The baby formula shortage and skyrocketing inflation are President Biden-made problems, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) said on the Todd Starnes Show.
The House Freedom Caucus Chairman told host Todd Starnes these issues are caused by government activity in the private sector distorting markets, and this shows that the Biden administration has no clue how free-market capitalism is supposed to work.
LISTEN TO REP. SCOTT PERRY ON THE TODDCAST PODCAST BELOW:
The following is a rush transcript from The Todd Starnes Radio Show. Listen to the program live Monday – Friday from 12 p.m. until 3 p.m. Click here to listen to the full interview.
TODD STARNES: [00:40:48] Let’s go to the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker Line. Honored to have with us chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Congressman Scott Perry. Congressman, welcome to the program. [00:40:56][8.0]
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REP. SCOTT PERRY (R-PA): [00:40:58] Well, Todd, it’s great to be with you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And unfortunately, in this case, the President of the United States is clueless. He’s completely disconnected. Most families know that have had children, that formula comes mostly in these cans that you mix. Some of it is incredibly expensive due to whatever special need your child has, so to speak, whether it’s a lactose allergy or something like that. I mean, this stuff can be difficult to come by in the best of circumstances. Of course, when he says he didn’t know about it, he might not actually be lying about that, because there’s at least a reasonable chance that the rest of the people in the administration that did know something about it just never briefed him, because it’s not important to them. What is important that I think your listeners know is, that this is a government created problem. One company essentially makes about 45% of the baby formula, which is used for the WIC program, the Women and Infant Children program. So, you subsidize that, and then that one company gets a kickback from the federal government every time a person that is subsidized to get the WIC formula goes ahead and picks it up at the store. The federal government shut that plant down, essentially 45% of the production market and cluelessly thought that it was going to have no impact on the greater market. And, of course, they’re completely wrong. And their answer is to ship it in from overseas after, you know, we have spent huge amounts of money and regulatory process in making the American food supply safe, so to speak. Now, when the chips are down, I guess we don’t care about safety and we can just get it from anywhere but all the rest of the time, you know, we prevail on these companies to make the food safe which costs us a boatload of money, not only in regulation itself, but in the cost of the regulation when you go and buy the goods and services. And so as usual, the government creates the problem and then spends more money and makes it worse by their solution to the problem, which is now shipping it from overseas on airplanes. [00:43:17][139.2]
TODD STARNES: [00:43:18] And Congressman, let me let me jump in here for a second. I mean, you’re right. All of these are manmade crises. But the problem is we’ve got a lot of these crises now. You have Jamie Dimon out there warning of what could be a Superstorm Sandy economic style event that’s about to happen. Inflation is insane. And when you look at the federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour, that’s what people are paying for gas in some of these states, California, New York. What is this country going to look like in a couple of months? [00:43:54][36.0]
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SCOTT PERRY: [00:43:55] Well, it’s really hard to determine, of course. Again, I know you say manmade, and I know what you mean, Todd. But I think it’s important for us to realize that Biden made, government made, and leftist made policies created these problems. Inflation, I think the latest numbers about 5.4, GDP is down to 1.3, illegal immigration to 200,000, plus, a record breaking every single month. And so, with all due respect to Jamie Dimon, they have not been helpful in this circumstance. They have never, as far as I know, been derogatory towards this administration’s unbridled printing. And let’s face it, we don’t even print it, because literally, we physically don’t have the time or the capacity to do it. Just creating digital currency out of nowhere and flooding the U.S. economy with it, which, you know, has gone a long way to create the inflationary circumstance. You add that with the shutdown of the federal government and state governments imposed on goods and services, you have these huge amount of dollars chasing fewer and fewer goods, fewer goods because companies were shut down, fewer goods because employees were incentivized not to work or told that they couldn’t work or couldn’t go back to work. That all has a consequence. And they think just by raising interest rates that they can fix all that. These problems are only slightly borne by the interest rates. What they’re mostly borne by is all this government activity in the private sector distorting markets. And it just shows they absolutely have no understanding of the free market and competitive market capitalism, which they are normally vilifying, including folks like Jamie Dimon, quite honestly. [00:45:44][108.3]