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--:-- John Bickley: After weeks of failing to capture Ukraine's capital city, Russia is redeploying its forces, while the U.S. warns that a major offensive by Russia may be coming. We'll discuss the latest developments in Ukraine and the prospect of a peace agreement. I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, March 30th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: 2020 saw a massive spike in deaths from alcohol. What caused the surge and which demographics were most affected? And President Biden has submitted his annual budget. What's in the $5.8 trillion proposal? And what does it say about the administration's priorities? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Ukrainian officials say that face-to-face peace talks with Russia on Tuesday showed signs of progress and that Ukraine has offered to give up requests to join NATO. Meanwhile, the U.S. says the world should be prepared for another major offensive by Russia. Here to discuss the latest messaging from Russia and Ukraine is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- Ian Howarth: So Ian, any progress on peace talks in Ukraine?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Well, despite President Joe Biden's speech in Poland over the weekend, which culminated in apparent calls to get Putin out of power, Russia is continuing in its messaging that their military strategy is changing. In the last few days, Russia has been saying that the first phase of the invasion is complete. After what they claim was a successful crippling of the Ukrainian military, Russia now states that they're going to be focusing on the eastern region of the country that was already largely under Russian control. And on Tuesday, Russia's deputy defense minister said that they had agreed to reduce military activity in areas to the west, such as the Kiev regions, in hopes of reaching some form of agreement with Ukraine to end the war.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it sounds like they're shifting the goalposts a bit. What's the strategy there?
--:-- Ian Howarth: The first factor is that, as we've discussed before, Russia's invasion has not been a success. Given the fact that they outgun and outmatch the Ukrainians in basically every single way, this is bordering on a historic military embarrassment for Putin. And he simply cannot afford to lose a full-on war. Given that he doesn't have the ability at this point to take control of the entire country, or even just the capital city, he's now looking for a way to save face. That could mean leaving with some concessions from Ukraine and the confirmation of Russia's control of eastern regions of Ukraine.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But there is also reason to believe Ukraine may agree to something like that. Ukraine's President Zelensky has been asking for a meeting with Putin in recent days and has also admitted that membership to groups like NATO might not be a realistic option for his country and this could happen soon At least according to the Russian defense official the two countries have supposedly engaged in constructive talks Do we have any idea what an agreement could look like?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Well, it's safe to assume that it would involve a statement of neutrality regarding groups like NATO and the European Union, as well as an agreement to remain a non-nuclear country. It will probably also involve some form of acknowledgement of the supposed independence of Russian-backed eastern areas of Ukraine, but that might be a tougher ask. On the Ukrainian side, though, they've laid out a possible framework for a future peace deal, which would involve legally binding security guarantees that would mean other countries would intervene if it was attacked again. So sort of like NATO.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, their delegate compared these guarantees to NATO's Article 5. In return, Ukraine would pledge neutrality, agree not to host foreign military forces, and agree to hold talks over Crimea. But given that Russia is so vocally concerned about Ukrainian membership to NATO, So it is unlikely that they're going to accept a, I guess, NATO light agreement, which could lead to outside military intervention in future conflicts.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. Still a lot of questions yet to be answered. Ian, thanks for the update.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Of course. Thanks, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, 2020 saw a massive spike in alcohol-related deaths. You can get this show and all of the content you love wherever you are, all on the Daily Wire app. Even if you're not a Daily Wire member, you'll be first to know what's trending with mobile notifications for the latest news, and you'll get content from all your favorite Daily Wire shows. Download the Daily Wire app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: As the COVID pandemic seemingly draws to a close, new data reveals the devastating effects of mandatory social isolation, including a record spike in alcohol-related deaths during the early days of the pandemic. Here are the details as Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So Cabot, there's a new study out that's getting a lot of attention for good reason. What have we learned?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we've been seeing anecdotal evidence over the last two years that's hinted at the negative impact of COVID lockdowns, but now we're starting to get hard data and it's bad. There's no other way of putting it. That study you mentioned comes from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. They looked at death certificates nationwide and found that in 2020, there was a 25.5% increase in alcohol-related deaths compared to 2019. 25% spike in one year. So we're talking about a massive increase in liver disease, alcohol poisoning, and other alcohol-related accidents. Now, these kinds of deaths had been rising steadily before, but the average rate of increase since 1999 was just 3%. So this is eight times that. A stunning increase.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One part of the study really getting attention was the number of deaths related to alcohol compared to COVID deaths. What did the study find there?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: This was pretty shocking for researchers. The study found that in 2020, more Americans under the age of 65 died from alcohol-related factors than from COVID. So more deaths for people under 65 from alcohol than COVID. It was 74,408 for alcohol versus 74,075 for COVID. And within that spike in deaths, it was younger people who were disproportionately represented. 35 to 44-year-olds saw the biggest year-over-year spike at 39.7%, while 25 to 34-year-olds had the second largest increase at 37%. That's devastating.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So what sort of insight do we have on what specifically caused the spike?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, the researchers on the study were hesitant to attribute all of it to any one thing, But sociologists and mental health professionals have weighed in with a few theories Number one is isolation caused by the lockdowns There a direct correlation between alcohol abuse and loneliness And it makes sense as millions of people were forced inside Experts say that lack of personal connection and also connection with family left people searching for other things to satisfy them And there's also the fact that treatment centers for alcoholics were largely closed during COVID. So that was a real blow to people who were working toward recovery.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, this isn't the first piece of evidence that lockdowns had deadly consequences. What more can you tell us there?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we're seeing more and more evidence of the deadly side effects of these lockdowns. And there's unfortunately a good chance that it'll take years for us to fully understand just how bad they were in many ways. For example, we also saw a record number of drug overdoses during the lockdowns for much the same reason we saw alcohol deaths go up. And as isolation set in during the lockdowns, suicide attempts went up among children, particularly adolescent girls. they had a suicide spike of more than 50% compared to the year before. And during the first year of the pandemic, we also saw a massive drop in the number of cancer screenings, something a lot of people don't think about, but some hospitals reported a 90% drop in the number of pap smears and mammograms and colonoscopies they were conducting. So now the fear is that those early detection methods that doctors often use weren't taking place. And so a lot of cancers and diseases went unnoticed.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, definitely many tragic consequences, as you say. We keep discovering more as time goes by.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Cabot, thank you for the reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Georgia Howe: On Monday, the Biden administration released its $5.8 trillion federal budget, laying out the president's policy agenda. The bill includes more than $30 billion to address rising crime, which includes 140 new ATF agents and 131 more attorneys to pursue January 6 prosecutions. There's also $813 billion for national security spending and $36 billion dedicated to combating global climate change. I spoke with Joe LaVornia, former chief economist at the National Economic Council, and he walked me through some of the items in the budget and what they mean for the U.S. economy.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Thanks very much for having me.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Now, the president just released his budget. First, can you tell us what's in it?
--:-- Joe LaVornia: A lot. A lot of defense spending, money for law enforcement, money for future potential pandemics. It's a grab bag of spending that pretty much covers all parts of the economy.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Now, is a budget actually binding? In other words, how much does this document really matter in real terms?
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Normally, the budget is set as sort of a narrative, what the administration wants to accomplish. And this is the blueprint and therefore kind of sets the table in terms of what the administration would like to accomplish. So normally, oftentimes, people don't take it verbatim or really, you know, focus too much on it. Although this time around, probably a little bit different because the administration couldn't get through its big spending and tax increases last year. And with the midterms coming up and the polling for Biden being so poor, this attempts to move a little bit more to the center, perhaps in the previous bill, which had even more spending or the previous budget plan. So therefore, this is probably a little bit more important because Senator Manchin has talked about possibly having a trim down tax hike. So this is going to be important in terms of negotiations and trying to get a bill passed before the midterm.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: So I think this is one of those times where actually it does matter.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Now, what can we learn about the Biden administration's priorities by looking at this budget?
--:-- Joe LaVornia: I would say the thing that jumps out is the tax increases. There a tax on unrealized capital gains They call it a billionaire tax but it starts at wealth above million which clearly is a lot of money Keep in mind of course that these things always start big and they always wind up trickling down to the much lower level, a much poorer person, if you will, than what is initially put forward.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Right. We actually covered that at length on Monday with Cabot Phillips, just for listeners who want a deeper explanation on that.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Now, I want to ask you about the corporate tax hike. The president proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. What effect would that have on businesses and the economy at large?
--:-- Joe LaVornia: The problem is if you're constantly changing these bills, and in this case you're raising corporate taxes, and you're making the U.S. much less competitive with the other G6 countries where their average tax rate is right around 22% or thereabouts, we're making ourselves less competitive by raising our tax rates. Not only that makes it very hard for businesses to plan if they think tax rates are going up. So these just are not really good policies at all in trying to increase the supply side of the economy or the economy's ability to produce the things that we want.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: And that's really what we should be focused on now, given the fact we've got all these supply side disruptions with supply chains and everything else aggravating the inflation problem.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Now, regardless of this budget proposal, what do you see as the biggest concerns for the economy, especially regarding gas prices and inflation?
--:-- Joe LaVornia: So inflation is running at 8 percent and the March numbers, which will come out soon, should show it up near 9 percent. Energy is a big factor that was rising way before the invasion of Ukraine. That was even the case with food prices up about 6 percent, again, way before we had the situation in Ukraine. So food and energy costs are high. Shelter is rising. So you basically get 55 percent of what I call essential items that households have to pay. That's food, energy and shelter. You can't get around it. That's going to be a huge hit to their disposable income, their living standards. It's going to hurt consumer spending. It's going to hurt discretionary spending. So we're going to see high inflation because these supply bottlenecks are persisting.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: If the economy's potential growth rate remains depressed, in part because of the fear of high taxes or more likely what's been a very, I'd argue, a regulatory onslaught to business, especially in the fossil fuels industry, then we're going to have these high prices persist longer than they're supposed to. And it's going to hurt America. And therefore, that's what worries me the most. I would like some policies that were a little bit more bipartisan in nature, that buy in on both sides. and we could argue about things here or there, but it seems like this is more class warfare than anything else. And that's ultimately, as I said, not good for the long-term prospects of the economy.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: All right, well, Joe, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Joe LaVornia: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Joe LaVornia, former chief economist at the National Economic Council.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another story we're tracking this week. According to a jobs report by Indeed.com, there are still an estimated 11.2 million job openings. The Labor Department said there were only 6.3 million people looking for employment in February.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission, please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter, available exclusively to Daily Wire members. Use code MORNINGWIRE to try a Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.
