GOP Rep delivers brutal economic reality-check to Dems in denial: ‘I’m blaming government policy’

Freshman Rep. Byron Donalds, a rising star in the Republican Party, has gone viral for delivering a basic economics lesson to his Democrat peers and their allies.

He delivered the lesson during a Democrat-scheduled House committee hearing this Thursday on corporate profits.

Below is a truncated clip from the hearing showing him in action:

Democrats believe corporations are purposefully spiking their prices to earn a profit, never mind current economic conditions.

“Companies [are] raising prices far more than required to offset higher costs,” Rep. Raja Krishnaomorthi said during the hearing, according to Nexstar.

“They are going up because powerful executives are making deliberate choices to maximize their profits,” Rep. Katie Porter added.

The Democrats’ chosen speaker, Dr. Rakeen Mabud of the Groundwork Collaborative, concurred with their opinion.

“Big companies, like Procter & Gamble, know that they can take advantage of consumers’ basic needs because they make necessities like diapers and laundry supplies,” she said.

Now enter Donalds, who can be seen both in the clip above and the full video below confronting Mabud and carefully explaining to her how this narrative is bull.

Watch:

His back-and-forth exchange with Mabud began with him asking her whether “there was a labor shortage coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

She claimed there wasn’t, which prompted Donalds to request that the Republicans’ chosen speaker, Tyler Goodspeed of the Hoover Institution, fact-check her.

“We had 1.5 million early retirements. We had 3.7 million Americans indicating that they didn’t look for work for the past month because of the pandemic. And we had an expansion of the child tax credit and an extension of federal supplemental unemployment insurance benefits that exacerbated a labor supply shortage,” Goodspeed replied.

With that out of the way, Donalds then continued his interrogation.

“Dr. Mabud, let’s get out of the statistical world. Let’s go into real-world America. You buy goods and services like any other American does. I’m quite sure you went to stores where the signs were in the windows about how they were basically paying people to come for an interview, let alone for the job itself. Do you acknowledge that to be a reality of what was happening?” he asked.

The doctor responded by ranting about “job quality” and “low wages.”

“Yes, but I also want to acknowledge that low job quality and low wages are huge a liability in our economy. I mean, last week’s recently averted rail strike is an example of this, right, when you don’t have workers who can come to work because they literally can’t take a routine doctor’s appointment. That’s not the fault of that worker. That’s the fault of the company,” she said.

Ignoring her rant, Donalds then said, “Dr. Mabud, do you acknowledge that if somebody is given dollars, if they’re given cash, and they don’t have to exchange their labor for money in order to pay for goods and services, that that lowers the productivity or the desire to actually go get working hours out of company or firm or shop or whatever the case may be?”

His point was that giving people free money — much like President Joe Biden has done via several policy decisions, including the American Rescue Plan — disincentivizes work.

“I believe that people should be treated with dignity at work,” Mabud replied, completely dismissing the congressman’s point.

“Oh, I believe everybody should be treated with dignity. But that’s not what we’re talking about. When it comes to labor shortages, what we’re trying to surmise is that if you go down the pathway of providing dollars to people and they don’t have to exchange labor … for money to pay for their goods and services, do you think that leads to a labor shortage — yes or no,” Donalds replied.

Again Mabud refused to directly answer the question, saying, “I believe we’re experiencing a shortage of good jobs, not a shortage of labor. And I think it’s really critical not to blame working people.”

Tired of her nonsense, the congressman then unleashed the Kraken.

“I’m not blaming working people. What I would say is I’m blaming government policy, because if you’re given money without having to exchange it with labor … most people are just gonna go ahead and take it. We know this. … The point I’m making is that … the American Rescue Plan led to a labor shortage, and that labor shortage has led to price increases because you had people who had the disposable cash flow to buy goods but not enough goods in circulation to purchase,”  he said.

Donalds concluded his remarks with a direct wake-up call to his Democrat peers.

“Look, I understand the majority party’s desire to try to put this on corporate America for raising prices, but if you do not have enough workers working, there’s not enough goods produced,” he said.

“If there’s not enough goods produced but everybody still has money to go buy goods, the price of each unit actually goes up. That’s how inflation is always created. More policies of the same is only going to lead us further down the road to perdition which we are already on.”

Lesson complete.

Vivek Saxena

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