Glenn Beck warns that America’s economy is suffering from a deeper disease... one that can’t be cured by printing money, free checks, or political spin. With inflation rising, housing unaffordable, and healthcare collapsing under government control, Beck argues the nation faces a “cancer” that only painful but honest reform can heal. He and Stu Burguiere break down why short-term fixes like subsidies and stimulus will only fuel the crisis, and why the only real solution lies in deregulation, competition, and courage. Will Americans endure the hard medicine needed to save the nation, or turn to socialism out of desperation?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program.

Stu does not share my -- my optimism. And I -- you know, I think that's too strong of a word. I'm not optimistic.

I am hopeful that someone in Washington, on our side understands what we're facing here. That health care is the biggest win!

It's the biggest win. And totally winnable.

STU: Yeah. And I do think -- if -- you know, if it was the top priority of Donald Trump. I think, he would be able to move Republicans toward trying to come up with something, I guess.

But I don't show much optimism on that. Because as I was going through that whole scenario, it wasn't just that we said these rates would go up, and that the Affordable Care Act wouldn't be affordable and gave all of the reasons that wound up playing out with risk pools and everything else.

And it wasn't also that we would say, hey. They're going to try to solve this by more government subsidiary easy. And more dependence on government.

We said all that stuff. And that's what we just talked about.

But other thing we said was that after this thing got passed, the Republicans would bail on opposing it. We would no longer have an opposition. We're now to the part of the story where the right-wing position is just normal Obamacare.

And the left-wing position is new expand, fancy, times ten Obamacare. The question of whether we triple down on Obamacare.

Or double down on it. That's now a conservative position.

GLENN: Okay. So let me give you some hope.

I talked to Dr. Oz. And he said, they're introducing something here in the next couple of months.

Should be, any time now.

And it will be done at the state level. And it will be to stop all the barriers from state to state.

And you get -- you get your -- your -- your funding for different programs if you get rid of those barriers for your insurance companies.

And if you don't, well, you don't get your funding. And so they will be incentivized to do it.

So I do think that there's some thinking about this, that's going on, with RFK and Dr. Oz.

In fact, let's see if we can get them on. Maybe I'll go up to Washington and do a podcast with him.

Because I think this is the big win here. Because if you look, you have to -- you have to change the life of people, in the next 15 months. Twelve months, if you want to win the election!

And if you -- if you want to win with J.D. Vance. You're going to have to do it in the next 18 months, at the very minimum, okay?

It's going to get harder and harder to do it.

So you have -- you have the things. What are the levers the president has in front of him?

Housing. What is the problem with the housing market?

The housing market, there's a couple of problems.

One, we don't have -- we have a shortage of housing. Okay. Because everybody freaked out. You know, 2008, we had a housing glut. Now, maybe we should go to other way.

So we didn't build enough houses. So now we have this giant housing shortage.

So can the president fix this one quickly?

No. Millions of houses need to be built. And how is he going to do it?

Unless there's a land grab, okay?

Unless he opens up federal land, which we saw how that one went. So he can't really fix the housing thing. He could help it, by saying, "Hey, BlackRock, you guys stop buying houses."

But how do you do that?

I mean, is that the right thing to do? I mean, it's the right thing to do for the people. Constitutionally, can you do that?

I don't know. I don't think so.

The next cost that people are feeling. Electricity. What are you going to do with that?

Well, we know that he's building power plants. Or he is -- he is letting the red tape go, on the power plants.

So if you want to build a power plant, you can build a power plant, in record time.

But that, again, is 18, 24, 36 months away. Minimum! Before you have new power plants, where you'll start to see your electricity costs go down. So you can't do that. Food costs. What is he going to do?

Import cheaper food. That's not a good idea.

So what are you -- how do you affect the average person's money? Well, you can send them free money. Which means, we have to print more.

He's going to send free money. It's the money that he's been taking in from the trade barriers.

So he's saying, he's going to send a $2,000 check to people. And that's the first time I've ever seen a check where the money was actually money.

That we had. Not printed money.

But that's all you can do. You can even do that. That's all you can do. Because you can't print money. You can't have a stimulus. Or you will Jack the prices of everything up.

And you're in the same loop over and over and over again.

The only place where the government has the tools, has enough sway, Donald Trump could do this.

To start breaking this thing up.

Is health care. And that could change things pretty much overnight.

Within 12 months, if he acted today, within 12 months, you would start to see prices come down. You would start to see competition.

You would start to see some sort of relief. But what else does he have, Stu. What else can he do, that will change people's lives. And he knows he has to do that.

STU: Well, I mean, I -- generally, I think I agree with most of that.

I think that the health care is one, you could do.

Again, that's something you sign up for on an annual basis.

Even if the prices did drop, it would take a while for that to come in.

The easiest way to do this -- and he's, by the way, done a lot of this -- is deregulation. You know, I think what's happening with some of that. And we're not seeing tons and tons of results from that, is because I think he's doing things on the other side as well.

That are affecting prices the opposite way. So we're not going to see massive drops.

Of course, a lot of this -- there's a lot of big promises that are being made. When you talk about prices coming down, really fast. It's not always achievable.

The president of the United States. We said this for 100 million years, I feel like again, we're on repeat here. The president of the United States is not the guy that sets prices. That's not his job, right? He doesn't micromanage the economy.
He can do things that can help the economy. I think what's happening now, as you're pointing out. I think this is the desperation a little bit seeping into our politics.

Is that there were -- Trump won the election with a lot of people who had faith in him. Not because he was good on even the border or on -- you know -- you know, trans kids. You know, trans men playing women's sports. It was about -- it was that affordability issue. He was really good on that.

People believed that they would see an economy like they saw in 2018 to 2019, in his first term. And we're just so far, not really seeing that.

Now, there's a lot to unwind. From where Joe Biden was. And the way these prices work. When it comes to inflation. Is not necessarily that prices drop down.

That's what is so devastating about a long-term inflation like the one we got from Joe Biden.

The prices get to a set level.

You don't necessarily bring those prices down. As much as, you slow the increase.

Which is difficult.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

STU: Again, one of the focuses of Trump's economic plan is to try to draw a lot of these products to be made in the United States.

As you point out, that is a long-term process.

You're talking about way after Donald Trump is -- is out of office, before you're seeing the -- what -- the potential theoretical benefits of new factories being built in the United States.

It's going to be to take a long time for that to work, if you believe it's going to work. When you're talking about the other side of that. Which is, you know, increasing prices, based on different taxes and such.

You're -- you're winding up with a situation where you're taking the medicine, and you're waiting for those results to kick in over multiple periods of years.

So I think the way he can do a lot of this stuff.

The best thing he can do in a quick way. Is cutting regulation.

You can cut out a lot of this stuff, to increase the speed of the improvement. Like, you want to build a new power plant. He can cut those things from 12 years, to four!

But that's not going to -- it's not an immediate, you know, economic win.

GLENN: No.

STU: What you're talking about.

GLENN: The country has cancer. That's the problem. The country has cancer.

And we can survive. But it's -- going to take chemotherapy and a long time. And so you can't just go in.

If you have cancer, you can't go in and say, well, you know, you told me yesterday, you were going to start chemotherapy, and I had my first chemotherapy, and I feel worse.

And I'm not getting any better.

"It's been six months, Doc. And I'm not feeling any better."

Yeah. You're not going to feel any better at first. Because it's a serious disease. That's the issue that we're dealing with. The damage -- and we said this under Biden. We said this under the first Trump. We said this under Bush. You know, Reagan was saying this. At some point, the -- the sickness is going to be so bad, that there's not going to be anything that feels good to do. And it's going to get harder and harder to take the medicine.
And unfortunately, you know, everybody wants a quick fix. You know, when Reagan came in. And everything was out of control, you remember what Paul Volcker did?

You remember this, Stu?

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: You weren't old enough. But you know it through history. What did he do?

STU: He had to get rid of inflation. That meant jacking up rates. And that was a painful period.

GLENN: To what? To what?

STU: Eighteen to 20 percent, in that range.

GLENN: I think at the top it was 20 percent interest rates. I remember 19 percent interest rates. Nineteen. People are freaking out over five or six. We had 19 percent interest rates. That stopped everybody from buying. You want to talk about not being able to afford a house.

That was it! But that's what sucked all of that money back in.

Well, you can't do that right now. Because the patient is so sick, you can't -- those interest rates will kill everything. It will kill all the jobs.

The whole thing will collapse. So you can't do that. But we're complaining on 5 percent. You know, and we're wanting them lower and lower and lower and lower.

Well, yes.

I want that too. Because there are signs that jobs are going away. But jobs going away is not just the interest rate. It is also AI and automation.

We are in this really ugly place, that we don't have these honest questions, and really explain to each other, exactly what's -- what all of the forces are. You're going to get socialism.

Because that will seem like the only answer.

Just make it stop. Just make it stop.

Well, okay.

But know what all of the forces are that are causing all of these things.

And there is a way out of it.

It just cannot be done in two years!

It can't be!