Greedflation forum with Casey and Warren 09/20/2024

2:36PM Sep 20, 2024

Speakers:

Keywords:

price gouging

montgomery county

prices

vote

big

senator casey

pennsylvania

senator

hear

election

put

bob casey

work

housing

fighting

talking

paying

grocery stores

big corporations

profits

Good morning, everyone.

I'm so proud and honored to serve alongside commissioners minor your Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. I also serve as the chair of the board of elections. You may not know this, but montgomery county has had the highest turnout in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, one of the highest voter turnouts in the country.

And we're actually working to make sure that everyone has a safe, secure and accessible election this season, in spite of challenges, in spite of press and intimidation, we took a number of actions just this past few weeks to expand and double our drop boxes and satellite offices. And last night, the RNC made its first draft, putting montgomery county in their crosshairs, and what I'm here to tell you is that we're going to make sure that no matter what happens, every resident of montgomery county is going to have access to the ballot and confidence that their vote will be counted and our election will be certified. I One of the things that we've done is make sure that everyone is within five minutes. We've increased the number from 30% of the county to 50% within five minutes of the Dropbox or satellite office, so you are five minutes away from the Upper Dublin mdj, the magistrate judge offices, where you can go and pay your parking ticket and then vote starting in October. So this is incredibly important, because we know that when montgomery county has its voice heard, and across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, candidates like Bob Casey, who've been fighting for the middle class, who've been fighting for everyday people, will once again, be sent back to the US Senate and the halls of power. I'm excited. I am fired

up to hear from another champion senator, Elizabeth Warren, are you excited?

Welcome on the stage another fantastic state editor we have right here in montgomery county. Senator Maria palette, you it.

So Hi everyone. I'm so excited to be here with all of you, and thank you to Commissioner mckiesha for giving us that wonderful opening about how important it is for us to get our votes out. I'm State Senator Maria Collette. I'm really honored to be moderating our conversation with senators Bob Casey and Elizabeth Warren. I also want to thank our fellow elected officials who are here today. We have representative, Melissa Serrato representative.

We have Lorimer our Montgomery County and

Dr Monica Taylor in the audience here,

and Mayor soar, but I just wanted to recognize, I want to bring our

guests out. Of course, we have the incredible Senator Elizabeth Warren with us, and we have Senator Bob Casey, and then we're going to get right into our conversations, but let's give them a big round of applause for

you

know, I don't have to tell anyone here just how much is that say in this election for Pennsylvanians, and it's really going to come down to who we trust in pipe rust, who's on our side. Senators Casey and Warren both have a long record of fighting for working families because they believe everyone deserves a fair shot at the American dream. But we need Democrats to remain, to maintain control of the Senate in order to deliver their plans to help Pennsylvania families and control the Senate. Control of the Senate runs right here through Pennsylvania. We need everyone in this room to vote and tell all your friends to vote. We have he has always had the back of working families in Pennsylvania, and now it's our turn to have his in November. So thank you again for all being here today. We're going to have a really robust discussion. Let's get right into it. So rising costs are a major issue for voters in Pennsylvania and across our nation as you both now, you both called out corporate price gouging or reclation, and have been vocal advocates for holding corporations accountable. Senator Casey, can you explain preflation and how it impacts us?

Yes. And Maria, I want to start by thanking you for your leadership, and let's hear from Maria

and to thank all of you for being here. This is a critically important issue, not only in this race, but I think races across the country where people are paying so much more today at the grocery store, and it's real simple, the Federal Reserve told us this from july 2022, or July 20, should say, to July of 2022, in that two year period, corporate profits went up 75% five times the rate of inflation. And we've got to, first of all, point that out and acknowledge what happened here. And secondly, we have to pass price gouging legislation to hold those companies accountable. That's what we have to do. Out of our 50 states, there are 37 with the Attorney General of that state, can bring and prosecute the case on price gouging, bring investigations and hold companies in their states accountable. The Federal Trade Commission doesn't have that power today, and that's why I've been working with Senator Warren, who's been leading on this for years, to pass that price gouging legislation, go into a court of law and prove when there's price gouging engaged in by these big corporations. So that's the second thing we have to do. We pass people see it all across the border. We saw in the post pandemic period, in a six month time frame, a box of diapers went up by 15 bucks just in six months. You see with all kinds of food and grocery stores people paying more, and these big corporations are laughing all the way to the bank. And then you have my opponent, Mr. McCormick, when I brought this issue up, he criticized me for bringing it up. He wants to excuse price gouging. I want to hold these companies accountable and make sure that's

what it is. It's when greed governs the decisions of major corporation. And we're talking about the big guys here. I'm not talking about small grocers. We're talking about the biggest conglomerates in the world that are jacked up prices with impunity. And we're not going to take it anymore. We're going to fight back and hold them accountable.

I want to turn to you now as we're kicking off this conversation. What do you think voters most need to know about Democrats work to lower clauses heading into this election?

Well, what they most need to know is we got a wheel like Bob Casey. What

a great way

to start on a Friday morning. And I really do want to say it's beautiful out there. There are a zillion things you could be doing, but the fact that you came in here to walk out a little over corporate price gouging really tells me about your investment in this Commonwealth behavior investment Foundation. And so I just want to thank all of you for being here.

I just want to add a few more factoids about what's going on with greed inflation. You know what happens? We've seen low inflation and, frankly, relatively modest increases in prices by big corporations. The pandemic hits, and now prices go up. And they go up for a lot of reasons. They go up because supply chains get tanked. They go up we're having shipping problems. They go up because it also is about the same time the war in Ukraine starts. And there are certain commodities we can't get. But here's the deal, these big corporations would have market dominance in their area or nationally. They looked over as to inflation. Everybody's talking about prices going up, well, as long as they're talking about prices going up instead of just passing along those price increases, which would have had an increase, but would have been modest, this is our big chance. We can jerk our prices even higher and raise our overall profits. And that's why, when Bob talks about the two year period, 14% increase in inflation, 75% increase in profits for these giant corporations, that's not right. That's price gouging, and that is why we are fighting that you

don't just have to look at the numbers and assume. The amazing thing is, these corporate executives actually said it right out loud every quarter under federal law, publicly traded, they have to do what are called quarterly earnings calls, where they got on the phone with Wall Street and their investors, and they describe the health of the business. So you know what they did. They could go on the phones and they say, oh, inflation has been very good to us. We still have what they call pricing power, what Bob and I call price gouging. They openly admit that they can make better profits by claiming it's merely an inflationary period and using it as a chance to jerk up their profits. By the way, one of them was in court two weeks ago, CEO of Kroger's, and he just flatly said under oath, yeah, we reached our prices to pass along cost, but then we looked around and raised a whole lot more, because that would really improve profits, as Bob Rockland points out, 37 states have the power to go after companies when they use an emergency or their market dominance to be able to lift their prices way above passing along cost. 37 states do it, and that's great, by the way. It's red states as well as blue states. Flores is this on a regular basis. Texas uses this on a regular basis, but they can only do it locally. And as you know, these grocery stores that we're having trouble with, the gas stations that we have trouble with, these are big national companies. So what Bob and I are fighting for is that we're fighting in order to put an enterprise gouging by giving the FTC the federal government power to go after the big guys in filing the

thank you for that background information. But I guess one of the questions that we face is, as you're going around the country and you're talking to voters, you're going around the Commonwealth. Senator Casey, what are you hearing from voters? How is this issue impacting them personally? Senator Casey,

well, you're a lot about it because it's real life. You know, one of the reasons why my opponent probably doesn't get it is he's been living up in Connecticut, so he doesn't really end up in too many grocery stores here in Pennsylvania. But this is real life, and it's compounded by if you're paying more at the grocery store for food and household items which you need every week or every other week. It's not like when you're buying a television set where you might buy it over, you know, one television set over the course of many years, you need these every week, and that's why they're that's why they're taking advantage of it, because they know that people depend upon these, these purchases. They have to buy food. They have to buy household items, whether it's tissue, you know, toilet paper or or paper towels or or food itself. And that's why they know they can get away with it and then go on those shareholder calls and literally brag about it. They're not even hiding this. It's not as if they're doing and trying to pretend they're not doing it. They're bragging about it to their shareholders. So that's one that's one big burden on families, on cost of living, the other one's childcare. We hear an awful lot about people paying through the nose on childcare, right housing. We hear a lot about housing. I'm glad that Kamala Harris is going to win this race. By the way, spent a

lot of time as a presidential candidate, not just talking about housing, but proposing specific ideas about how to combat that crisis. So we hear about these all the time. Elizabeth probably hears she might even hear a laundry list, but they're the ones that I hear most about. Let's sell the price of gas. But again, the price of gas goes up. You know, who's doing that? It's those foreign oil companies jacking up the cost. It's the same thing. It's replation in the oil markets,

absolutely. And Senator Warren, what about you? What are you hearing when you talk to voters?

So it's very much the same kind of thing that Senator Casey has talked about, people who work hard, who play the rules, who budget, who are careful with their money, and then you feel like just always being cheated, because that's what's going on here. You know, they go pay a fair price, and they understand that. You know, sometimes your costs have gone up. They get it when that happens. But that's not what Senator Casey and I are talking about, I love that Senator Casey is out there talking about greed inflation, because it's about raising the prices just so you can boost those problems. This isn't for long term growth. This isn't to invest more in America. This is because you can suck more out of the pockets and out of the budgets of Americans across this country because you have power and they don't, well, our job in the federal government is to put power Back in your hands and say no about

the role that these giant corporations are playing right now. Just understand this. They're coming after you. They're also coming after the small businesses. They cut the deals at the big supermarkets that cut out the little supermarkets, so the little supermarkets have to pay more and have slimmer profit margins. This is about concentration of corporate power. Nobody has spoken more eloquently about this than Senator Casey and the focus on grocery stores and gas pumps. But I want to put one more in your thought right now, because it's finally coming to life, but also doing it on the rental front, they're coming after you. So there's an organization now, Wall Street darling, and it figured out something called Real page. Now keep in mind, I believe in markets, but markets means competitive. It means you've got a seller here and a seller there and a seller there. That's how it is that we got prices to the best place for consumers, and we got innovation who's coming up with the new product. Price fixing in America is flatly illegal, not maybe it's illegal for the real page doing it goes to the big corporate landlords that started taking over our apartments, our rental properties, too. They're even buying up single family homes and bringing them within their corporate sphere. And then this outfit puts them all together, collects all the private information on what you're charging for rent and exactly what it is this apartment looks like, or this house looks like, sharing that information among what was supposed to be competitors and then suggesting the higher price that everybody ought to charge. Here's data now suggesting that as much as 25% of the increase in rentals is because of an outfit like like real page, where a corporation has figured out will get smarter and we will squeeze the American consumer. What this fight is all about is you can elect a hedge fund guy to go to Washington to watch out for I don't think it's going to be you to watch out. Someone said for China to watch out for the other hedge fund guys to watch out, big investors to watch out for private equity. Or you can elect somebody once again, like Bob Casey, who is in this fight for you,

going along in the conversation about housing, we here at the state level, at the local level, we have heard a lot about affordable housing, a lot about renters needing to be able to get into an apartment and not being able to Senator Casey, can you talk a little bit about the work that you're doing In the Senate to help with affordable housing measures.

This is one of those areas where for too long, we haven't had nearly enough focus in progress. There's no question that we've got to do more more to provide more supply, as well as to help purchase it. Right? So we've got to help the builders do their work, but also help the buyers, and both are critically important. Part of that is through tax credits. We have the long term housing tax credit. But by the way, we just had a vote a couple months ago, now, just a few months ago, where in one bill, we had some good business tax provisions. We had a huge expansion of the Child Tax Credit, not quite as,

not quite as robust as we had in 2021 Elizabeth and I supported that child tax cut, which transformed the lives of children. 70% of montgomery county children benefited from that tax credit, if you go to a small rural county in Pennsylvania, wasn't 70% of 90 90% of the kids, but so we had a version of that in this tax bill. So that was part number two, but the third part of the bill was the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to to update that and to through in a century authorizing But Republicans all voted against it. They talk a good game about families, and they vote against a child tax credit expansion. They talk a good game about affordability. They vote against a housing measure. They talk to a game about business of all things, all the business community wanted this to happen, and they voted against it. You know why? Here's why they voted against it, not just because they're catering to their own corporate special interests, the big guys who may not care about these tax bills, but they wanted to prevent that bill from becoming law for two reasons. One, it would help people in the short run, and that might help our side in the election, right? But secondly, they wanted to block this tax bill for kids, for business people and for for housing folks who need housing that's affordable because they wanted to block it, because next year, in this Super Bowl of taxes, in 2025 they want to read the system again, to give those big corporations and billionaires another gross, obscene. And obscene doesn't begin to describe how gross that corporate tax was. Corporate tax cut was in 2017 they want to do it again. No, they jacked up the debt in that in that Republican only corporate tax bill in 2017 the debt went up by $2 trillion and you saw in the debate that Kamala Harris had with President Trump, she said, Wharton. The Economist at Wharton, think she said it because she knew that he attended Wharton. But the economist at Wharton said, if the Republicans get, if they went and get their way and they institute the same rigged tax bill that will jack up the debt by 5.8 trillion with a T dollars. That is fiscally reckless, and it's going to screw the middle class. It's going to prevent a lot of families from being able to make ends meet. So that's their agenda for my that's the agenda for my opponent, that's the agenda for the Republican Party and keeping their billionaire friends rich. That's exactly damn right. Bob's laid it all out. This one,

control the Senate is all about right now, both didn't quite do the last part when they voted no, when they said they didn't want to do this, it's because they're betting that they didn't actually win on november 5, and they lay out for all of us to see if they win on november 5, they are going to help the rich get richer and let everyone else be dirty. I am here today. Bob Casey is here today. We are whole as Democrats in this fight, because we will not let them take back the senate. Thank you for the