Our Post-Neoliberal Moment (w/ Mike Konczal)

0:01Jacob Shapiro Hello listeners.

0:02 Welcome to another episode of the Jacob Shapiro podcast. Joining me today is Michael Conal. He is the Senior Director of Policy and Research at the Economic Security Project. He also, from 2024 to 2025, was the Chief Economist and Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and National Economic Council.

0:17 So because of the level and tenor of our political discourse, I have to begin with this disclaimer. Uh, if you are. On the right, you will disagree with many of the things that you are about to hear. I trust that my listeners come here, not because they're gonna get exactly what they agree with all the time, but because they're going to get different perspectives and that they are going to use those perspectives to formulate their own view.

0:38 So you should know going in that Michael Conal, he has served, um, he served with President Joe Biden, like, gave him economic advice and he is gonna come from that viewpoint. And I would ask you if that. Sends a shiver down your spine. That's all the more reason to listen to this episode. You have to listen to people that you disagree with if you're going to get ground truth about what's going on.

0:55 So thank you so much to Mike for making the time and sharing his views. Um, I learned a lot. I hope that, uh, listeners learn a lot too. Um, otherwise, I think that's all that I have. Um, take good care of the people that you love. Cheers and see you out there. Uh, most listeners will not be able to see the picture of FDR behind your head, but that pretty clearly telegraphs to me who your heroes are.

1:20 Mike, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's good to see you.

1:23Mike Konczal Thanks for having me on.

1:25Jacob Shapiro Uh, you know, I was prepping for the podcast.

1:26 I wanted to talk to you about the economy, the one big, beautiful bill of market reaction, tariffs. I mean, we're recording on Tuesday, July 8th. We'll probably get this out in the next couple of days. Who knows how many new tariffs or new letters we will have from President Trump by the time our listeners hear this, but when I was doing my research on you, I found your substack, and it's called Rorty Bomb.

1:44 And I assume that's an illusion to Richard Rorty. Am I, am I making a mistake there?

1:48Mike Konczal No you're not.

1:49 It's a, it's a very old economics blog. I started in the Ts, actually, especially around the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it just picked up steam and I kept writing, and now I professionally talk about the economy for a living, which is.

2:03Jacob Shapiro It is amazing.

2:04 I sort of feel the same way about geopolitics, but you, you took me back to my college days because my college roommate was obsessed with Richard Brody. He made me read Achieving Our Country just so that we could like have arguments, uh, over in the chapter house at Cornell University. The chapter house has since burned down, which is really, really sad.

2:21 And I came at it from a, I was a Leo Strauss fan in college. I like to think I've grown up a little bit, still, still, like some aspects of Strauss. But I'm not, like, did not drink all of the Straussian Kool-Aid, but you can imagine me and my college roommate, him with Rorty on the one side, me with Strauss on the other side, uh, dueling in a bar in Ithaca, New York.

2:38 So you actually sent me down a little rabbit hole because I spent like 30 minutes this morning reading, like achieving our country and some other things. And it was, uh, it was both a breath of fresh air and also like. Prescient, like I didn't quite realize just how much Rorty got, right. Both in terms of, um, sort of the cultural left devouring, um, the left in general.

2:59 And also about his warnings about, you know, uh, society turning towards strong men if government can't respond to the ills of globalization and things like that. So before we started, I just wanted. Say, thank you for getting Richard Rorty in my mind and ask if there was anything you wanted to share about that, or, or why you picked Rorty as the namesake for your Substack.

3:16Mike Konczal It was literally like an old a IM handle.

3:19 I'm, I'm of a certain age, so I was a big fan. I also was a big fan in college and Red Aton too. And what I'd say for your listeners is for a person who's dealing with really complicated theories of truth and ideas and knowledge, in addition to politics, uh, he's a very clear writer. Uh, even his academic work is incredibly clear and, and accessible in a way that I think is both, um, good for a reader, uh, especially if you don't have a lot of background.

3:41 And also I think speaks to his, uh, philosophical commitments, which was about accessibility and, uh, egalitarianism and a, a lot of the really good stuff. And so, yeah, and the stuff still holds up very well. Occasionally you'll see quotes from achieving our country and a few other of the later works on, on these.

3:56 Political questions about right-wing populism and they show up on social media or on Twitter X and uh, they get shared because they really do speak to this moment.

4:05Jacob Shapiro Well, and, and also fundamentally optimistic.

4:08 Like, fundamentally like had an optimism about the United States and talked about it and talked about how, you know, the left in particular, but not just the left was losing that optimism. That's why it was such, such a breath of fresh air to, to read him again this morning. 'cause it was like, oh yes, like there is this thing called National pride and there are myths that we tell each other.

4:25 And just because every single norm seems to be busted in front of our faces every single day on social media like. There is, there is an idea here, but before we get too far down the philosophical rabbit hole, um, why don't we start with the one big beautiful bill or I think, what is it, it's official name now, uh, is, uh, something boring?

4:44 The two oh, the 2025 Tax Act, I think is what they're officially calling it now. Um. You know, there's so much in it and obviously the people who voted for it don't even know what's in it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, uh, from my old home state of Georgia was, you know, saying, oh, I didn't know that these things were in here that I voted for.

5:01 It. It was like, isn't it your job to read the bill? Uh, but you know, when, when you talk about things like, you know, the biggest Medicaid cuts in history and double what any other previous administration ever cut from Medicaid, when you talk about, you know, cutting snap benefits or getting food to poor people by something like, you know.

5:18 Uh, 25% or something radical. Uh, when you, I, I had, there was an incredible chart. I think this was Ian Bremmer, but suddenly, uh, somebody posted, um, ICE's new budget versus the world's top defense budget. ICE will now have a budget larger, larger than the military of Italy, the, the military of Israel.

5:35 I mean, just kind of like mind boggling statistics. Um, so I, I just wanted to sort of, from your, I mean, there's so much we could talk about in the one big Beautiful Bill, but if you only have 50 minutes and you're listening to this podcast, like what are the key. Takeaways, who are the winners? Who are the losers?

5:49 Are there, is there anything positive about it? What would Richard Rorty say about it? Take that question in whatever direction you want.

5:54Mike Konczal Yeah, before we get into the deep stuff, I think love it or hate it.

5:57 I think you can agree that the name is pretty cringe and very, very uncomfortable. And I kind of, it, it's almost an extra level of indignity that we have to talk about the bill as such. And you know, it, it was rushed through pretty quickly, especially at the end. So, um, again, you know, love it or hate it.

6:11 Um, you know, the, the fact that it makes such comprehensive changes from everything from our energy markets to our healthcare markets on such a quick timeframe, especially at the end, where they were just aiming to get it done by the 4th of July, um, means that I think we still don't really know, and I think the Republicans don't know, and, and maybe many of them don't wanna know the really severe consequences it's gonna have on, on people who aren't even directly impacted, but will be indirectly impacted.

6:33 So, you know, I'd say the bill does four major things. It's, um, it's, uh, an exte, it's a, a significant. Extension and rewriting of the tax code. So it extends, um, many of the tax cuts that were passed on a temporary basis in 2017. Uh, in particular, um, it does a lot of, about 80% of those tax cuts go to the top.

6:52 Um, you know, top 10% of incomes, it's essentially a trillion dollars for people who make millions and billions of dollars. Uh, and it's a cut of, we will talk about the distributional in a minute, but it's a cut of a lot of programs so that the net effect is actually that about 40% of Americans, people making $56,000 or less, $50,000 or less will actually be worse off from this bill.

7:13 They'll have less resources either through Medicaid, snap, other, other provisions, which is very unique. Um, you know, the Bush tax cuts, the very first. Donald Trump tax cuts, tax cuts in, in the 21st century, but under Republican governance, tend to like cut taxes for everyone and just a lot more for very rich people.

7:30 And you can argue with the proportional, uh, you know, basis for that. But this is an actual reduction, the standard of living for almost half of Americans, which is just wild given that it also blows out the deficit about $4 trillion. So, um, you know, let's. So, you know, the major things that happen, I, I'd say there's four when, when is the taxes.

7:48 The second is a reworking of our healthcare markets, cutting about 17 million people from healthcare. Third is reworking our energy markets, taking us off a path towards green energy. And then fourth is, as you brought up, uh, a real expansion in deportations and border patrols and, and particularly the funding device.

8:04 So, you know, we just talked about taxes. Let's talk about healthcare for a minute between, um, severe work requirements and other kinds of cuts on Medicaid. And between not extending, uh, Biden era premium tax credits for the Obamacare exchanges. You know, nonpartisan estimates have between 11 to 17 million people losing their healthcare.

8:23 And if you take the, the totality of all those things I just mentioned, including the not extensions, it's probably closer to 17 million. Um, in addition, that's mostly through Medicaid. Um, Medicaid if, if your listeners are thinking Medicaid's, well that's really like a safety net program for the very poor, well, no, it's actually been expanded quite a bit over the last 50 years, particularly since the mid eighties, but especially under the Affordable Care Act, what is often called Obamacare, the 2011 Healthcare Extension.

8:48 Um, you know, a lot more people get healthcare through Medicaid that are middle class and working class and people who are fully employed and about half of births happen through Medicaid. It's a much broader, more experience. Expansive program than it was 15 or 20 years ago. And this really does put a real hammer on it.

9:06 Um, you know, they, you know, we can talk a little bit about why it happens this way, but, you know, these work requirements are really kinda like paperwork requirements. And they're done in a, when they have been done in the past, they've been done in a punitive way to try to like kick people off who can't keep up with it.

9:21 And if, you know, you're struggling working two service sector jobs, trying to raise kids on minimum wage, um, you know, you don't have a lot of bandwidth. You don't have. On a personal attorney or accountant to go through this paperwork for you. And so you know, you could lose healthcare. And that's what we've seen in the states that have tried to do it, which they've often tried to walk back and you know, Medicaid doesn't just help those individual people.

9:40 It also backstops a lot of healthcare networks. So hundreds of rural hospitals are gonna close. 'cause Medicaid is a major funder in rural communities. Hundreds of nursing homes are gonna close because Medicaid supports people, uh, who are elderly on Medicare. To get, uh, people who are poor to get access to nursing homes and other kinds of, um, helpful care.

10:00 So, you know, it's gonna be a really substantial working reworking in the healthcare market to make healthcare a lot more precarious, a lot less a sense of a right or something that you've, you know, something that you work with the government to make sure you can get, depending on your work status and your income status instead of something that is much more.

10:16 I'm say paranoid, but it's so something that's, you're much more likely to lose something that's much more, the government's much more skeptical that you deserve to have this. And it percolates through a lot of other ways in the ways that, you know, um, how easy it is to get Obamacare exchanges, how easy it's to get certain kinds of Medicaid funding.

10:31 But the general atmospheres of it. Is the idea that the government should be much more skeptical that you should get healthcare and after, you know, for people who remember healthcare before the Affordable Care Act where you could lose healthcare for preexisting conditions, um, it's a very different world.

10:45 It's, it's gonna reverse a lot of the progress we've made against that kind of barbarism over the last 20 years.

10:50Jacob Shapiro Hmm.

10:51 And what about, and what about green energy and, and, um, and immigrants, what, what are the cliff notes there?

10:57Mike Konczal Sure.

10:57 So, um, it repeals quite a bit of the, um, uh, green tax credits that were put in place in the Inflation Reduction Act. Um, the 2020. Uh, law that President Biden signed into office and, you know, healthcare, I'm sorry, energy costs are gonna go up for people like reasonable estimates. Say maybe even next year, $110 per person very soon, you know, $200 a person, uh, or households, uh, annually.

11:22 Crucially at a point where there's gonna be a lot of new energy demand from the mainstreaming and extension of ai, which is very mm-hmm. Data intensive with its data centers. Um, at a point where, and in a point where, you know, we had started to make real progress and in both the deployment of green energy, like solar panels and batteries and, and so forth, and also like.

11:41 Rebuilding our competitive industrial edge in those sectors, uh, which was really important both for fighting climate change, for making sure the United States is at the frontier of leading 21st century, uh, industries. And for making sure that it's not just China, um, who is a, you know, geopolitical, um, you know, frenemy somewhere.

12:01 We don't wanna be solely dependent on one country. I think that's true of any country. But in particular, we wanna make sure that there's a diversified set of. Um, resources that, you know, people can, as we continue to try to decarbonize over the next decade, uh, that's not just China. And this, I think, really throws us off that and makes it so that China will really be leading that industry in the 21st century.

12:22Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

12:22 And then there's also the immigration component of this, and I, I have to confess, I, I'm so confused by the voices of some in the Republican party, like Vice President Vance was somebody who, in his past would've been against something like this and knows very well how important Medicaid and some of these things are to rural communities.

12:39 But when he was on or. On, on Twitter or X or whatever we're supposed to call it. He talked about how the most important thing were the provisions on ice and ending illegal immigration. Because if we don't end illegal immigration, according to him the country, that's what's gonna send the country into bankruptcy.

12:52 And I have trouble processing that because it's actually the exact opposite. We're, we're a country of immigrants, um, and we've already seen demographic rates in the United States. Edge down to literally historical lows, like they haven't gotten this low in recorded US history really, since we've been collecting the data.

13:09 This is not to say that we should just open the border. Like Biden I think was dealing with a really. A difficult border situation. And if you look at the, the statistics now at the border, if you could trust them, like we're at, you know, extreme lows of border crossings in general, but that means that immigrants are not coming into the country and that should mean increases in the cost of labor and other things.

13:29 And you, you're starting to hear from farmers and other, and restaurants, others who rely on that kind of immigrant labor that things are starting to get a little bit. Tight. So, I mean, there's a two part question there. There's one, like what, what do you see in the bill tied to migration? And then two, how do you explain this, this fixation from even people in the Republican party who would not be cool with any of the things that you just talked about, but say, oh no, no, but we need this immigration plank because this is the thing that's the real threat.

13:54 Like I'm, I'm having a really hard time explaining that move to myself.

13:58Mike Konczal Yeah, I, it's, it is very hard to follow.

14:00 I think a few things to note. One is that this funding is not just for border security, and as far as we know, a lot of the border security build the wall kind of funding is fungible towards building large scale detention centers and con, you know, concentration camps and in the literal sense of like concentrating people.

14:18 Um, you know, there, there's, what, what I'd say is that. Lemme pause for a second and ask you to take out that pause. Yep. So I can think for one second.

14:28Jacob Shapiro I got you.

14:34Mike Konczal I'd say three things.

14:35 One is that, you know, we have six months of what, you know, immigration policy looks like under President Trump. It is very unpopular already. Given that it was a very strong issue for him going into his second term and a very bad issue for the Democrats coming outta the Biden administration and he's already polarized it in such a way that is, is pretty noteworthy and for good reason because I don't think he's doing the things people thought he was going to do.

14:58 Um, they're not particularly going after violent criminals. They're not particularly going after. Gangs or cartels or people who have committed serious crimes, you know, they're literally putting quotas on ice to round up people. They're going to nannies and parks. They're going to people outside Home Depot.

15:15 They're going to people who are having their naturalization ceremonies or or, or processes or are part of the asylum process, and they're rounding up people and they're not just deporting them, they're often sending them to very dangerous. Jails in other countries and prisons in other countries, and really punitive actions far beyond I think what anyone would have rationally expected.

15:37 Um, and there's a really important case for border security is a very important case for making sure people who are violent criminals, um, are not here. Um, that is not what they're doing. It's not what they're prioritizing. Second, um, you know, with the, with the ICE resources they've already had, they've used it to kind of.

15:54 Do political battles that I think are unbecoming to serious concerns about, you know, immigration and national security. Um, they're terrorizing communities in Los Angeles because Gavin Newsom, the governor there is an opponent of the president. Um, you know, they are not, I. Going after red states in the same way.

16:12 Um, they're using as a political culture and like it's pretty scary that they're gonna get more resources to do that kind of thing. Um, you know, they do not generally have the level of deportation infrastructure that they want, and so that's going to, a lot of this funding is going to go to that, which is to say, building.

16:30 Detention camps. We're already seeing one in Florida, so called the alligator El Alcatraz. Um, that's really scary stuff. I think people are not going to like what that looks like and how it affects their communities where, you know, people might be opposed to immigration an abstract, but their actual neighbor who's been here 20 years and, um, you know, seeking to be naturalized who runs a business like that's, you know, when that person's just grabbed off the street by someone in a mask who doesn't identify themselves.

16:55 That's pretty scary. And then the third thing is, you know, I. I often don't exaggerate or get, um, you know, I always try to take a balanced view of where President Trump has been, both in his first term and second term, but the idea of building a police force that's accountable to him that can act with the way they've already set up ICE to act is pretty scary.

17:14 Um, the sociologists and political scientists, uh, theta scotch pole, um, had a really great piece in TPM, uh, a website, um, that talks a lot about politics, about how, um, you know, one reason. Historically, I think fa fascism hasn't risen or taken hold here, uh, is because there's no national police.

17:30 The police are controlled by counties and cities and it's, and states in, in different ways. And that there, there is the FBI and obviously there's the CIA and there's other things as well. I. But, um, giving the president this kind of national police force that they are using in a punitive and political way, uh, on a far expanded scale, I mean ICE is gonna have the budget of the FBI plus, um, is, is just crazy and I think quite dangerous.

17:53 So though it's not the most immediate thing of people losing millions of people losing their healthcare and, you know, almost half of people being worse off for this bill passing. Um, you know, this political change I think is pretty scary and I think it's pretty important to watch.

18:06Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

18:07 And again, an an area where, where Rorty was pretty prescient. Um, okay. Well before we get into some more criticism of it, I do wanna try and, and be balanced. Um, and of course I don't think anybody has read this bill from start to finish. I haven't even finished reading the AI summary 50 page AI summary that chat CPT generated for me from the, the 1000 plus pages of this bill in general.

18:28 D from what you've seen thus far though, is there anything in there that you like? I mean, I know you've got FDR behind your head and we're talking about Rorty and like anybody can look up your bio. But is there, are there any redeeming qualities for you? Is there anything in this bill where you're like, okay, cool, like that, that's actually a good idea.

18:41 Like, we shouldn't throw this baby out with the bath water.

18:44Mike Konczal So I think if, um, you know, if, if, uh, vice President Harris

18:48 had won the election in 2024, um. You know, there she had campaigned as President Biden had campaigned in that election before he withdrew on keeping the tax cuts for people making under $400,000 a year. So they made a real distinction between people who, you know, like. Vast majority of people, maybe like 90% of the population, and then the top 10% would have their taxes raised.

19:13 Um, I think there's an argument that we should all be paying a little bit more in taxes to get a little bit more social insurance. And, you know, the overall bill in 2017 was not particularly good. So it's not like, um, you know, like going back to the tax code of 2017 wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing though.

19:27 I, I think under. The political constraints we face right now, it would've certainly been the case that whoever had won the election would have continued the tax cuts for most people, which is in there now of those people. Now they're facing snap cuts, they're facing amp cuts, they're facing Medicaid not being there if they need it or if they use it, um, they're gonna have indirect hits from the way their access to healthcare happens throughout these other effects.

19:52 I think that's all quite bad, but I think that extension probably would've happened no matter what. Um, it's the, you know, the regressive part of it, both on the cuts and on the top one, top 10%, top 1% I think is particularly bad. Um, you know, that's honestly, I, and I, uh, pause for a second. Lemme just see if I can find something else.

20:21 The child tax cut. I'm sorry. Cut that. Okay. Start again.

20:27Jacob Shapiro I got,

20:27Mike Konczal yep.

20:30 The child tax credit is extended, uh, it's, uh, it's expanded out, uh, a couple hundred bucks, which is good for parents who are able to claim it. However, it's not fully refundable. So for parents with low income or no income, they who, you know, often young parents have a lot of kids and they're, you know, quite deep in poverty.

20:46 Um. You know, that's not gonna help them. Very much worse. And something I think is pretty cruel is that for children who are US citizens who are born here, but have two immigrant parents without social security numbers, um, who perhaps undocumented that child no longer qualifies for the CTC. Um, they do if they have one parent who has social security number, which was, uh, you know, something that changed over the course of the bill, which is for the better.

21:10 Um, but you know, the fact that it takes away, um. A tax credit meant to help children, you know, thrive and get outta poverty and build, you know, build a strong family and a foundation for success. Kids who are US citizens, um, and whose parents are perhaps undocumented or immigrants. Um, you know, I think I find that very cruel and I, you know, I think it more than sours the expansion of the child tax credit as nobles that might be.

21:39Jacob Shapiro Yeah, there's a three year pilot program in the bill that

21:42 offers basically a thousand dollars from the government for any American child born between 2025 and 2028. You get a thousand bucks that the government's gonna put up to be invested in an index fund. Um, well first of all, as somebody who had daughters in 2022 and 2024, can we please make this retroactive?

21:58 I don't understand why you have to be. Like past 2025. This is a great idea. Like we should probably be doing this like a long time ago and putting aside nest eggs for children. So just to, for the listeners to think like there are some things in this bill that are, that are not terrible, but anytime you're talking about an a thousand page bill that does all the things that you're talking about, doing it so quickly without the requisite.

22:17 Level of discussion, like we probably don't even know the things that are broken in the bill and the things that are gonna be there. I want to go through your list of, of four things for a second. 'cause, you know, from, from the point of view of the tax code, okay, so wealthy people are gonna get taxed less and poor people are gonna be taxed more.

22:33 So taking money away from poor people. Number two, like getting rid of, um, you know, rural hospitals and some of these other things with the cuts to Medicaid taking away people's, um, health insurance. I'm, I'm vividly reminded by the way of, um, when people. You know when Trump campaigned the first time, they would go out and interview people and people would say, yes, we want to get rid of Obamacare, and these people would be on Obamacare.

22:54 They didn't understand that their health insurance was tied to Obamacare. I think this speaks to the charisma and power that Donald Trump has over the natural, the national psyche. We'll get there in a second, but, okay, so more people will die because of this green energy. You're gonna make energy more expensive.

23:08 Like, look at how much solar China's turning on every single month right now. And it's not just like, like you don't have to be only for renewables or only for hydrocarbons. I would think that the median voter would say, what I want is cheaper energy. I don't really give a crap where it comes from. And so if you're saying, no solar, no win, like we're getting rid of all of these different provisions, you're basically saying, okay, now you're chained to the hydrocarbon market.

23:31 And it's been relatively low. Recently that's been a reprieve on inflation, but that's not gonna continue forever. And you're basically betting on one horse. And then, you know, expansion of deportation, MI migration, and especially illegal migration. I know that it's something that captures people's minds, but if you get rid of all immigrants, like you will see growth in this country, probably you'll see negative, uh, a negative impact on growth.

23:52 So we're gonna have lower growth, more expensive energy. People are gonna die, and poor people are gonna have to pay more in taxes. So the question I have is, how is this possible? Like I understand that Donald Trump can say that he's gonna shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and nobody's gonna get him. He's the Teflon man.

24:07 But for the Republican party and for the congressman and senators who need like show things to their constituents, I don't understand how they could think that this bill is in their best interest. Because if all these things are true, they're gonna get slaughtered in the midterms, aren't they? Or am I missing something?

24:22Mike Konczal So here's a couple things on that front.

24:23 So first is that the Medicaid cuts don't go into effect until after the midterm, so at the end of next year, which is, um, and you know, some of the, um. You know, some of the more mega senators, um, you know, Senator Tom Cotton, for instance, has emphasized, you know, how much the coalition that they're trying to build around, uh, president Trump on the Republican side really is, you know, includes a lot of people on Medicaid, especially this expanded Medicaid and that, you know, going after it's gonna hurt their ability to kind of like realign the population and he's right.

24:54 Um, and so I think maybe he thinks you can kick it, you know, in two at the end of next year. Maybe, you know, if the. You know, Democrats take the house, maybe they can work with Democrats to kick it out another two years, but they, you know, the tax cuts happen right now, but some of the cuts, um, you know, happen in a few years and maybe they can be kicked out indefinitely.

25:11 Um, I don't think that's gonna work because hospitals don't budget and do their capital allocation that way. And they're certainly not gonna like, think, well, you know, there's a a 50% chance this won't happen next year, so we're gonna like, expand right now. Like we're already seeing some hospitals get caught and we.

25:26 Continue to see more so. Mm-hmm. I, I don't think that's gonna buy them the reprieve that they think it will. Second is I think they've, you know, it's interesting that, you know, um, they used to talk a lot about repealing Obamacare. That's what President Trump ran on in 2016. That was what they spent the subsequent two years through 2018 trying to do.

25:44 And now they're, they are in fact cutting a lot of medi, uh, of Obamacare, killing a lot of the expansion of state level. Uh. Medicaid, but they're not saying it out loud. They're actually like hiding from it as much as humanly possible, which tells you that they know that the politics are bad. Uh, Senator Tillis is, is, you know, said he's not gonna seek reelection.

26:02 He is a moderate belief in North Carolina who, uh, you know, just vote on this. Bill basically checked out and said, I'm not gonna run for reelection. They give you a sense of the politics of it, and you know, they, when you do ask them, and I think it's a. That's all it sounds very poll tested, so I'm no doubt it's gonna work a little bit, um, at least with their voters, uh, on this idea that the people, the only people who are gonna lose their healthcare are able bodied young people who could be working but aren't.

26:27 And from that point of view, like there's just not that many people on Medicaid like that. First of all, um, it's a very small percentage of the people and you can't get that level of cuts and the savings particularly that they, that they have booked, um, with, with the, without. Um, going into people who are actually working, uh.

26:46 People might lose their jobs because they have erratic hours. Um, you're supposed to work 80 hours a month. But some people, you know, we see it from um, surveys of, of income that, you know, people, a lot of service sector workers just have very volatile hours and maybe the job, maybe the hours just aren't there in a certain month and they could lose their healthcare just because of the random coming and goings of their employer.

27:05 And so, you know, the idea that only undeserving people are gonna get hurt by this. Um, you know, something that they can tell cameras a lot, but I don't think it's ultimately gonna hold up for them.

27:15Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

27:15 It seems to me just the poli the, the economic shockwaves from this over a period of years are gonna be very bad for the Republican party, and I don't think they'll stick to President Trump. He has shown a unique ability to have water, just, you know, float off him like a duck. But the rest of the Republicans, like I. That this is major change.

27:31 Like there's a, there's a reason like they didn't end up repealing Obamacare. 'cause you know, McCain famously went, went in there in the Senate and put the thumbs down. But, uh, careful what you wish for sort of thing. Um, I wanna tie it to markets a little bit. Markets are relatively muted today. Have been muted for the past week.

27:45 Um, cousin Marco's been on my podcast quite a few times and one of his talking points has been, look, when the Trump administration first came in for, to start the second term, they were talking about blowing out the deficit. 10 to 15 trillion. Now we're talking about three. So what, like the market is like, ah, this is not as bad as it could have been and sort of proceeding forward.

28:03 And he has even made the case that this is probably the last time that the US government will be able to do this because, you know, eventually the bill is gonna come due. And with you've, when you've got debt climbing to wherever it is and you've got Elon Musk over here talking about a third party based on fiscal discipline, like maybe the cards are there.

28:17 I can't really see that. I've sort of talked about if you look at the spending, like there's actually gonna be more spending up until. President Trump is theoretically no longer in office, and then the next president is supposed to inherit this and make the cuts that balance all these figures that are saying those things.

28:30 But anyway, I wanted to ask you from a deficit perspective or a US debt perspective, is there anything sanguine in here? Is it, do you, do you buy this view that it's less than what it could have been? Um, is this the last time we're gonna get this level of fiscal pro or is this just US politics right now?

28:44 Is it just, we don't have any fiscal conservatives. We just have people who are gonna blow out the deficit to realize their political goals.

28:51Mike Konczal Yeah.

28:51 So I, I wanna take two different things. One is like, what was the kind of delta from what people might have reasonably expected, uh, in, you know, like January of this year, once it was clear, um, you know, the Republicans would have a United controller, you know, even November, December of last year, and I.

29:07 You know, the deficit path is probably a bit worse than I think people would have reasonably thought. I think you would've reasonably thought that they would've extended what they had, um, in the TCJA, the previous President Trump's 2017 bill, uh, uh, some of it was permanent, but a lot of it expired.

29:23 Would have expired at the end of this year. And so I think a reasonable person would've thought, well, they're gonna extend that and maybe they're gonna do another. Half trillion in some kind of gimmick stuff that President Trump had campaigned on, no taxes on tips, which doesn't actually end up helping as many workers as you would think, even people who make their incomes in tips.

29:40 Um, but instead there's a lot more stuff on that front. Uh, a lot more stuff is made permanent, A lot more stuff like, uh, 1 99 A, which is like if you don't know about it, then you're not gonna benefit from it. But if you do know about it, you're probably very happy. Uh, if you're a very wealthy lawyer or business owner or a person who picks their own income.

30:00 Um, you know, like a lot of this stuff is more regressive and more permanent than I think people would've probably thought. So it definitely spends more than people, I think, reasonably would've thought. Um. Also, like, I honestly didn't think they'd do the cuts to Medicaid the way they did. I, I, I think that was also surprising.

30:19 And though those cuts aren't enough to offset how much more, how much more spending there is by cutting taxes or how, how much more or how much less revenue there is as a result of the tax cuts. Um, I, I am still very, very surprised. I would not have thought that they would've gone as hard as they did in January, for instance.

30:38 Mm-hmm. Uh, when I was first thinking about what this might look like, um. And so, you know, it's, it's a bigger deficit. Um, and some of the. Cuts that, you know, you can imagine a world in which there are cuts to healthcare, but also you raise taxes because you're very worried about the deficit. And that's generally how, kinda like grand bargains work.

30:57 But here you've just cut a bunch of healthcare, uh, in a way that's not where the healthcare costs are scary, which is, you know. Has could be more like a, there are ways to bring down healthcare costs and healthcare spending by the government that I think have bipartisan consensus and just, you know, uh, a lot of wealthy people would lose their lose, lose those, lose that, uh, wasteful spending.

31:19 But this is not it. And this is not the way to do it. This is, uh, you can just see it by the fact that they're saying it's not gonna do anything to people, but they're budgeting as if it's gonna cut, kick, you know, 11 million people off their healthcare. So. Um, so I do think it's, it's a much worse fiscal picture than I would've thought the Trump administration was probably gonna do in January in terms of like financial markets, um, on one hand it's a little bit more, spending a little bit more of a net impulse, like a kensen fiscal stimulus into an economy that's been at, you know, the same unemployment rate for a year now.

31:48 Uh, pretty much clearly near full employment. Um, on the other hand, the tariffs are a pretty regressive, um, drag on growth. And, um, independent of, of their allocative effects, independent of how much there might slow our economy and our potential over the medium term, right out the door. There's, it's just, it's raising taxes on, on consumers.

32:07 And so, uh, we're already seeing revenue go up from that. And so like that, the drag from that is probably gonna balance out. So it's not clear to me there's a real big. Growth impulse one way or the other on this bill. People have debated on this quite a bit, but you know, it probably nets out. So not a lot more spending and we see consumer spending basically flat this year, if not down.

32:26 Um, you know, stock markets have been euphoric and angry and upset and all over the place because, um, even to this day, you know, recording this on the eighth, I have no idea what our tariff policy is gonna be and I followed for a living. So, uh, anyone's guess is what? You know, a year from now where this thing actually lands and if it ever lands anywhere.

32:43 So, you know, I think, uh, a lot of the volatility in stock markets and financial markets, it probably reflects the fact that, um, just the huge amount of uncertainty about what we're actually gonna do with imports and tariffs and other really key things for the global economy.

32:57Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

32:58 And, and maybe listeners will write to me and explain this to me, like, I, I still, like, I just cannot comprehend the Medicaid cuts like you said, because Okay. Like, yes, you need to cut. Like medical costs in the United States. It's a big portion of spending. But if you're gonna do that, if you're gonna do department of government efficiency, style cutting, then you cut across the board like you try and do spending all over the place.

33:16 But this is not what this bill does. Like this bill says, no, we're gonna cut from this one thing, which means people die in places where people vote for us in large numbers and we're gonna throw money at these other things which don't actually help, uh, you know, which are. Which not only like, um, like yes, they're, you can argue whether they're political or not, but they're gonna increase the deficit.

33:34 So the whole reason you're, you're taking on the really tough problem of Medicaid is because the deficit is a problem, but you're not actually fixing anything. So why would you go after Medicaid? And I'm not saying this from an ideological point of view, I'm saying from a sort political strategy point of view, it seems really, really shortsighted to cut this thing because if you're adding all this other stuff.

33:53 Why not just keep an extra trillion on so that you don't have the people that are mad at you in two or three years or whenever the cuts go through? Um, I don't know. It, it's just really hard for me to process, but. Um, may, maybe we turn to tariffs there as well, and we can spend a little bit of time on that.

34:09 Um, it's what, July 8th? We, we were liberated on, on April 2nd or whatever it was. I hope everybody's enjoying their liberation. To your point, we don't know what tariff policy is. I. The Japanese don't know what tariff policy is. The South Koreans don't know what tariff policy is. Different countries and leaders of countries are getting strange letters with weird capital letters and with things spelled wrong, uh, that tells them that they are getting X tariff, right?

34:31 And then President Trump is coming out and tweeting. Actually, it's a deal, not a tariff, and it's all gonna be towards August 1st and it blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, um. The, the flip side of that though is, you know, we have not seen a huge uptick in inflation since Liberation Day. We haven't seen, uh, particularly negative jobs, reports or anything like that, like the economy seems to be okay.

34:51 So I wanted to get your take on Terrace, but also wanted to ask why hasn't the bottom fallen out? Because it seemed for a couple weeks thereafter, liberation Day, you know, we were reading about supply chain gridlock and it was gonna be COVID again without the government support and everything was gonna fall off the wheels and it, and it hasn't happened.

35:06 And maybe some of that is. You know, uh, Trump always chickens out, but it also feels like there hasn't been this sort of one-to-one, um, relationship between the two. And, and maybe you'll tell me that more is coming, but I, I've noticed, like I expected weirder CPI prints, I expected weirder signals, um, in the market.

35:22 And aside from, you know, the bond market having its little freak out and the dollar continuing, its descent since Liberation Day. Like most markets seem to be, uh, strangely like sanguine based on all the chaos that's happening around them. So take that any direction you want.

35:36Mike Konczal Yeah, absolutely.

35:37 So, um, as a reminder for your listeners on April 2nd, president Trump announced, um, uh, really large tariffs, um, that would, I, I believe be essentially 20% tariff rate, which we haven't seen since the 1930s. And at that point it was already declining. Um, you know, right now, you know, it, it, it.

35:55 Right now it's, it's about 3% be, you know, in the first term of, uh, president Trump, you know, it was like one point half percent. He brought it up to two to 3%. Now they're jumping up to 20%. Even at that, the worst. Even at the point where the impact was gonna be the most intense, you know, forecasters basically gave it a 50 50% chance of a recession because imports at the end of the day, are not that big of part of the economy.

36:16 There are things you can substitute. It's less that it would be a technical recession, uh, where there's, you know, two quarters of negative GDP growth and unemployment goes up substantially, and instead just a more general sluggish stagnation. The analogy I use a lot is, um. The uk uh, England, after Brexit in 2016, where, you know, they withdrew from the European Union really became anti-trade and the, like, the most visceral way that they could be, the equivalent of us doing, you know, 15 to 20% tariff rates and the economy just sucked for a long time and still sucks, right?

36:48 Like, you know, it just, it's slower. Um, you know, I, I. You if you know, just it's slower. Things aren't working as well. People are just feeling poorer. And once you get into that low gear, that stag stagnation, it's really hard to get out of it because you first have to dig out of that thing before you can even do all the stuff we want to do.

37:06 That's still hard to like. Rebuild growth. So that's always been my base case is less like there is going to be a recession or a stag, like 1970 stagflation, which I saw was exaggerated, but you know, it was at, at the peak number was like a reasonable fear. Um, more this kinda like longer term stagnation.

37:23 Now, you know, a lot of companies from what we're seeing is. You know, they're not sure what to do with their prices 'cause they're not actually sure what the end rate of these these tariffs are gonna be. Right. So we just, you know, we finally had another announcement yesterday on the seventh, which kinda looked a lot like the Li Li Liberation Day rates, which were quite high.

37:41 Uh, and you know, some people think, well maybe now that the bills passed, he's gonna go ahead and go gung-ho here in his, the Trump's administration is really gonna jam through high tariffs because they did the one law that they wanted to pass. Mm-hmm. Um, maybe. Maybe not, I don't know. Maybe they think it's gonna give them more negotiation to do more grandstanding and more deals.

38:00 It is honestly, quite hard as someone who watches this professionally to even really get a sense of, so you can imagine a lot of business economists at various Fortune 500 companies, uh, or the s and p 500 companies that's saying like, you know, we don't know what to do, so let's just kick the can. Let's wait, let's run down inventories, which we've heard a lot about in, uh, in the chatter without necessarily increasing prices.

38:20 And once you run down inventory, not then, it's all prices, right? Um, and so that's, that's one thing. Second, the job market, you know, like is gonna be, it's gonna be weird because, you know, like it's, the economy is slowing, people are spending less money. We've seen it so far this year. You know, we're gonna get another GDP report in a few weeks.

38:38 Um, you know, it's. I'll say during the Biden administration, I served in the Biden administration, um, and worked on, on some of the inflation policy and analysis. You know, the soft landing was pretty miraculous. The fact that we were able to bring down inflation, the l from a very high level to a, a regular level without a recession, without unemployment really even going up very much and with, you know, GDP growth faster than trend.

39:04 Um, was pretty remarkable, but it did leave the economy a little fragile, right? Like interest rates have been high. Um, you know, housing had slowed quite a bit. Construction had slowed quite a bit. Um, you know, a lot of the cyclical jobs had slowed a bit. There's a lot more jobs in healthcare. Um, I still think that's.

39:21 A very solid economy, but it's not something you'd really wanna stress, right? Like it's not something you really wanna put pressure on. So it is true the jobs, you know, the labor reports last six months look a lot like the six months before, at the end of the Biden administration, you know, unemployment between four and 4.2%, a hundred, 150,000 jobs a month.

39:38 Um. But you know, like once you start stressing that there's, there's not a lot of, you know, there, it could, it could fall apart pretty quick, which is why I think it's there. There, the uncertainty around tariffs, much less, just the tariffs themselves has been really. Really surprising to me.

39:53Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

39:53 What about inflation? I know that, um, you know, if you look at, um, data from, you know, Michigan Survey of Consumers, you get, you know, really high, uh, rates of expected inflation over the next five to 10 years. At the same time, if, if you look at like the New York Fed, like, uh, I think it was just this morning, like release some data that.

40:12 Uh, expectations were maybe down a little bit, at least from one year from now, uh, 3% rather than than 3.2%. I've been looking at the CPI and I continue to think, you know, you strip out energy, um, which is really bringing it down like doesn't look so great to me. And I feel like to, to your point, once you run down the inventories and if you still have all of these trade issues, like you can substitute some things, but you can't substitute all things.

40:32 Like, we still rely on lots of in inputs from lots of different places around the world. So those costs are gonna have to be. Passed on a little bit, but where do you think, um, we're at with inflation for the next six to 12 months and, and maybe on a longer term time horizon as well?

40:46Mike Konczal That's a good question.

40:47 I mean, I, I, I think we'll eventually see some more in goods. We can argue that, you know, the pattern, the price level of durable goods is generally declining. So the fact that it's increasing over the past six months is, is, is a notable break. Um, you know, I, I've seen some people watch this quite closely.

41:03 Um, you know, I, I, I expect we'll see a little bit more in goods in over the second half of the year in some certain kinds of services that are, are traded this way. Um, I don't think you'll see huge numbers. Um, I think what I. Freaked out the Federal Reserve and I think freaked out a lot of people was what, as you said, the Michigan survey, which, you know, inflation expectations over the next five to 10 years, they actually never budged during the peak inflation.

41:25 If you run those numbers back. They were also, they were basically the same numbers in 2019 as they were in 2021 and 2022 when inflation was like 8% over the year. Um, because I think, uh, it just didn't, consumers didn't recognize that prices would be higher on a more. Enduring and durable basis, and you can argue a lot, and people argue a ton about what those numbers really mean.

41:48 And how accurate they are. Um, what I'd say is that it is true that you have not seen, um, those numbers in the financial markets data, uh, like the New York Fed, Cleveland Fed, and a couple other feds like track expectations through financial data. The problem is once it's in the financial data, it's very hard to get it out.

42:05 So like you would, if, if you waited until you were at that level, then you almost certainly need a recession to bring down inflation. Um, I think some of the Michigan numbers have rolled back as I think people have understood that the worst version of tariffs have rolled back, though, who knows what, what with what just happened yesterday as we're recording this, um.

42:25 So what I'd say is that, you know, I, I think the worst case scenarios have, have eased up quite a bit since April, that Trump is probably gonna have something, um, still quite high, um, and already generating quite a bit of revenue. So it's, you know, quite a, quite, quite important tax increase on working day Americans.

42:44 Um, but is. Going to be a little less of the scary stagflation. And I think, you know, the fed's gonna start probably adjusting to that reality as well. Um, you know, it is funny to watch the Trump administration say like, everyone got it wrong because like, they didn't do the thing that they've said that they were gonna do because you see a lot of like, like, oh my God, there's no inflation.

43:05 It's like, yes, because you're not doing the thing you threatened to do in April. Uh, so congratulations. Um. But, uh, yeah, so that, that's kind of where I think it is right now. I think that's where most analysts are on this.

43:17Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

43:18 Um, I don't envy Jerome Powell at all, but rate cuts through the end of the year. What, what are your views? You think we're gonna get some, or, or do you think that Jerome's gonna hold the line? Um, it sounds like we're not thinking about increases, although if, if you did have an, an inflation surprise to the upside, I don't, I don't quite know what Trump or Powell would do with themselves.

43:35 But how are you thinking about interest rates through the rest of the year?

43:38Mike Konczal So if you.

43:39 So the, the Fed itself reports this, but if you were just to plug the economy as a whole into, uh, what, what economists call a Taylor rule, but basically it's just like a little widget in Excel that kind of gives you what the rate the Fed should be doing is, um, it's basically where it is right now.

43:53 Um, you know, it's, it's uh, you know, approximately within the range we have right now. So, um, the Fed's not very much off. And crucially, and I think this is really important for the way these debates are playing out, is that, you know, you could argue maybe the Fed should cut. A quarter of a percentage point for your listeners.

44:09 You know, the fed cuts in quarter percentages, so it's like four, 4.25 or 4.5. I, I could see the argument for cutting a quarter of a percent from, i, I believe it's 4.5 to 4.25 right now. Um, depending. Um, you know, president Trump has said he wants rates at 1% or 2%, which would be, you know, two and a half percentage points cuts.

44:29 Right. You know, like 10 cuts as opposed to one. And there I do not see a plausible case for why you should have rates at that level. And so the idea that this is like the late in the year 2021, um, or perhaps this, uh, right when inflation really took off or you took off in a much more durable way or, um.

44:49 You know, the summer of 2008 when the Financial Bear Stearns had collapsed, Lehman had not yet, but a lot of people worried. The Fed, which had, was not cutting rates very aggressively, was missing the great recession. I don't see that case for here right now. I do not think the Fed is so offsides and I. As it has been in the past to justify the pressure.

45:08 Uh, you know, I, I think the Fed should be independent, period, but the level of pressure Trump officials are putting on, I think, is completely detached from any economic analysis. And they wanna really do different things with it. Like have the Fed just basically manage the debt instead of inflation.

45:22Jacob Shapiro Yeah, I mean it's hard to, to interpret any other rationale towards

45:26 cutting interest rates that low besides debasing the currency and inflating your way out of a debt problem, which is not what you would expect from, uh, the halls of power in the Republican party. Um, we've got, but for casino owner who is, uh,

45:38Mike Konczal a real estate Mongol who has done bankruptcy many times, maybe it does

45:41 actually fit his view of how the economy should work, but hopefully well and. And maybe the United

45:46Jacob Shapiro States is in a position where somebody who has great experience

45:49 with bankruptcy is somebody that should be, uh, in control, because that's a different way of thinking about things. Um, I'm gonna give you an impossible brief to to close out which, and which is inspired by, by Rorty because, you know, we, we began talking about Rorty and I wanted to bring it back to him because I think when he talked about the left, and he talked about how the cultural left basically swallowed everything else so that things became more about identity politics or political correctness rather than working with workers and.

46:14 Figuring out how to help people in the context of globalization, which exacerbated, um, inequality. Let's say it's four years from now. I wave the magic wand. Uh, a man of or woman who, whoever you want is president and hires you to be the chief economist, uh, or the chief economic advisor for them. And you're inheriting what you see so far.

46:32 Like, like we said, it could change 500 billion different times before then based on how the administration is going. Um, but you know, in a couple years. If you had a change in power, uh, and you had the ear of whoever was gonna be in the office next, um, how would you, what would you advise? How would you start to pick up the pieces or, or what kind of like, not just, uh, hey, the one beautiful bill sucks.

46:52 Like, what would you substitute for some of the things that we're seeing that are passing as policy in the United States?

46:58Mike Konczal Well, I can say I, I'll, I'll bring up stuff that I

47:00 know will still be an issue in a few years because I can't tell what will. Be new issues, uh, and, and how we'll, uh, sufficiently address things like the civil service and how well the government works post Doge and a lot of government cuts and a lot of other things that are gonna probably be happening with the Supreme Court.

47:16 Um, I do know affordability will still be an issue on the key things that really matter for people. Housing, healthcare, childcare, retirement security. Food, you know, food and energy. Uh, I work at the Economic Security Project. I'm the senior Director of Research and policy. And, you know, at ESP, um, you know, we, we work on policy that helps build power for working people.

47:36 And you know, one thing we're really focused and thinking a lot about is affordability. A lot of our work has been on income support. A lot of our work has been on market crafting, which is to say that there are certain things where people need a level of resources. Um, say if you're a child in poverty or you're someone who's retired, um, you know where you need a level of income support, uh, or a level of baseline access to a resource.

47:58 I. Then there are markets that deliver them that can be quite dysfunctional, which prevent people from getting the resources that they need. You know, like we we're concerned about getting money into people's pockets and we're also concerned about people who are trying to take it out of their pockets.

48:10 So, um, with that in mind, you know, we think a lot about affordability and we think a lot about how the way certain kinds of. Uh, baseline supports, but also certain kinds of market structuring can make things much more accessible. So when you think about, you know, food security, we think about like, well, what about guaranteed income?

48:27 What about expanded EITC or CTC or other forms of income support? And also, um, consolidation and groceries and meat packing, and as well as, you know, uh, public groceries. Maybe that has a role to do, uh, that can play a role. Like how do you structure food markets so that they're competitive and getting.

48:44 Things where they need to go, but also how do you make sure that there's just enough money so people can afford food no matter how competitive the market is. And I think, you know, those two tools, uh, under a framework of affordability, I think are still gonna be quite urgent. Um, you know, thinking about, we're already thinking about other people who have thought about capitalism for a long time.

49:02 You know, those are still the fundamental problems. Even, you know, I, everyone's people think. Correctly about, you know, the risks that AI could pose. Both like kinda existentially, but also just like, you know, the labor market and people's careers. And you know, we dealt with this going from agriculture to industrial economy and I don't know if the AI will be as big as that was, which was quite dramatic and help pioneer the role of social insurance and antitrust.

49:25 And you know, I think those two tools structuring markets so that they work better. And then making sure people have the resources to get things in markets. Through work and through non-work means of income of, of gaining access to income. You know, those will still be very relevant in a few years and that's not necessarily a specific platform someone should run on.

49:43 Um, but knowing that the affordability crisis and those things is not going away and the conceptual tools we can use to tackle them are still gonna be the same. Um, I think that's a pretty good foundation to start to. Do a lot of thinking on as we're, as we're doing right now at Economic Security Project.

49:58Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

49:58 No, and I, and I, the, the things that motivated people to vote for President Trump will still be there, uh, at the end of his administration. Those things won't be fixed. If anything, they'll be even more acute. So you'll probably still, um, those will probably still be hot button political topics. How, how do you pay for those things, especially when you think we're adding another 3 trillion or whatever to the deficit, um, with this new bill?

50:19 Like at what point does the debt just become a handicap on our ability to do anything? Like, like some of the things that you're talking about. 'cause that takes spending. Um, and the, the left in general is talking about using the government to spend in order to take care of people. But it's, it's hard to do that when you're starting to close in on 40 trillion or whatever it is.

50:35 So how, how would you, um, how would you try to approach that accordion?

50:39Mike Konczal Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things there.

50:41 Um, one is that, you know, um, interest on the debt will start to pile up. And they'll start to eat more into the budget. And whether or not that's an actual economic constraint, it certainly is a political constraint. It's what forced, um, George Herbert Walker Bush's hand in the late eighties and early nineties to do a deficit deal with Democrats, uh, when interest on, on the debt had gotten to levels as it will soon get to, uh, now following President Reagan's tax cuts.

51:05 So one could imagine something like that. Um. Happening in, in the next few years, or, you know, over the next five to 10 years? Depends a lot on how much feedback there is in the financial markets. I mean, rates are quite high. Um, they might come down a little bit, but they probably won't come down a lot and they're probably not gonna come down to 2019 levels.

51:23 So, um, you know, the ability of the economy to grow faster than the interest on debt grows, uh, is probably gonna be a little bit more subdued. Something that gave us a lot of wiggle room in the past, maybe less so, especially if we're gonna have a lower growth because we are now tariffed and, uh, trumped.

51:42 Uh, the economy is just, um, between nativism and tariffs has just moved into a much slower growth path. That said, when it comes to affordability, a lot of it is about containing costs and a lot of it is about moving costs more efficiently to the government, right? So moving. Some private healthcare into a public option for Medicare, which I think people would like more, can in fact save money and, um.

52:06 Though, you know, it's moving from private to public, which is a big deal. It does mean that there's more resources overall. Um, in the same way the Affordable Care Act was able to slow and bend the cost curve of healthcare. So I think there are efficiency gains that you could make, um, that are credible and I think that that could help do things.

52:22 I think there's also a lot of growth you could unleash through investments, through housing policy that could help. Um. Of the case, but you are right that it's a little tough to figure out right now, in part because we haven't seen the full impact on interest rates yet and what they'll look like in a year or two.

52:37 But it is something that will become more of an issue sooner than later.

52:41Jacob Shapiro Well, Mike, I hope you'll consent to come back in a

52:42 year or two to talk about it with us when we see kind of what unfolds. And otherwise, just thank you for making the time and sharing your perspective. I appreciate it.

52:49Mike Konczal Absolutely.

52:49 Thanks for having me on.