Dan Crenshaw's Problem with Stimulus Checks

But that moment is special because there's value in suffering. And in today's society, we have convinced ourselves that there is no value in suffering, that the entire role of say government is to end your suffering. But this is a false promise. Not only is it a false promise, but it will create a weak society that is unable to sustain itself. That's a really important point and I think there's deep truth in that. This is why victimhood politics is so dangerous, and I would say populism is too. I think the two are almost indistinguishable from each other. People are always trying to talk about populism on the right and the left. And I say, look, here's what populism is. It's telling you what you feel. It's mirroring your feelings back to you. It's telling you what you want to hear as opposed to the truth. So I think that's a decent definition of populism. I don't like it. I don't like people embracing it. It doesn't just mean, hey, things that are good that people are for. Well, you know what? A lot of people are for $1,600 checks that are free. That doesn't mean it's a good policy. Right. That's a good example. Right. People voted. If they voted and said, do you want $100,000 for a year? Totally. Everybody would vote yes. Yeah, why wouldn't you? But is it a sustainable policy? Of course not. Of course not. And the kind of amounts to the, I think, drastic lurches and welfare policy or infrastructure spending and all of these things that we're seeing. It's populism on steroids. It's telling you what you want to hear. And that's not truth. That's not truth. And we have to get back to truth and we have to get away from this victimhood mentality where we actually, we actually elevate this idea of being helpless. See, that's what's changed. That's what's changed in the last decade. It used to be that, well, you might feel some shame if you were the type to, you know what, you know what? I just, I need some help. I feel bad about it. I'm going to get back on my feet, but I need some help right now. That used to be the sort of American way. All right. We need a safety net. Nobody would disagree with that. We need a safety net. We need to help people who have truly fallen on hard times, who lost their jobs because of COVID. But does that also mean we need to provide a $1,400 check to somebody who never lost their job and whose biggest hardship has been Zoom meetings? Of course not. But over a hundred million people were getting checks that never lost their jobs. A hundred million? Easily. Through COVID? It's way more. It's way more than that. I'm cutting it off at a hundred million. So I'm going to fact check. Explain that to me. When we send out checks, the direct cash payments, I've always been against direct cash payments. So the COVID stimulus checks. Yeah. Because they go out to anybody who makes... People got those checks that didn't lose their jobs? Of course. What? Yeah. The cutoff was like 75K a year. So that means... Wait a minute. That means every federal... Well, not every, but a lot of federal workers getting them too. So people that didn't lose any money because of the pandemic still got checks? Yeah. These were never based on your situation. What? Yeah. Really? It's ridiculous. I didn't know that. I thought you had to lose your job. I thought there was a problem. Wait a minute. So people who never lost a penny. So if you look at their tax receipts, you look at what they made in 2019 versus 2020. Correct. If they didn't lose any money. Yeah. No, it's based on just your income. So I think 75K a year was the cutoff. But also if you're a married couple, 150K. And if you have kids, then it's even more... So fewer. A lot of active duty military friends are getting thousands of dollars because they have kids. And they're like, why? Why am I getting... This is such a waste of taxpayer money. You know what I mean? I had no idea. Do your duty and go spend it on a local business that's been suffering. I thought the money was allocated to people that lost money because of the pandemic. No, no, no. Because we already have a system for that. It's unemployment insurance. Our system works fine for that. And this was always my thing. It's like, look, I'm in favor of temporarily boosting payments to those who are unemployed on unemployed insurance. Usually state run unemployment insurance runs at... It's at a formula that would make sure that you're not making more than you would have if you were already employed. Because you don't want to have a disincentive to go back to work. Right. What we did in the initial stages of the pandemic was increase that to an extra $600 a week if you're unemployed. I'm okay with that for a few weeks during hard times. The problem is Democrats want to keep it forever. And now every business I talk to is like, I can't hire people. I have so many job openings right now. Can't hire anybody because we still have it. It's $300 a week, but we still have it. It means people are getting paid to stay home. There's a distance. They're making a purely rational financial decision. But again, that's one conversation. That's at least a debate to be had during hard times. But the direct cash payments, that's nuts. That's nuts. What are the direct cash payments? That's the free money. That's the free money. That's the free money. So this is the people that even though they still make the same amount they made in 2019, 2020, they got a big check for no reason. Yep. 100%. That seems crazy. And that's well over 100 million people. They just got it. They didn't ask for it. They just received it. So it's not something they're guilty of. Yeah. They just received it. But it gets to the cultural argument that we're talking about. There was no backlash for this. Even on the right, I remember, I remember, I was a little frustrated with the president or the ex-president, Donald Trump, the president I voted for, he was pushing for those $2,000 cash payments. But don't you think that he was doing that politically? And I didn't vote for him. That's the point. But don't you think that was- But that's the point. That's politically. That's exactly the point. There's an incentive now to pay people off with their own money. And it's not good. Yeah, but don't you think that he was in a desperation situation where he just wanted to get reelected? I mean, he's coming through this whole- This was in December. He had already lost. Oh, so in December after he lost, he still- But he didn't think he lost. He thought he was still- Oh, in every conversation. I don't know if you want to get in it. It's a good conversation. He thought he was going to somehow or another get reinstated. I don't know if he ever truly believed that. But- He was pushing for it. But yeah, it is on the victimhood side. This is the demise of the republic. When people are comfortable with being bought off with their own tax dollars and being comfortable, and even more than that, comfortable with being told that they're victimized and that some other group is responsible for that victimization. Right. So it's not just a kind of bad situation. They're in a bad situation. Because someone did it to you. And maybe it's the 1%. Maybe it's those mean corporate giants, and now those corporate giants are trying to get all woke and get on the democrats' good side. Like they always do. Because they want to maintain their little piece of the pie. That's where it gets tricky, right? Where they manipulate the narrative and they realize where people's heads are at so they try to jump on board. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips. 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