Live from the Airport Diner in Manchester, NHJournal presents Diner Table Economics!
Want to hear the specific economic proposals from the people who want to be the next president of the United States? You’ll get it here, straight from the candidates themselves, over a cup of coffee at the iconic Airport Diner.
No “horserace politics,” no “politics of personality,” just a 25-minute conversation about jobs, inflation, taxes, and spending. The policy positions from regulation to tax reform that impact the daily lives of Granite Staters and all Americans.
In this edition, former South Carolina Gov. (and U.N. Ambassador) Nikki Haley lays out her economic agenda. A few highlights:
What would you do about inflation?
“The first thing we should do is claw back the $500 billion of unspent COVID dollars that are out there. Instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after Middle America, let’s go after the hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID fraud. One out of every seven dollars.
“If eight percent of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards. Families have to balance their budgets. I had to balance a budget as governor. Why is Congress the only group that refuses to balance a budget? So, we’ll cut the spending, we’ll stop the borrowing, we’ll eliminate the earmarks, and I’ll veto any spending bill that doesn’t take us back to pre-COVID levels. That will save us trillions.”
What should the federal government do about the high cost of housing?
“A new statistic came out that the average age of a new home buyer is 49 years old. Forty-nine. Unbelievable. So when you think about our kids — and my daughter just got married, and I saw how hard it was for her and her husband to buy a home — it is really tough.
“We talk about interest rates. The Treasury rates that the Fed set, that’s what ran up mortgage prices, auto loan prices, all of those things. And so we’ve got to get our fiscal house in order. The first thing is we do have to get these interest rates down because no one can afford a mortgage at this point.”
What’s the proper role of the Federal Reserve?
“What’s the role of the Fed? To protect the strength of the dollar –period. And if you lose the strength of the dollar, what happens? That’s our national security at risk. Because that’s what keeps us as a superpower. China and Russia, they’re salivating at that fact, and if we don’t get this under control, we’re going to look like Japan.”
New Hampshire, like many states, is suffering from a labor shortage. What could a President Haley do?
“One of the things we had to focus on in South Carolina is to get parents off the idea of ‘you have to go to college.’ Because at the end of the day, what happens? You go to college, you build up all this debt, and then you’re wondering how to find a job. For us, technical schools were a big answer to that. But we had to partner with our guidance counselors and take them to these manufacturing places and show how worker friendly they were, how these were amazing jobs.
“We also did — and this is why I want vocational classes back in our high schools — we did apprenticeships all over South Carolina. We taught our kids how to build the things we were making. And so they got invested in our economy before they ever finished high school before they ever finished college. These jobs are fantastic jobs. They pay well, they’ve got great benefits. There are so many things we can do instead of building in China. Let’s make it here in America.”
Diner Table Economics is sponsored by The Competitiveness Coalition.
