YouSaid · the spoken record

Bruce Bartlett

lines on the record: 91
first: 2018-01-03
most recent: 2018-01-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's a continuing problem. I wish I had understood tribal loyalty. And the extent to which people on the right have Not motivated by ideas, it's just guts. And it's all about the tribe. And if you're a Republican and you're saying something and I'm a Republican, I have to support you. I have to agree with you. I'm not allowed to independently evaluate what you said because I might discover you're wrong. And if I discover you're wrong, that creates a crisis for me. So it's better if I just don't even think about it. I just lockstep say yes. you know Heil Heil Hitler, you know?”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just as a pure career element, I think the health issue area is going to be a huge continuing growth area. The baby boomers are getting older, gerontology, care for my generation. I think this is the way the wealth will be transferred from our generation to the younger generation. They basically are going to have to take care of us in our old age, and that's fine.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the facade is cracking. I mean, I think the corker flake business is potentially far-reaching in its impact because finally there are people articulating views that perhaps you and I may have, but they have credibility because they are elected officials in the Republican Party. Corker is still chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He's in a position to actually do something.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's that the Overton window, which we discussed earlier, has moved. Very sharply to the right so that what used to be considered the center is now the left wing, so to speak, of policy debate. And all of the debate takes place between the center and the far, far right, and the right is very clever about continuously pushing to the right so that positions outright racism, neo-Nazism, people going around carrying flags with Nazi swastika on them. Is not treated as outrageous or beyond the pale. It's oh, that's what the right is doing today.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's not the writer's fault. And so anyway, I think there's a lot of blame to go around here. But I do think that quite often I'll come across some story that sounds quite interesting. I'll click on the link. And it turns out it's a secondary source. And I have to click three or four more times to find the original source. I think writers should do more to try to give credit to the original source that broke a story or is the primary source.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, later I needed to find that quote again. So I went to my article, clicked on the link. It did not take me to the State Department. It took me to some random article on that publication's website that happened to mention Hillary Clinton in passing. It was not documentation for the statement that I made. It had nothing whatsoever to do. Editor, but whoever checks your own links after they're published, you see, I don't know how much of this sort of thing goes on.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's right. I think that a lot of writers are lackadaisical about using links, which may explain why readers are lackadaisical. I'll give you an example. I used to write for a publication and one day I was writing something where I quoted Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State. And I quoted her, and I provided a link that went to the Department of State website where you could find the text of the speech that she gave and where they found the quote.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hate to say this, but I don't actually read very many books because I read all day long on the internet. I'm just kind of a junkie about this sort of stuff. One of the things I talk about that I'm sure you're familiar with is an RSS reader. Which I depend on absolutely to keep me up to date on all the stuff that is being published all around the internet. And it aggregates and brings the specific items from specific websites to me directly. And so the last thing I want to do is read for pleasure. And secondarily, when I write things, I like to be able to link to them. I think links are underutilized by readers. Can you reference?”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you're talking today, I'm still educating myself. I spent an enormous amount of time reading the literature, especially I've learned that I have to study things like psychology. Right. In sociology, in political science, that to try to understand why things are so screwy. And the academics are only just barely scratching the surface, but I do believe the psychologists will eventually be the ones who tell us.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the last and probably the last time forever that I was at the American Enterprise Institute, I confess that in every instance in which I thought Herb was wrong and I was right, it was the other way around. And you pointed out my comment about Paul Krugman. So I'm trying to make amends.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jack Kemp was unquestionably the person who influenced my thinking. I remember when I used to work for him, I would sometimes think I was wrong, or he was wrong and I was right. Eventually I realized he was right and I was wrong. And I've discovered that about a lot of other people. There was an economist named Herb Stein that I used to argue with all the time.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, these days would probably be that I was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation for two years or that my boss in the White House was a guy named Gary Bauer, who's one of the epitomes of... Evangelical Christianity”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There may be still some affiliated with universities and such that are worth paying attention to. But in a way, the Internet made the think tank as it was originally created superfluous because what think tanks did is they, they were the intermediaries between the policy people and the academics who theoretically were the sources of original deep thinking. And so the idea at least when I was at the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s is, okay, you know, we'll talk to Milton Friedman. He'll give us his ideas. You write them up in a way that a policymaker can understand. We'll pump this stuff out onto Capitol Hill because there's the pre-internet era you had to have printed documentation that was written. In a short way easily understandable, and that was what our job was to be the middleman.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So they don't seem to have the guts or the intelligence to say, we don't need a goddamn tax cut. What we need is all this other stuff. We've got problems with climate change. We have one hurricane after another. We need to be building seawalls across the entire southern part of the United States. Look at Puerto Rico. I mean, Florida.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the problem is the Democrats have internalized the basic Republican view of the world. They argue within parameters that are established by the Republicans. So the Republicans come out and say we are going to have a tax cut. The Democrat reaction instinctively is to say. Say, well, we don't want to cut it for the rich. We need to tilt this more towards the middle class, but we still agree with the principle that we need a huge tax cut. We just want to reorient it towards our...”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why couldn't they have drafted an infrastructure plan? Why couldn't they a couple weeks ago we had a big debate in the Senate and the House about we're going to allow, we're going to put 1.5 trillion dollars of increase in the national debt into the budget to accommodate the revenue loss from the tax plan we're going to pass. Widen some Democrat offer as a substitute a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan? See, they don't have the sense to do that.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Apparently, he has no staff people that could have picked up the phone and called Paul Ryan and said, could you please send us over HR 2363 or whatever it is your legislation is so that we can take a look at it for your Obamacare? There was nothing. There was nothing there. And I think this was true of so many other things. I think he thought that the Republicans had a fully developed tax reform plan. And all he had to do was endorse it. There was nothing there. There was nothing.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they didn't see it that way. I don't know why. I don't really understand how they think about these things anymore. But it's clear that that's what they were trying to do. And Trump, the problem was Trump believed them. And remember, he screwed everything up by saying, no, no, we're not going to just repeal Obamacare. We're going to repeal and replace. So it was really Trump who upset the Apple cart by insisting that there be a replacement. He didn't have one, but he was afraid.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think he did think that Republicans in Congress had been working since 2009 on a replacement for Obamacare because that's what they've been saying for eight years. Right.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know for sure, but what I think happened is Trump was simply misled by Congressional Republicans. They lied to him. Well, one of the things they lie to, I mean, Trump is on record as saying he thought an Obamacare repeal bill was going to be on his desk the first time he walked into the Oval Office after taking the oath of office. Because remember, they won. The Congress had been in session for three weeks before he took the oath of office. And so I...”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, we in the early 80s, in the late 70s, early 80s, the biggest problem was we had too much demand, not enough supply. And the proof of that is we had inflation. That is per se evidence of that. Being the case, we always used to say inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. So you could argue that we did need to do things to help encourage the creation, the production of more goods and services, and that's what the supply side theory was about. Today we have a persistent problem of deflation. And the proof of that is the current level of interest rates, which are ridiculously low 10 years into an economic expansion. It's absurd. Now, this is per se evidence, I think, that we have a lack of aggregate demand. We have the reverse problem. So we don't need a supply-side solution. We need a demand side solution. In my own preferred solution would be something that Trump allegedly is in favor of, which is a big infrastructure program. That would be the medicine the economy needs.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“thirty four percent. I mean, this is like the best tax reform imaginable. And what happened to wages is they fell for 10 solid years after the 86 Act. It was only after the 93 tax increase that wages started to rise again.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I just say one more thing about this? If you go, it's very easy to go to bls.gov and look up the data for wages, real wages. Start in 1986 and look at what happened to real median wages. And you'll see that after the 1986 Act, which lowered the top personal income tax rate from 50 to 28%, which is much lower, and they lowered the corporate tax rate from 46%.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something like that. I think in the aggregate. No family with an income above $40,000 pays any below $40,000 taxes at all. So they have to make up Some way of claiming that these people will benefit, and that's why they've come up with this crackpot theory that wages will rise by at least $4,000. And maybe as much as $9,000. If you pass this big cut in the corporate income tax rate,”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that this is what they believe in their heart of hearts. And so that's why they're obsessed with the top rate of taxation and why they're obsessed with getting it down no matter what. The problem is they also want to be able to say that tax cuts benefit the average person. The problem is you can't help the average person with federal income tax cuts because they basically don't pay any. They pay a lot of payroll taxes, yes. But they pay the families within. paying virtually nothing in terms of income. Med”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think you have to look at it from, at least from the theory of what the supplies, of what the Republicans say happens when you cut taxes. They believe, basically, in the Ann Randian Great Man theory, that the wealthy carry the rest of us on their backs, and their incentives count for everything. The average guy contributes nothing. It's the wealthy who do everything.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's even worse than that because they apparently did absolutely nothing between Election Day and January 20th. He was just as unprepared the day he took the oath of office as he was the day he won the election.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I mean, the people who do the real work, the Assistant Secretaries and people of that sort, the White House staff, they're just paid whatever they get paid, $50,000 or $100,000 a year. And now many of them now have to hire private lawyers because they were involved in the campaign. And you saw the other day Trump was offering to pay some of their legal expenses. And I think some of these people are really, really hurting.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, not well, if you're talking about the cabinet, sure, guys like Steve Manuchin and... Rex Tiller Ross and go down the list. Sure. Fabulously wealthy.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One reason I think that you haven't seen more people leave is because there's no place for them to go They're stuck. I mean, to literally have a paycheck coming in, they have to stay there and maybe hope for the best.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New to ask for a favor, and Trump said, sure, why not? You want to be ambassador? You want to do it? I don't care. Because he clearly has shown absolutely no interest in the highest level appointments in his administration. I mean, it's quite clear that the Secretary of State hates him. And who knows what Kell is going through Kelly's mind these days when he's forced to stand up there and tell rank lies about what this woman, this congresswoman, said at an event they had videotape of. And he won't say, okay, I'm sorry I made a mistake. I misremembered. He stands up there and says, I stand by the lie that I said the other day and I'm not changing it”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps I think he mostly just doesn't care. Newt called him up and said, my wife is a big Catholic. She really wants to be ambassador to the Vatican. Wait, he said.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he, of course, he's been married three times I doubt that he had his marriages annulled, and so he acted legitimately. And these are paragons of”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. It's well known. Was it six year affair? Admitted. Yeah, it's well known that she had an affair with Newt while he was still married.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, as far as I can see, even Catholics have pretty much, or I should say Republican Catholics pretty much ignore what the Pope said. I mean, look at the fact that we are ambassador to the Vatican as a woman who's an admitted adulterer. Callista.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Belief system, it could be fake, doesn't that. And I think it's very easy for them to kind of just gloss over the fact that facts don't fit their worldview and to create an alternative universe in which they do.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think that's absolutely true. I think part of the problem with those on the right is many of them are very religious, and they are very accustomed to taking things on faith.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that issue is still open. As you know, there are people in the Congress working on an Obamacare fix that he has on various days, said he supports or opposes. And I think there's still something that at the end of the day could get a That's his strength. It's, of course, a weakness as well, but let's not underestimate the strength part.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think Pence is nominally more competent, but that's damning him with the faintest possible. Okay. But he's such a religious fanatic. I think it would be like having Jeff Sessions. Really, as president. And I wouldn't underestimate Trump's ability to get things done because he has absolutely no consistency I mean, he's willing to just flip 180 degrees from what he said yesterday and what he really cares about is the art of the deal.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's within Striking distance, but the point is that I was getting at is even if they win, they're not going to have an overwhelming majority. It's not going to be like 1974, where a huge Democratic majority comes in. And so I think that they'll have their hands full just trying to stop some of the Trump initiatives that more than likely will still be, I think we'll still be talking about tax reform in 2018. I don't believe that they have the competence or the wherewithal to pass anything. Certainly not this year, and I don't think next year either.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite possibly depends. I think the Democrats have a better chance of retaking the House than the Senate. I think it's going to be tough in the Senate.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. I mean, Republicans, what you can always save them is they never learn and they never forget. And so they will be dredging up these things for the rest of our lives.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite possibly. Look, they just started a new investigation of Hillary's involvement in some uranium sale. Nothing about...”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But look, if she had won, she would have won by the skin of her teeth. And you can imagine what the Republicans would be doing to savage her. I mean, she'd have already been impeached by now. So I come around”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could put resources into these places rather than just pretending, oh, they're in the bag. I don't need to waste my time there. I'm going to have a big rally the night before the election in Philadelphia with my pals. Know Beyonce and Jay-Z or whoever”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Neither of them No, I agree, but I thought Hillary was going to win. But then again, I always assumed that she was doing competent polling in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and knew what her situation was.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lots of people have dissected that election and will continue to do so. And it's pretty clear that Hillary Clinton had deep, deep flaws as a candidate, and everybody knew that.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was simply a waste of time. You couldn't win. And the one group of people who You could have gotten support from were, of course, African Americans who were widely had their votes suppressed. So there was simply, you simply couldn't win. So if you wanted a career in politics, you had no choice but to be a Democrat.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the deep historical trend that explains what you're talking about is, of course, what goes by the Southern strategy. That is, you had for 100 years or more after the Civil War A weird situation in which you had very conservative, politically, culturally, economically, and so on, a group of people in the South who for purely historical reasons associated with the liberal party. And there were too many of them to be pushed out, so they had to be accommodated.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. That's right. Around 2009 or 10 thereabouts. But I think it was before the big Republican victory in the elections that year. So there were still sort of on the outs. But now, of course, they're very much on the inside.”
2018-01-03 · Masters in Business · Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source