Republican Nominee Dave McCormick

hello the sun Gazette is happy to be joined today by David McCormack former under Secretary of the Department of the treasury combat veteran and Republican nominee in this year's Senate race uh Mr McCormack why do you believe inflation has been such a persistent problem the last several years you know I I think it's um it's it's really almost indisputable what the cause of inflation is um so we have uh cumulative prices that have gone up by more than 20% uh and wages haven't kept up and um and so it's been been a huge impact on Pennsylvania 60% of pennsylvanians live paycheck to paycheck so food Fuel and rent they're they're getting squeezed and the direct cons the direct uh cause of this is government spending and um you know every mainstream Economist would say that Democratic Economist would say that and what's happened is Republicans and Democrats like have been spending too much for the last 20 years but under President Biden there's A5 trillion dollar spike in in new spending and that's been the cause of inflation the uh the American Rescue plan which was2 trillion dollar the inflation reduction act which which in fact was part of the cause of inflation that's been the driver of uh of these price increases the second cause of it has been you know really a war on fossil fuels so under the Biden Administration and and Senator Casey my my opponent supported this 98% of the time in terms of the votes what's happened is uh fossil fuels have become much more restriced so uh the had the LG pause you had the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline very recently you had the um the EPA under President Biden put in place which which Senator Casey supported put in place a policy that by 2032 70% of all new light Vehicles if you look out the street you know 5% of the vehicles today are EVS in less than eight years the B Administration has mandated again Senator Casey supported it that uh uh that 70% be be uh electric vehicles so all those things have driven up prices and it's really biting uh Americans and it's really biting pennsylvanians and so you know the the thing we have to do to get prices back on track and reduce that is is pull back of the spending um much of that Biden casy spending Biden Harris casy spending uh can be can be stopped and we gota we got to develop and open up our energy sector because fuel prices fuel prices alone are up 40 to 50% you all know that so when you show up at the pump you can thank President Biden and Senator Casey who's with him 90% of the time what role can the federal tax code play in providing Americans with relief from inflation and price increases well I wouldn't try to solve inflation um through tax policy um I think we need to lower taxes I need think we need to extend the Trump tax cuts uh those have been very important for Working Families a family of four that makes $52,000 a year got a $2500 tax break under those um under under that tax plan that that went in place under President Trump uh Senator Casey uh KLA Harris have publicly said they want to not extend those tax cuts So a family of four here in Williamsport will have a tax increase of $2,500 that just makes the problems with inflation uh harder because you know you get U you get more of a more of a more pressure so the best way to deal with inflation is what I just said is to is to open up our energy sector and reduce the cost or reduce um uh the the spending the other thing I think we should do and it's it's related to your question but it's it's I think it's important is that because inflation's gone up so much because it's more and more expensive people are having less kids so if you look at the birth rate the birth rate across Pennsylvania across the country is less than replacement rate so we have to have 2.1 kids on average per family to continue to have our population stay the same size or grow um and it's gone down to about 1.8 and part of the reason for that is it's just too expensive to have kids I got six kids so I I feel this six daughters so I know what it's like um and so one of the things that I proposed very explicitly is to increase the child tax credit which will make it much easier to have kids um and to do a number of family policy uh policies that'll make it easier for people to save in ways that support child care tax-free savings so these policies are meant to be pro- family and they're going to be good for all families but they're particularly going to be good for families that are living payche to paycheck and struggling to have kids and and to make ends meet you've mentioned some of the steps that can be taken what other measures can Congress pursue to prevent these sorts of inflationary spirals in the future well you know I I'm I'm a believer that um government needs to play a role um in protecting our citizens protecting our national security the number one mission of government is is National Security but but but to be honest with you I think government has been more a problem uh than a solution in terms of our economy and our and our economic well-being and so I travel across our Commonwealth I think this year alone I've made something like 400 separate visits and events many of those are with small manufacturers many of those are with job creators 80% of the jobs in Pennsylvania are created by small businesses so the government needs to play a role that doesn't uh drive up inflation through all the spending um that's one thing it needs to do but that when I when I go to uh uh talk to people they say the three biggest problems they have that are standing in the way of them creating more jobs good paying jobs is inflation which we talked about it's regulation too much government the cost of doing business is getting more and more expensive because of government intervention and nowhere is that more um clear than in the energy sector and in particular fracking so this region of course is um and I grew up not far from here I grew up in Bloomsburg um this region is blessed with Incredible natural gas resources that natural gas is the long pole in the tent for Pennsylvania's future we have we have literally Saudi Arabia under our feet in terms of our Natural Gas capacity we just can't get it out of the ground we can't get pipelines to ship it to other states because of of restrictive regulations I just had an energy Round Table this morning where we talked about this so um so the government needs to protect its citizens but more than that it needs to get out of the way of government out of the way rather of of Industry particularly the energy industry driving um opportunity here in Pennsylvania that's the best way to deal with the challenge the economic challenges we're having in Pennsylvania reduce inflation um by by pulling back on spending open up our energy sector which will create these fabulous great paying jobs uh and um and and let Pennsylvania take advantage of its incredible natural resources to preserve the sustainability of Social Security what change should Congress adopt first and what proposed change should Congress reject or rule out well I think the thing Congress has to rule out is is not living up to the promises we we made our elders they paid into Social Security with a certain set of expectations uh people on Social Security are the ones that are getting hurt most by the inflation because they're on fixed income so when you talk about getting squeezed people on fixed income prices are going up they're getting hammered um so I I tell a joke on the campaign Trail my dad's 86 uh he lives in anola and my mom and dad live in anola outside of Harrisburg my dad called and said listen I love you son but uh you know I think you'd be a great Center be a touch Social Security I'm not vot for you so we can't we can't touch social security for our elders and um part of the reason it's not sustainable financially is that the social security uh account which people paid into has been raided by Washington Senators like Bob Casey if you look at the the deficit under under Casey um you know he when he entered the Senate uh 18 years ago it was 9 trillion it's now over $30 trillion today 35 trillion on the way up uh we have an interest payment that's a trillion dollars so it's the outof control spending across the board that's the driving problem it's not the spending um from Social Security so I wouldn't touch Social Security but what I would do is put in place a set of fiscal constraints so people in Washington have to live just like we all do which is within your means and um and the best way to do that I think would be um a um uh a balanced budget amendment which would require ire um the Congress to live within its means it's going to take a while to get there but that's that's the place we're in today and it's irresponsible and and you know just to put in perspective um which this is a way that I think most Americans can can make sense of this our interest payment today on our debt is a trillion dollars our defense budget the single most report responsibility of of government is to protect us from from foreign adversaries is 900 billion so we spend more on paying the interest on our debt uh than we do on paying for our defense and U listen Bob Casey has been part of the problem not part of the solution he's been there for 18 years spending's been out of control it's been more out of control under the last three and a half years and it's it's also the result sorry to go on on this but it's also the result not just of these incredible spending bills um but of a a set of choices that I actually believe are completely out of step with Pennsylvania so let me give you the best example of that I don't think most Pennsylvania certainly the ones I meet on the campaign Trail believe this is a good idea Senator Casey voted for and supported the student loan forgiveness plan that President Biden put into place so what this is is there's $160 billion of loan forgiveness uh that uh he's given students across our country now listen I want to make sure education is Affordable but you know I went to high school with uh just right down the road uh in Bloomsburg with uh with a a couple friends one of them didn't go to college um part of the the reasoning was how much how expensive it was um maybe he didn't want to go either but he he chose not to another extended his time in college these are guys my age 58 59 years old extended his college because he wanted to work during the time so he didn't take on too much debt those two guys you two everybody Williamsport is paying regardless of what their choices were they're paying for $160 billion that's more than our army budget for student loan forgiveness some of whom for are kids that made a choice and maybe making you know more than $100,000 a year that is unfair it's unamerican but those are the kinds of choices that I believe you know I don't believe it's true that Biden Harris and Casey have made and those are choices that are out of step and they make the pressures on Social Security the pressures on our budget um you know dramatic um uh final Point our kids are never going to forgive us for this our kids are never going to forgive us because it's not going to affect you and I and the three of us so much because you know we we're we're a little further along but um right now every American if you take the debt of our entire country and divide it across our population $160,000 of debt each one of our kids has $160,000 of debt on their heads so you think about the new debt that they're going to take on for college they already got $160,000 of debt because of what Bob Casey and other people in Washington have done what role should the federal government have an improving access to affordable child care well I mentioned it already um I think um I think helping families afford the cost of of first of all having children and then being able to afford you know um a home and a family life that allows them to to prosper is is is kind of the most important thing we can do in our society families are struggling so um I gave a pro- family speech which uh which Nate can share with you um and this was profiled a number of newspapers but I had a couple policies which I thought were really important to to doing just what one is the child tax credit which I talked about so doubling the child tax credits $1,000 making $2,000 per child that was in the Trump tax cut so I doubled on that I had a um a child care um savings account um which you could save up to $10,000 taxfree to be able to support and then I I proposed a policy which which got a lot of attention I really I really think this is in many ways the most important thing we could do is I learned as a CEO I was a CEO of two companies and um in my last company I put in place a policy where the company paid for IVF fertility treatment I I knew this was a big issue often case from many times when women are in the workforce and they wait till a little bit later to have kids they struggle um to have children then they need fertility treatments IVF for that's the primary one IVF to uh to help them do that it's incredibly expensive it's something like 15 to $30,000 per treatment depending on where you live and those treatments aren't always effective so some people may have to use it two or three times so essentially what happens is people that are living you know kind of on the edge paycheck to paycheck or just don't have a lot of discretionary income they can't afford to have IVF therefore they can't afford to have kids so so what happens um is that the people that can afford to have kids are just it's just like school choice the people that can afford to have kids are the ones that are wealthy enough to do it that seems completely wrong to me I think everybody um that is you know wants to have children that is going to commit themselves to be good parents should have the opportunity um to have the joy of Parenthood I think it's critical to the future of our country so I proposed an uh uh IVF tax cut tax um uh credit rather so similar to what I was describing for the child tax credit you could take $115,000 of tax off of your tax bill and allocate it to IVF and you could do that two times so what that would do it would allow uh the possibility of having children with IVF be available to uh to kids uh to parents across our country and when I was a CEO I gave that to women or men if you were a man whose family was struggling and that's the place where I you know I would would get the thankk you notes like you changed my life I think this is something that the government should think of you you will rarely you hear me as you've already heard you rarely hear me saying we need the government to get involved that's usually not my answer to things but in family policy to be able to afford to have children through fertility treatment but also to be able to afford to you know have a family um I think that's an area where we should use the tax code the tax code through tax credits uh to really support support families should Congress increase the federal minimum wage why or why not well listen uh Pennsylvania's minimum wage I think is 7 725 um so we are completely you know out of line with um um the states surrounding us and um uh and and people don't pay that wage generally speaking because they have to pay a competitive wage to compete with New York and Maryland so forth I'm generally not a fan of of of of mandates from the government um this might be an area where we I would consider um a national minimum wage which um creates a working wage that people can actually um can actually you know be able to be you know have a functional life and um um you got to be careful because if if you know when whenever government gets involved and they start to to make choices like that it can be very detrimental to business um so it's something i' i' i' want to study something but something I'd be open to because certainly the minimum wage in some places is not a wage that is sustainable uh for families and and unfortunately wages have been getting pushed down by illegal immigration so I want to make sure people understand that uh under the Biden Harris Casey Administration what's happened is we've have 10 million new illegal immigrants that are in our country um many of those work in the uh in the labor course um not as necessarily registered or legal workers but they work and that drives down wages so what what's happening is essentially um citizens American citizens that are trying to you know make a living are competing with illegal immigrants who are working at lower wages um and are in the you know in the dark economy where people don't know about it we we can't have that so part of the way to not depress wages is to have a secure border where we don't have 10 million illegal migrants coming in over a three and a half year period and um and so that's an important part of getting wages right but I would consider it but i' want to make sure I understood the second and third order consequences what one change could the federal government make to health care to improve access and affordability well my view on this is you know we we we have the Affordable Care Act which was passed under President Obama it's failed in in it's two primary goals it primary goals is said by President Obama at the time that Senator Casey voted for was it was going to reduce cost and enhance access and it said you weren't gonna have to change your doctor and it certainly failed on the first one and the and the third one so it failed in it cost of SP skyrocketed cost of healthcare have gone up more than the cost of of many of the other things in our society and people didn't weren't able to keep um their healthcare provider as they had hoped but we that is the law we have and so I would be one of those uh people in the Senate that would be saying okay how do we make that uh law better how do we make that legislation better it failed at its goals I wouldn't overturn that but I would say how do we make it better and the the primary way to make it better is through competition we need to create competition where uh the healthcare industry is like other Industries um that um uh are able to provide um Healthcare access to to people and in that competition you're going to drive down price and increase quality and um and and the Affordable Care Act didn't do enough of that so that's the primary thing the the second thing that's happened is that um particularly for our elders the price of healthcare has gone up and particularly um prescription drugs and what's happened under Part D of Medicare is a 59% increase in prescription drugs under the Biden um Harris Casey Administration and in particular that was one area where they said prices would come down based on the inflation reduction act and in fact prices have gone up and so we gota we got to particularly focus on uh on affordable health care for our elders and as you know kind 80% of the health care cost for a citizen comes in the latter years of of your life so that's an area where we need to make a big difference you mentioned immigration a few moments ago what are specific changes the US should make to how refugees or immigrants seeking Asylum are vetted well I I mean I I think it's I I think it's fair to say senator Casey has been running an ad which which your your readers may have seen which is I think is completely disingenuous I think it's it's a complete misrepresentation of what's really happened here what what's really happened here is that under President Biden uh with Senator Casey's support every step of the way we took a dram atically different approach to immigration and uh and Senator casy voted for stopping the wall uh he voted against additional funding for the border patrol he voted against uh a fentanyl initiative which would have helped address this horrible scourge of people coming across the border uh with fentanyl and um and it led to a complete uh overwhelming of the system where I went I've been to the Border um two times in the last uh couple of years I've been to the Border more times than the borders are or Senator Casey and this is it's it's absolutely overwhelming and um the notion of Asylum uh was created in a way that under very selective circumstances someone could apply for Asylum and be granted entering the United States is a matter of you know protecting our principles of we want to we want to help people around the world that are under enormous duress it was never meant to be a blanket green light into our country but because the system's been so overwhelmed under um under the policies of Biden Harris and Casey we've had this enor enormous Onslaught I I literally went there in the middle of the night with the border patrol I saw 50 people walk right across the border in front of me in yum Arizona I posted this on on social media so you can see it for yourself in that group I saw there were five military age men from Syria five Chinese Nationals and um and they what happens is they apply for Asylum there's no way to document and get them the hearing so they're released into society and they get a hearing 12 24 36 months later there's no way of tracking them it's it's it's it's complete chaos and it's it's the direct result of a fundamental reversal of the policies that were put in place by uh Trump and worked if you look at the charts on legal IM immigration entry it's it's it's a fraction of what it is now it this is a this is the difference between strength and weakness bad policy versus good policy so so that's where where we are um uh we need to uh have an asylum policy which essentially goes back to remain in Mexico and keeps Asylum Seekers on the other side of the Border we need to have a a a path that shows that Asylum uh hearings and Asylum is going to be under the the rarest of circumstances it's not a method to get access to the United States uh illegally people are coming across our border as illegal immigrants with the expectation it's because the expectation Biden and Harrison Casey have set that they will have a path to Legal citizenship there there there there should not be a path to Legal citizenship coming across our border illegally otherwise you're gonna have an incentive system where everybody wants to come in illegally as opposed to go through the right path so um this is a a dramatic failure that's had huge economic um cost huge National Security cost huge human cost with the fentanyl crisis to the citizens of Pennsylvania and we need 100% reverse it and the law that Senator Casey touts is the law that he voted for which by the way he voted for this in an election year after the Democrats didn't do anything on the border they said the problem was that President Biden had his hands tied which of course he didn't um the the bill that uh Senator Casey voted for and says this was this great thing was not a border security law it was a law to expedite the Asylum and it set a limit of 5,000 per day um um that it would allow up to before the government would have further ability for restrictions based on that um proposed legislation I went and looked I had my team looked at every industrialized country in the world there is no country in the world not in Europe not in Asia not China not Japan that have anything close to an asylum uh uh system that allows up to 5,000 people a day it's completely go and talk to the people on the street in Williamsport and say do we want 5,000 people a day coming in under an asylum uh policy so it would have been a very permissive policy that would have continued to pose real real risk to uh to the United States th this is one where I think uh Biden Harrison case you're just completely out of touch uh with Pennsylvania and America and um and it was deeply flawed can you site a policy or initiative President Biden pursued dud that you thought was worthwhile well I think um I I think the the following um I think that if you look at what he has said in a particular area which I'll come to in a minute I I'm aligned with some of the things he said I just think the execution of that's been deeply Fed so the area which is a very polarizing issue something that people across Pennsylvania and America are focused on is what's happening in Ukraine so um I believe we are in the mess we're in in Ukraine and uh and Russia attacked Ukraine because of the weak weakness that President Biden showed um in responding to Afghanistan and the debacle we had there that's one of the reasons I got into the race in 2022 the primary is that as a military guy as a West Point grad as a combat V I thought that was a disgrace but that s a signal to the to the world send a signal to the bad guys then Senator Biden or President Biden went on to approve the nordstream 2 pipeline which was a signal to Putin hey we're going to play ball and Putin subsequently soon after that and by the way Senator Casey voted for that uh uh that uh allowing the the Keystone Pipeline um soon thereafter Putin invaded Ukraine he knew he was dealing with with weakness and that created a huge issue which is how do we support or not support Ukraine in defending itself against um against Russia believe we should support Ukraine defending itself against Russia with military aid I think we should give Ukraine military aid to fight back against Russia I don't believe we should give them economic aid uh which President Biden wants to do because um I think the the government's very corrupt and we wouldn't be sure taxpayer money uh would go there and I and I absolutely agree with President Trump um and and uh Senator Vance that we got to make the Germans and the French pay for their fair share but I believe we should support Ukraine with military aid because uh because we said we would when they gave up their nuclear weapons in the early 90s because um if Putin's successful in Ukraine I think he'll continue to challenge other parts of Europe which will be bad for America bad for our interest we're not doing this as a favor this is bad for America and third I think our biggest adversary is China I think China's watching and I think we need to we need to give strong military support uh to Ukraine even if at the same time I think we need to absolutely force and push for a resolution of this with Russia C so that's one area where I think um President Biden's instincts to give military aid were right I think we wouldn't be there without him and the execution has been deeply falled and he hasn't held Europe accountable but I'm I'm in favor of military a of Ukraine uh thank you for joining us today and for answering our questions my pleasure good to be with you thank you