Biden's 9% inflation claim needs to stop: Kevin Hassett

Why does he keep misrepresenting this? He's making the point that the factors that caused inflation to climb to 9% were in place when he took office. I think that's not what he said. He said it was at 9%. It would eventually get to 9% a little over a year after that. But the fact of the matter is it wasn't 9% Orion and back and forth it went. Now some of you already criticizing, I was rude, I probably was. I didn't mean to share it like that or come off like that. A couple of you also saying that no lunch for you today, Cavuto, as if I'm on doing the show right now. Anyway. Kevin Hassett is the Council of Economic Advisors chairman under Donald Trump's of the predecessor to the fellow you just saw there, Jared Bernstein. But Kevin, I do want to get back. You remember what it was like as you were leaving office and that we were looking at a 1.4% unemployment rate. It wouldn't last very long. But for the administration to say now because this is a new wrinkle and I guess a clarification on Jared's part to say the the the policies were in place that would lift that average eventually to 9%, it's a bit of a stretch. But. But what did you make of that? Well, if they, if they have, if they have a model that shows that you should invite, you know, Jared who who I have a great deal of affection for as do you invite him back on the show and have him like put up on the Twitter feed, the model that shows that. I think they're going to have a very hard time finding such a model. The fact is that there was a lot of stimulus spending during 2020. But, but it happens. You might remember four or five times we passed the stimulus bill that was right sized for the amount of harm that Tony Fauci was causing. And so at the end of the year, after a 32% decline in GDPGDP was about flat for the year, which means the stimulus was right sized. They inherited 6% growth, 1.4% inflation and then they came in on a partisan basis and passed a massive stimulus bill, which you might recall Neil, right after that, John Cochran and I came out and wrote an article and said this is classic inflationary spending. The supply is going down and demand is going up. And and I think in May of that year already my models were saying inflation was going to be 7%. We talked about that. So the one other thing I got to say about your interview, I didn't think that you were hard because the thing I respect about you, Neil, is like you, you been that hard on me, right. I mean the fact is this is what a journalist is supposed to do is ask the hard questions and go in and and then make people try to answer. And I think that Jared was in a really difficult because you can't actually come out and so the president just lied. Right. So what do you do if you differ? You wanted to clarify something to Donald Trump when he was president. Obviously, he's the president. He's your boss. I get that and I get what he's saying there. But in the case of, you know, Joe Biden, he keeps saying this about the 9% inflation. What inherited anyone worth this salt in the administration? Mr. President, the fact really is a little bit different. Just want to let you know. But he no one is doing that. If they are, he's ignoring them. So what are we to make of that? Yeah, it's it's a very difficult spot. They have something called the staff secretary process where anything the president says that's like an arranged remark gets fact checked by the Council of Economic Advisors and the chairman. And, you know, false facts don't make it through that process. And every now and then they would leak out. And I could think you probably remember, Neil, when I was at the White House, that there were a couple of times where a bad number came out and then I corrected it right away. It took a lot of heat for doing it but I always tried to get the numbers right and and I think that Jared was, you know, again, he's a good friend that he said that that there was a model that says the 9% was going to happen already. There really I don't think was but you should ask him back and say I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember. But I do know we came up from an economy that was in park with COVID and you knew that you were experiencing that. We all did as a country. I'm not blaming or attributing anything to either president coming out of that when you're going 0 miles an hour and and and any movement after that is going to seem like 60 miles an hour and prices demand and accelerate they compounded it with all the spending. So if we ever got into a pickle like that again Kevin, I don't know what role you'll play in a future Trump administration it comes to that. I know he he regards you very, very highly. How would you deal with that? Would you would you swear off spending? Would you swear off more tax cuts, especially with the Trump tax cuts expire next year. What would you do if at some economists think we could go into a slowdown here? Maybe not a recession, but it's certainly a slowdown from where we are? Well, we were running the numbers, my team and I today. And we if we went back to the spending we thought we would have over the next 10 years in 2019, right before COVID hit, then we would reduce spending over the next decade by 8 1/2 trillion dollars. Neil, 8 1/2 trillion. And So what happened was the COVID spending went up in 2020, and then President Biden and his team use that, like, basically as an excuse to spend money on green things and all their favorite projects. And so spending didn't really go down, even though the COVID emergency was over. And that's where inflation came from. If there's a new administration that, you know, an easy place for them to start is to go back and say, hey, if Nancy Pelosi thought this spending trajectory in 2019 was just then, maybe we should start from there and and and see how much spending we can cut. And after we do that, there should be plenty of room to make the tax cuts permanent, for example. All right, We'll see what happens there. That will be an uphill fight, but we'll watch it closely if it comes to pass. Kevin Hassett, the former Council of Economic Advisers chairman under Donald J Trump.