Kudlow: Biden's fiscal policies are completely out of line
Kudlow blasted Biden's fiscal policies as being "from another planet"
It's Friday, folks. Let’s do some random thoughts on money, politics, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
First up: Our friend, Senator Bill Hagerty, who was kind enough to come on our show a number of times, refuses to vote for unanimous consent to close down further debate and amendments to the infrastructure bill.
Why? Because the CBO just scored it as a $256 billion deficit. In other words, the pay-fors are not paid for and Mr. Hagerty, whom I’ve known for many years, being a man of principle, objects to the deficit score—period.
Now, here's what I don’t get: According to news reports, 15 other Republican senators were crowding around him on the floor of the Senate to try to talk him into voting for unanimous consent.
Well, what were they thinking? These are Republicans. We're talking conservatives like Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, John Thune... What were they thinking? There’s already far, far too much Green New Deal in this bill.
We will talk to Kim Strassel, of the WSJ, and Steve Moore, of FreedomWorks, about all the problems—most particularly the unprecedented and centralized control over the economy that the democrats seek through the Green New Deal.
This is not free enterprise. This is corporate cronyism, statist capitalism.
This is car companies pledging to sell half their cars by 2030 so long as the federal government pays for it. Some people would call that socialism and, as I mentioned last night, President Biden has choked off all of the mining and production of rare minerals and he's aiming to stop oil, natural gas and coal also.
So, we couldn't go to a battery-driven economy even if we wanted to and I don't want to anyway.
Back to Senator Hagerty. The least the GOP bipartisans can do is pay for their bill transparently, out in the open, but now it's clear they haven't even done that. So, I think I’m losing my patience with the whole story and I think we should be praising Senator Bill Hagerty and wishing many of his other colleagues would join him.
Random thought two: Today's big jobs gain is very important.
943,000 jump in nonfarm payrolls plus big upward revisions for the prior two months, which means over a million jobs were created in June and July.
That is big—very big. People telling us the economy has already peaked are wrong. Unemployment fell to 5.4% from 5.9%. Underemployment fell to 9.2% from 9.8%
The employment to population ratio rose by a sturdy 4 tenths of a percent and the wage income proxy, which is hourly earnings plus hours worked, is over 10.7% at an annual rate over the past three months.
That’s huge. Even with a 6.6% personal consumption deflator, that's still a 4.1% gain in real wages—very strong and so are profits—the mother's milk of stocks and the lifeblood of the economy.
The DOW and S&P 500 hit record highs today, so this is all good.
Now, I ask you folks, in the name of good ole fashioned American common sense if you're looking at a million new jobs a month, rising real wages, rapid consumer spending, big gains in business investment in plants and technology equipment, not to speak of a booming stock market —Does anybody out there in their right mind believe we need another $5 trillion of federal spending?
Please, raise your hand. Call me. Email me. Text me. $5 trillion! Not to speak of $3 trillion or more in higher taxes that will kill the golden goose.
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In other words, Biden fiscal policies are completely out of line. We're talking more than three degrees of separation from our economic performance—completely out of line. They're from another planet.
My last random thought this Friday night centers on an old friend—a common sense, traditional values, free enterprise, throwback to the principles that made America great. His name is Larry Elder. He is running for governor of California in what may well be a successful effort to recall Gavin Newsom and then on to victory to turn the not so golden state around.