Mark Levin: ‘Are We Better Off Today than We Were Four Years Ago? Hell No’

Conservative talker Mark Levin opened up his Sunday broadcast of FNC’s “Life, Liberty & Levin” by criticizing President Joe Biden and Democrats for how it has approached the American economy.

He also blasted the Biden administration for a series of foreign policy blunders and education and corruption allegations within the Biden family.

Transcript as follows:

MARK LEVIN: Ronald Reagan used to ask the question, are you better off today than you were four years ago? So, I’ll ask the question. Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Is the country better off today than it was four years ago under President Trump?

Well, let’s take a look at these dismal numbers — dismal numbers — and we’re still heading south. Consumer prices, the price that you pay rose eight and a half% in March. Eight and a half — that’s the highest in 40 years, eight and a half%. “The Consumer Price Index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services jumped eight and a half% from a year ago on an unadjusted basis. The data reflect price rises not seen in the U.S. since the stagflation days of the late 70s, in the early 80s. March’s headline reading, in fact, was the highest since December 1981. Core inflation was the hottest since August 1982.”

You’re feeling this. You know this already.

“Due to the surge in inflation, worker wages, despite rising 5.6% from a year ago, weren’t keeping pace with the cost of living.” No. If something goes up eight and a half% and your wages go up 5.6%, last time I checked, that’s almost a three% gap. “Food rose one% for the month, 8.8% over the years. Prices for goods such as rice, ground beef, citrus fruits and fresh vegetables all posted gains of more than two% in March. Energy prices were up 11% and 32%, respectively, as gasoline prices popped 18.3% for the month.”

“Price gains in clothing, services, excluding energy and medical care, each which increased 0.6% for the month. Transportation services also rose two% bringing its 12-month gain to 7.7%.”

These are monthly increases.

“Soaring gas prices are forcing some Uber and Lyft drivers off the road.” You can’t — when prices for gasoline are going up almost 20% a month. “Food prices” more on food prices. “Here items predicted to cost a whole lot more at grocery stores.” I’m going through the various news items, “Poultry and eggs, fats and oils, fruits and vegetables, non-alcoholic beverages,” you know like milk, “Sugar and sweet cereal and bakery,” and may I mention meat.

“Supplier prices rose 11.2%.” What are those? This is called the Producer Price Index. This affects you, too. “The prices that goods and services producers receive like wholesalers rose in March at the fastest pace since records have been kept. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Producer Price Index, which measures the prices paid by wholesalers increased 11.2% from a year ago, the most in a data series going back to November 2010 on a monthly basis. The gauge climbed 1.4% stripping out food, energy, and trade services.” Although I don’t know why you would strip out food and energy that seems to me the be the biggest.

“So-called core PPI or Producer Price Index rose 0.9% on a monthly basis.” That’s where you get the 10 or 11% on an annual basis. That’s excluding food and energy.

“Supply chain crisis continues.” We never had a supply chain crisis. “A whole host the Biden policy just decision,” says the former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao under Donald Trump and what are those whole host of Biden policy decisions? They’ve been telling you that our ports are working 24/7.

I’ll give you an example. Long Beach has seven. One is working 24/7. Why aren’t they all working 24/7? Because of union rules for the longshoreman, because of environmental rules in California, they can’t work 24/7. What’s Joe Biden doing about that? Absolutely nothing.

Just another group he is bought and paid for by. “Biden: New Plan to Fight Inflation.” Remember, he talked about going after Big Meat, and now, it’s Big Oil. And of course, all of this has to do with Putin.

Everything that’s in short supply, everything where inflation is going through the roof, where the currency is being debased by deficit spending, it is on Putin.

Look, Putin is a monster. He has committed atrocities of the worst kind. He is a genocidal maniac, but that does not give Biden a pass on what he is doing to our country internally.

His policies are destroying the United States of America. They are destroying our economic system, they’re destroying your pensions, they’re destroying whatever salary you are receiving, whatever bonuses you receive. They are driving up medical costs. They’re creating food shortages.

Next thing you know, listen to me, we’re going to have brownouts and blackouts and gas shortages. What are we going to do? Like we did in the 70s, even and odd days, you can fill up your car, it is coming, and it’s not because Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s because the Democrats invaded the Oval Office and Congress. These are their policies at work.

Remember what they said? They embrace Bernie Sanders, who you don’t hear from anymore. Gee, I wonder why. They embrace this Marxist agenda of rejiggering the entire society, of destroying fossil fuels.

You remember that document about 120 pages in length that Bernie Sanders and Biden put out, the most radical screed in American political history. It could have been written by Marx and Engels. That’s what they’re instituting, whether it’s cultural, whether it is economic, whether it is political, whether it’s immigration, they’re going through this, his staff, the people he has surrounded himself with who are the radicals of the radicals, this is what they’re instituting.

U.S. government debt — U.S. government debt, ladies and gentlemen, is over $30 trillion. When Biden took office, it was about $23 trillion. $30 trillion. It’s unimaginable.

That is a%age of the GDP we haven’t seen since the height of World War II, and we are surpassing it in peacetime — relative peacetime. That’s number one. Number two, the interest on this debt, as interest rates go up as they must, because the currency is being devalued with inflation. As the interest rates go up, we have to pay the interest on this debt. This takes a bigger and bigger%age of the Federal budget.

We haven’t had high-interest rates for over a decade, now they’re going to start to kick in. So you folks are going to see high inflation, you’re going to start to see shortages, you’re going to see costs going way up, supplies going way down. This is the horror that is created by the left when they abuse the laws of economics. The laws of economics are just as correct as the laws of physics. You can’t change them with legislation, you can’t change them with borrowing.

Mankind has experienced this sort of thing before, whether in Germany or Zimbabwe, or Venezuela or wherever you look. You keep printing money and printing money and printing money, you keep creating economic dislocations, you keep creating situations where people don’t know where to put their money, they don’t know what to invest in, research and capital, they’re not sure where to go and so forth and so on.

You’re having a war against fossil fuels. And what happens? You get less fossil fuel.

We were energy independent 18 months ago, 15 months ago. Now, we’re begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil. No, Putin didn’t do that, Joe Biden did that. Chuck Schumer did that. Nancy Pelosi did that. The Democratic Party did that. That’s who did that?

Never forget.

So we have around $30 trillion to $31 trillion in debt, and Biden wanted to add, I want you to remember, the Build Back Better nonsense, another $6 trillion. Where would we be today with that?

Let’s look at this country. Are we better today than we were four years ago? Cities across the U.S. are breaking all-time homicide records this year. Wow and it’s not just homicide, it is violent crime across the board and it’s not just violent crime, you see how people are stealing things from stores willy-nilly and so forth? Under lawlessness?

What’s the Department of Justice doing? Chasing down parents in front of School Boards, going after Republican legislatures where they disagree with what the will of the people have to say in a particular state about abortion, or putting sensible voting laws back in place. What’s the Department of Justice doing? They have 13,000 Special Agents in the FBI, give or take, 13,000.

How many of those 13,000 are focused on going after people who are quote, unquote “parading or trespassing on January 6.” They say it’s the biggest investigation they have going today. The biggest one in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; not terrorism, not the mob, no; not sex crimes, the Mexican cartels — January 6.

So how many of those 13,000 Special Agents are busy looking at video? They say they’ve looked at 20,000 hours of video. We’ve got to get those trespassers and those paraders. Yes, we all agree about violent crime. Of course, the media don’t and the left don’t, they were all fine with violence in the summer of 2020. I mean, that after all, was liberating.

Now, let’s look, are we better off today than we were four years ago?

Look at Afghanistan, a horrific surrender that resulted in the murder of 13 American soldiers. Look at Russia, threatening to use nukes against us. Would they have done that under Donald Trump? Look at Iran getting nukes from this President? Would they have gotten nukes under Donald Trump? No. They were barely surviving under Donald Trump, economically and otherwise. China producing more nukes than ever before. They weren’t doing that under Trump either.

I’d say our foreign policy is an abject disaster, absolute disaster and a grave threat to the United States.

Look at our classrooms, the reason we have a parents’ movement, because Joe Biden and the Democratic Party and their Big Government, teachers, educational bureaucrats unions have taken control of these classrooms. They don’t want parents involved in the teaching of their little babies. They’re pushing transgenderism and sexualization. They’re pushing critical race theory. They’re pushing all kinds of the hard left Marxist agenda on your little kids. The one thing they’re not pushing is education.

And then we have these executive orders. Destroying women’s sports, Title 9, womanhood. We can’t even define a woman anymore. We have a historic appointee, we’re told, a Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States, who can’t even define why she is historic. What am I talking about? She wouldn’t define what a woman is. Why? Because she wants to be free to rule in a radical left way when it comes to these ideologies. They are destroying womanhood and women’s sports.

And then in my view, we have the most corrupt President in American history, potentially. The former Mayor of Moscow’s wife invested three and a half million dollars in the Biden family. China has invested tens of millions of dollars in the Biden family. The former Ukrainian regime invested millions of dollars in the Biden family. We don’t know about Joe and Joe Biden’s S-corporations, they haven’t released their tax returns on that. So they invested millions in the Biden family.

What do we know about this other than what some of these intrepid reporters had been doing? Not enough. Shouldn’t we know if Joe Biden is the Manchurian Candidate? Shouldn’t we know if he’s been bought off and sold out? I think we should. There’s more predicates here than you can throw a stone at, to have a Special Counsel investigation.

Are we better off today than we were four years ago? Hell no. The country is in grave straits.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor