Fox’s Harris Faulkner Takes It to Manchin on Schumer Bill

BUCK: I want to talk about the Build Back Better-ish bill that they want to pass here. They want to talk about this, and we should. They want to pass this. What’s going on here? Harris Faulkner did a good interview with Joe Manchin right before I came on air with you at noon Eastern time, and there’s some important parts of this, right? Is it raising taxes on people who earn less than $400,000? Is it going to combat inflation? Here is how some of this went when Joe Manchin was asked about it.

BUCK: Telling her she’s wrong. Now, she pushed back, Harris pushed back against this and pointed out that groups that Democrats, including Manchin in the past have turned to and said, “See? Look at our analysis on this issue, “Right?” “See? Look at what they say the impact of this will be.” And now they’re saying, “Oh, they’re just wrong. They’ve got it wrong.” What is more likely… Let’s just start from this perspective, because you can always do, “Well, my experts say and their experts say and my experts say.” What is more likely?

At this point with Democrats heading into an election that will be more of a slapdown for them than anything we’ve seen in a midterm since 2010 — so, in a decade at least — what’s more likely? That all of a sudden Joe Manchin found some great middle ground with Democrats that’s just gonna “only raise taxes on the rich and corporations and is gonna make energy cheaper and it’s gonna be just lollipops and fairy dust and unicorns and rivers of you chocolate and great things for free”? It’s Fantasy Land stuff, right? Remember Candy Land, the board game? I used to play that when I was a little kid, really little kid.

But that was a board game. But that’s what’s gonna happen. Gonna be amazing, right? This bill is doing all these great things. No downside! You always know they’re lying to you when they negate that there is any tradeoff. This is a good rule of thumb. I have a few rules of thumb in politics. One thing that anytime anyone tells you that they’re doing it — like Nancy Pelosi loves to say — “for the children.” Anytime she brings “the children” into it, trust me, it’s not about helping kids. Usually, it’s about stealing from productive adults using government force to spend money on things that make Nancy Pelosi and her constituents feel good and important. Anytime they say it’s “for the children,” you should be concerned about it.

But also anytime they refuse to admit that there’s a tradeoff. It’s just all good things, it’s just all good things — and if you don’t see that, you’re a bigot! An example. Illegal immigration. How is it that I know the Democrats — and there are so many things. How is it that I know the Democrats are lying to you about illegal immigration? Well, just think about it this way. Whenever you ask them, “Hey, shouldn’t we limit, you know, illegal immigration into the country because aren’t there some downsides, resource drains, problems with additional law enforcement concerns, especially with the drug trafficking and MS-13, et cetera?”

They go, “No, that’s not true. That’s not true. It makes us all richer and wealthier and increases GDP,” although they don’t talk about GDP per capita. They just talk about net GDP. “It increases GDP!” Meanwhile, in New York and D.C., the mayors of those respective cities are saying, “Yeah, the illegal immigrants are actually a big drain on resources here. We need federal government money now.” There’s some cynicism in that too but the point is they have to admit there is a tradeoff. It will be honest if Democrats said, “We need to be an open borders country because we think that’s a moral thing because the working class in America is where the illegal immigrants are gonna go live.”

So they’re gonna live in Nancy Pelosi’s backyard, they’re not gonna live in Nancy Pelosi’s street. And she gets to feel good about herself — and the rich libs who support her and watch CNN and subscribe to Washington Post, they get to feel good about themselves — and, yeah, sure there’s gonna be some financial tradeoff for the country. At least that would be an honest way to frame it. Same thing can be applied here to the way Joe Manchin talks about this Manchin-Schumer bill. First of all, the name Schumer is attached to it. So that’s what we would call in the poker world “a tell.” Not that I know anything about poker. I do not gamble, and I know nothing about it.

Although they may change at some point. But I do watch movies, and sometimes they talk about these kinds of things. So Manchin is saying that this is just going to combat inflation, only raise taxes on the rich people and the corporations, and is not some boondoggle of spending at a time of high inflation for the green energy lobby, essentially, and green energy apparatus in this country. That’s just not true. Right? There’s no way. It’s not possible. It is not possible for this bill to just being the things that Joe Manchin says. So he’s trying to sell it. He’s in salesman mode.

The reality is that they’re calling it the inflation-reduction bill because they know that, if anything, people are looking at what the federal government has done recently and what it did under Biden, spending the $2 trillion right out of the gate when he took office, and Senate Democrats — or congressional Democrats across the board — pushing that without any Republican support, people understand, “Hold on. We’re in a time of high inflation which has come from government monetary policy. The government running up debt, the government printing of money and spending of money,” and this is a problem ’cause inflation everywhere is a government monetary policy issue.

So they’re passing this bill that has a whole lot of spending in it and a whole bunch of tax increases. And they’re telling you that this is going to fix inflation. Joe Biden a year ago, remember he was going, “Reduce inflation. Reduce inflation!” That’s what he was saying about a three and some would say actually more like $5 trillion, they’re always playing games with this, what’s mandatory spending, what discretionary spending, ’cause they don’t want to tell you what they’re really doing. They’re trying to hide it from you. And if we had a media that was honest, it would be a lot easier.

But the media runs cover for this, and Joe Manchin knows that. Joe Manchin knows the second that he switches over and does Chuck Schumer’s bidding, 95% of the news media is gonna be finding ways to support his point of view, back him up, tell him how great he is, et cetera. So that’s where we are. They’re clearly not being honest with you, and Manchin wasn’t honest when he said weeks ago that he wouldn’t be a part of this, he wouldn’t do any of this Green New Deal spending stuff. It’s just gonna be a whole bunch of taxpayer-funded giveaways to companies that make solar and wind energy inefficiently and at a very high cost.

That won’t change the energy grid in any meaningful way, but they’re important constituencies for Democrats and it also makes the Democrat base feel good about themselves because the planet won’t melt or whatever ’cause of CO2. So that’s really what this is. So, you have to know that they’re being dishonest with you. Now, people are saying that there are some hurdles that this will face, that this bill, which is, according to Democrats, $433 billion of spending, $739 billion in tax revenue, including a whole lot extra money for the IRS to audit you. Yeah, that’s right. Democrats like to sick the IRS on people.

So that’s all a part of this now. They do have to look at Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to see if she will go along with this. I think I can cut to the chase here. We can skip to end up. She will go along with this, in my opinion. That is my prediction. I do not think that Kyrsten Sinema will be the lone Democrat senator holding the line against this just self-defeating… It’s good politically for Democrats because it feeds their lunatic base what they want and it spreads money around, and money is power, and Democrats want to wield it while they have it. And I get that. But in terms of what’s actually good for the American people and the economy, it’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea.

And the notion that it will reduce inflation? No serious person who looks at the numbers and understands politics in America is saying, “Yeah, this is gonna really reduce inflation.” It’s not gonna do anything on inflation. In fact, there’s analysis that says that statistically it’s gonna have an effect of zero on inflation. So I think Sinema goes along with this. And remember at the beginning I was surprised. I thought they were gonna get Manchin to cave a lot earlier. If you go back and listen, I think when Clay and I were talking about this… Gosh. I can’t remember the date. It’s all blurring together now. But whenever it was that they were first pushing it.

Was it you about a year ago they were pushing Manchin on this? No, it was more like last fall. Anyway, I remember thinking, “Manchin’s gonna cave. Manchin’s gonna cave.” And then it seemed like he didn’t. I said, wow. Saving the Democrats from themselves with this crazy spending. But, well, he ended up caving just a little bit less, just for a little bit less. Sinema is gonna cave or she’s gonna go along with this. It’s not even really fair to say she’s caving, I think, because she hadn’t opposed it. They say that she’s reading the bill. There’s some stuff about parliamentary process.

The Byrd Rule. They’re gonna be talking about poison-pill amendments and stuff that, you know, .001% of the American people know about and should know about, quite honestly, ’cause you get really deep into the parliamentary games that are played in the Senate. Isn’t it funny, we call them parliamentary games, but of course it’s the Senate, not a parliament. But, you know, whatever. None of that’s gonna stop this. Democrats are gonna get this thing through. That is how I see this going.

I would be completely shocked. Yeah, there could be some covid case that takes one senator offline for voting for a few days or something. They’re gonna get this thing through. Why? Because their power is at stake. You want to see Democrats be motivated, Democrats who are in elected office? When they are facing the wrath of the people that they have done a bad job representing in government, that’s when, all of a sudden, they get really mobilized. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.