Does He Even Believe This?

On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Senator Schumer’s explanation of the reason for the defeat of so many Democrats in November’s election.

The article reports:

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that voters “didn’t realize how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years heading into November’s elections, claiming it played a key role in his party’s demise.

President-elect Donald Trump scored a historic win for Republicans in November, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, while Vice President Kamala Harris failed to even match the numbers President Joe Biden had received in 2020. On “Meet the Press,” NBC host Kristen Welker questioned Schumer about his thoughts on the “root cause” of the Democrats’ loss, noting that Democratic strategist James Carville had blamed the state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration.

“I told my caucus and I’ll say it here, too. We should regard this election, certainly it was a loss, but it’s also a challenge, and we did some things right against very severe headwinds. We kept four of those seven contested Democratic seats, but we did some things wrong and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong,” Schumer said.

“Then there’s some things we didn’t do that we should have done. One of the things we have to do is we must focus on the working families of America,” Schumer added. “We believe in them and we passed all kinds of legislation that helped them with the infrastructure bill which made our economy stronger and employed lots of people.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, on December 22, 2024, The Center Square reported:

President Joe Biden is only a few weeks away from the end of his time in office, and one key part of his legacy is undeniable: inflation.

Biden has battled inflation from the start, but critics say he helped fuel it with trillions of dollars in deficit spending during his four years in office. Federal debt spending is offset in part by printing money, which increases inflation.

Biden has boasted bringing inflation rates down from about 9% earlier in his term to roughly 2.5% currently.

While the rate of inflation has slowed, that doesn’t mean prices have decreased. In fact, they continue rising, albeit slower than earlier in his term.

The federal government released a a key inflation marker Friday, its Personal Consumption Expenditure index, which rose 2.4% last month, a bit less than expected.

Overall, though, prices have risen more than 20% since Biden took office.

It really is the economy, stupid.

Who Do You Trust To Keep This Promise?

Both the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign have pledged to stop taxing tips in the service industries. When President Trump made the suggestion, the media immediately calculated the missing tax revenue. When Vice-President Harris made the suggestion, the media praised her for the idea. That is how the media works right now.

On August 30, The Center Square reported the following:

In a mirror of national politics, California Republicans followed former President Donald Trump’s lead by proposing to end taxes on tips. While Vice President Kamala Harris, who formerly represented California in the U.S. Senate, embraced the measure, California Democrats said no, shooting down the proposed amendment in the California Senate.

“Even Trump and Harris both say we should eliminate the ‘tip tax,’” said the California Senate Republican Caucus in a statement. 

Soon after Trump announced his proposal to a crowd in Nevada, which has the highest percentage of tipped workers in the nation, Harris also came out in favor of the proposal. The Budget Lab at Yale University reports there are approximately 4 million tipped workers — 2.5% of all workers nationwide. Many tipped workers earn less than the minimum wage, and thus earn the lion’s share of their income from tips. Some higher-paid tipped professions such as barbers and hair stylists would also benefit from this rule change. 

…In the California Senate, Democrats — except for Senate President Pro Tempore Senator Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who abstained, voted to put aside the amendment, while all nine Republicans voted for it.

I think it is rather telling that there are only nine Republicans in the California Senate–which has forty seats. Don’t try to blame the Republicans for anything that happens in California!

The Impact Of Inflation

On Thursday, The Center Square posted an article about the impact of inflation on homebuyers.

The article reports:

(The Center Square) – The housing market is not immune from inflationary woes as buyer’s purchasing power has significantly diminished in four years. Home buyers in 2024 need 80% more income to purchase a home than they did in 2020, according to a new report by Zillow.

“The income needed to comfortably afford a home is up 80% since 2020, while median income has risen 23% in that time,” the report states. That equates to $47,000 more than four years ago.

“Home shoppers today need to make more than $106,000 to comfortably afford a home,” according to the report. “That is 80% more than in January 2020.”

A monthly mortgage payment for a typical U.S. home has nearly doubled since January 2020, the report notes, up 96.4% to $2,188. The calculations are based on a 10% down payment.

Home values also increased over 42% in the last four years, with the typical home nationwide worth roughly $343,000, according to Zillow’s January market report. Mortgage rates in January 2020 were 3%, the report notes. By February 2024, they are closer to 7%.

The article notes:

The report’s analysis was based on quarterly median household income from the American Community Survey, Moody’s Analytics, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index.

The findings were announced as total household debt reached a record $17.5 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report. Mortgage debt increased by $112 billion in Q4 2023 to reach $12.25 trillion. Balances on home equity lines of credit increased by $11 billion, the seventh consecutive quarterly increase after Q1 2022. There are currently $360 billion in aggregate outstanding balances, the Fed states.

The overspending of our government impacts all of us. There will eventually be a tipping point where the housing market crashes because people cannot afford to buy houses. We need to un-elect any Congressman or Senator that continues to vote for overspending.