On this “Face the Nation” broadcast moderated by Margaret Brennan:
- Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois
- Dr. Scott Gottlieb
- Amos Hochstein, special presidential coordinator for international energy affairs,
- Jason Furman, economist and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
- Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser
Click here to browse full transcripts of “Face the Nation.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m Margaret Brennan in Washington.
And this week on Face the Nation: Grim economic numbers prompt new fears of a recession, as President Biden makes a controversial trip to try and help cut global energy prices.
Costs continue to soar, with the price of food, energy and housing all up from May. Inflation is now up 9 percent year over year, despite a strong jobs market and decreasing gas prices. Wall Street and economic observers were shocked by the report. But those numbers came as no surprise to Americans finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.
This was not the news the president needed on his Mideast trip, where he was criticized by even some Democrats for meeting with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The CIA says MBS approved an operation to capture or kill U.S.-based writer Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
(Begin VT)
QUESTION: Do you regret the fist bump, Mr. President?
JOE BIDEN (President of the United States): Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters? I’m happy to answer a question that matters.
QUESTION: Will inflation go down from here, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I’m hoping.
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will devote most of our broadcast to the economy today, Presidential Coordinator on Energy Security Amos Hochstein, former head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman, and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser
We will also preview this week’s prime-time installment of the January 6 hearings with Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two committee members presenting new evidence Thursday.
Plus, former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb is back with us, as monkeypox continues to spread and new COVID variants prompt questions about what kind of booster works best.
It’s all just ahead on Face the Nation.
Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation.
We have a lot to get to today, but we began with the new January 6 investigation developments.
Late Friday, the committee issued a subpoena for Secret Service records following the revelation that the agency had erased text messages from the day before and the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Last Tuesday’s hearing detailed a chaotic White House meeting between the former president, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and a group of outside advisers over a plot to seize ballot boxes and overturn the 2020 election.
This week, the panel will hold a prime-time hearing on Thursday focused on the 187 minutes from the time when President Trump left the stage at that rally in the Ellipse…
(Begin VT)
DONALD TRUMP (Former President of the United States): And we’re going to walk down to the Capitol!
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: … until he issued that infamous video message.
(Begin VT)
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So go home. We love you. You’re very special.
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger will be co-leading that hearing on Thursday.
Good morning to you.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER (R-Illinois): Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So let’s start with these Secret Service texts.
The agency said this was just a matter of timing and a tech upgrade. Do you believe that? Or was this malicious?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: I think we’re going to know more Tuesday.
We made the decision as the committee that we need to subpoena these records. The I.G. came in front of us and said, look, we have been working hard to get this. They claim it was this technological change: We moved everything, we lost these texts.
And then they also put out a statement, though, that said: We’ve only lost some of the texts and everything relevant to this investigation has been turned over.
So, those are very conflicting statements. So we decided, as a committee, let’s request these by Tuesday, and we can make a decision.
I will say this. In the very least, it is quite crazy that the Secret Service would actually end up deleting anything related to one of the more infamous days in American history, particularly when it comes to the role of the Secret Service.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, the subpoena set Tuesday as the deadline. So has the Secret Service said, we will meet that deadline, and these texts still do exist somewhere?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: That’s what we’ve — from what we understand, they’ve said: We’ll meet this deadline.
And we’ll see what we get here. So, either we get that info…
MARGARET BRENNAN: You don’t know that they exist still on record?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: We don’t know.
So either we get that stuff — if we end up getting the texts, then obviously, for whatever reason, the I.G. didn’t. Now you have what you have. If we don’t, then it’ll call out the Secret Service as having said that they had these texts, and they don’t.
So, is this anything big? We’re not sure. But we need to chase every lead down on this, and there’s a question of, why are they not cooperating with the I.G., the DHS I.G.?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Inspector general.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: And they need to.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the committee has, though, spoken in the past with some Secret Service officers.
So do you have a date yet to question the two, in particular, Tony Ornato, about what happened January 6? Of course, he’s relevant because of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about what happened in the vehicle.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: Yes.
Look, we’re still working on that. We’d love to have him come in. We’re working out those details. We know that through, I guess, anonymous sources, they’ve said they’re going to be happy to come in and testify. We would encourage anybody to, anybody that knows anything, but it’s got to be under oath.
Right now, it’s just been discussion from Secret Service through anonymous sources. And that, to me, compared to somebody like Cassidy Hutchinson, who swore under oath what she had heard, that’s important to come in and do that. So that’s still ongoing, but, hopefully, we get that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Will you get that by Thursday and this hearing?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: I highly doubt we’ll get them coming in and talking by Thursday.
But, again, I would love that. But we keep getting new people coming in every day with information, willing to go on the record. So it’s been amazing how, since these hearings have started, the amount of information we’re getting has just rapidly accelerated.
MARGARET BRENNAN: CNN was reporting that a D.C. police officer who had been somehow involved in the motorcade arrangements was corroborating the testimony given by Cassidy Hutchinson that there was an almost violent confrontation with the former president in the vehicle that day.
Is that what the committee has been told?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: I can’t confirm or deny those, because we haven’t come out with who we have or haven’t spoken to.
I will just say, I’m not going to aggressively push back on that characterization. And we have every reason to believe that what Cassidy Hutchinson said, at least from what she said she heard, because she wasn’t in the limo, never said she was…
MARGARET BRENNAN: She was told this by other officers.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: She was told this. We fully believe that she is a credible witness. And her allegations are quite explosive.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, 187 minutes.
You’re leading this hearing. You know what you can present at this point. Can you at least tell us if you filled in the blanks of who the President was actually speaking with, why there weren’t phone records, for example, of phone calls he may have placed during that time period?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: We have filled in the blanks.
I can’t necessarily say that the motives behind every piece of information we know we’ll be able to explain. But this is going to open people’s eyes in a big way.
The reality is — I will give you this preview — the president didn’t do very much but gleefully watch television during this time frame. We’re going to present a lot more than that.
But I could only imagine, as — I mean, I knew what I felt like as a U.S. Congressman. If I was a president, sworn to defend the Constitution — that includes the legislative branch — watching this on television, I know I would have been going ballistic to try to save the Capitol. He did quite the opposite.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The president didn’t do anything?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: The president didn’t do anything.
And we’re going to fill those blanks in. And if the American people watch this, particularly — I say this to my fellow Republicans — watch this with an open mind. And is this the kind of strong leader you really think you deserve?
MARGARET BRENNAN: The chairman of the committee, Bennie Thompson, has said you all are still discussing whether to go ahead and try to force a conversation with the former vice president, Mike Pence.
His former chief of staff, Marc Short, said on this program this is very low likelihood of ever happening. Do you personally want to subpoena Mike Pence?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: Look, I personally want to talk to Mike Pence. I think there’s a difference between, do we subpoena him, do we ask him for a transcribed interview? I think it would be important to hear everything he has to say.
That said, I’m not sure we get a ton more out of him than what his staff has already told us. The big question we’re still dealing with as a committee is, is there benefit in talking to somebody like Donald Trump and request, and he come in? That’s something we’re negotiating back and forth on whether we want to do that and what that looks like.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What is the value in speaking directly to the former president and the vice president, when the former vice president’s chief of staff and his legal adviser have testified to you?
Why do you need him physically there? And what would the president’s testimony do?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: Yes, and I’m not sure we do need them physically there, because, again, we’re getting a lot of information.
And I think you’ll see, after Thursday’s hearing, we know a lot. Look, Donald Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t mind not telling the truth. Let’s just put that mildly. He lies all the time, I wouldn’t put it past him to even lie under oath.
So I’m not sure what the value is there. That’s, again, something we’re — I think the thing to keep in mind is, this — this investigation is not winding down. We may be towards the end of this tranche of hearings. We may have more hearings in the future.
And the investigation is still ongoing. So, we’re — we’re getting to the bottom of what we need to know.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Tranche of hearings. What does that mean? I mean, how many are you thinking? What more do you have?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: Well, we’ve done — this is — this will be our eighth hearing. This is the end in this kind of grouping.
I fully expect, when the report comes out, we may have a hearing or two around that. But, of course, as you saw with Cassidy Hutchinson, if we get information that the American people need to know, we may end up bringing up more hearings at that time too.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So I want to ask you about the former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who spoke, I guess, for eight hours behind closed doors with the committee the other day.
He said to reporters: “There is so much interest in the December 18 Oval Office meeting because it all comes down to it. The crux of history comes down to it.”
And then his lawyer said, stop talking.
(LAUGHTER)
MARGARET BRENNAN: What’s the rest of the sentence? Exactly what is the crux of history here?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: I don’t know. You know, it’s hard to get into the mind of somebody like Patrick Byrne. It’s hard to get in the mind of somebody like Rudy Giuliani.
Is this a grift? Do they really believe some of these conspiracies? But he has been — I mean, it seems like Patrick has come to believe that there is some deep state conspiracy to overthrow the government, and — or to at least have the deep state way of the government.
And so I don’t know what would have come next in his mind. But I can tell you his — he seems a little unmoored from reality when it comes to politics and when it comes to democracy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, “Mother Jones” published audio this week of Steve Bannon, who was speaking to a group of associates in October, I understand this was recorded, about the former president’s plan to declare victory. Let’s listen to what he said:
(Begin VT)
STEVE BANNON (Former White House Chief Strategist): And what Trump’s going to do is just declare victory, right? He’s going to declare victory.
But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just going to say he’s the winner. That’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself the winner. So, when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm.
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: What does that indicate to you? I mean, Steve Bannon speaks sometimes in hyperbolic terms. Does that indicate to you that there was a level of planning going back that far?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: Oh, yes.
I mean, I think, look, if you look at the President’s statements even months prior to the election, he started saying: If we lose, it’s because it’s going to be stolen. –
There was — I think it was Chris Stirewalt came in on our second hearing and talked about that idea of that — the red mirage, how, early in the night, it’ll look like Republicans are winning, and then, later, it will be the obvious result.
I mean, I think Democrats were ahead in Ohio significantly even at the beginning of the night. Steve Bannon is an agent of chaos. Steve Bannon, in his own words, believes you have to basically burn the system down to rebuild it and fix it. What he’s saying right there is very clearly him saying, no matter what, we’re declaring victory.
And that is a violation of everything we have to hold dear in the Constitution. Listen, the only thing we need for democracy to survive is the knowledge that you can vote, that that vote counts, and we live with the winner and loser.
If half the country believes that that wasn’t accurate, you can’t expect democracy to survive.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about what’s going on in Georgia.
Your fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is challenging a subpoena by a grand jury there. They want to ask him questions about this call that he placed to the secretary of state there around the election.
Graham said he’s done nothing wrong. Is there a reason the January 6 Committee has not spoken to him? Are there questions you have for him?
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: Well, look, the question of, is there reasons, well, I mean, first off, we have a lot of information in terms of what happened in Georgia.
That’s a piece of our investigation. We have the whole broader thing of what led to January 6, what’s been done since. In terms of him, no, I haven’t talked — talked to Lindsey Graham personally. That’s his decision with the grand jury and a challenge.
I’m not sure if his issues of speech and debate, which is what he claims the protection are, he was acting in his position as a senator, I’m not sure if that actually would apply to if you’re attempting to change an election outcome. I’m not the lawyer. I don’t know. But, to me, it seems a little odd that he would try to pull that in front of — in terms of going in front of a grand jury and saying what you know.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Congressman Kinzinger, thank you for coming in. We’ll be watching on Thursday.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: You bet.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And CBS News will cover that hearing at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday night on our broadcast and streaming networks.
Face the Nation will be back in one minute, so stay with us.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: There are now more than 1800 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the United States.
States and cities where infections are spiking are now demanding more vaccines from the Biden administration.
Joining us to discuss this is former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who’s also a board member at Pfizer.
Good to have you here.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB (Former FDA Commissioner): Good to see you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Give us a sense of the scale of this, because the CDC numbers are out. They say they’re only eight women within that, no children.
You’re saying this is a pandemic. That’s not a word the administration is using yet. What level of emergency are we at.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Yes, look, and I think they’re going to be reluctant to use the word pandemic, because it implies that they’ve failed to contain this.
And I think, at this point, we’ve failed to contain this. We’re now at the cusp of this becoming an endemic virus, where this now becomes something that’s persistent that we need to continue to deal with. I think the window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed. And, if it hasn’t closed, it’s certainly starting to close, 11,000 cases across the world right now, 1,800 cases, as you said, in the U.S.
We’re probably detecting just a fraction of the actual cases, because we have a very — we had for a long time a very narrow case definition on who got tested. And, by and large, we’re looking in the community of men who have sex with men and at STD clinics.
So we’re looking there, we’re finding cases there. But it’s a fact that there’s cases outside that community right now. We’re not picking them up because we’re not looking there. This has spread more broadly in the community. I wouldn’t be surprised there’s thousands of cases right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s a little chilling to hear you say containment has failed. I have heard you say that before with COVID.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, look, this isn’t going to explode like COVID. This is a slower-moving virus, which is why we could have gotten control of this if we had been more aggressive up front.
And we made a lot of the same mistakes that we made with COVID with this, having a very narrow case definition, not having enough testing early enough, not deploying vaccine in an aggressive fashion to ring-vaccinate.
But now this is firmly embedded in the community. And while it’s not going to explode, because it’s harder for this virus to spread, it’s probably going to be persistent. You’ll have this as a sort of a fact of life, maybe spreading as a sexually transmitted disease, but also breaking out of those settings.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the CDC said monkeypox can show up to three weeks post-exposure. What are the basic symptoms? If you have a rash, do you call your dermatologist? Who do you call?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, it’s a vesicular rash.
It’s associated with fever and achiness. You know, historically, you used to get a disseminated rash. What we’re seeing right now is people aren’t presenting with a widely diffuse rash, but sometimes just a small number of vesicles. So I think it’s being confused with other vesicular rashes, Herpes. Coxsackie can cause a vesicular rash, certainly chicken pox.
Right now, anyone who presents with a vesicular rash that can’t be explained by another etiology, so a rash that causes vesicles, should be tested for monkeypox, whether they come from a high-risk community or not. That’s the way we’re going to snuff this out. We didn’t have enough testing to do that. Now CDC has gotten in place more testing. There’s probably adequate testing to broaden it to be able to accomplish that.
So we should be doing that physicians should be sending off these tests.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The problem with testing, also, it seems that distribution or access to a vaccine is an issue, the mayor of New York, the governor of New York asking the Biden administration to do more to get them access.
Why is this a problem?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, we didn’t have adequate stockpiles of the vaccine, the one vaccine that’s approved for monkeypox.
We only had 2,000 doses in the National Strategic Stockpile. It was there as a hedge against smallpox. We took our eye off that ball, so we didn’t replenish that supply. They ordered about 300,000 doses that have been delivered; 150,000 have been distributed. Another 130,000 will go out this week. There’s going to be…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Some of that overseas.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Some of it — well, there’s 800,000 doses that were overseas that the manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic, had overseas. Those are being brought into the U.S. right now.
FDA has to do what’s called lot release. They have to inspect those doses to make sure they were appropriately manufactured. They’re doing that inspection at the same time that they’re forward-deploying those 800,000 doses. So those are going to cities right now. And, as soon as FDA finishes that, which should be this week, those doses will be turned on. They’ll be able to be distributed or be used on patients.
So I think the vaccine situation is going to improve dramatically this week. You’re going to see literally hundreds of thousands of doses become available. The White House has intervened to take more control of the response away from CDC. This can’t be our response every time…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: … that, when CDC drops the ball, the White House and the political leadership need to step in. That’s what’s happened here. It happened in COVID.
We need to fundamentally reform how we respond to these crises.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You wrote a book on that.
I want to ask you about COVID. The CDC says now about 54 percent of Americans live in an area of high COVID community spread. That’s up from 31 percent the prior week. That seems fast-moving. What is different about these variants now?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, look, it’s the B.5 variant that’s growing. It has the capacity to evade the immunity that we’ve acquired from vaccination and also from prior infection.
It does seem to be that B.2 infection confers more robust immunity against this B.5 variant. So places that had big outbreaks of B.2, like the Northeast, probably are going to be more protected. There’s 100,000, over 100,000 cases on average being reported on a daily basis. We’re probably detecting one in 10 infections right now. So it’s probably more like a million.
I think most Americans have started to accept this as part of the fabric of daily living. In part, that’s based on a wholesale recalibration of risk. In part, it’s based on the fact that there’s very few people who are immune-naive, so people feel rightly more impervious to a bad outcome.
So we have to recognize that this spread is happening against the backdrop, basically, of normal living.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But the White House is saying, put a mask on if you go into indoor gatherings. The city of Los Angeles says they might institute this at the end of the month.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Yes, I don’t think we’re going to see mandates. I don’t think that there’s a lot of tolerance for mandates, maybe in select cities like Los Angeles.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But is it advisable?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: I think, if you’re going into a congregate setting with a lot of people you don’t know, wearing a mask is prudent if you’re in a high-prevalence area, especially if you’re someone who’s at risk.
You know, I still wear a mask in certain settings. I wear it when I go through the airport. If I catch COVID, I want it to be from a family member or a friend, not some stranger I’m sitting next to on a plane. So I try to be prudent when I’m in mixed company.
I think, right now, if you live in a high-prevalence region, it’s advisable, especially if you’re someone who’s vulnerable, if it’s easy enough.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And a booster shot. Will we have a rebooted bivalent vaccine in the fall?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Yes, well, look, there’s going to be a vaccine based on B.4 that the manufacturers are developing right now. There is a bivalent vaccine based on B.1 on the shelf right now that we could be deploying. We’re not.
That probably would be more protected against this B.4 variant and B.5 variant. We — they’ve made a decision so far not to deploy that, but to wait for the B.4 variant vaccine that’s going to be available this fall. Right now, if you’re above the age of 50 and you haven’t had a dose of vaccine this year, you probably should get one.
And the sequencing is good. Get a dose now if you’re someone who’s at high risk, and you can come back and get one later.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
Dr. Gottlieb, good to have you back in person. Wish you had better news, but it’s nice to see you.
(LAUGHTER)
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Thanks a lot.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will be back with a lot more Face the Nation, so stay with us.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: In Uvalde, Texas, the community awaits the release of an investigation conducted by the Texas House into the police response to the massacre at Robb Elementary School, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.
More than an hour of video from school security cameras will be shown to families along with that report.
CBS News correspondent Lilia Luciano is waiting for the report in Uvalde — Lilia.
LILIA LUCIANO: Margaret, for too many parents in this community, it’s too late. Answers will not bring their children back.
But they hope this investigation will pave the way for some level of accountability and will prevent at least a delayed response like this one from happening in the future.
One of the big questions we’re seeking to answer is, why did officers wait more than 70 minutes to stop the shooter, when the training for every one of the seven agencies represented in those hallways tells them you stop an active shooter immediately?
Why did they wait even as the gunman continued to shoot? They had shields, rifles, breaching tools. And why was the state’s governor, Republican Greg Abbott, given incorrect information about the shooting response in the immediate aftermath?
(Begin VT)
QUESTION: How do you feel about that now that you have seen the video?
GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT (R-Texas): Well, just as angry, because it’s clear that what was shown on the video was the exact opposite of the information that I was given on the day that I went out and explained what happened.
(End VT)
LILIA LUCIANO: The committee interviewed nearly 40 people, at least 20 from law enforcement.
Among the questions that we need answers to is, why did officers think that this was a barricaded subject? Why did they wait, when we know from previous police reports that there were discussions among officers about children being inside the classroom, about possible injured people inside?
And we also know that, early on in the timeline, officers were talking to dispatch. So who was getting the 911 calls from children like Miah Cerrillo, who was calling from inside the room nearly 15 minutes before that door was breached?
This is not the only investigation. There are at least four others, including one by the Texas Rangers and a federal one by the Department of Justice. That so-called critical incident review seeks to inform future policy, training and apply lessons learned for other police agencies across the nation — Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Lilia, thank you.
We will be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: If you can’t watch the full Face the Nation, set your DVR.
We will be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION.
As President Biden met with middle eastern leaders last week, he was accompanied by Amos Hochstein, the special presidential coordinator for international energy affairs. He’s with us now.
Mr. Hochstein, welcome to FACE THE NATION. Good to have you here in person.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN (Presidential Coordinator on Energy Security): It’s great to be here in person. Thank you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you were one of the few U.S. officials in the room when President Biden met with Saudi leaders. Why was this trip worth the political risk? What did you get?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think this was a historic trip. First it started just landing in Saudi Arabia, in Jetta, as the first ever flight from — for a president to fly from Israel directly to Saudi Arabia, with the backdrop of Saudi Arabia opening the — announcement that they’re opening the skies for the first time for Israeli aircraft, for all aircraft, including flights to and from Israel over its air space.
It comes on the backdrop of a major achievement over the last few months of a cease-fire in Yemen where thousands of people have been killed over the last seven years. This has been the longest cease-fire we’ve had with a commitment from Saudi Arabia to work to extend the cease-fire even further. Major announcements for food security and achieving contributions from the GCC, from the Gulf countries, on food security.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But none on oil yet?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, we had a — major announcements on – on cooperation on energy rite large. And if you recall, just before the president announced his trip, just a few days before that, OPEC Plus made a major shift in its policies, recognizing that since Putin started amassing forces, the markets have been affected and that there was a supply/demand issue and announced increases in supply of 50 percent for July and August.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: And I’m — based on what we heard on the trip, I’m pretty confident that we’ll see a few more steps in the coming week.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, OPEC Plus meets August 3rd.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Saudi has some, very little, spare capacity. So, are you saying you got a wink and a nod that they’re going to pump more?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: I think what we discussed — first of all, it’s not just about Saudi, it’s about — we met with – with the GCC and with Saudi Arabia. There is — I’m not going to go into how much spare capacity there is in Saudi Arabia and in UAE and Kuwait, et cetera, but there is additional spare capacity, there is room for increased production.
As we’ve told producers in the United States, we have had conversations over the last several months and weeks with OPEC. And I believe that there is still more room to – to see additional steps in the coming weeks.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Saudi says it’s got like a million spare barrel capacity.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Again, it’s not just about Saudi. This is OPEC, so there are other countries as well. So what we need is to see a little bit more. But let’s – let’s look at what has happened since the president announced his trip. Oil prices, at that point, were at about $120. Today oil prices are around $100, $101.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: So that’s a $20 decline based on the steps –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Some of that due to economic concerns, though. China looking like it’s slowing and concerns here about consumption going down.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: So, there’s no doubt, there’s never one reason why oil prices go up or why oil goes down. As you know, when oil prices go up, they tend to say there’s only one reason, and that’s the political leadership.
But, if you think about it this way, over the last few months, the president has supplied the U.S. market with a million barrels a day, which is a historic level.
MARGARET BRENNAN: From the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: From the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We’ve never done that before.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And that, what, ends in September.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: No, that – that will end towards the end of the year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do — will it end towards the end of the year? Can you afford to stop putting emergency supply on the market?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, look at what has happened. The private sector, as we talk to them in the United States, said they can increase production in the United States by about a million barrels a day, but it’s going to take time to invest in it. It will come at the end of the year.
So, we stepped in, the president stepped in and said, I’ll fill that gap.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: So, hopefully, my expectation is that the private sector in the U.S. will have those increases coming so we don’t need to have the emergency from the U.S. government. In the meantime, we’ve seen the – the prices — both the oil price, but also the price at the pump has come down at the fastest rate that we have seen in over a decade. So, from over $5.
And remember this, just a few weeks ago –
MARGARET BRENNAN: IT’s still pretty high. $5. Still pretty high. It may have come down from –
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: It’s not $5 anymore. It’s now $4.55. And I expect it to come down more towards $4. And we already have many gas stations around the country that are below $4. So we’re – we’re – this is the fastest decline rate that we’ve seen against a major increase of oil prices during a war in Europe where one of the parties in the war is the third largest producer in the world. So, these are extraordinary circumstances. We’ve taken very tough measures to address them right away.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Both or the American consumer but really for the global economy too.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we’ll watch to see if those gas prices continue to fall.
I want to ask you about what the administration is pushing around the world, which is this concept of putting a cap on the price of Russian oil that is sold so that it’s not cutting back on the amount but rather the windfall profits Putin can profit off of it. What’s to stop Vladimir Putin from just saying, fine, I’m just going to stop pumping?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think that the way – look, the price cap is —
MARGARET BRENNAN: Doesn’t that ruin your plan if he does that?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, first, he could do that tomorrow regardless of what we do on a price cap. You know, Putin has been an unreliable supplier, unfortunately. But I think what we’re doing is we’re designing the mechanism so that he can still – he still would have revenues. He needs those revenues to – that’s the only revenues he really has in his country. There’s nothing else in Russia except for oil and gas.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, JP Morgan says he’s got enough cash that he’s sitting on that he could cut by 5 million barrels in that extreme example that the price of oil would go up to, what, over $300 a barrel, almost $400 a barrel.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, what we want to be able to do is to mitigate where the price of oil on the world market doesn’t actually impact Russia at all because we’re going to put a price cap so that all they have is to get that price and no more than that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: We believe that that is the way to do it. So if prices go up, he still won’t get that price, and we can reduce that prices for –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you have buy-ins for that? Why would India or China comply?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, first, at the G-7 a couple of weeks ago, the G-7 endorsed this idea as a good idea. We’re now starting to have the conversations with the major consumers. And I would ask the question the other way around, doesn’t every buyer try to get a lower price? So, I think every buyer’s incentivized to pay less.
And I’ll – I’ll go a step further. Right now, regardless of what you see as the global oil price, that’s not what Putin’s getting. So these headlines about Putin getting a – some kind of a math between how much is he stilling times the price of oil in the world, that’s not his revenue because he’s already agreed to major discounts.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But he’s still taking in money and he’s still funding this war. So —
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: That’s what we’re trying to stop.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. But, in the meantime, I want to ask you quickly about the president’s climate change efforts. This bill and his proposal is completely stalled right now. The president says he’s going to take executive action. What is the plan? What are you going to actually do here in the United States?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think we’ve tried to get a plan where we can incentive great incentives for U.S. investment –
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you can’t block new oil and gas drilling, right? You can’t do some of those things because they would counter your efforts.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think what we want to do in this – in this bill that we have proposed, and we are hopeful that – we still hope that that’s what Congress does, is to give it the kind of incentive assurance that we can have additional American investment in climate, renewable energy, electric vehicles. Why wouldn’t we want to do that? Why would we want to make – to create an environment in which China is ahead of us? The rest of the world is making the investments and we’re not. We want to be able to put the kind of incentives that there will be additional investment in the infrastructure for renewable energy, for solar, for wind and for electric vehicles and for our nuclear fleet in this country. That’s how we get to climate. We didn’t get that today. The president is determined to take some action that he can through executive orders and through other actions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Like what?
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: We’ll see what we can do this week and in the coming weeks. But, again, I think that the responsibility here is to be able to invest into our future. Whether we like it or not, the — those — some don’t like it. This is the future of energy markets in the United States and around the world. We’ve got to decide, do we want the U.S. to lead or do we want the Chinese to lead this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. You’ve got to convince Senator Joe Manchin.
We’ll be talking about that ahead in this segment.
Thank you very much for coming in.
We’ll be right back.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: It’s a pleasure.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: For a broader look at some of the economic headwinds we are facing as a country, we’re joined now by Jason Furman. He was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under the Obama administration, and is now a professor at Harvard. He joins us from Boston this morning.
Good morning to you.
Inflation is running extremely high, as you know. Up 9.1 percent over the past 12 months. Shelter, food, gas, all the things the Fed can’t really control, they’re hurting people.
Are we at the peak yet?
JASON FURMAN (Former Chairman, White House Council of Economic Advisers): You know, Margaret, I don’t know. Oil prices have been coming down. Gasoline prices have been coming down. So that headline number, that’s the one that Americans really feel could be coming down.
What was worrisome in this last report is even if you strip out all the volatile things, the underlying floor was actually strengthening. We might see the 12 month numbers rising in the months to come.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Ouch.
You know, looking at forward planning, Bank of America is now predicting a mild recession in the second half of the year. JP Morgan says the risk of recession is uncomfortably high. But Citigroup’s CEO said she sees nothing in the data now to indicate that we’re on the cusp of recession.
So, this – this is the big money bet. What’s your bet? Where are we on the possibility of recession?
JASON FURMAN: Look, I’m not that much more worried than I am normally, but I don’t have any confidence in that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What does that mean?
JASON FURMAN: In part because the economic signals are really unclear. In the first half of the year, it looks like GDP fell, but jobs grew quite a lot. You have business leaders saying they’re worried we’re going to go into a recession, but they’re still hiring people. If they’re bankers, they’re still making loans to people.
You have consumers saying they’re really negative about the economy but they’re still spending money. It’s hard to square a lot of these contradictory signals right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. But you’re saying it is quite possible, it’s just not clear.
JASON FURMAN: Oh, it’s certainly possible. But I – you know, and it’s certainly more likely than it normally is. The risks are much greater than they normally are. But the idea that a recession is a foregone conclusion, or even over 50 percent chance, I don’t see that, but I’m looking through a cloudy rear-view mirror trying to guess what’s going to happen ahead of us.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. Fair.
I want to ask you about something you’ve been – you’ve been tweeting quite a lot about, and that is the fiscal side of the spending plan here. There have been these weeks of talks — we just discussed it — over the president’s proposals on climate spending, a number of other things, and it collapsed, these negotiations, in recent days.
You’ve been tweeting in favor of the Democrat’s bill, which apparently would expand an income tax on individuals making over $400,000. Why do you think it’s advisable to raise taxes in a period of inflation like that? People like Senator Manchin say we shouldn’t be due to inflation.
JASON FURMAN: Yes. So, Margaret, Senator Manchin is absolutely right to be more worried about inflation after the Friday report. That means we’re going to need to do more. The Fed’s probably going to telegraph larger rate increases in the future. It also means Congress should be trying to do their part in helping out. If they can cut the deficit, including raising taxes on high income households, that would, you know, reduce a bit of spending in the economy. It would cool the economy down a little bit and actually take some pressure off the Fed. The Fed would not need to raise rates by quite as much if Congress did their job.
So, clearly, this is a time where everyone should be helping out and bringing inflation down.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, what’s interesting is that, when you were on this program back in May, you said one of the reasons the U.S. has incredibly high inflation was the emergency spending that President Biden signed into effect back in March of 2021. And it was spending like that, that Senator Manchin points to and says, see, this is why we need to wait.
So, why was he right in the past and he’s wrong now to be concerned about spending?
JASON FURMAN: Yes. The difference is that we’re talking about something exceedingly different then — now than then. That was $1.9 trillion of new spending. Now on the table was something like $500 billion of deficit reduction. It was a net reduction in the deficit.
I think almost anyone, regardless of where they were on the political spectrum that was an expert on this topic, would agree that would lower inflation. There’s Republican friends of mine that would say, oh, I don’t like lowering inflation by raising taxes on high-income households. They might have some other way they’d rather lower inflation. But, unambiguously, this is going to bring inflation down. And from my values and perspectives, it would bring it down in a fair way. Certainly much more fair than the tiny reduction in inflation we’ll get if 12 million people get cut off their health subsidies and see their premiums go up at the end of the year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, President Biden issued a statement saying he would endorse this slipped down version of the bill that would — that Senator Manchin is endorsing that would lower health care premiums and prescription drug costs. Are you saying that slimmed down version is just not meaningful?
JASON FURMAN: Well, look, I think that slipped down version helps. It would lower inflation both because of the overall deficit reduction and then very directly by slowing the growth o prescription drugs cost. That would be in both likely the private sector and the public sector that you would see that slowdown. So if that bill is the best you can get, and I certainly don’t know enough about tactics in Washington to judge, that bill would be – would be a very good thing to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
JASON FURMAN: You know, even within that bill, by the way, there are some open questions, at least in my mind. If you’re not going to raise taxes, how about enforcing the tax code we already have? $600 million goes uncollected every year. Audits of millionaires are down 70 percent. If you fund the IRS, you can collect a lot more taxes without raising tax rates on anyone.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Very quickly, will it add for inflation if all these states, Massachusetts, California, Indiana, Delaware, hand out checks to offset inflation?
JASON FURMAN: Absolutely. Every one of those states is raising inflation nationwide to benefit the citizens in their own states. Collectively we’ll be worse off because of it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Jason Furman, thank you for your analysis and for joining us today.
We’ll be back in a moment.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: One of the more startling numbers from last week’s Consumer Price Index was the cost of rent, which is soaring at the fastest pace in 36 years. Here in the nation’s capital, average home rental costs have jumped more than 11 percent in just the past year. The national rate is nearly 6 percent.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has made the push for affordable housing a part of her agenda. And she joins us.
Good morning, Mayor.
MURIEL BOWSER (D-Washington D.C. Mayor): Good morning. Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, I want to ask you, “The New York Times” had this piece on the housing crisis and homelessness in America and it highlighted D.C. as just one of those cities that has just persistently not had enough housing to meet demand.
You’ve been working on reducing homelessness. Is the prime issue supply?
MURIEL BOWSER: Well, we’ve been working on creating affordable housing and producing more and preserving more. And we are among the jurisdictions, I would say, that lead the nation in being a local partner in production. So, just in the last seven years we’ve invested more than $1.4 billion in doing exactly that.
We’re equally invested in making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring in our city. And we have a plan to get there. We’ve seen our rates of family homelessness, for example, decrease by 78 percent. Chronic homelessness also. We’re attacking and driving those numbers down for most categories.
So, what we see is, in a city like ours, where people want to live and want to work, that we always have to be producing more housing.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, I’m wondering then, in an environment where we are now where interest rates are going up, is that discouraging builders from producing what you need? Do you need the federal government to step in and provide some sort of support?
MURIEL BOWSER: Well, we certainly are going to be able to do less with the very historic investments that we’ve made. So, we’re concerned about that. But what I know, that we’re doing everything locally that we can. We have a tool called the Housing Production Trust Fund. This year alone we’ll invest $450 million in new units. We’ve set a goal of building 36,000 new units.
So, we’re always looking for the federal government to be a partner. And I have to say that in coming out of this pandemic and everything that the federal government was able to do to help cities like ours keep people housed with the American Rescue Plan dollars, with making sure that we’re preventing evictions and keep people from getting evicted has been very helpful.
MARGARET BRENNAN: “The Washington Post” reported last week that homeless shelters in D.C. were filling up and groups are getting overwhelmed by these buses that the governors of Texas and Arizona are sending here full of migrants.
How significant is this influx? How many people?
MURIEL BOWSER: Well, this is a very significant issue. We have, for sure, called on the federal government to work across state lines to prevent people from really being tricked into getting on buses. We think they’re largely asylum seekers who are going to final destinations that are not Washington, D.C.
I worked with the White House to make sure that FEMA provided a grant to a local organization that is providing services to folks. But I fear that they’re being tricked into nationwide bus trips when their final destinations are places all over the United States of America.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So it’s not just local taxpayers picking up the tab. You’re saying federal government is helping?
MURIEL BOWSER: Well, local taxpayers are not picking up the tab and should not pick up the tab. And we really need a coordinated federal response. We know that it’s done for refugees who – who come to – to the states from all points of the world and the same has to be done in this situation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I also want to ask you about monkeypox, 108 million infections here in the district according to the CDC numbers. Is the outbreak more significant than that? And are you prepared for the spike when it comes to available vaccine? Your Democratic colleague in New York City says he needs more vaccine.
MURIEL BOWSER: We need more vaccine. We’ve gotten just over 8,000 doses. We estimate that we need about 100,000 doses to address the current target population.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Wow.
MURIEL BOWSER: So, we need more doses for sure and we know that that work is being done. We already have a very robust testing regime and we’ve mottled it on what we were able to do with Covid. And we’re going to continue to test. And I think because of that robust testing, we’re going to see more cases. But we want people to pay attention to ways to – of protecting themselves, especially by getting vaccinated when the vaccine is available.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Has the federal government promised you those doses?
MURIEL BOWSER: We — no. Our health department works with the CDC and others.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
MURIEL BOWSER: And so as the – as the vaccine is available, we’re going to be ready to distribute it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I also want – you have a big portfolio here in the nation’s capital.
MURIEL BOWSER: Indeed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about the risk of political violence. Homeland Security has warned the entire country should essentially be prepared for more political violence. How are you planning for it here in D.C.?
MURIEL BOWSER: Well, we, as the nation’s capital, we’re kind of always on high alert as a target of all manner of political violence. And, unfortunately, we’ve seen that of a domestic nature in the last several years. So our —
MARGARET BRENNAN: Particularly Supreme court justices, January 6th.
MURIEL BOWSER: January 6th. The events of — surrounding the murder of George Floyd. All. But we also see — we see demonstrations of First Amendment protests throughout the year. Some you don’t hear about, but our police are out there working every day to make sure people can peacefully protest, but also keep our cities safe. So, it is a ongoing, high-level interaction with our federal partners, including federal homeland security, all the federal agencies that are in D.C. But our metropolitan police department is there to support them in many cases and lead in others.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Mayor Bowser, thank you for your time and for coming in today.
MURIEL BOWSER: Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we will be right back with more FACE THE NATION.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s it for us today. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you Thursday, along with Norah O’Donnell, John Dickerson and the rest of our team covering the January 6th hearings at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time right here on CBS.
For FACE THE NATION, I’m Margaret Brennan.
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