Campaign trail myths about immigration and the economy
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2024
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
Ahead of this year’s election, politicians are spinning out all kinds of narratives about how immigration hurts the U.S. economy. But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projects that a surge in immigration over the next decade will ultimately lower the federal deficit. We’ll do the numbers. Then, we’ll get into why former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers compared the Republican Party’s economic agenda to former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ infamous mini-budget disaster. And, Kai tells us about his cool dad moment.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Summers Says GOP Fiscal Plans Set US Up for ‘Liz Truss Moment’” from Bloomberg
- “Undocumented immigrants will boost economy, lower deficit, CBO says” from The Hill
- “Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy” from the Congressional Budget Office
- “Why Hydrangeas Are Blooming Spectacularly in the Northeast This Summer” from The New York Times
- “Chappell Roan Booked a Tour. Then She Blew Up.” from The New York Times
Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right now that I'm over my pet peeve let us begin |
| 0:07.0 | Well, I should say Stephen Scholar makes things a run around here so I can't |
| 0:14.2 | criticize him but he did mess up my computers. Anyway, hey everybody I'm |
| 0:17.2 | Kyle Rosal welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today makes sense. |
| 0:20.3 | I'm Kimberly Adams. Thank you for joining us on this Wednesday. |
| 0:24.6 | It is July the 24th. |
| 0:27.0 | You know, it feels like this month has gone by so fast |
| 0:31.2 | but so much has happened. And. And yet. It feels like. It feels like it's been a year. |
| 0:38.0 | All right, well other than calendar updates, we're going to do our usual things, some news, some smiles, and we will start with the news. |
| 0:44.0 | Kimberly Adams, you get to go first. |
| 0:46.0 | I'm living all things election at this point in my life, and I'm paying a lot of attention to the narratives that are coming out from the different campaigns and now that Harris is likely, very likely to be the Democratic nominee we can expect to hear a lot about her work on immigration |
| 1:06.1 | in the United States. |
| 1:07.1 | She was given that mandate by Biden as Vice President. |
| 1:10.4 | Republicans like to call her the borders are even though she's kind of seems to back |
| 1:14.7 | away from that a bit and so all of that to set up some news out today from the |
| 1:20.7 | Congressional Budget Office. A report on the headline, the title of the report |
| 1:27.7 | is effects of the immigration surge on the federal budget and the economy. |
| 1:34.0 | There are plenty of narratives about what immigration, particularly undocumented |
| 1:39.0 | immigration does to the U.S. economy, and so I was very fascinated by this look actually digging |
| 1:45.0 | into the numbers of what it does and so they're talking about from 2021 to 2034, the net immigration of people in the other foreign national category |
| 1:58.8 | totals about 200,000 people per year, right? |
| 2:02.0 | So we're going to take the 200,000 people a year. |
... |
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