Program:  Your World with Cavuto
Date:  5/13/2021
Station:  Fox Business News
Time:  4:00PM

CHARLES PAYNE: As President Biden was meeting today with a group of Republican senators on infrastructure, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio leading another group of Republicans and saying, forget spending, it’s time to get Americans working.

MARCO RUBIO: Enhanced unemployment benefits are creating an incentive for people not to return to work until they expire because people are lazy, i’m not accusing anyone of being lazy, it’s because people are logical, because it’s logic that if you’re going to make close to what or as much, in some cases more than what you do in your work, you’ll go back to work when that expires. We have a labor crisis in this country.

PAYNE: All right, so who’s right here, I want to go to Fox Business contributor’s Scott Martin and Gary Kaltbaum, along with Optimal Capital’s director of strategy, Frances Newton Stacy. Gary K, I got a feeling I know what you’re going to say, but we’re sure we’ll be going more spending or more workers.

GARY KALTBAUM: Well, look, it’s unfortunate that the president said there’s no data. He can come to Lake Mary, Florida, and I’ll walk him into some restaurants and they’ll tell him exactly what’s going on. The theme parks are offering bonuses, and all you have to do is just go print out what all the states are giving before this extra on unemployment. There are some states that are paying out nine hundred dollars with the extra per week. So people are definitively staying home. I’m pretty sure the President knows this. I wish he would roll this back sooner rather than later. Why? Because there are a lot of businesses just getting off their back that can’t go one hundred percent because they can’t find people to show up at this juncture.

PAYNE: To be clear, the administration says they haven’t seen the evidence because they know it’s out there. They’re just saying they haven’t seen it yet.

Real kid. You know, Frances Newton Stacey, right. Turn around three o’clock. The biggest trend on social media is we are closed. In other words, the left now saying we’re not going to go back to work, even with the CDC guidelines, until we get more money. We feel like we’ve got big business on the ropes. McDonald’s raise their prices so we can still see a worker crisis.

FRANCES NEWTON STACY: Yes, we definitely could. I think what’s kind of weird is that taxes are going to go up, right? And these companies that made it through covid and God bless the ones that didn’t, the companies that made it through covid have a record amount of debt service probably on their books. And so I think that this sort of demand and supply in the hiring is going to kind of even out toward the end of the year. Also, I think that there is some other sort of, you know, headwinds coming in the system that might kind of even out the record amount of pent up demand that we’re seeing play out now. So this hiring thing could even out. But I do agree that it should be handled on a localized basis, because if you just cut it off at the federal level, you really do risk leaving some people behind. And locally, you can analyze that a bit better.

PAYNE: Yeah, you know, at this point, though, Scott, we’re talking about small businesses to Gary’s point, it’s gone on a long time. It was a noble thing to do. This has been this has been extended now two or three times. So the question is, do we need it right now?

SCOTT MARTIN: No, and I love how Marco Rubio used the word logic, like you don’t need evidence, I mean, it’s easy to ignore the evidence if you close your eyes. But like logic. I mean, I get it, too. If you’re getting paid to stay home or go out and party, go to the beach, whatever you want to do after you’ve been cooped up, by the way, thanks to the government for a year. Yeah, I would do that as well. I mean, I’ll say that right now. So the fact that we want to get this great reopening going, we want the markets and economy to enjoy a normalized environment, yet we’re going to keep this stimulus going. It’s just crazy to me. And it’s because the government wants to control you. They still want to have control. They still want to have you dependent and under your thumb for funds. And so as long as we are in this position, I’m now concerned, Charles, about this great reopening and the pent up demand that Frances was talking about, because there’s no way that demand is going to be satisfied if you’re a small business, a big business, if you can’t find the workers to service people.

PAYNE: You know, Gary, we just heard from President Biden at the top of the show, he came out, he took a victory lap, and he’s been in an awkward position because I think a big part of this is that they have to sell a certain amount of fear, a certain amount of urgency. There’s no way you can push through another four trillion in spending and at the same time say things are great.