Meghan McCain react to Pres. Trump specifying that Dr. Anthony Fauci will testify before the Senate next week, not the House, calling House Democrats “a bunch of Trump haters.”
"The View" co-host Joy Behar said on Wednesday that President Trump wouldn't let Dr. Anthony Fauci, who's helping to lead the government's coronavirus response, testify before the House of Representatives because he was afraid of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
"The 'wartime president' is scared of Maxine Waters -- he's just scared of her. She might ask a question of Dr. Fauci that makes [Trump] look bad. And that's what is whole thing is about -- PR and how is it going to play and is his base going to be upset? Nevermind that people are dying, and everybody's scared. It's all about him," she said.
Trump had complained that the House set up an oversight committee made up of Democrats who opposed him.
"They put every Trump hater on the committee — the same old stuff. They frankly want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death, and our situation's going to be very successful," he said. "The House has put on a committee, an oversight committee, of Maxine Waters and [Rep. Carolyn] Maloney and the same people, and it's just a setup."
He added that Fauci would testify before the GOP-controlled Senate. "But the House, I will tell you, the House should be ashamed of themselves. And frankly, the Democrats should be ashamed, because they don't want us to succeed. They want us to fail so they can win an election," he said.
Behar insisted, however, that Trump was being cowardly. "I called him a malignant narcissist, then I added a bad tactician," she said, referring to her earlier comments. "I would also add coward because he's scared of looking bad. He's scared of the questions," she added before pointing to how Trump criticized female reporters in testy exchanges at his task force press briefings.
"They would just ask a direct question and because he didn't like the question, he would turn on them ... everything is about how good does he look."
The government's top expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged to CNN Monday night that some people may "violently" disagree with his warnings about reopening too quickly but said he has a "moral obligation ... based on evidence and experience" to help make safe decisions.
"How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be some form of normality sooner rather than later," Fauci asked. "There are people that are going to be disagreeing with me. Some of them, rather violently in many respects, you know, telling me that I'm crazy you know fire Fauci, do this, do that. That's part of the game."
White House economist Kevin Hassett on CNN Tuesday gave a dire prediction for the U.S. jobs report expected Friday, saying unemployment may be as high as 20% -- a number he previously predicted the country wouldn't hit until June.
"My guess right now is going to be north of 16%, maybe as high as 19 or 20% -- so we are looking at probably the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression," he said.
Hassett also pushed back on Washington Post reporting and said that his own modeling projections suggesting a lower rate of death from the coronavirus than other models were never used by Trump or the task force to make decisions in pushing for an economic reopening.
"I was in the Oval with Drs. Fauci and Birx and always agreed with their forecasts. I've had plenty of opportunities to say, 'No, it's going to be lower,' -- I never once did," Hassett insisted. "I even asked chief Meadows this morning," he said, referring to new White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. "I said, 'Did you ever see anyone take this chart to the president and say, hey you know it says that things are going to be better than they say,' and he said no."
"The thing that was incorrect, I think, was to assert that this was relevant for decision making," Hassett continued on CNN, which displayed an up-to-date version of Hassett's modeling. "This is a very standard statistician's tool kit kind of thing to visualize how the model is performing relative to the data."
Hassett said that his modeling is "not a prediction" but intended to compare actual data to the various forecasts. By comparison to the popular IHME projection, for instance, Hassett's modeling indicates a rosier future and much steeper downward trend in deaths.
As he left the White House for his first major trip in two months, Trump said he was not concerned about a new University of Washington IHME model forecasting 134,000 deaths by August -- taking into account states easing restrictions.
"That's without mitigation, and we will have mitigation," Trump said, although the model is based on current behaviors in the U.S. "The fact that we are letting people go and go to their jobs, they have to do it. You know, if they held people any longer with the shutdown, you are going to lose people that way, and you already have, I'm sure. But between drug abuse and they say suicide, a lot of different things, there is no win."
He continued to shift his message to reopening the country.
"We have to open our country," Trump said. "Models have been very inaccurate. ... We did everything right but now, it's time to go back to work -- so I'm going to Arizona."
When asked if he would wear a mask on his visit Tuesday to the Honeywell N95 mask production plant, Trump said he will, "if it's a masked facility."
Trump also confirmed that Dr. Anthony Fauci will testify before the Senate next week -- not the House -- he specified, calling House Democrats "a bunch of Trump haters."
"Dr. Fauci will be testifying in front of the Senate and he looks forward to doing that. But the House, I will tell you, the House should be ashamed of themselves, and frankly the Democrats should be ashamed because they don't want us to succeed. They want us to fail so they can win an election which they are not going to win," the president said, before heading to the battleground state of Arizona.
The US is becoming the king of debt. It's a necessary risk
ReplyDeletePresident Donald Trump is living up to his self-given nickname "King of Debt." On his watch, the United States has borrowed aggressively -- during the good times, and now the bad times.
Instead of whittling down the federal deficit when the economy was strong, Trump directed the federal government pile on even more debt to pay for massive tax cuts and spending surges.
That meant that the United States entered this crisis in rough financial shape. Debt-to-GDP stood at nearly 80% even before the coronavirus pandemic struck -- a rate more than twice as high as the historical average and double the level before the Great Recession.
Now, the national debt is exploding because Washington is being forced to rescue the US economy from its greatest shock ever. The Treasury Department said this week it will borrow $3 trillion this quarter alone. That's nearly six times the previous record, which was set in 2008.
Still, while the national debt is scary -- it now stands at nearly $25 trillion -- now is not the time to cut back on the borrowing.
Economists agree that the United States must continue to rack up debt to prevent a full-blown depression. Otherwise, there won't be much of an economy left to repay the debt once the health crisis is over.
Even deficit watchdogs are urging Uncle Sam to keep borrowing.
"We made a huge mistake being so in debt when the economy was strong," Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN Business. "But just because we were reckless and foolish going into the crisis, [that] doesn't mean we shouldn't borrow during it."
Of course, there will be long-term consequences for the mountain of debt Washington is racking up. Eventually it will mean higher interest rates, hotter inflation and likely higher taxes.
'Absolute necessity'
ReplyDeleteBut for now, the focus is on keeping American businesses and households afloat. In March, Congress passed a $2.3 trillion stimulus package, the largest in US history. Half a trillion dollars of forgivable loans have been handed out to small businesses. Direct payments were made to low- and middle-income families.
The Congressional Budget Office expects the federal budget deficit will hit $3.7 trillion this year, up from an eye-popping $1 trillion in 2019.
And more stimulus is likely coming, perhaps another $2 trillion later this year, to help out states and local governments battered by the crisis.
All of this will add yet more debt to the pile. But there's no other viable option to stave off further crisis.
"The fiscal stimulus and resulting explosion of the deficit is an absolute necessity to combat the devastating impact from the economic shutdown and to avoid a second depression," said Steven Oh, global head of credit and fixed income at PineBridge, an investment firm that manages $101 billion.
Spiking deficits are also the result of a dramatic loss of tax revenue caused by the shutdown of businesses and 30 million Americans out of jobs.
The federal deficit is expected to hit 18.4% of GDP in 2020 and decline only gradually over the next decade, according to Moody's Investors Service.
Powell: 'Not the time' to worry about debt
ReplyDeleteJerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, recently expressed regret about America's failure to get its debt situation under control years ago.
"It tells you the importance of getting your fiscal house in order," Powell said during a press conference last week. "Ideally, you would go into an unexpected shock like this with a much stronger fiscal posture."
Yet Powell urged politicians not to worry about that now. "This is not the time to let that concern, which is a very serious concern, get in the way of us winning this battle," he said.
Worries about debt forced the United States to rein in spending shortly after the Great Recession a decade ago. Economists say that premature withdrawal of stimulus hobbled the economy.
"The anemic recovery was a direct result of not enough fiscal stimulus," said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco.
The national debt has been on an unsustainable path for decades, in large part because of high entitlement spending on Social Security and Medicare.
Before the pandemic, Moody's forecast US debt would hit 100% of GDP in 2030. Now, it expects debt to stand at 128% of GDP by then.
Markets don't seem to mind, at least not yet
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that Uncle Sam is having no trouble, at least so far, with financing the deficit. The 10-year Treasury rate is near all-time low at just 0.7%. That signals investors don't fear the US debt situation is even near a breaking point.
Markets aren't freaking out about US debt for a few reasons.
First, this spending is temporary and emergency in nature.
Second, the US dollar remains the preeminent international reserve currency and US Treasury market is the deepest and largest in the world. Those are huge advantages that keep demand strong for US debt.
Third, it's extremely cheap to borrow right now. The Fed slashed interest rates to near-zero --and economists think they may stay there into 2022.
"It doesn't blow us up -- because interest rates are so low," said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds.
Rate hikes could set off a crisis
ReplyDeleteBut that equation would change, of course, if rates rose sharply. Given the sheer magnitude of the debt, even a tiny increase in interest is costly. Interest payments were the fastest-growing expense for the federal government even before the crisis.
One risk is that a surprisingly strong rebound in the US economy forces the Fed to rapidly reverse course.
"If the economy comes back too hot, then you could have inflation, higher interest rates -- and that could lead to a fiscal crisis," said JPMorgan's Kelly.
That's exactly why some believe the Fed will be forced to keep rates at rock-bottom levels. "It will be that much harder this time to wean the economy off ultra-low rates because the debt is that much greater," said Invesco's Hooper.
Higher taxes, less spending
ReplyDeleteStill, it's a mystery when and if the bond market will eventually balk at high US debt and demand much higher interest rates.
"The breaking point is like an invisible dog fence," said MacGuineas, the president of CRFB. "You don't know where it is, but if you actually hit it, it'll be a huge problem."
To avoid hitting it, politicians will eventually have to make difficult decisions to get the United States back towards a sustainable fiscal path -- most likely less spending and higher taxes -- both of which would translate to slower economic growth.
"If we live beyond our means today," JPMorgan's Kelly said, "we will have to live within our means in the future."