They are, in fact, direct quotes from Whatley — but they are a bit dated, and some of the comments were more defensible or true at the time when Whatley made them.
The ad starts with a quote from Whatley: “Grocery prices are down, gasoline prices are down, housing prices are down, inflation is down,” he says.
“Unbelievable,” Cooper comments.
In a radio interview last year, Republican Rep. Mike Collins made the case for the tax cuts in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, claiming that cutting taxes would spur economic growth and provide an incentive for people to “get off of Medicaid, get off of Social Security, get back into the workforce.”
Collins, June 5, 2025: It’s just business 101. You’ve got spending, and you’ve got revenue, and you set it up to where you can increase your revenue. And you do that by lowering taxes and making it more advantageous for people to work and to get off of Medicaid, get off of Social Security, get back into the workforce. And that decreases it on that side of the equation as well — on the mandatory side.
