiting the protestsen on college campuses. of the almost 30 arrested at columbia university and city college of new york this week -- 300 -- nearly half add no affiliation with any school. let's bring in dan henninger, kim strassel and and mary anastasia o'grady. dan, you wrote these protests have a cookie cutter quality to them. what do you mean? >> i meant they all look the
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same, and i think we're finding out why. for starters, they use social media now to organize these things. the intervention, destruction of hamilton hall at columbia was set up by an instagram message that was sent out by the group saying, urging a mobilization at hall. is people show up to do the these sorts of things. monday night -- i guess it was tuesday, actually, some of us here in new york watched a long interview with eric adams and the new york police department, and i was especially struck by the presentation by the head of the the new york police department department's intelligence unit, rebecca weiner. and as was said in that, they have reason to believe a lot of these protesters are from the outside. nypd intelligence is one of the strongest in the world. they do know that something else
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is going on. and it's not just in new york, paul, it's all over the country. and the question is, what does the fbi know about this? i think they have got an obligation, a, to investigate if it and, b, start letting us know who these organizations are and who's funding them. paul: mary, that's an important point dan makes. when he say says outside agitate theres, do they have to start identifying them in and who do you think they are? as we wrote in an editorial on friday, they do have is web sites where they lay out their lessons learned from various encampments and so on and give a strategy for how to approach. >> well, some of them were actually caught on camera there, the people who lives on their resumés that they are protest consultants, that's a job apparently. [laughter] paul: tremendous career opportunity. >> and they have the long resumés of being involved in this. so there's no secret that -- the question is how deep it goes, you know, how broad it is, how
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organized it is. mean, at ucla they started asking for a weird mix hur of things they wanted -- mixture of things they wanted brought in, gas masks, elbow pads, knee pads, you know? all things that, obviously, people with experience know this is what you need when with you're barricaded inside a building -- paul: and fighting police. >> exactly. [laughter] and, you know, paul, the other thing that they are working with a very fertile crop of young people who feel a need to belong. and we've seen this in climate agitation. and i think it's very similar. it's sort of a cookie cutter approach to what we've seen with climate protests -- paul: are you saying that some of these professional leftists are exploiting the idealism of these young people? >> not just the idealism, but i think, again, people feel like they need a meaning in life.
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they need a reason to belong. i don't know if they think that gaza is necessary hi an idealistic -- necessarily an idealistic vision that they have, but i think they feel that they belong to a community when they're part of this movement. and young people have a need to belong, and that's the one that's put before them. paul: kim, you wrote this week about the president's response which finally came on thursday. did you think it was add -- adequate to what is going on on campus? >> no, i did not. [laughter] and i would say two things about that, or paul. one, look, i think it's great that the president finally came out and denounced violence and made a distinction between violent versus peaceful protests, a although the i think that could have been a bit clearer too. one problem here, too little, too late. it took the them nine days to do this as police had already been engaged in actions across the country, and it was very clear from that engagement that he gave, those talking points that he gave, that he was done
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because he was told that he had to do this, he had to the address this. his heart was not necessarily in this, okay? that was one problem. the other problem is that all he did was address exactly what's going on on campus. he did not address why this is happening which is, of course, his own policies. this was an opportunity for him to portion forcefully recommit, explain if why the united states is backing israel, remind everyone about the terrible atrocities that happened on october 7th, make a case for why this is the also in america's national interests, and he didn't want to do any of that because at heart, paul, he's till trying to thread the needle. he still wants those young, ooh idealistic voters to come out and reelect him in november, and so he won't say anything that truly will upset them. paul: what's the political fallout here, dan? don't have a lot of time. is it serious potentially for president biden and the democrats? >> absolutely serious. i mean, i think to kim's point, that's why biden went out and made this statement. the people around him, the re-election team understood they
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have a big problem with these demonstrations. it was not going in a direction that they had hoped. the violence is turning poem off, and they had to address it -- people off, and they had to address it. the question is, is it going to last up until november or at least the chicago convention in august. paul: and is it a problem for him because it's aimed at him and the democrats? is that the it? >> it's because he's trying to appeal to both the gaza supporters and the democratic youth vote, and he can't have it both ways. paul: when we come back, marjorie taylor greene gets set to make her move as democrats vow to block the ouster of house speaker mike johnson. ♪ right now you can get a free footlong at subway. just buy any footlong in the app and get one free. just scan the qr code and enter promo code flbogo it only works from the other side of the screen, buddy. you still got a land line in your house.
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♪ paul: georgia congresswoman marjorie taylor greene said wednesday that she would demand a vote next week on her motion to vacate the speaker's chair, force her republican colleagues to go on the record with their support for mike johnson after he shepherded a $611 billion ukraine -- can 61 billion ukraine aid bill through the house. her move came a day after democratic leaders pledged to provide the votes to save the speaker's job saying, quote, the time has come to turn the page on this pro-putin obstruction. we will vote to table representative marjorie taylor greene's motion to vacate the chair if she invokes the motion. it will not succeed. we're back with dan dan henninger kim strassel and also a joined by "wall street journal" columnist allysia finley. kim, i guess marjorie taylor greene's motion is fated to lose, and if that's the case, why is she bringing it?
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>> well, i think at this point, paul, she has realized that she can get an enormous amount of attention and fund raising simply by threatening to do it and then going ahead with it even if it is going to fail. and i think one thing that is still a little bit concerning here, this is not going to be a threat to mike johnson in the near term because as you just noted, democrats say they're going to save him. one thing they did say as well, the democratic leadership, is that was a one-time deal. they would not know if they did it again in the future. and, again, i think one of the things that people are now watching for is marjorie tea hour greene takes this -- taking this as an opening shot. but as we move along a couple of months further along and there's another moment where she threatens it again, will the democrats still be there where they're still grateful to mike johnson on some of his efforts like the ukraine funding bill? paul: al liesia a, what's the democratic calculation here? that's not usually what they do
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for republican speaker e. >> i think some of this is gratitude, as a kim said, for passing, whipping up the votes to pass this ukraine bill and funding for taiwan as well. i think they're also hoping to extract some con, sessions. now republicans only have a 1-vote majority, and i've heard actually from some sources that they're hoping to at least put some bill on the floor, for example, broadband subsidy and if get mike johnson to support some of their prerogatives. so, in fact, she's actually helping empower the majority here. paul: because to the extent that johnson needs democratic votes to pass anything, then he needs to make concessions to get those votes. >> i think that's right, and that means you may actually see some democratic bills or bills that have more democratic support than republican support pass. paul: dan. >> i think one other point is that the democrats are trying to look constructive, aiming towards the november elections because the margin of the
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republican gains now are so small. bear in mind, or paul, as we know, democrats control the house of representatives from 1955-1995. people forget 40 years of democratic control of the house of representatives. finish i don't know if something like that could repeat itself, but i think the marjorie taylor greenes of the world run the risk of putting control of the house back in the hands of the democrats for at least several election cycles in which case nothing that she e represents will ever get done in congress. paul: kim, dan's point's absolutely correct that there's, say, a real danger here that republicans will look so chaotic that they can't govern, democrats will get the power. so what is it that is driving greene and some others to constantly attack republicans, republicans, republicans as sellouts, renos, whatever -- rinos, whatever, even if it
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essentially blows up the republican majority and helps democratic priorities? >> you know, it's cynical, paul, but it's self-serving, okay? i mean, look, would anybody really know who marjorie taylor greene was right now? there are 435 members of the house, and most people couldn't name more than two or three. this is a great way to get attention, a great way to fundraise. now, some of her colleagues have been quite frustrated to what end -- by the way, she's in a pretty safe district. her re-election prospects are not necessarily in doubt although all of this is putting enormous train -- strain on a lot of those republicans that are the majority if makers in swing districts where joe biden might haven won his election in their district and they barely squeaked it out. they're the people that are going the struggle with the fund raising and money and that are being put on the spot. yes, to dan's point, this very much could injure the republican majority and for no real gain or purpose as even donald trump now seems to understand, which is why he's been backing mike
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johnson. paul: there's also sort of a conservative media complex out there the like steve bannon's radio show and others that basically get an audience just by calling republican sellouts and rinos, and that's how they keep their audience. and they're also sustaining marjorie taylor greene. >> i think that's right. this is really all about money to some extent. to the extent that they can drive their own brands. as you say, both marjorie taylor greene, or but also these personalities, these radio personalities or they have blogs, they can drive more clicks to their sites, and they really actually profit from driving division within the republican caucus. paul: all right. still ahead, the fed holds interest rates steady the as its fight against inflation stalls. but an optimistic jerome powell says prices could resume falling. so is his sunny economic outlook warranted? if. ♪ ♪
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to see persuasive evidence that our policy stance is not restrictive enough to bring inflation sustainably town to 2% over time. that's not what we think we're seeing. paul: mary, we got the jobs report friday for april. kind of disappointing. not bad with, but disappointing, 175,000 new jobs. some revisions in previous month, jobless rate pond up to 3.9 -- popped up to 3.9%. still lowe historically. -- low historically. is this a sign of lower growth? >> i think it is, and i think it's good news for jay powell who wants to bring the fed if funds rate down but is afraid to do so especially after the first quarter of this year where inflation popped up a little bit. but i think, you know, basically, he's walking a very narrow corridor here because on the one hand this is good news. fewer jobs suggests a cooling
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economy which he hopes will suggest cooling inflation which will allow him to bring rates down. but not too much, please, you know? >> right. >> if he's already been a too tight as some people say he is, he could the tip us over into a recession. so that's the give and take. and, unfortunately, the work that the central bank does is all a backward-looking. they look at what happened in the past, so they don't have a very good crystal ball. their depending on the data that they have in realtime. paul: dan, on the jobs report, about half of the new jobs in april were health care or social assistance the or government. finish and those, that suggests a lot of them, because health care is so much paid for by the government, that these are based on government transfer payments, government spending which is, as we know, not productivity-boosting in the way that corporate investment is, business investment is. that suggests maybe that a we're
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not in the longer term here getting real productivity growth. >> yeah. or put another way, real private market-driven can growth. which is one of the fed's biggest problems is the biden administration and the biden government because the biden government is not really allowing the post-pandemic economy, private economy, to completely unwind and find its equilibrium again. i mean, there the has been an onslaught of regulation from thed biden administration just in the last several months, federal communications commission, federal trade commission, all of the suppression -- paul: it's almost every day, and you can't, even a journalist can't keep track. [laughter] >> yeah, that's right. and simultaneously with the regulation you have a tremendous amount of federal spending going with on. that spending has to be paid for somehow. and so that weighs on the fed's decision about interest rates. it's interesting because joe
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biden is not getting political credit for anything that he's doing. so this condition of instability and uncertainty, e i i think, is coming back to hurt the biden administering. paul: i want to ask, mary, about a word that has come up here. i've used it, tag nation. stagflation. which means both higher prices and slower growth. 1.if 6 gdp growth in the first quarter with. you had an end crease, as you mentioned, a bump-up in inflation, and yet with jay powell said i haven't seen the stag, and i haven't seen the flation. [laughter] is he right? >> like i said, he's looking in realtime. if the economy grows 1%, 1.a 5% this year, he figures that's okay as long as inflation's coming down. so, again, he's trying to walk that a balance. i think the real concerning thing which dan touched on is the amount of government spending because that's a headwind for jay powell. and this year the u.s. government is going to have to,
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you know, is going to have maturing and going to have to go to the market $10 trillion of debt. foreigners are backing away. i mean, that's a problem -- paul: got to sell treasury bonds and notes to finance -- >> exactly. and who's going to be buying them? this is a problem for jay powell. it's not of his making, but he has to deal with it. paul: and with more if gang rates above 7, dan, and real incomes because of inflation having risen almost not at all during the biden administration, maybe not so much in the last year, but over the full administration, no, on average. you are talking about -- maybe that's the explanation for why the president isn't getting any credit for the jobs market and overall growth. >> yeah. i mean, it's all these disequilibriums in the economy, higher rates for mortgage, higher prices for gasoline. it might come down next month, but the prices that people -- that affect if most voters or directly are staying high and
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persistent. and the president is just going to get damaged if that per seeses through november. paul: thank you both. still ahead, taxes emerge as a sleeper issue of the 2024 campaign as a president biden vows to let the trump era cuts expire next year. we'll talk to former trumps no economic adviser kevin hassett next. to see and things to do. that's why you choose glucerna to help manage blood sugar response. uniquely designed with carbsteady. glucerna. bring on the day. [tense music] one aleve works all day so i can keep working my magic. just one aleve. 12 hours of uninterrupted pain relief. aleve. who do you take it for? ...and for fast topical pain relief,try alevex. (reporters) over here. kev! kev! (reporter 1) any response to the trade rumors, we keep hearing about? (kev) we talkin' about moving? not the trade, not the trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor. sell your house directly to them, it's easy.
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cuts and jobs act expire if he's reelected next year. let's bring in kevins hassett, he serves as chairman of the council of economic advisers in the trump administration and is a distinguished visiting fellow at the hoover institution. welcome, kevin. good to see you again. >> good to see you. paul: let me first ask you about the economy, kind of mediocre jobs results friday. 11.6% growth in the -- 1.6% growth in the first quarter but prices not falling. what do you think of the outlook? >> right. i think the fed and markets are focused too much on the kind of short-run things like or what did the jobs number do this week and so on. and the bottom line is that because of president biden's policies, their medium and long-term forces pushing inflation if higher and higher. one of the things we saw, for example, in the latest wage data is that a lot of the deals with organized labor started to kick in in january, and the
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year-over-year wage gain for organized labor in the if u.s. is about 6.5%. paul: wow. that's basically how wage price spirals happen, right? last year they saw the inflation and then they were striking, and then they got wage with concessions and the data started to kick in, and that wage with price spiral takes a long time to unwind. and that's why inflation is really sticky. right now the consumer price index has been up at the core .4 three months in a row, about a 5% annual rate. that's about consistent with the idea that price and wage inflation should be about the same. and i can tell you that when we were at the cea, we used forecasting models to forecast which would happen in the next six months, and the last three months of price data is really about the best forecast for what's coming. the idea that the fed's going to be able to cut rates this year, it's just ludicrous. it's not going to happen. it's because of all these things. and don't forget we're adding $20 trillion to debt held by the public -- with the government applicanting -- printing money and spending like crazy, we're
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talking stagflation, and it's really obvious in the data. paul: okay. thanks for that sunny outlook. [laughter] >> sorry. paul: let's turn to taxes which are, obviously, crucial for whoever takes the presidency this year because in 20 that 25, at the end of 2025 a good portion of the trump tax cuts expire. what are the most important tax cuts that you're looking at that we really need to, in your view, maintain and extend? >> right. i'd like to, first, start with joe biden's $2 trillion number because it's such a misleading statement. if you look at the trump tax cuts, most of them, most of the money went on the individual side to things like the child credit, and that's stuff that president biden, i'm sure, going to renew. the fact is that on the corporate side he says massive tax cuts on the corporate side. now, it's true that the rate went from 35 to 21, but we also had base broadening, and you'll recall that the 10-year cost for
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that whole thing was only $300 billion, and that's without any if kind of dynamic effect. and if you look at corporate revenue right now, it's almost double what it was the year before the tax cuts because, basically, the laffer curve works the best. something i wrote in your pages about 20 years ago. [laughter] >> paul: i remember, yeah. >> the fact is that this idea that there's been, like, this massive tax cut for rich corporation cans, actually, they're paying a lot more taxes now because the tax cuts worked. if you go back and look, if you remember during the financial crisis, president obama ran aggressively are against the bush tax cuts. paul: right. >> but when the economy was on the ropes, they renewed them. [laughter] do you remember? two years they renewed them. so my guess what's going to happen is the corporate tax at 21 is permanent. expensing is expiring, they will change that. there's long been bipartisan support for extending expensing. and then the child stuff and everything, that'll go up under president biden or president trump. the real open question is what
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happens to the top marginal rate, and for sure with president trump, it'll stay low. under president biden, it'll go up. paul: that's on individual income taxes -- >> that's right, yeah. paul: which are also paid by small business, superintendent chapter s and c companies -- subchapter s and c companies. that's the big dispute. and what economic costs would this be if those rates go back up to where with biden wants to put them? >> well, if you do what biden actually proposes which i don't think we can do, but, you know, lifting the capital gains tax, starting to tax unrealized gains perhaps down to a million dollars, lifting the corporate rate back up to 28%, if you looked at what biden's actually proposed, you're looking at finish that stuff would easily cause a recession. we already see it right now they have this thing in economics called the toe by's cue, and right now it's really high, but investment is really, really low. all of this heavy regulation of
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president biden is already causing the kind of capital spending crisis that we inherited. remember, capital deepen. inging, which was one of the key driverses of the economy, was negative if for the first time since world war ii when president trump took office a because president obama was so unfriendly to business with his heavy regulation and taxes. so what biden's done is he's given us the regulation, and you can already see that capital spending is down. not just flat, but down for a few quarters in a row. and my guess is that if you get the taxes on top of it, you're looking at a deep can recession and long-run growth and higher inflation as well, right in because there's no supply and lots of government demand. so it's just a catastrophe. it's a stagflation catastrophe. he's gotten us halfway to catastrophe, and if he's able to do his proposals, he'll take us the rest of the way. paul: kevin hassett, thanks for joining us. appreciate it. >> thank you, paul. paul: when we come back, college session today came is and went as the education department's
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♪ paul: may 1st has traditionally been the deadline for high school seniors to decide where they'll attend college, but the education department's botched rollout of a new version of the federal student aid a application known as the fafsa has turned this year's decision can day into a nightmare for many fafsa glitches and hold-ups in delayed financial aid offers to, excuse me, tens of thousands of students forcing some to make a decision without a full picture of college costs. and causing some families not to file the form at all. the education department said this week that the it had received just 8.4 million submissions so far this year, far fewer than the 17 million it processes in normal years.
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secretary miguel cardona if told angry lawmakers at a senate hearing on tuesday that students and their families deserve better with. or -- >> look, there's no excuse. our students deserve better, and i'm committed to making sure the process works, to make sure that more students is have is access to higher education and to a simpler fafsa process that encourages families to engage and give students an opportunity for higher ed. paul: we're back with kim strassel and allysia finley. you've been writing about this for us. explain what, explain this mess and what's going on. [laughter] >> well, it really is inexplicable on a certain level. back in december 2020, congress mandate canned that the federal student aid office redesign the fafsa. simplify it. so this was actually supposed to be a simpler form, easier e for parents to encourage more people to apply for student aid. that hasn't turned out to be the case, and there are a lot of questions why. first off, the federal student
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aid was very late in rolling this out. usually, the fafsa becomes available early october -- paul: they had three years to do this. >> they had three years, right? if. [laughter] this was late by a few months, and then when it eventually did launch, it was freezing all the time, crashing, so many parents couldn't even log on until sometimes -- sometime late january. many colleges weren't getting the information until march. no now, mind you with, they are usually having to process this and send out financial aid offers by april, so this has been delayed by months and, again, it's what because of one goof after another. paul: kim, this means that parents who are making decisions about where a junior's going to go to school have no idea what the college cost might be, a pretty big with issue finish. [laughter] it's really kind of extraordinary and an example of government incompetence.
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i gather you have had some personal experience here. [laughter] >> yes. you can consider myself ten call of the millions of american parents -- typical of the million of american parents that have had to deal with this garbage heap that is a fafsa form. many of them, by the way, who have been doing this for a month now. i was a little later in submitting mind. you go on, there's this technical nightmare. when e first submitted, i got nine separate e-mails all saying the same thing, that i'd submitted it. it's come back now. many parents are getting that,s there's a mistake. you can't figure out where the mistake is. my form think had changed answer as and erased over of my information. it's just -- and then you add in, as you say, that because of all this parents cannot make fundamental decisions, i mean, because these are huge costs as we know, and college is not a small deal. they're still waiting to find out. a lot of colleges while they've delayed some of their admissions deadlines, many others haven't.
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and people have just had to allow their kids to say yes and hope that they're going to be able to do this. so the consequences are going to be lasting and spill over into the coming years as parents grapple with the mess of this meltdown. paul: so why -- you described the glitches, allysi ia, but who's responsible? you would think by now you'd be able to roll out a new web site. couldn't you call up amazon and say, could you help us? [laughter] there's a lot of companies that do this. [laughter] >> that gets to the heart of the problem is that rich or ard cordray, who was the head of the federal student aid office who was previously, by the way, under barack obama the head of the cfpb, he wasn't chosen for his competence, he was chosen as a, essentially, a fixer for elizabeth warren. by that i mean he wanted to forgive a lot of student debt -- paul: that was the priority. >> in fact, he has forgiven student debt on an accelerated
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timeline. he's -- by some estimates he's canceled about $1.2 trillion in debt including these new state repayment plans. so they've rolled out these while actually cutting resources that go toward, like, fafsa and these kinds of rudimentary things that the government should and needs to get done. paul: is anybody if taking responsibility for this? cord ray has now said he's going to resign, so i guess he's not going to be continued, but the damage is done. what about cardona? is he taking respondent for it? >> well, you just heard him, he habit apologized. he said, well, we need to do better. and cordray is stepping down after his 3-year term, but he hasn't apologized. he's even said that, well, i accomplished a lot and, in fact, i even made it easier to apply for financial student the aid. paul: until the web site crashes. all right. we have to take one more break. when we come back, hits and misses of the week. ♪ ♪
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number of hits and misses of the week. kim you are up first. quick hit goes to gerry seinfeld who interviewed new yorker this week excoriated the extreme left and pc culture that has killed comedy. he correctly noted the only place you can go for laughs these days is stand up comedy sy because anything that has a script that goes through tv or movies end up in committees all they do is kill stuff because they're worried about the present people. you know this, paul. i don't most americans don't always going to change the of titans of industry start pushing back so well done gerry. >> this is a hit to the company one day which has developed a pill for brain cancer in kids it was found to reduce tumors about half of kids who didn't respond to other treatment it's a lot less damaging than radiation.
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even among the ugliness in the world today biotech student fabulous things. >> a hit for japan which we learn is reaping the rewards of its democracy by attracting high net worth chinese migrants in notable numbers. many of them are successful entrepreneurs. for example something like 10,000 have gotten visas in the technology area since 2019. that is a 30% increase. note to shooting pain, chinese vote with their feet. [laughter] and money. >> a big hit for lee roberts the interim chancellor of the university of north carolina at chapel hill. at one point to say during a protest they are overt gods of the students took down the american flag and hoisted the palestinian flag. on hearing this to chancellor roberts walked across the campus personally took the palestinian flag down and re- hoisted the
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american flag. he then held a press conference which she said quote what the processors has antithetical to who we are in and what this university stands for. i don't normally root for north carolina or the tar heels but after this week at >> do not tell me or for ducal? >> absolutely. >> they ought to make his chancellorship permanent pickwick that should indeed. remember if you have your own hit or miss be sure to send it to us at je are on fnc. that is it for this week show. thank you to my panel i and to l of you for watching. hophope to see right here next week. ♪ [background noises