Illegal Immigration Housing Costs and the Spending Message: Jim Pfaff on Bobby Gunther Walsh | Sep 9, 2026
Published: September 9, 2026
Network: NewsRadio 790 WAEB, Allentown
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff
The Conservative Caucus got to Dallas on a Saturday afternoon, finished its setups on Sunday, and was in place before the Secret Service locked the building down on Monday. On the September 9 edition of Bobby Gunther Walsh on NewsRadio 790 WAEB in Allentown, Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff joined the show from the TCC suite on the opening day of the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas. The segment ran from the mechanics of the suite to the argument Pfaff wants every Republican candidate carrying into November: not a recitation of inflation statistics, but the chain that connects government spending to prices, and illegal immigration housing costs to the rent and mortgage payments voters are actually feeling. Along the way: the 1986 amnesty, ICE and the blue cities, Ken Paxton against James Talarico, Milton Friedman, and the 54 days left on the calendar.
Topics Covered
- Day One in Dallas: The TCC Suite Above the Convention
- Trump Can Help, But Candidates Have to Tie In
- Run on a Platform, Not Against Socialism
- From 1986 to a Closed Border: The Laws Were Always There
- A Lawless, Godless Institution
- Illegal Immigration Housing Costs and the Case for Spending Cuts
- Key Takeaways
Day One in Dallas: The TCC Suite Above the Convention
Walsh opened by noting that the party is still calling it the Republican National Convention while he has taken to calling it the Republican Midterm Convention. Pfaff had been in Dallas since the weekend. The Caucus arrived Saturday afternoon because the setups had to be done Sunday afternoon — Secret Service started closing everything down by Monday — and the team had been running live broadcasts and interviews out of Dallas since. The Caucus has been covering this convention since it was announced, including the first-ever RNC midterm convention and what it is for.
“What we have is a suite at the same level that even CBS, NBC, Real America’s Voice, and NTD News. We have an exclusive suite at the top and every one of them have their banners and ours is prominently there as well.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Pfaff called it a key position, and the point of it is volume: interviews all day long, with the convention program itself not starting until 4:00. The names on his schedule were specific — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton; Mike Collins, running in Georgia; and Mike Howell of the Oversight Project, who Pfaff said runs an immigration coalition the Caucus is part of and is with the Heritage Foundation.
Where the Coverage Lives
Asked where listeners could watch, Pfaff pointed to theconservativecaucus.com, which carries a live banner when the Caucus is broadcasting and archives the recordings afterward: full vision, as he put it, of what is taking place in Dallas.
Trump Can Help, But Candidates Have to Tie In
Pfaff described the Caucus plan for the convention as a highlight on two things at once: what Donald Trump has already done well, and how members of Congress and candidates need to tie into that. He was blunt about the limit of the first half.
“Donald Trump can’t carry this in an off-year election, but he can certainly be a big help.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
The help has a condition attached. Pfaff said Trump has to run this like he is running for president himself, because the presidency effectively ends if the House goes into Democrat hands — they will drag everybody in the administration in there. Trump has said that after the convention he will be out on the road constantly until November.
“He needs to run this like he is running for president.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
The second condition falls on the candidates, particularly the ones not yet elected to the seats they are running for — and Pfaff said there are a bunch of those, many in key areas. What they owe voters is a specific commitment: this is what we bought into, and here is how I am going to stand with the president to get it done. He named Ken Paxton and everyone else in races that look up in the air right now.
Pfaff also set the clock. With events happening in Ukraine — and if some deal gets made there, he said, the Iran situation would not demand as much as it did — he wanted the attention back where the voters are.
“We really need to get this whole campaign the next 55, 54 days, whatever it is, focused on what the American people are concerned about.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Run on a Platform, Not Against Socialism
Walsh brought an advertising argument to the political one, citing a book called The Battle for Your Mind and the way 7-Up took market share by becoming the un-cola, Pepsi ran the Pepsi Challenge, and Burger King ran Have It Your Way. Politics, he said, works differently.
“Running against something usually is not as successful as running on a platform.”
— Bobby Gunther Walsh, Host, NewsRadio 790 WAEB
Walsh credited the argument to Tom Del Beccaro and pointed to Newt Gingrich, whose plan for America gave Republicans a platform to run on. Republicans need to say what they did, he argued, but they also have to say what they are going to do, the way Trump ran on fixing immigration and fixing the economy — a formula he put as: we will do A, B, and C if you reelect us. The answer to running against socialism, he added, is running for capitalism.
Pfaff agreed, and said it needs to be discussed at the convention. For the record half of it, he pointed listeners to a post on X by Conrad Black listing the administration’s accomplishments. For the forward half, he wanted candidates demanding things of their own leadership: that GOP leadership in Congress change the amount of spending being done, and that agencies which are unconstitutional — he named the Department of Education and said he could name many others — be torn down.
Gen Z voters, Pfaff said, were inspired by what was happening with Elon Musk and DOGE, chaos around it notwithstanding. The resistance came from the radical activist share of the country — apparently 25% or somewhere thereabouts — that wants to use violent action to stop a reformation of the Constitution. He borrowed Victor Davis Hanson’s frame for the alternative: Trump as a counterrevolutionary, turning back a revolution that came on this country to tear down everything that mattered.
“They need to be counterrevolutionaries themselves in the Trumpian mold and say, we’re not going to go down that path. We are going to stop it right here. And we promise you, we will do that if you elect us.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
That, Pfaff said, is a message that can give hope to Americans who are really frustrated by what has taken place.
From 1986 to a Closed Border: The Laws Were Always There
Immigration is the accomplishment Pfaff put first, calling it one of the biggest wins on the immigration problem in decades. To show why, he went back forty years.
1986, and the Laws Still on the Books
Pfaff’s account: by 1986 the situation was starting to get out of control — an estimated four or five million illegal immigrants here at the time, though he said the real figure was probably closer to two million. Congress passed a bill strengthening immigration laws that Ronald Reagan signed, and gave amnesty to roughly one to two million people. That was supposed to fix the problem. Pfaff’s point is that those laws are still on the books and are very stringent about the consequences of coming here illegally.
What changed was not the statute. It was enforcement. Pfaff said presidents have not taken a serious enough effort to enforce the law: it was starting to get bad through the Bush and Obama administrations, then went way out of control under Biden — because no one did anything they legally could do.
“When a president is elected, he is duty-bound to follow those laws, and certainly Biden flouted those laws like he didn’t give a flip about them.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Pfaff said the border is essentially closed and there are so few people coming across right now because Trump is doing what he legally can do as chief executive — and that is all it takes, a willingness to do it. Criminal illegal aliens are being removed forcibly, and other people have left voluntarily. The Caucus has argued the same enforcement-first case in its own policy work on immigration enforcement.
Pfaff did not leave it as a victory lap. He said he has criticism of what has been a highly successful effort, because it needs to go further: the people here illegally have to be deported, and if they want to come back they need to do it through legal means.
A Lawless, Godless Institution
Walsh framed the backlash against ICE as a change in the opposition, not in the agency: under Obama, when they went to deport someone, they deported them. Now agents are met with resistance, and it is the people fighting ICE who are making the issue worse. Pfaff said there is no doubt about it, then widened the charge.
“The Democrat Party is a lawless, godless institution. And I say that very purposefully because everything that they do, every policy that they promote, every action they take when they have authority, and particularly in blue cities right now, is always the worst possible application or non-application of law.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
He applied the same standard to his own side. There is a degree of lawlessness in the Republican Party that needs to be firmed up too, Pfaff said — but that is of the human sort, people who sometimes act like politicians instead of like administrators who take an oath to the office. He also defended ICE agents against the characterization coming out of Minneapolis and elsewhere: they are not untrained, incapable or heartless.
The Texas Senate race gave Walsh his example. Ken Paxton has a battle on his hands with James Talarico, who is presented by the left as a great Christian. You can believe there is more than one way to get to heaven, Walsh said, but you cannot believe that and call yourself a Christian — and the media passes it off. He added that Paxton has scandals to answer for and that the RINO division of the party that backed John Cornyn is angry.
Pfaff expects Paxton to pull it out ultimately, and drew the line harder on the theology.
“Talarico can call himself a Christian all he wants. It is not acceptable to say there are many ways to heaven and Christianity is bad, which that’s his message.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Calling that out is necessary, Pfaff said, but not sufficient. You have to go the next step and say where you want to go: continue what has been done on immigration, and — as he put it for Paxton and all the rest of them — say the Justice Department effort was right and double down on it.
Illegal Immigration Housing Costs and the Case for Spending Cuts
Walsh brought the numbers. Affordability is the buzzword Democrats are running on, and he cited research from Tom Del Beccaro: at the same point in the term, roughly 570-plus days in, inflation under Joe Biden was 8.5%, and under Trump it is 3.5%. Prices are not down, Walsh said, but inflation is.
The Numbers Both Men Used
Pfaff added the level to Walsh’s rate: a 20% rise in inflation during the Biden administration that has entirely leveled off, with current inflation running at 3.5% — slightly high, he said, and mostly gas prices. The gap between the statistic and the feeling is the price level itself. Inflation slowed; prices never went backwards. The affordability problem was caused by Biden, by COVID, by the government restrictions, by growing government and all the government spending that never went back to pre-COVID levels.
Pfaff did not dispute the statistics. He said they do not finish the job: you can talk numbers all day long, and you have to say the numbers so people understand, but then you have to take the next step and show how this is going to work for people.
Gas prices, he said, do not create inflation. There is inflationary pricing in that market, but other areas of the economy are in a bit of a deflationary phase. The cause is singular.
“What does cause inflation is one thing, and Uncle Miltie, Milton Friedman, told us, and he was right the whole time: government spending causes inflation because the Federal Reserve prints dollars. And the more dollars you have in the system, the greater the inflation overall.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
That is why, Pfaff said, the people running for congressional seats in the Senate or the House need to say that they are going to cut spending. Overall inflation can be dealt with if the government spending stops and the trend is reversed.
Then he gave the place where the mechanism becomes something a voter feels in a monthly payment — the functional example, as he called it, that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others have been making. Illegal immigration housing costs are the bridge between the abstraction and the household budget.
“We had inflation in housing because of the illegal immigration problem. 30% increase in the cost of housing was caused directly by that.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Pfaff said there is study after study showing it, peer-reviewed studies, and that the job now is to talk about how that cost comes down if Trump’s policies continue. It makes the enforcement record and the affordability fight the same argument: the border is essentially closed, and the pressure that drove illegal immigration housing costs up is the pressure that comes off. Alongside it he listed the rest of what candidates can point to, starting with drug prices going down, and Walsh added the savings accounts and no tax on tips.
Key Takeaways
- The Caucus is broadcasting from a suite above the convention floor – TCC set up in Dallas ahead of the Secret Service lockdown, on the same level as CBS, NBC, Real America’s Voice and NTD News, with interviews running all day on day one.
- Trump can help, but he cannot carry an off-year election – Pfaff said Trump has to run this like he is running for president, because a Democrat House ends the presidency in practice, and candidates have to tie themselves specifically to what he has done.
- The immigration laws were already on the books – The 1986 bill Reagan signed, which came with amnesty for one to two million people, is still law and still stringent. Pfaff said the difference is enforcement: Biden flouted it, and Trump closed the border by doing what a chief executive legally can do.
- Spending cuts, not inflation statistics, are the message – Inflation at the same point was 8.5% under Biden and is 3.5% now, and a 20% price rise under Biden has leveled off but never reversed. Pfaff’s answer is Milton Friedman’s: government spending causes inflation because the Federal Reserve prints dollars.
- Illegal immigration housing costs make the case concrete – Pfaff cited a 30% increase in the cost of housing caused directly by illegal immigration, backed by peer-reviewed studies and raised by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as the way to show voters what continuing Trump’s policies buys them.
- Candidates should run as counterrevolutionaries with a platform – Walsh argued that running against something loses to running on a platform. Pfaff’s version: demand that GOP leadership cut spending, tear down unconstitutional agencies like the Department of Education, and promise voters up front you will do it.
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The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.
Originally broadcast Sep 9, 2026 on Bobby Gunther Walsh, NewsRadio 790 WAEB in Allentown, from The Conservative Caucus suite at the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.
Peter J. Thomas is a veteran conservative political strategist and seasoned policy expert dedicated to upholding the principles of the Constitution and democracy. As a founder and the chairman of the Conservative Caucus, he has played a pivotal role in promoting and shaping the conservative agenda across the nation for over half a century.