Sen. Cramer on Mornings with Maria: President Biden is Doubling Down on Dumb

Press Release

U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Banking Committee, joined Maria Bartiromo on Mornings with Maria to discuss President Biden's upcoming meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the Administration's misleading rhetoric and dangerous policies which are crippling the American economy. Excerpts and the full video are below.

On Upcoming Meetings with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell:
"I intend to visit with him about the plans for raising [interest] rates and shrinking the balance sheet. Chairman Powell has always been very forthcoming with me about that. He and I disagreed over much of last year because I felt like the [Federal Reserve] should have started this process much sooner and had a much more gradual path to shrinking [the balance sheets]. Anyway, they're doing what they need to do now, I'm just afraid the pain will have to be a little bit greater."

"I'm not a banker, but I do know this much when you put one bad thing on top of several other bad things, you're just going to have a lot more bad things. Like I said, my concern with the Federal Reserve was always that they didn't start soon enough with modest differences that would actually have a much less painful response. Clearly, we have an overcharged economy in the sense that we have much greater demand than we have supply. Reading the tea leaves is really going to be the answer, but I'm going leave that to the experts and listen to what [Chairman Powell] has to say. I'll give my two cents worth but again, I wish they would have started sooner more modestly."

On Biden Doubling Down on Dumb:
"The first thing he could do is lift all of his regulatory craziness. His first day in office, he signed several executive orders, undid many of the good executive orders President Trump put in place. He also said in his op-ed that he inherited a very bad economy and that it was very static. Well, the reality is he inherited a robust economy built on a strong foundation, built on the lower regulations and lower taxes. The reason we were able to come back so quickly after COVID was because of the foundation built by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, prior to the pandemic. Instead of seeing that, President Biden doubled down on dumb. He passed the American Rescue Plan with just Democratic support, which added $2 trillion of fuel to the fires of inflation. He increased regulations. He stopped oil development largely in the United States of America. Worse and all of that, Maria, all of these things plus many more, send bad signals to investors and into the marketplace... Everything he does sends the wrong messages."

On Biden's Messaging Problem:
"The problem is he's got a really bad message, Maria. He can send all of the surrogates he wants out there. He can have an aggressive campaign. He can scream it louder if he wants but screaming it louder doesn't make it a good message. It's a really bad message. His political, his political numbers are irredeemable -- they may go up or down a little bit within a small range -- but people know every time they fill their car, every time they go shopping, every time they look for a used car or want to buy a new home or build a new home. They know what's happening. The American people are not dumb, and [Biden is] counting on them to be dumb. I'm not sure [Biden] knows exactly what's going on. He clearly has a bad philosophy, but you've got to have enough political sense to correct course rather than just scream louder about what bad idea you have. It would be a better idea if he'd correct course: lift regulations, lower taxes, and incentivize people to work."

On Democrats Build Back Broke Efforts:
"I'm afraid we are [going to see another Build Back Better push] right now. It's an irredeemable political situation. I think Democrats have resigned themselves to the fact that they're not going to win, and they just want to do all the damage they can do in the meantime."

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