The Armstrong and Jetty Show. I need to stop looking at Twitter for the day. It has ruined my soul. My soul has been ruined for the day, and on a Friday, and this early in the day. That's a shame. What are you gonna do? So much to talk about?
With lanh Chen David and Diane Stephy, fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution, the director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University, and a candidate for the California State Controller's Office, recently endorsed by both the Los Angeles Times as a Republican for the Love of Heaven and the Orange County Register. It's Lon chan Lan,
he are you hey? Great to be with you, great to have you so something we're discussing earlier in the show, and I will take pains to keep this on an academic level. You have a president who is not terribly popular and really quite old and unlikely, extremely unlikely to run for re election. In fact, I've predicted he wouldn't finish his term. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. You have an extremely unpopular vice president whose qualifications to lead
the nation are in doubt. To say the least. I think we are a nation that is headed toward a real crisis. Do you share that worry at all? Well, I have a particular concern around the economy now, and I think as both of you know. You know, in my my prior life, before running for this office, I spent a lot of time thinking about economic policy and a lot of time thinking about the course of our economy.
And we got used yesterday. You may have covered this that the economy is actually shrinking, that that that the size of our economy is decreasing. And you add that to the inflationary pressure that a lot of families around the country and particularly here in California field, and we have some real severe economic challenges. And of course, what
if the President decide to go and do well. He decided yesterday to talk about student loan forgiveness, and he's really at this point now engaged in politics as opposed to policy, because if he were really serious about dealing with inflation, really serious about dealing with our economic condition, he would not go out and propose, you know, hundreds of billions, if not trillions in new spending, which is part of the reason we're here. By the way, guys.
Part of the reason we have eight and a half percent inflation, why gas and milk and everything else we buy costs more, is because we have put trillions of dollars of stimulus into this economy in the last year and a half two years, and so it's just not serious anymore. And that's the problem, is that the folks in Washington, they don't seriously understand the challenges of the economy is about to face. And so if it's not inflation, it is going to be recession. And that's a horrible combination.
If anybody remember us back to the late nineteen seventies, it is a horrible combination for our economy. Yeah, so who's making these decisions? Speaking on Twitter? Has he been being led by the Twitter left? Who cares about the college because the average American thinks it's insane to bail out the college student loan debt and at a time when the economy is shrinking and inflations at record highs. You're absolutely right, it's a what an insane policy decision? Well,
it is. You know. It is interesting because when Biden campaigned for president, he campaigned as somebody who would bring people together and try to find relatively central solutions, and so far we have seen a lot of pretty far
left policies. I mean, this thing on student loan forgiveness is the latest example of something that is embraced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren but causes Kirsten Cinema and Joe Mansion to cringe because it is not It is an example of another set of policies that do not speak to the economic challenges that American family these are
facing right now. The fundamental economic challenge that American family space right now is they have a difficult time affording the gas they need to put in their cars to get to work. And and you're out here talking about something which is, you know, I think frankly a a political campaign issue. Joe Biden needs to figure out a way to fire up the progressive left because that is the only way he believed that he bailed himself out
of a very very poor midterm election cycle. So he's trying to motivate the progressive left, and he does it by proposing policies that I'm pretty sure seventy five percent of people look at and they say, why are we doing this? Why are we not figuring out a way to get this economy on track instead. So this is
more a philosophical question than a policy question. But as most political messages, especially these days, have to be extremely simple and blunt to break through, are this is it possible that voters are beginning to grasp the subtlety of when the government acts as Santa clause, there are economic effects that hurt you. Do you think people are connecting those dots? You know? I don't know. I hope they are, because I think it's fairly obvious why we've seen inflation
and prices explode so much over the last six months. Um, And I think it's important for people who who believe that to be the case, and I certainly do to make that, to make that clear that the reason that we have record inflation, the reason why families are having a tougher and tougher time making making ends made. And by the way, the housing market, which has undergone a massive expansion over the last two years, is headed in
some places. I fear for a massive correction, uh, precisely because of the economic conditions and the broader inflationary conditions we face, and with interest rates rising, it's gonna get harder and harder for people to afford houses. And also, by the way, people who carried out loans UH that have adjustable rates, they're going to get hit very, very hard because of the rising just rate. So there's all sorts of things happening in this economy that I think
is really kind of a toxic mix. And uh, and folks just need to recognize that we didn't get here by accident. Okay, it's not like, you know, Joe Biden makes us sound like Vladimir Putin caused inflation, and that's like, listen, buddy, I got used for you. You caused it, you and people who decided that we were going to put it. I said, trillions of dollars into this economy. You caused it. So long you're the guy who's putting all those stickers in the gas pumps, then you're the guy with the
Biden sticks. I did that next to the numbers on the gas pumps. By the way, here's here's a simple idea. Why don't we give people a very clear sense when they sell up their gas take how much in those uh gas fees per gallon are because of taxes? And no kidding, no kidding, Why don't we just give people a clear idea of that so they can get a sense of how badly they're getting hosed every time they put a gallon of gas into their cars. I'm against this.
I'm against this sort of thing as a libertarian, but I would like it to happen like the same way that they have calories next to the food now and the menus and be awesome. On the phone, every gas pump it told you how much of the price was taxes. Yeah, I mean and and and then it'd be great if we could figure out where that money all actually went. Because what we're told in California is it's going to build better roads. I don't know about that. I don't
know about that. I've driven around on these roads recently. They're not so good. So you know, it's it's this is the stuff that drives people nuts, though, is that fundamentally? Uh? You have government making excuses, you have governments saying well, we're doing all this stuff for you, and people turn around and they say, no, actually, I think you'll make
it harder. And right now, in many cases, unfortunately for too many families, Uh, things are not going well and they're and they're not going well, because of bad decisions by our policy name hey, speaking of bad decisions by policymakers. We talked about this story earlier in the week, and
I understand you have some thoughts on it um. The San Francisco Chronicle did a great job of looking into the results of the hundreds of millions of dollars taxpayers have spent to deal with the so called homeless problem, and the results have been horrible. People dying of opioid deads, people staying homeless, and increase in homelessness of fifty six percent after spending all that money. How did how did
that report strike you in two minutes or less? If you can pull it off, well, it reminds me of what happens when you don't have effective oversight in in in a city or in a state. And in California, there is no problem where the lack of oversight has has been a bigger cause of things getting worse than our homelessness crisis in San Francisco. They spent a lot of money in l A. We know they in one program, they're spending eight hundred thousand dollars per unit of housing construction,
and the problems are getting worse in the state of California. Overall, we've allocated twenty billion dollars for homelessness and over the last three years, and every California and I speak to and everything that I seek suggest the problem is getting worse. So you tell me what what what's the problem here? The problem them is there's nobody who's saying, hey, you can't keep spending this money if it's not solving problems.
If you're gonna spend money, it better solve problems. And that's you know, that's one of the reasons why I'm running for for Controller in California because as Controller, my job would be to provide accountability for every single dollar this state spends. And I will tell you, in homelessness, we are not solving the problem. We are spending an awful lot of money, and we need to get back
into the problem solving business again. We are not only uh, we are not only hurting people who are homeless by not giving them the ability and helping them figure out how to get down of that situation, but we're making it worse. And people are literally dying in San Francisco.
They are living in rat feasts infested hotels because because the City of San Francisco can't get it back together, and because the mayor there doesn't want accountability, all right, and and they have repeatedly refused to have an oversight commission. And I'll tell you it's about time somebody was up up there calling balls and stripes and saying, you guys,
can't keep doing this. You can't keep spending good money and sending it after bad So that that I think is really the fundamental route of the problem is we don't have an independent fiscal watchdog. We have too many lap dogs. And that is why, that is why Alan he Chan is running for California State Controller. Lan he always enlightening, Thanks so much for the time. Good to
talk to you, great to do with you, guys. And of course, one of the most insidious parts of that lack of an oversight or accountability or whatever is that for ideological reasons, those on the left continue to ignore the fact that we have an enormous drug crisis, and that's at the heart of a lot of what's going on with the so called homeless crisis. But just in general, nobody ever looks at the results of government programs. He
just he's somebody proposes them, they passed. You spend a bunch of money and then no where ever checks to see, hey did that work or not. You just keep doing it right. You don't even like get as far as getting a dishonest answer. Nobody even asks the question. You miss an hour. Grab the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand and Getty