Pod Save America - “Gaslighting gas prices” (with Elizabeth Warren!)

President Biden hits the road to go on offense against rising prices and falling poll numbers, Senator Elizabeth Warren joins to talk about passing the Build Back Better plan, and Elijah Cone offers up the week’s worst punditry in another round of Take Appreciator.

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Duration: 1h 12m
Broadcast on: 18 Nov 2021
Audio Format: other

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe vs. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Litman, and each week on Strix scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strix scrutiny every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Potsave America, I'm John Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pot, President Biden hits the road to go on offense against rising prices and following poll numbers, Senator Elizabeth Warren joins to talk about passing the Build Back Better plan. And Elijah Cohn is here to help us take on the week's worst punditry in another round of Take Appreciate it. But first, but first, check out this week's episode of hysteria with Alyssa Mastromonico and guest host, Julissa Arse, where they discuss Alex Jones' Cuba immigration reform and are joined by Representative Pramila Jayapal. Julissa is filling in for Aaron Ryan, who just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl a few weeks ago, congrats to Aaron and Josh. New episodes of hysteria drop every Thursday. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. In a line that could have easily been about Congress, Joe Biden said, quote, "These suckers are something else," as he screeched away behind the wheel of an electric humer at the grand opening of GM's Detroit Assembly Plan on Wednesday. The President then gave a speech where he sold the benefits of his new infrastructure law, talked up positive economic indicators, and touted a new independent analysis that says his Build Back Better plan won't add to the deficit or inflation. Through the leading rating agencies on Wall Street confirmed today, not a liberal think tank, two Wall Street outfits, that the economic proposals we put forward for the nation, the infrastructure law we just signed in the Build Back Better plan are being considered this week, and Congress will not add to inflationary pressures in the economy. Won't add to inflationary pressures. Hey, there is no one America's working class trust more than Wall Street. A couple of Wall Street outfits. What a funny applause lie. Anyway, so the political backdrop here is that despite really strong job growth that has actually been revised many months later, it was even stronger than we thought, despite strong job growth and the passage of a bill that will create even more jobs, the infrastructure bill, Biden's approval ratings are in the shitter, driven by concerns about the economy, and specifically about rising costs. So a new poll from Navigator, which is a democratic research firm, shows a 17 point increase since June in the share of voters who say they are quote very concerned about the rate of inflation, including a 20 point increase among Democrats, and the top concerns are the price of groceries, then gas, and then housing. Uh, Dan, how much control does the president actually have over inflation? A lot less than the president wishes and the public expects. There is. I mean, there is very little that the president can do with or without Congress, frankly, to immediately stem inflation. And we know this because this is not a unique problem in the United States, costs are up all over the world. This is happening. Global problem. It's a global problem. So it's not related to the American rescue plan, the Build Back Better bill, which is not even past yet or anything like that. There's very little that the president can do. I mean, there are some things on the margin and the White House is doing those, right? You can, you know, work and use the bully pulpit and the infrastructure of the federal government to try to unclog the ports to get more goods in faster, which will help with the supply issue. You can, you know, the president just sent a letter to the FTC trying to encourage an investigation into price gouging from oil companies and a gas prices. There are things you can do there on the margin, but the bigger problem, what is causing all of this is a truly unprecedented thing. It has been decades since we have dealt with inflation on a prolonged basis in this country, really not since the late 70s or early 80s. But what we've never dealt with before is pandemic inflation, where people's economic behaviors have changed. The economy in some places come back faster and people thought

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