and passing those costs on. and this is the biggest question and headache for the biden administration going forward. is inflation going to come back down later this year or early next or not? keep an eye on rent prices. i ve been watching those. they have been rising. it s a critical component of so many family budgets. if those don t tame i think they re going to have issues. wow. grocery workers getting above $15 an hour, that s a data point that i did not expect. heather long, thank you very much. joining us now is democratic congressman mark of texas. he s vice chair of strategy at the democratic campaign committee. welcome to the last word. congressman maloney said if the election were held today democrats would lose the majority. are you that pessimistic? look, you always have to take the majority very seriously.
be paying attention to? and she had that s almost impossible one because of redistricting. and two, once the districts are redrawn democrats stand to lose ten seats in the house before a vote is even cast. so how do you go up against those two twin tidal waves? well, you know, first of all let me just say we ve got to put the guardrails back up on the voting rights act. i don t think there s any question about that. i m from a state that was under section 5 that was under preclearance, and it s one of the reasons why the democrats have the amount of seats that they have in texas right now. the republicans were going to draw far more seats for themselves in 2011. but we were able to get that overturned because of section 5. if we re not able to put the guardrails back up on section 5 and get the john lewis act passed, then you re going to see the republicans attempt to draw three new seats in texas alone. and if you look at arizona, you
but i also think we need to make sure we re touting these economic numbers you just talked about. i mean 5.4% unemployment. you re looking at job growth at a very spectacular rate here. even in texas we were doing very well here and had a lot of growth before the pandemic and continue to have some growth even during the pandemic. and things are really picking back up here. it s something you can almost physically see when you go out and about in dallas and in fort worth every day. and so we need to make sure that we re touting these numbers and that we re talking about the president s infrastructure plan because it s going to put even more people back to work. and if you re a conservative, hey, i think you ve got to be happy because the last time the economy was doing this remarkably well and had turned around so quickly you had a president saying that it was morning in america. and he s someone obviously very well-liked on that side and i m
that s just a very good point that you just made, to remind people this is a novel virus meaning it s brand new and scientists are learning. but the important thing is that they are sharing the knowledge with us pretty much in as best they can in realtime. and that s why we seem to be having these conflicting messages. don t wear masks, wear masks, don t wear masks, wear masks. that is why. doctor propst, in texas have you met parents who are concerned or afraid their children to send their children to schools without masks? absolutely. there are pediatricians who are extremely concerned about sending their children to school this coming school year. we are in a situation, unfortunately, where our governor has really tied the hands of local municipalities, public health departments, school districts and mandated
and by my friends from texas who fled their homes to make sure that we could have the right to vote. we re dramatizing the moment because that power doesn t seem quite yet to be there, but we started with the election in georgia and we re going to continue giving power to the people until we get this done. before i go to representative hinojosa, i wanted to ask you it been to have the texas democratic delegation from the state legislature in washington all this time pushing on voting rights? i think when they initially fled people saw it on the news and didn t really think how long it would last. i flew back early on week i wasn t in washington to host my friends in texas, my co-conspirators for justice for dinner to talk about what the next steps need to be done. they ve met with the vice