Economist Stephen Moore on How to Fix Inflation

BUCK: We now have Stephen Moore with us, former economic advisor to President Trump, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and a senior economist at FreedomWorks. Stephen, I know we’ve only got you for a few minutes today, so I want to hand the floor to you by asking you what’s going wrong with this economy, and what should Biden and the people around him be doing to stop messing it up so much?

MOORE: So, great question. First of all, the worry right now is everyone knows we have inflation. Right? Everybody deals with it every day. I don’t have to dwell on it. The inflation is getting a little bit worse, not better. We’re at somewhere between 8, 9 or 10% inflation, depending what gauge you want to use. Those are terrible numbers. Those are the kind of numbers, Buck, that we saw back when, remember…

I don’t if you’re old enough to remember, but I’m old enough to remember, the ’70s when Jimmy Carter was president. And it just was a snowball that just kept rolling down the hill and got bigger and bigger until Ronald Reagan came to the rescue. So the problem that I see right now… Look, inflation is a big, big problem, but what happens if this inflation crashes the economy?

And there are more and more economists who I respect who are really worried about that. And I am, too. This story of raging inflation almost never has a happy ending. So then you get that dreaded S-word, Buck, which is of course “stagflation.” You know what stagflation is, right?

BUCK: Yes, sir.

MOORE: For those that don’t know, stagflation is the combination of stagnation — which is no growth — and high inflation, and we’re seeing some signs of that. So far in the first two and a half months of this year the economy is growing at about 1%. That’s barely just keeping your head above water.

CLAY: And, so — this is Clay, by the way, thanks for coming on with us — what is going to happen? It appears that there’s almost no ability to pass any kind of significant legislation for the rest of this year, and then obviously we go —

MOORE: That’s good news! (laughing)

CLAY: Yes, that’s good news.

MOORE: Yeah, right. Look, almost everything that Biden has passed is what’s created this inflation.

CLAY: Yes.

MOORE: See, and I think most Americans can connect these dots. When you have multi-trillions of dollars of spending bills and then you’re just borrowing to pay for it, and then you’re printing money to pay for it, isn’t it pretty self-evident that’s going to cause inflation?

CLAY: Well, thankfully Joe Manchin was one of the few Democrats that said, “This is not ideal,” and managed to not pass the multi-trillion dollar additional bill.

MOORE: Yes. Right. Could you imagine if they passed that $5 trillion spending bill?

CLAY: It’s crazy to think about.

MOORE: By the way, there was a news report this morning that came across the wire, and I don’t know how accurate it was, but that Joe Manchin was open to some compromise on this. We don’t need anymore spending! We should be cutting government spending right now. If I were… I did advise Donald Trump on the economy.

He didn’t need a lot of my help because he understood the economy; Joe Biden doesn’t. But if I were advising him, I would say, “Get cutting. Covid is over for now. Let’s cut back on all these extra expenditures. Pay our bills. Start balancing our budget like households do,” and then I think you’d see the inflation going down. The other thing we have to do by the way is start producing energy here at home.

CLAY: Yeah, there’s no doubt. That’s what I was going to say,is we’re not really going to get a lot done the rest of this year. Then we get Democrats losing the House and maybe the Senate as well, so nothing happens the next two years. What are we going to look like — gotta get a quick answer here — by 2024? What are we sitting at as an economic situation?

MOORE: Well, I can’t see that far ahead. I can tell you the next 12 months are looking pretty dicey.

BUCK: Recession, Stephen? Are we heading to a recession?

MOORE: I hope not. I think we can still avoid it, if we just get some sensible policies coming out of the White House. And the Fed, by the way, has to start to act more swiftly and with more authority to tackle this inflation problem.

BUCK: Stephen Moore, everybody. Stephen, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

MOORE: A recession is not in the cards. We can still avoid it. It’s not too late.