In this episode of the Morning Joe show, host Stephen K.K.Bannon is joined by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-Massachusetts) to discuss the ongoing debt ceiling crisis and what can be done about it.
00:02:18.000Today, we will counter the Chinese Communist Party with our select committee on China.
00:02:23.000We will vote to protect every American's constitutional rights with the new select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.
00:02:31.000We will also vote to stop the Biden administration from selling our strategic petroleum reserves to China.
00:02:37.000Well, one of the things we heard a lot about during that drama in the House of Representatives last week was the debt and the deficit and what needs to be done about it.
00:02:44.000And by the way, the debt ceiling as well and how that could be used to address those issues.
00:02:48.000To bring us up to speed on exactly where we are with these issues and what could be done, we welcome now Maya McGinnis.
00:02:53.000She's president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
00:02:56.000Maya, welcome back. Great to have you. You and I have talked repeatedly about what's going on with, I will say it, overspending, borrowing so much money, borrowing more money.
00:03:06.000The Republicans appear to really want to address that. Do we need a debt ceiling crisis in order to do something?
00:03:13.000Yeah, good to be with you. We don't. We don't need a debt ceiling crisis because a debt ceiling crisis would be very, very damaging to our own economy.
00:03:21.000And you don't want to negotiate in a way where you're actually threatening yourself.
00:03:25.000But similar to that, here's what I think we do need. We need an absolute commitment not to borrow anymore.
00:03:32.000And let me separate these issues. The debt ceiling means paying the debts that we have already incurred and passed into law.
00:03:38.000The vast majority of members of Congress have voted to increase borrowing since the last debt ceiling increase.
00:03:45.000So it's really not appropriate for them to vote for policies that would grow the debt and then turn around and say, I'm not going to pay for that.
00:03:53.000And many policies that are already in place are the things that are driving the debt the most are big mandatory spending programs and ongoing tax cuts.
00:04:01.000Let me let me have this. She's OK. They got it. That's all they're talking about.
00:04:06.000If we can get the if we can get the the morning from the hill up there, I got Philip Patrick to start this off.
00:04:13.000They're firing out of the box where regardless of McCarthy today, they did pass the committee to go after the Chinese Communist Party.
00:04:21.000OK, and this is going to tie right back to the Biden regime.
00:04:24.000By the way, the Biden top secret compartmented felony in the in the in the cover up by the Department of Justice is not trending on Twitter.
00:04:37.000I'm going to get so big in tomorrow morning, Elon Musk. And this shows you the phoniness of the whole operation.
00:04:43.000It's the hottest story in the world. It's the biggest story in the world.
00:04:46.000We're going to have a later to show the reporters even like every time Biden goes somewhere, they're asking about it.
00:04:51.000It's not trending on Twitter. And here's the reason not turning on Twitter.
00:04:54.000Elon Musk is not going to put up anything that goes against the Chinese Communist Party in any real sense.
00:04:59.000Not going to do it. He's financed by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:05:02.000And I understand people hate when I say that. But the Tesla joint venture in Shanghai is how he financially bars against us.
00:05:08.000We've got the margin. He's got the margin loans over there. He bars against it.
00:05:11.000He sells stock without the Shanghai joint venture. I don't care what he's doing in the great state of Texas.
00:05:16.000That's all fine. But it's the Shanghai joint venture in the selling into the Chinese market.
00:05:22.000That is is everything to him. And he will not go.
00:05:26.000The reason this is suppressed, they understand immediately we connected the dots back to the CCP for the University of Pennsylvania, for Tony Blinken's West Executive Avenue consulting firm.
00:05:38.000And of course, the laptop from hell all goes back to the railhead of their money is the CCP.
00:05:43.000And you will never see anything. Remember, that call they had that day I was on on the on the Twitter.
00:05:50.000We were listening on Getter. As soon as somebody mentioned the covid, the covid demonstrations and think, oh, they jumped in a couple of guys.
00:06:00.000Oh, that's not that important. You know, it's fine. It's OK.
00:06:03.000And moved on why he had not had not condemned it. So we're going to have a Sam Fattis on later to talk all about this.
00:06:10.000But they passed the China. There's already been a resolution put forward about the impeachment of Yorkers.
00:06:16.000We have Andy Biggs. Andy Biggs said, hey, I see the guy's putting it on. He's great, but I'm putting up my own.
00:06:22.000We got Todd Benzman there. They're moving to impeach my Yorkers ready to box the IRS thing like a lot of these are messaging.
00:06:29.000The investigations are real. The messaging are not there. I mean, they're great messaging.
00:06:33.000They're not real because it's not going to pass the Senate. But there's a lot going on.
00:06:37.000But I want to get to the debt ceiling. She's got she's got the old misdirection plate.
00:06:42.000Now she's saying, well, we shouldn't buy. She did say you shouldn't borrow any more money.
00:06:47.000You should not borrow any more money. Well, if we're not going to borrow any more money, we don't need to raise the debt ceiling.
00:06:53.000They said their whole fill up. They always said, well, you know, you've already bought.
00:06:56.000You've already you've already spent this. You can't. That's the old canard. We're not.
00:07:00.000I want everybody to understand you're not raising the debt ceiling one penny.
00:07:04.000You're not going to raise it one penny. We're going to go through a situation where we show you how you can pay the debt.
00:07:09.000Keep the full faith in credit. The United States government pay all the interest payments on a waterfall.
00:07:14.000Pay Social Security, pay Medicare. And then we have the old cash flow discussion.
00:07:21.000Remember, all of its discretionary spending just causes an appropriations bill doesn't mean anything.
00:07:26.000Doesn't mean anything. Still discretionary if you got the cash.
00:07:30.000Philip Patrick, this whole issue last week comes down to money and power and the convergence of money and power is spending and the in the debt ceiling.
00:07:41.000Give us your assessment, particularly where you and the Birch Gold guys see the economy going in 2023, which looks like a complete disaster.
00:08:00.000Turn on CNBC and you're going to hear, of course, the worst is over with the start of a big bull run.
00:08:05.000And I think if inflation comes down marginally, which I think the headline number may do on Thursday, these calls will get even louder.
00:08:14.000But the reality is they're just wrong. Right. They're just wrong.
00:08:19.000Let's remember, we are down here 20 percent from the most speculative level of valuations in U.S. history, 20 percent from an absurdly high level in the markets.
00:08:31.000Based on Shiller P.E., we still need about a 40 percent drop to return to historic valuations.
00:08:38.000Not even a typical recession would be enough to return stocks today to fundamental values.
00:08:44.000During an average recession, we see about a 29 percent drop in stocks.
00:08:51.000Now, we look at the World Bank report that came out recently saying that this will be a global recession.
00:08:57.000Right. And I think it's certainly imminent for this year.
00:09:00.000But we've got to remember something. During the last recessions, the stock market bottomed on average 12 months after the first Fed rate cut and 13 months after unemployment rate bottoms.
00:09:12.000We're nowhere close. And I think investors today are grossly underestimating what they call tail risk.
00:09:19.000Right. The probability that their investments will drastically underperform compared to history.
00:09:24.000Listen, Jerry, Jerry Grantham's head fund, GMO, published a seven year asset class forecast.
00:09:30.000They're saying U.S. stocks and bonds will be negative for the next seven years.
00:09:34.000And that's before the inflationary problem, which we know is nowhere close to being solved.
00:09:42.000Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. I know the let me go to the World Bank report.
00:09:46.000I want to go to China and then come back to what GMO said. The World Bank has put this report out that said they're seeing a global, a significant global recession this year.
00:09:54.000And particularly in the developing world, it's going to be really bad.
00:09:57.000But they're all running around with their hair on fire. And this is why these things are inextricably linked.
00:10:02.000You've got the China Select Committee. Gallagher, Wisconsin is going to run that.
00:10:06.000You've got the China Select Committee that's going to look at influence peddling and infiltration by the CCP.
00:10:11.000Right. The CCP in the United States, plus the problems we've got with it on Taiwan and other places.
00:10:18.000But China is telling people now on a day that Goldman Sachs lays off 4,000, 3,200 people, one of the biggest layoffs they've ever had.
00:10:25.000That tells you what Goldman, the smartest guys on Wall Street, think about the economy. Right.
00:10:29.000They also cut off the free coffee. When Goldman's cutting off the free coffee, they want you.
00:10:34.000They want you caffeinated. Right. They they want you chained to that desk 24 hours a day and caffeinated.
00:10:39.000Having been a grundoon there, the so they're laying off Morgan.
00:10:46.000OK, so Goldman lays off 4,000. Morgan Stanley comes out and says you're going to have a 22 percent drop in equity prices this year.
00:10:53.000Twenty two percent this year. World Bank says it says it's going to be a recession, global recession.
00:10:59.000But I got them run around their high five. Jim Cramer's about to get all cranked up again.
00:11:03.000Remember, he said he said on New Year's Day last year is the greatest economy he's ever seen. Right.
00:11:07.000Twenty twenty two. Kramer's running around because China is now saying that when the opening and of course the CCP makes up every number in the world.
00:11:16.000But they just hinted they showed him some ankle six percent growth.
00:11:20.000And man, it's like they came down for this. Like it's like Moses came down from the mountain and had it engraved in a tablet.
00:11:25.000I've never seen anything like it. Philip Patrick. Right.
00:11:28.000What is this? Are they promoting us, sir?
00:11:31.000Listen, two very good investments for this year. Gold, which we talk about a lot.
00:11:37.000And as always, inverse Kramer is usually a very safe bet.
00:11:41.000Listen, as you said, this stuff is all tied together.
00:11:46.000The reality is, look, in very simple terms, what goes up must come down.
00:11:51.000Very simply, we have amassed a massive debt bubble. We have fueled asset prices for the last 13, 14 years here in the United States.
00:12:00.000And we are going to pay the price. You are correct. The World Bank came out.
00:12:04.000They slashed growth forecast from three percent to one point seven.
00:12:08.000That's that's less than half of the 60 year average. Right.
00:12:11.000Right. This would be one of the weakest periods of global economic growth in three decades.
00:12:16.000And what it tells investors domestically here in the United States, there really isn't an escape. Right.
00:12:21.000This is global in nature. The reality is we have half, hard, hard times to suffer.
00:12:27.000And as we've said, we need strong, real leadership.
00:12:30.000And we're not getting that from the Biden administration. Nothing's really looking good economically.
00:23:32.000The appropriations, they took the gavel out of our hand approach.
00:23:36.000If we, if McConnell had not screwed us and let Pelosi have the gavel, but given, given McCarthy or whoever is going to be the gavel on appropriations to say afternoon, you could say, guess what?
00:23:54.000Now they took it away because they knew what they were doing to keep the cartel going, but they're already starting to appropriations process.
00:24:00.000Every hearing you have, every time we have it on the show, every time you tweet it out or put it out on get or push it on Facebook, it gets, it resonates.
00:24:09.000That's what being a force multiply means.
00:24:11.000All of a sudden we get it in the conscious to build the narrative to say, hold it.
00:24:19.000Is somebody giving you a debit card that you can go put food on it, that you can go put your rent on it, that you can put your gasoline on it?
00:24:28.000Ask yourself, is anybody bailing you out?
00:24:45.000This is your government aiding and abetting an invasion of this country, Todd Bensman.
00:24:51.000Well, yeah, and it's not just Americans.
00:24:55.000You know, the piece that I published about the UN funding for 2023 quotes a migrant shelter director, the biggest migrant shelter in Mexico, in Monterey.
00:25:07.000And he's telling me this story about how this mother of three children getting 6,000 pesos a month on her credit card, as well as getting shelter, food, everything they need, clothing in his shelter.
00:25:43.000A lot of people would view this as unjust and injustice.
00:25:49.000Talk to me about guys over in the House that right now are moving bills to try to defund, take the $14 billion we give the UN and zero it out and say, we want the $14 billion to build the wall and other things.
00:26:03.340Talk about this movement to defund the UN on this topic.
00:26:18.460It's signed by, it's co-sponsored by 12 Republicans.
00:26:22.460Most of them are in the Freedom Caucus.
00:26:25.460And they're saying, look, we're going to defund, we're going to defund the United Nations on the basis of they're using taxpayer, U.S. taxpayer dollars to hurt American taxpayers.
00:26:43.460They understand, they are going to roll, I'm told that they are going to revisit this in the very, very near future.
00:26:50.460Add some revisions, rewrite it, and trot that thing out.
00:26:54.460You're going to start hearing about this UN thing as part of the overarching border, you know, reform, you know, enforcement move in the Republican House.
00:27:10.460Real quickly before I get Andy, you're going to hang with me, but Mayorkas, they're moving bills right now to start the impeachment process.
00:27:17.460We're going to have Andy Biggs on here for a second.
00:27:19.460Does Mayorkas deserve to be impeached, yes or no, Todd Bensman?
00:27:25.460I think that there is plenty of grist for that mill.
00:27:32.460You know, the chief one is this, you know, made up parallel immigration system that's extra legal, outside of the law, skirts congressional statutes, start with humanitarian parole, fact find.
00:28:26.460After I've stolen the title, barred against it, or sold the property, it's 60 to 90 days for that person to even figure out that they're the victim of this crime.
00:28:34.460You start getting foreclosure notices, you've got four mortgages on your house.
00:29:54.460And I just want for the audience is just, you know, we can't say enough.
00:29:59.460Talk to us about a little bit how what happened there, what that was like, all the threats you had, and then how it's played out over the last couple of days.
00:30:07.460You guys have gotten in and gotten to work.
00:30:10.460Yeah, you know, Steve, I'll tell you, the six of us hung together well, but it was synergistic with the other 14.
00:30:18.460So there were the 20 of us fought that fight and and and it was so synergistic.
00:30:26.460And but with the six, we when we decided that they had their votes, they were going to get there.
00:30:32.460But we we've gotten so much with the help of our team, a total team of 20 and one more Victoria Sparks was voting present with us.
00:30:41.460You know, the pressure was intense, the things that were said, the threats that were made.
00:30:48.460I had major donors call me and threaten me.
00:30:54.460And I had people tell me I wouldn't get committee assignments.
00:30:57.460I mean, those things happen and we knew that they were going to happen.
00:31:00.460But we believed that we would get to the right place.
00:31:03.460And we when we felt we were at the right place and we could go no further.
00:31:09.460That's when we made the call and we did it as a team.
00:31:12.460And that's that was that was really how it happened.
00:31:16.460I got to tell you, though, none of this was started.
00:31:20.460And Matt Gates is just absolutely brilliant how he gamed this out and how he thought it out.
00:31:24.460And people the whole story will come out later.
00:31:26.460But Gates was working on this last summer thinking through.
00:31:30.460But Congressman Biggs, if you had not stepped up in that conference right after the election and put your name in whenever else was running for the hills, this would have never happened.
00:31:39.460You needed what we call Wall Street a bid away.
00:31:42.460Not that you were going to win the speakership, but you needed somebody to step up there and put them.
00:31:45.460He needed a bid away right from McCarthy.
00:31:48.460If you had not done this, I don't think it would ever come together even to get even organized or get out there.
00:31:54.460So that's why I think the nation, not just the conservative movement, the Republican Party, the entire country, you can already tell already it's going to be more on point, more focus.
00:32:03.460It's going to you know, this is going to help the country.
00:32:05.460You've already had a ton of progressives, which is amazing.
00:32:08.460We're saying, hey, why don't we have guys like Gates and Boebert and Biggs on our side?
00:32:13.460They're prepared as why didn't we stand up to Pelosi?
00:32:56.460That they were going to force Pelosi out.
00:33:01.460And and by the way, there had been first two election cycles before that.
00:33:06.460A lot of progressive part of that wing of that party was was trying to get rid of Pelosi as their their leader, but they just could never get it done.
00:33:17.460But in the end, you have to be willing, as you know, you have to be have the will and you have to be in some ways willing to take self immolation, if I could put it that way, or the immolation that's going to.
00:33:33.460And just say, well, we're going to do that.
00:35:14.460These are some of the same people who told, though, told me whatever you do.
00:35:18.460In fact, I was told by some of them, some of the same people.
00:35:21.460They said, if you do what you're doing on the floor on the speakership, you will destroy the party, destroy the majority and ultimately destroy the country.
00:35:31.460And and my I thought, well, first of all, no, no single person has that much power.
00:35:37.460And if and if the institution and the party are so weak that having a debate about who should be the third most powerful person in the United States government, the Speaker of the House is going to destroy us.
00:35:54.460And I would say the same thing that the people who are telling me this about my work is that it's going to be perceived as political.
00:36:01.460It's not going to be perceived as political.
00:36:03.460We're going to have an opportunity to show what this guy has done to dismantle our border and put this country in peril economically, national security wise, crime wise.
00:36:15.460The inhumanity, not to make the environmental impact.
00:36:19.460All of these things have been put in jeopardy because of this guy and his policies.
00:36:26.460And he's not. And people say, well, it's Biden's policies.
00:37:40.460So and the in the single subject provisions, they're not as the single subjects, not nearly as strong as the germaneness.
00:37:47.460So it's not where I would have had it.
00:37:50.460But what it does is it says you can't come in and say you're going to have a bill on, let's say, the antitrust for the big tech and then throw in 40 billion dollars to give to Ukraine.
00:38:04.460That would be violative of those rules.
00:38:06.460And that gives us that power to step in and make sure that we're on point and we're focused on the legislation, which means that we will hopefully do better legislation going forward.
00:38:19.460And then we'll be more transparent so the so the people of the United States can hold us accountable instead of everybody saying, well, I didn't vote for that.
00:38:27.460You know that somebody just added that in, blah, blah, blah.
00:38:30.460We got to be kind of within the other part of it, Steve, is we're getting to the spending side of it.
00:38:37.460Everything from the from the debt ceiling to reinvigorating the appropriations process and the budgeting process.
00:38:44.460So we can try to attack the structural deficit which drives our our national debt.
00:38:51.460And so those two aspects in and of themselves are huge and potentially transformational.
00:38:59.460They're not they're not the be all and end all.
00:39:02.460But what they do is is they they actually have a chance to change this institution to make it more responsive to the people and actually deal with the problems we have.
00:39:12.460You know, whether it's energy policy, border policy, the inflation and economy.
00:39:21.460And I think it will begin to open up as people realize how members of Congress, that is, realize how much more power that they have to represent their constituents.
00:39:52.460There is a temptation to just waive the rules so you can do what Pelosi did, which is always have an imperial, as you described, an imperial speakership.
00:40:00.460So I am hopeful that that Kevin McCarthy, I want him to be very successful.
00:40:05.460I want to be successful with the Republican Party agenda, the America First agenda.
00:40:10.460But in order for him to be successful, in my opinion, these rules are going to get him there.
00:40:16.460They're going to make him a successful speaker, a memorable speaker.
00:40:21.460Tell me, people that at 1030 or 1130 at night, when Crane, Good, Rosendale and the Biggs voted for somebody else, the people that said, those are my guys.
00:40:32.460How do you make them comfortable that since we didn't remove the cartel head, that this can still be something that is meaningful and really starts to change the country, the debt ceiling, the spending, all of it?
00:40:50.460I mean, certainly my biggest fear is that it is performative and we lose the ability to constrain leadership.
00:40:58.460Well, that's why the motion to vacate is important, but there's other avenues that are out there to keep pressure on leadership.
00:41:07.460And there has to be pressure on leadership.
00:41:09.460So when we when we the four of us said, OK, we're going to we're going to go out as a team because we came in with these two as a team, we're going to go out as a team.
00:41:21.460We what we said is we're going to have to make sure that we keep vigilant eye on the ball and target focus.
00:41:30.460And and and any five members can actually hold up this this this process.
00:45:22.460Comer, head of House Oversight, initiates a probe into Biden's handling of the classified documents and asked the White House and the National Archive for records.
00:45:31.460Matt Gaetz has just said they're going to release the 14,000 hours of the J6 tapes have been hidden by the Democrats.
00:45:39.460Pat Fallon's announced that he's also putting in additional information on his impeachment of Mayorkas.
00:45:44.460And, you know, Congressman Troy Nels, we had on last week, he supported McCarthy, but the sheriff down there said there's 65 Democrats voted against the select committee on investigating China.
00:45:55.460And their names, we're going to get their names for everybody.
00:46:22.460And particularly when you come in here and every day you're talking about what the law is, the asylum law, and they're going out of their way just to break the law.
00:46:28.460Give us your assessment as as a ability to get information out about in a formal setting.
00:46:34.460What would you recommend these guys do to start this process?
00:46:37.460How would you actually start it and where would you tell these guys to go?
00:46:41.460Well, to start with the nation's top law enforcement officer is constitutionally obligated to make sure that the laws passed by the legislative branch are hewed to that are that they are enforced.
00:46:59.460And that's probably the first big issue that somebody would want to raise at a hearing like that is that that was not done on purpose, purposefully not done to to hold to the INA of about detention, mandatory deportation and detention.
00:47:18.460And number two is these structures, these extrajudicial kind of parallel ad hoc laws that they came up with that are parallel to what Congress wanted, which is notice to report handing out notice to reports to, you know, thousands upon thousands of immigrants and allowing them to enter the United States.
00:47:43.460This massive use of humanitarian parole, this massive use of humanitarian parole, which is supposed to be a one off, you know, singular individual basis power given to, you know, mass numbers, hundreds of thousands of people notice to appear.
00:48:01.460The failure to appear the failure to not failure, but I would say intentional abrogation of duty to deport, to carry out deportations from the interior.
00:48:18.360The, the, the, the, the Mayorkas administration stopped interior deportations of every category.
00:48:27.820The numbers are down 80%, 90%, even of criminal aliens, leaving criminal aliens that have lawful deportation orders, uh, hanging over them, just ignored, uh, left.
00:48:42.460So that should just kind of give you a starting place right there.
00:48:46.960They, they, they are no longer, that would blow people's heads up.
00:48:50.980I want you to hang on cause we're going to keep you on to the six o'clock show.
00:48:53.980I want to talk about, uh, uh, bigs co-signed the defund bill.
00:48:57.340I'm going to get back into your UN analysis, talk about the daily mail story.
00:49:00.540And I got to talk about when the three amigos are down there, that looks like they're talking about one entity, Canada, the United States of Mexico, particularly this micro, very, very dangerous.
00:49:09.420So hang with me, Todd Benzman, Todd Benzman from CIS, author of the, uh, of the amazing new book overrun.