Unconstitutional Business as Usual as Biden Panders to His Base

CLAY: Joe Biden’s now $500 billion-plus plan — without any legislative approval — to further make inflation a disaster and to make the working class pay for the college- and grad school-educated classes’ educations. This is indefensible. And want to dive right into this off the top because, Buck, a lot of the details are now coming out. And I want to hit you with a couple of things. This is flagrantly unconstitutional, and what is going to happen here is I believe the courts are going to strike this down.

Democrats will blame the courts and argue that the courts are too political when they take this action. That won’t happen, however, until after the midterms. And, in the meantime, Joe Biden is trying to juice support from younger voters who have college and grad school loans to potentially show up. It is effectively a bribe. Biden is using, Buck, as legal authority — so far as I have seen — a law that was passed after 9/11 that allows for debt cancellation in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.

The emergency that Biden is citing for authority to cancel this student loan debt? Covid-19. It’s crazy. Also, I mentioned yesterday, Biden’s got a majority in the Senate. He’s got a majority in the House. If this is so politically popular and you want to spend an additional $500 billion plus, put it in front of Congress and let your Democrat majority in the House and the Senate pass this bill as you would ordinarily do with an expenditure of this magnitude. Well, at least one senator has already come out, meaning it wouldn’t pass.

In Nevada — you want to know how close this race is gonna be? I think Adam Laxalt is gonna win, but the current senator there, Catherine Cortez Masto says, “I don’t agree with today’s executive action because it doesn’t address the root problems that make college unaffordable.” She’s right on that respect.

Tim Ryan, who is running for the Senate in Ohio, likely to lose to JD Vance, said, “Waiving debt for those already on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.” This is dead on arrival, Buck. Even Democrats in the House and the Senate are lining up against it. How shameless is it of Joe Biden to have undertaken this action?

BUCK: To me it’s just the Democrats doing what they always do, which is taking care of their base and trying to find ways to shift money to the interests that vote for them or that support them. So, yeah, it’s shameless, but it’s also business as usual, you know what I mean? This is not really that different from their usual approach, which is rooted in a lack of principle, integrity, and certainly they don’t care about constitutional restraint. The people who lecture us the most about how Trump is a threat to the Constitution and our democracy —

CLAY: Oh, yeah. Yes.

‘BUCK: — unless we want something real bad while we have a Democrat as president, then we just do it. Then there’s no big deal. There’s no outer limit to what is possible or what we’re allowed to do because, you know, it’s the ri… Remember when Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do”? Someone said, “Raising taxes, sir, right now, you know that’s probably gonna hurt the economy.”

“Yeah, we’re just gonna do it ’cause we gotta punish our enemies and reward our friends,” and that means a little bit of class warfare is always, always on the agenda. I think that Biden doing this is also a reflection of the fact that the whole Biden comeback moment, yeah, not really enough. I don’t think that anybody now even remembers all that much of what they did. But what they do see, meaning the inflation bill —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — I mean, they literally name something an inflation bill that will make inflation a little bit worse.

CLAY: They named it the Inflation Reduction Act —

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: — and it actually I’m gonna make inflation worse. It’s crazy.

BUCK: It is actually the inflation-inflation act, right?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I mean, it’s actually gonna be inflating the inflation, and now they’re doing something that would also have inflationary effects. I mean, to have the government just say, “Yeah, well, we’re not…” This is money that is supposed to be paid back, as we’ve discussed. There’s no “cancellation.” There’s not a magic wand where this, “Oh, it’s just not owed anymore.” We have a monetary system. People that owe money, people that pay money, and changing all of this to the tune, what is it, $500 billion is the latest assessment, $500 billion plus?

CLAY: That might be low. Half a trillion dollars.

BUCK: It’s a lot of money! (laughing)

CLAY: How crazy this is? That’s a real amount of money. He’s doing it all without any legislative authority to do so, and I’m still disappointed… You ever feel like…? I feel a lot of times about the media like a parent who’s really disappointed in a kid, because it’s such an easy thing for media to inform people of. There is no legislative authority here — and I know most media are too dumb to even understand the Constitution.

But the president can’t just… To your point, he can’t cancel debt. I mean, even the phrase “cancel debt” implies that it disappears. It doesn’t. He doesn’t have a magic wand. He doesn’t have the authority to do this! So, Buck, if I came out and said… Do you remember, in a funny way, The Office? Did you watch The Office back in the day?

BUCK: Oh yeah.

CLAY: It’s such a great show.

BUCK: Great show.

CLAY: Do you remember Michael Scott, who decided that he was gonna pay for all those kids’ college one day. Like, he went into the Elementary School, Scott’s Tots, which is one of the great programs of all times, and promises this entire classroom of kids that he was gonna pay for their college tuition? He thought he was gonna be super rich one day?

BUCK: It was almost as funny as the Walkathon to Cure Rabies. (laughing)

CLAY: Yes. So he waives…. Basically Michael Scott, for those of you who are not huge The Office fans, it’s one of the funniest television shows that’s ever been done. Goes into a school classroom, elementary school classroom, and tells all these kids, “I’m going to cover your college,” and the kids are all celebrating, and they’re running around, they’re all excited. The problem is Michael Scott doesn’t have the money or the ability to do that.

So what Joe Biden did is Scott’s Tots for politicians. He just went out and said to all these people, tens of millions of people all over America, “Hey, I’m canceling your student loan debt because I’m president, $500 billion of relief.” It’s Scott’s Tots on steroids. He don’t have the right to do this, and nobody will call him on it.

BUCK: There’s a fundamental misconception that Democrats have about money and government’s role in everything that involves finance. We think of our earnings and money — and everyone listening to this, what you are accruing through your labor — as your property.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And then the government does take some of it through taxation, and we’re Alice fighting back to limit that. I think taxes are far too high in this country and there’s a whole conversation to be had about this. But the fundamental philosophical position of the left is more like a parent that gives the kids a little bit of an allowance. And we, the American people, are the ones getting the allowance.

Essentially, the government can take whatever it wants and spend whatever it wants and then decide what we all get to have. They really invert the basic logic of whose property is it, anyway? Who’s really calling the shots and who’s in charge here? You know, there is, I think, at this point in time a broad understanding that Biden and the people around him know nothing about making an economy better.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Anyone knows how to spend money. You can find any fool who can run up a credit the card or who can spend somebody else’s money and write the checks. That’s the easiest thing in the world. That’s what this Biden White House knows how to do. Creating the foundation, creating the framework for growth, prosperity, rule of law, innovation, all that stuff, Clay, I honestly think they don’t even know — and I don’t think they care, either.

They just want to spend what’s out there and they don’t worry about whether or not the American people are getting squeezed and it’s being made more difficult for them. And certainly, the class optics of this: This is gonna be a lot of people getting paid off. I mean, people looked at the decision, “Do I go to college? Do I not go to college?” And some said, “I’m not gonna go ’cause I don’t want the debt.”

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: And the government is now saying, “Well, I guess you’re a sucker, because we’re gonna cancel $10,000!” By the way, I think that’s just a starting point, if they get this through, to your point, it’s not legal.

CLAY: Not legal. Also, Buck, it doesn’t end. So, the $500 billion in costs, there are a lot of kids that are gonna be taking out college loans over the next several years. Do you think those kids aren’t gonna be clamoring in 10 or 15 years for their loans to be forgiven in the same way? So, Biden doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do what he’s doing, but this doesn’t end, Buck. So, you just start to say, “Okay. It’s $500 billion now.”

Well, in 10 years it’s probably gonna another 500 billion at least. We’re talking about trillions of dollars in promises that actually encourage people to take out more debt because there now will be people who will say, “Well, this seems like a lot of money, but if the government’s going to forgive it in the future, then maybe I can take this loan out; I don’t even need to worry about it.”

BUCK: Democrats also love price controls. We just went through this. Over the summer, you remember when the Democrats were given all these sound bites on, “Gas stations just need to lower their prices!”

CLAY: Yeah. (laughing) Yeah, right.

BUCK: “Why don’t gas stations just charge less for their product?” As if it’s not a global market in fossil fuels — and as you pointed out aptly, gas stations actually make a lot of their money on the convenience store.

CLAY: Almost no money from a gas station is made from gas.

BUCK: Right. You go there for the gas. They make their money on the Hostess Cupcakes or whatever that you’re buying, which can be delicious on a long trip.

CLAY: Absolutely fantastic. Yes.

BUCK: And I think that it’s funny to see how they’ll call for that for private industry, but you can’t… Even private universities aren’t really private because they’ve been propped up by this taxpayer backstop.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It’s like they’ve Solyndra-ized the entire higher education system where the taxpayers on the hook, not the actual person setting the prices and engaging in the process or the product here. And so why don’t we just tell all universities, “You know what, guys?” When I say, “Why don’t…?” I don’t believe in price controls.

But I’m saying Democrats could just say you can’t charge more than 30 grand a year for college education. We’re just gonna federally cap this if we’re gonna have federally backed student loans. They won’t do it, and they won’t do it because the multibillion-dollar hedge funds… My school I think has, like, a $2 billion endowment now, Clay, and 1,600 students!

CLAY: Yeah, and they don’t really aggressively go after the hedge funds — the massive endowments — that these universities have, either. So why…? If you’re going to forgive all this student loan —

BUCK: I’m sorry, it’s $4 billion — $4 billion, 1,600 students — my college. Just to give you a sense of how much money these places have accrued. Go ahead.

CLAY: Given the fact that we’re effectively passing $500 billion at minimum as a gift to all these institutions of higher learning — ’cause they already got paid for their education — why don’t we ask the schools to refund some of the loan costs, right? I mean, why don’t we tax their endowments at an insanely high rate, if you actually want to get some of this back? And at what point…? This just makes things worse when it comes to the cost of higher education. These universities are not being run… What did we say yesterday? There are two things that seem to be broken from a purpose of business, right?

BUCK: And health care.

CLAY: Universities and medical care, right?

BUCK: Those are the two things, when you look on a chart over the last 40 years. People complain about the cost of housing, they complain about the cost of food.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And depending on where you are in the timing, that can very much be true. No matter where you are in the United States, university or college education and health care has gotten wildly more expensive over the last 40 years.

CLAY: And what’s unique there is the competition element is broken. Just think about it. If you go buy a car, let’s say you’re going to buy a Ford. There are multiple Ford dealerships that you’re competing with to try to get the best price, the best loan, the best overall financial results. If you go shopping for groceries, grocery margins are tiny, and grocery stores are fighting all the time — even, as we mentioned, gas stations.

It’s not a coincidence that a gas station on one side of the street and a gas station on the other side of the street are constantly competing on the pennies to see which one can offer the best price on gas. Universities are the opposite. They’re not competing on price, by and large, hardly at all. And again, if you go into a hospital, your point yesterday was great, Buck. You were talking about elective surgery on your ankle.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: And they told you, “It could be $3,000 or $50,000.” They weren’t sure what the cost is gonna be. Like, that’s not a market-based solution at all.