Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 29, 2023


Biden-McCarthy Debt Deal： the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly


Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.500 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.420 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:08.160 Ben Ferguson with you as always.
00:00:10.080 And Senator, the number one question that everybody wants to know right now
00:00:14.260 on this Memorial Day is the Biden debt deal.
00:00:19.480 The Biden debt ceiling.
00:00:21.020 Is there a deal with Republicans?
00:00:22.520 And if there is, what does that look like for the American people?
00:00:27.080 Well, and it was announced on Sunday that there was an, quote,
00:00:31.240 agreement in principle between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy.
00:00:35.920 And the agreement in principle included some cuts in spending from what Biden wanted.
00:00:42.320 It also included an extension in the debt ceiling.
00:00:44.700 And I would say as we sit here, you and I are recording this Sunday night.
00:00:48.900 At this point, we don't have the text of the bill.
00:00:51.600 We have not seen exactly what's in the bill.
00:00:53.860 So it is not entirely clear all of the details.
00:00:58.380 But based on what we know now, there are some good elements,
00:01:03.460 but there are a lot of things that are disappointing.
00:01:05.920 As I'm sitting here right now, I'm disappointed that this agreement does not cut more.
00:01:12.060 And I'm also disappointed that this agreement adds a lot of debt
00:01:16.400 in exchange for relatively little cuts.
00:01:19.780 Now, we can break that down piece by piece and walk through what's in it and what's not
00:01:25.440 with the caveat that the bill text, at this point, we still haven't seen
00:01:30.460 and presumably we will see sometime soon.
00:01:33.720 Let's start with, is there something in this bill that we could probably get excited about
00:01:38.040 as conservatives?
00:01:38.940 Because I know this is a fight, but there are many conservatives saying,
00:01:42.540 OK, we won back the House.
00:01:44.740 Surely we're going to get something that's positive for us from winning back the House.
00:01:49.360 Is there a light at the end of the tunnel saying, hey, at least from what we've been told,
00:01:53.980 obviously we don't have the text yet, but there are going to be some victories for us?
00:01:58.780 Well, I can tell you what House leadership is emphasizing.
00:02:03.020 So on Sunday afternoon, I sent out a tweet critical of this deal.
00:02:07.940 And in particular, that that House leadership had been saying that there's not that the Democrats
00:02:14.080 don't get a single thing from this deal.
00:02:16.120 And I sent out a tweet and said, well, actually, they get four trillion things,
00:02:20.660 which is the four trillion in new debt that this deal adds.
00:02:23.800 And that they also get, I said, 87,000 new things with the 87,000 IRS agents.
00:02:30.180 And I'll tell you, within minutes of sending that tweet, I was on the phone with Kevin McCarthy.
00:02:35.480 And Kevin called me.
00:02:36.260 Kevin and I are friends.
00:02:37.200 And he was unhappy with what I had expressed.
00:02:40.460 And look, I respect that Kevin picked up the phone and called me.
00:02:43.580 And he pitched what he saw as the benefits of this agreement.
00:02:48.520 And I listened to him and gave him a respectful hearing.
00:02:52.020 And actually, later in the afternoon, I was on a call with Kevin McCarthy and with all the Republican senators
00:02:58.380 where he walked through the benefits.
00:03:00.920 I'll tell you, according to House leadership, the biggest benefits in the deal are as follows.
00:03:07.280 Number one, they're leaning in aggressively on the permitting reforms.
00:03:12.760 They say that there are significant permitting reforms that will speed up the development of energy,
00:03:19.260 that will speed up the development of construction projects, that will reduce the time spent on NEPA,
00:03:25.780 which is very costly and slow environmental regulations.
00:03:29.220 And if those reforms are real, that's good.
00:03:32.480 We haven't seen the details yet, but that's at least House leadership is pitching that as a significant victory.
00:03:39.380 Secondly, what they're pitching as a significant victory is work requirements for SNAP and TANFs.
00:03:47.820 Now, SNAP are food stamps and TANF is what used to be AIDS to families with dependent children.
00:03:58.040 And from what we understand, it expands work requirements from individuals from age 49.
00:04:06.940 It expands it up to age 54.
00:04:09.480 So it adds five more years of work requirements.
00:04:13.900 They're pitching that as a positive.
00:04:15.740 The third positive they're pitching is they say that there's a provision in the bill
00:04:22.160 that if Congress does not pass the appropriation bills this year,
00:04:28.260 that a budget cap kicks in automatically that is current spending minus 1%.
00:04:35.380 And so they're pitching that as another fiscal benefit.
00:04:39.200 Those are the main arguments they're laying out.
00:04:41.700 All three of them, the details matter.
00:04:44.660 If they are, as leadership's describing them, those are positive.
00:04:49.580 Those are not nothing.
00:04:51.500 There's obviously the big question that many have heard about.
00:04:55.280 There's been a lot of attention on this, Senator, on social media.
00:04:58.940 And that's about IRS agents.
00:05:01.160 There is a concern that the IRS cannot be trusted, that they're targeting people.
00:05:06.140 We saw what happened with Matt Tebe when he was testifying before Congress and the IRS is knocking on his door.
00:05:11.220 And many people believe that these new IRS agents would, in fact, be nothing more than harassment agents for those that are Christian,
00:05:20.280 those that are conservative in general.
00:05:22.960 Look at Matt Tebe as a perfect example of this.
00:05:25.460 We know what happened in the past with Tea Party and conservative groups, patriot groups, Second Amendment groups.
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00:06:41.920 Those IRS agents, Senator, are something that so many are concerned about.
00:06:45.660 You mentioned that as well in your tweet today.
00:06:48.080 Where are we on this army of IRS agents?
00:06:52.200 Is that in this deal?
00:06:53.900 Are we going to be able to stop that?
00:06:56.100 Well, it's not entirely clear.
00:06:58.260 So the original bill, the House passed, what was called the Limit, Save, and Grow bill, that zeroed out the $80 billion in new funding that Democrats rammed through in the prior Congress for the IRS.
00:07:09.860 That $80 billion was going to be directed to 87,000 new IRS agents and employees to be hired to harass the American people.
00:07:18.580 And the first bill the House passed zeroed that out.
00:07:21.440 We don't know exactly what's in the Biden-McCarthy deal.
00:07:26.020 The New York Times reported that the IRS new spending was reduced by $10 billion.
00:07:31.660 In other words, from $80 billion to $70 billion.
00:07:34.240 So that's pretty disappointing.
00:07:36.380 And one House Republican tweeted out that the cuts are only $1.88 billion, so $1.9 billion instead of $10 billion.
00:07:45.840 We don't know for sure.
00:07:47.520 However, I will say when I tweeted out, based on the public reporting, that the 87,000 new IRS agents were still there, and Kevin called me, what he argued is he says in this bill they zero out the new spending for the IRS for next year so that they cannot hire the new IRS agents next year.
00:08:11.000 And the pitch he made is, we zero it out next year, and we'll fight over subsequent years in appropriations to stop Biden from hiring them in those years.
00:08:22.180 Until I see the text, I can't assess that, but that's at least his response.
00:08:27.640 If it's right that they zero it out next year, that's good.
00:08:30.700 On its face, I'm glad they zero it out next year if that's in there.
00:08:34.360 I'd rather see the whole $80 billion zeroed out, but zeroing it next year is a significant step in the right direction.
00:08:42.880 But again, the devil's in the details.
00:08:44.660 A lot of conservatives that were just recently elected to the House, they have pledged, and they've been doing this a lot on social media, that they are going to try to do everything they can to stop this from passing the House of Representatives.
00:08:58.640 There have been a lot of hard-line members of the House Freedom Caucus.
00:09:02.900 Chip Roy is one of those who said on Twitter exactly that.
00:09:05.360 We're going to try to stop this from happening.
00:09:09.540 After you talk to House leadership, do you feel pretty confident that Democrats and Republican negotiators are, in fact, able to iron this out, the final details of this agreement?
00:09:21.160 And to be clear what this is, to suspend the federal government's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in the coming days, and they're acting like this is a victory.
00:09:32.560 I worry that, yes, this is a short-term victory, Senator, and many Americans, I think, worry that.
00:09:37.920 Yeah, this is short-term, but how much damage are we doing to this country when we're going this much into debt without real cuts to spending?
00:09:45.480 Yeah, and look, that is my principal concern.
00:09:48.300 So in the original bill, the Limit, Save, and Grow bill, what it did is it rolled back discretionary spending.
00:09:55.320 So what does discretionary spending mean?
00:09:57.240 The federal budget, there are two components.
00:09:59.420 There's what's called mandatory spending, and there's what's called discretionary spending.
00:10:03.520 So mandatory spending are things like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.
00:10:09.140 They're things that are on autopilot in the federal budget, and they grow automatically.
00:10:13.880 Congress doesn't appropriate every year.
00:10:16.000 They're set to be automatically appropriate.
00:10:18.300 Discretionary spending is essentially everything else, and so that is what Congress takes up and appropriates each year.
00:10:25.940 The Limit, Save, and Grow bill cut discretionary spending from $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 23 to $1.47 trillion in fiscal year 24.
00:10:42.020 So that was $230 billion, cutting the actual spending levels, and then it kept spending at 1% per year, and that was calculated.
00:10:52.740 Just that reduction in spending was calculated to save a total of $3.2 trillion.
00:10:57.960 Now, we don't know for sure, but what has been reported publicly, according to the New York Times, is that this deal leaves discretionary spending at the exact same level, $1.7 trillion, that it was in fiscal year 23.
00:11:15.300 In other words, that we lose, that we lose the entirety of that cut, and it then grows from 1% from there on.
00:11:23.200 Now, it's a big difference if you're growing 1% from $1.7 trillion or growing 1% from $1.47 trillion, because it makes a $3.2 trillion difference over time.
00:11:37.520 What does that mean in total?
00:11:39.040 The New York Times is reporting that the total savings of the deal are about $650 billion.
00:11:45.140 That is a massive reduction from the $4.8 trillion total savings in the Limit, Save, and Grow bill.
00:11:52.440 Now, I can tell you, when I asked Kevin about that this afternoon, he pressed back pretty hard, and he said,
00:11:58.380 Why are you believing the New York Times?
00:12:00.260 And I said, Look, I don't have bill decks.
00:12:02.800 What else do you want me to believe?
00:12:03.960 All I have are the public reports.
00:12:06.460 If the bill text shows something different, then we'll discuss it on the pod.
00:12:10.340 But what the New York Times is saying right now, at least, is that this agreement is giving $4 trillion in new debt in exchange for much, much smaller spending cuts.
00:12:22.800 If that is true, that's pretty deeply disappointing.
00:12:26.560 There's always people, Senator, that are saying the sky is falling when they don't get what they want.
00:12:31.660 And I'll just give you examples of the spectrum here.
00:12:35.500 Representative Norman on the debt deal today said, What I'm hearing is, quote, anything but fiscal sanity.
00:12:41.720 Then you move over to Lindsey Graham.
00:12:43.780 He's raging against this debt deal, warning that the cuts could, quote, cripple the military.
00:12:48.420 And then Kevin McCarthy says the debt ceiling deal is, quote, worthy of the American people.
00:12:55.400 That's a pretty big spectrum swing there.
00:12:58.400 Which one is it?
00:12:59.980 Well, there may be some truth to all of those.
00:13:04.060 Look, leadership in both the House and Senate are going to pitch that this is the greatest deal since sliced bread.
00:13:09.560 The White House is pitching this is a terrific deal.
00:13:13.460 A lot of Democrats are pitching this is a terrific deal.
00:13:16.380 The number of Democrats who are happy with this should give you real pause.
00:13:20.880 In terms of the military hawks and part of the way we got into thirty two trillion dollars in debt is there's a dynamic that that that the Democrats play against Republicans, which is we have a big chunk of the Republican caucus that consider themselves military hawks and that always want to spend massive amounts on the military.
00:13:43.540 Now, I consider myself a military hawk.
00:13:46.520 I put myself in that camp, but I'm also a fiscal hawk.
00:13:49.360 So I don't want to bankrupt the country while we are investing what we need to invest in our military.
00:13:54.720 And Lindsey is one who focuses very much on the military side and far less on the fiscal side.
00:14:02.340 And the tradeoff the Democrats always do is, well, if you know, if you want your guns, we get our butter.
00:14:09.740 And so they they typically leverage the military hawks in the Republican Party to get the trillions in spending they want on the social side.
00:14:22.480 This tradeoff, I think, on the military side.
00:14:28.380 Much of the gnashing of teeth may be overstated, but again, we haven't seen the bill.
00:14:33.840 So so we will see the details.
00:14:35.560 I will tell you something that leadership is pitching is positive.
00:14:40.660 So the first version of limit, save and growth rescinded the unspent covid covid spending that that Congress had appropriated that saved about 30 billion dollars.
00:14:51.840 This agreement is likewise expected to rescind unspaved unspent covid relief funds and also vaccine research and disaster relief.
00:15:00.640 We don't know that know the details of that, but we're being told that could be saving 50 to 70 billion dollars.
00:15:07.240 So depending on what that is, that could be a positive element.
00:15:11.920 Now, let me give you a negative element.
00:15:13.900 The limit, save and grow bill repealed almost all of the ridiculously named Inflation Reduction Act's energy and climate tax credit expansions, which saved five hundred and sixty nine billion dollars.
00:15:26.820 According to the public reporting, no changes are made in this.
00:15:31.360 So this is something that the Biden White House won and and that House Republicans were not able to prevail on.
00:15:37.280 So that's disappointing.
00:15:41.480 Focusing on the work requirements.
00:15:43.640 The House included work requirements, not just on food stamps and welfare, but also on Medicaid, which is a huge component.
00:15:54.460 Based on the public reporting, there are work requirements, although we'll see how stringent there are.
00:15:59.940 But there are at least some work requirements for food stamps and welfare, but not for Medicaid and Medicaid is a massive program.
00:16:08.520 So back and forth. What's reported, at least, is is that House Republicans got some of what was included in the first bill, but it's not clear how much.
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00:16:52.100 I want to play part of what Joe Biden said.
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00:17:04.600 I want to play for you what he said about reaching this bipartisan agreement.
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00:18:54.200 Senator, I want you to hear how Biden described it.
00:18:57.060 Some thought he was, you know, not that excited.
00:18:59.620 And I'm like, well, it is Biden.
00:19:01.160 It's kind of hard to read him on most days.
00:19:02.760 Let's be honest.
00:19:03.780 Here's what he had to say.
00:19:04.740 We're sorry to keep you waiting, but we've got good news.
00:19:09.200 We've got to spoke with Speaker McCarthy and we've reached a bipartisan budget agreement
00:19:15.260 that we're ready to move to the full Congress.
00:19:18.840 And I think it's a really important step forward.
00:19:21.320 Excuse me.
00:19:22.100 And it takes the threat of catastrophic default off the table, protects our hard earned and
00:19:27.720 historic economic recovery.
00:19:29.100 And the agreement also represents a compromise, which means no one got everything they want.
00:19:34.760 But that's the responsibility of governing.
00:19:38.420 And this is a deal that's good news, I believe you'll see, for the American people.
00:19:43.740 The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis under fall for the first time in a nation's
00:19:48.920 history.
00:19:49.920 An economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, millions of jobs lost.
00:19:55.040 It also protects key priorities and accomplishments and values that congressional Democrats and
00:20:00.720 I have fought long for, long and hard for.
00:20:03.360 Investing in America's agenda, that's creating good jobs and communities throughout the country.
00:20:08.880 It protects Social Security, Medicare and veterans and so much more.
00:20:12.960 The Speaker and I made clear from the start that the only way forward was a bipartisan agreement.
00:20:18.840 That agreement now goes to the United States House and to the Senate.
00:20:22.880 I strongly urge both both chambers to pass that agreement.
00:20:27.240 Let's keep moving forward on meeting our obligations and building the strongest economy in the history
00:20:32.540 of the world.
00:20:33.160 I'll take a few questions.
00:20:34.980 Now, Senator, before we get to the Q&A part, there is a large portion of the American people
00:20:41.300 and a large portion of people, especially that listen to this podcast.
00:20:44.840 And they sit there and they go, let me get this straight.
00:20:46.760 He wants now credit for creating a crisis and then now saying we've averted said crisis,
00:20:54.120 which was a massive default.
00:20:55.900 So therefore, you should be happy.
00:20:58.040 And the red flag goes up, which is, OK, so you drive us down this road so that there's
00:21:03.980 this deadline in our face with a gun to our head.
00:21:06.760 And then you can throw in a bunch of pork and a bunch of stuff we don't like because
00:21:10.520 the guns to our head on default.
00:21:12.940 And then you want us to clap for you doing a great job.
00:21:16.860 And I'm not just referring to him.
00:21:18.200 I'm referring to Congress.
00:21:19.300 Are we ever going to find a way to get us off this merry-go-round?
00:21:24.880 Well, look, I think Joe Biden is going to continue to try to create crises and continue to go
00:21:29.660 hard left and try to ram through his hard left agenda.
00:21:34.220 It's going to be much harder with a Republican House.
00:21:37.000 So I expect more and more of it to be on the executive side and regulatory side.
00:21:41.600 But in this instance, look, if you want to know how to assess this deal, one of the ways
00:21:45.860 to do so is listen to what the Democrats are saying there.
00:21:49.440 Joe Biden is urging every Democrat to support it.
00:21:52.520 Here's Ron Klain, his former chief of staff.
00:21:54.920 He tweeted today, quote, every Dem should support this deal and then rally behind Joe Biden
00:22:01.900 and help him win the White House, the Senate and the House in 2024 so we can save our economy
00:22:07.160 now and get better policy in 2025.
00:22:10.800 That was Ron Klain's reaction.
00:22:12.560 Let me give you another reaction to it.
00:22:14.000 And this was Bill Kristol.
00:22:15.020 Now, Bill Kristol used to be somewhat conservative.
00:22:17.880 When Trump became president, Kristol lost his mind and has been a hard left Democrat cheerleader
00:22:23.360 ever since.
00:22:24.640 Here's Kristol's reactions.
00:22:26.180 Quote, first reactions to the deal.
00:22:28.460 One, good for the U.S. through the need to get rid of the debt ceiling in 2025.
00:22:35.460 And two, good for Biden.
00:22:38.520 Keep policy.
00:22:40.440 Domestic spending freezes no worse than the CRs that a GOP house would have produced.
00:22:46.620 And over the four years, spending on liberal priorities up.
00:22:50.480 So that's Bill Kristol's assessment.
00:22:52.080 And Bill Kristol's assessment beyond that, he also, quote, tweets, a tweet from a reporter,
00:23:01.860 a guy named Max Cohen, who tweeted the following.
00:23:05.460 He said, quote, I asked McCarthy about how he would describe his interactions with Biden
00:23:11.900 during negotiations.
00:23:13.800 Quote, very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time, McCarthy replied.
00:23:21.060 And here was Bill Kristol's reaction to that.
00:23:23.700 Wow.
00:23:24.660 McCarthy seems to be all in for now on undercutting the MAGA narrative about President Biden being
00:23:30.440 out of it, which is good for Biden and for the country.
00:23:34.640 And then he says, and for the future, wouldn't McCarthy prefer being speaker with a President
00:23:39.340 Biden than having to deal with a President Trump?
00:23:41.660 As to that last question, hell no, Bill.
00:23:44.100 And you have Trump derangement syndrome, which makes you think the country is better off handing
00:23:49.720 the nation over to out of control Marxists than actually winning policy victories in the
00:23:56.320 White House.
00:23:56.780 But but that does tell you something about how people are reacting to this deal, that that
00:24:01.540 folks on the far left are cheerleading it right now.
00:24:05.460 Yeah.
00:24:06.080 And there's one other question, and that is this from a reporter.
00:24:09.740 And I want I want to get your reaction to it.
00:24:11.980 A reporter asked the president about him, quote, compromising.
00:24:18.820 And as you mentioned it there, it seems the Democrats in many ways got a pretty good deal
00:24:23.820 here.
00:24:24.440 And Biden was trying to act like he was some sort of, you know, well, it was really hard
00:24:29.660 for me to do this really tough.
00:24:31.320 But, you know, what was my alternative?
00:24:33.180 Listen, you said at the beginning that the debt system was not negotiable.
00:24:37.800 Isn't that what you've just done here?
00:24:39.760 Isn't that what you guys?
00:24:40.740 Look, we're not negotiating the debt ceiling.
00:24:42.420 Here's the deal.
00:24:43.640 They passed.
00:24:44.480 They said they're going to they passed the debt ceiling.
00:24:46.880 And they said they'd only do it on condition that it had all these cuts in it.
00:24:51.420 I said, I'm not going to do that.
00:24:53.060 You pass the debt ceiling, period.
00:24:55.640 I'll negotiate with you on the cuts.
00:24:57.840 What you say, what's going to happen, what the budget's going to look like.
00:25:01.960 But that's what we are negotiating in order to get to them deciding that they're going
00:25:08.400 to go along with a new debt ceiling, meaning that it's not attached.
00:25:12.920 It's something totally different attached than was attached before.
00:25:16.660 But you want to try to make it look like I made some compromise in the debt ceiling.
00:25:20.300 I didn't.
00:25:21.120 I made a compromise on the budget.
00:25:23.760 That's what they wanted is you make a compromise on the budget.
00:25:26.080 And that's what you've done, even though you haven't gone as far as they wanted.
00:25:28.540 Isn't that sure?
00:25:29.480 Yeah.
00:25:30.400 Well, can you think of an alternative?
00:25:35.800 Can you think of an alternative?
00:25:37.660 And there's the chuckle.
00:25:39.000 I mean, really, that's what you've got from the president in the White House tonight?
00:25:42.760 Oh, look, what he just said there was complete gobbledygook.
00:25:46.040 And it is absolutely right that Biden suffered a major defeat.
00:25:50.660 Initially, he staked out a position that was patently unreasonable.
00:25:53.980 He said he wasn't going to talk.
00:25:55.260 He wasn't going to negotiate.
00:25:56.300 The only thing he would take was a clean debt ceiling.
00:25:58.980 That was objectively unreasonable.
00:26:00.800 But frankly, it's been the position of a lot of Democrat presidents in the past.
00:26:05.800 And sometimes they've held that line.
00:26:07.340 Sometimes they haven't.
00:26:08.740 Unfortunately, sometimes Republican leadership in the senator House has echoed the line of
00:26:14.040 Democrat presidents that it must be a clean debt ceiling with nothing attached,
00:26:17.380 which is beginning with unilateral surrender.
00:26:20.720 I will credit the House, the House Republicans, and I think it is House conservatives that drove
00:26:26.340 this, that the clean debt ceiling was off the table and Biden was forced to completely
00:26:32.180 surrender on that demand.
00:26:33.620 And his whole convoluted explanation there made no sense.
00:26:39.320 He ended up abandoning his claim.
00:26:41.100 He wasn't going to negotiate.
00:26:42.220 And he came to the Yoshin table.
00:26:43.340 And look, it was always obvious that what was going to pass was going to be somewhere
00:26:49.840 between what the House initially passed and nothing.
00:26:53.480 And so I did not stake out the position that every word of what the House passed initially
00:26:58.800 has to pass or else it's unacceptable.
00:27:01.380 My criticism is it's closer to nothing than it should have been.
00:27:05.560 And so, for example, in what the House originally passed, it blocked the illegal and unconstitutional
00:27:12.500 Biden student debt cancellation.
00:27:15.540 That would have saved at least $460 billion.
00:27:19.380 What's been reported publicly is, nope, all of that's still in there.
00:27:22.900 Now, allegedly, and what Kevin said, is there is something in there saying that if the court
00:27:30.400 strikes it down, people have to resume paying their debts.
00:27:33.560 I didn't quite understand what he was saying when he described that, but we'll see what
00:27:38.880 the text is.
00:27:40.040 At the end of the day, the old version eliminated it altogether, and this one, at best, punts
00:27:45.740 it to the court.
00:27:47.120 It's worth comparing the overall numbers.
00:27:50.400 What the House did initially was increase the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March
00:27:57.220 of 2024.
00:27:57.980 So it was a partial debt increase, but not a blank check.
00:28:04.860 What this does is it suspends the debt limit altogether until January 2025.
00:28:12.460 So on the face of it, instead of $1.5 trillion, it's about $4 trillion in debt.
00:28:18.080 Now, that's more than twice as much debt.
00:28:20.400 That is a lot of debt.
00:28:21.620 And if you're giving the Democrats that much debt, I think you should be getting real and
00:28:27.020 material spending increases.
00:28:29.060 And the big thing to understand is what happened for the federal government.
00:28:34.260 In 2017, the total federal budget was about $4 trillion.
00:28:38.840 It's now $6.5 trillion.
00:28:42.140 That's happened in just five years.
00:28:44.320 Why?
00:28:44.640 The biggest reason is because of COVID and the massive spending on COVID, and then because
00:28:49.960 the Democrat majorities the last two years rammed through massive spending.
00:28:56.160 And unfortunately, this deal may slightly slow down the rate of growth going forward, but
00:29:04.080 it does very little to turn the clock back on the explosion of spending that was given with
00:29:11.880 COVID as the excuse, and that is driving inflation.
00:29:16.000 If you don't like paying more for every bill you've got, having the federal government spend like
00:29:21.660 drunken sailors is one of the big causes of it.
00:29:24.240 And so if you just think in terms of big picture comparison, increasing the debt limit from $1.5 trillion
00:29:33.520 to $4 trillion is a big increase, and the spending reductions are much, much smaller.
00:29:39.840 That's the biggest reason I'm disappointed by what we're looking at.
00:29:43.980 I got to ask you a hypothetical here.
00:29:47.440 Will we ever, and there's a lot of people that are listening, I'm one of them that thinks
00:29:52.820 this every time we go down this road.
00:29:55.700 Are we ever going to get a balanced budget amendment, Senator?
00:29:59.200 Is that now just the biggest load of crap ever promised by a lot of politicians to get people
00:30:04.900 to go to the polls and vote for them that I'll do this and I'm going to do this?
00:30:08.040 Because there's been opportunities to do it, never gets done.
00:30:11.160 People love the drunken sailor spinning when they get into office.
00:30:14.720 You're one of those that criticize it every single time.
00:30:17.820 But when you see where we're going with our debt, is there any chance that we will ever
00:30:22.860 get a balanced budget amendment, even if the Republicans got back the House, Senate, and
00:30:26.880 the White House, all at the same time?
00:30:29.280 Well, look, if we're counting on current members of Congress, there's no chance whatsoever.
00:30:34.060 All of the Democrats oppose a balanced budget amendment.
00:30:38.280 All of them like spending like drunken sailors.
00:30:40.700 And the unfortunate thing is about half the Republicans do, and Republican leadership loves
00:30:46.560 the spending.
00:30:47.300 Anytime we have a big spending fight in the Senate, there are about 20 Republicans who
00:30:54.360 are willing to vote no.
00:30:55.520 And you usually get all the Democrats and 20 to 30 Republicans who will vote for damn
00:31:02.140 near any spending bill they see.
00:31:03.740 I did last week.
00:31:04.780 I was on Squawk Box on CNBC, which I really like doing Squawk Box because you actually get
00:31:09.040 into substantive conversations in greater depth than the five or six minute soundbite you
00:31:15.120 get on most other shows.
00:31:16.260 But in the course of being on Squawk Box, at one point we were talking about the out-of-control
00:31:21.460 spending, and they said, well, gosh, you know, you had the Inflation Reduction Act, you had
00:31:26.960 the infrastructure bill, and you had this other bill.
00:31:29.600 And I'm like, yeah, and I voted against all of those.
00:31:32.020 And the hosts were a little surprised on that.
00:31:34.280 But look, I don't think we ought to be bankrupting our country.
00:31:38.120 And the simple math of it, five years ago, the national debt was just over $20 trillion.
00:31:45.020 Today, it's $32 trillion.
00:31:47.980 That is a massive, massive increase.
00:31:52.060 And I think we should be using this leverage now to make a greater step to stopping that
00:31:58.800 spending and that out-of-control debt.
00:32:01.260 Last question for you, Senator.
00:32:03.080 How close are we to just being in total chaos?
00:32:07.200 And I'm talking about as a country with debt.
00:32:10.260 You look at the National Debt Clock and those numbers.
00:32:12.980 If we want to pay it all off of the U.S. national debt, debt per citizen is over $95,000 now for
00:32:18.780 the first time ever.
00:32:20.120 But not every citizen pays taxes.
00:32:22.220 So if you had debt per taxpayer, you'd be $248,000.
00:32:27.080 And that would just pay off the debt for one one-thousandth of a second.
00:32:30.320 And we'd still immediately go back in the red.
00:32:32.080 You look at the U.S. federal debt to GDP ratio.
00:32:36.600 For example, in 2000, it was 57.78 percent, the U.S. federal debt to GDP ratio.
00:32:42.820 Now, it's the worst it's ever been in history, 120.47 percent.
00:32:48.300 That is something that every economist in the world would say is impossible to sustain.
00:32:54.700 And when you see this now and you look at the debt and you look at our kids, I look at my kids.
00:33:01.460 I know you look at your kids and you see this and you think at some point this debt time bomb is going to explode.
00:33:09.900 Is there anyone really that cares that's in a high leadership role in D.C. over this?
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00:34:56.180 Lastly, that question for you.
00:34:58.540 I see a U.S. debt ticking time bomb.
00:35:01.100 I think every economist says it.
00:35:03.640 This is not just about our kids and our grandkids having debt.
00:35:06.740 This is about losing control of a country, in essence, when this explodes, if we don't right this ship.
00:35:13.500 How concerned are you on that level?
00:35:15.800 So I'm very concerned, but let's wrap this podcast up with a note of optimism.
00:35:21.140 Yes, absolutely, yes, we can solve this.
00:35:24.000 I don't believe this is unsolvable.
00:35:25.840 I don't believe we're in a hole that is too deep.
00:35:28.340 If you look at the federal budget and if you're a numbers person and, look, I'm someone who cares about numbers, cares about the budget, there is only one first-order variable when it comes to the budget, and that is economic growth.
00:35:45.820 Everything else is a second-order or third-order variable.
00:35:48.540 In other words, we cannot cut spending enough, doing nothing else to solve this problem.
00:35:53.960 But the only way to get out of it is to increase GDP growth.
00:36:00.900 And if you look at when growth is booming, since World War II, GDP growth has averaged about 3.3 percent a year.
00:36:10.960 That number is critically, critically important.
00:36:14.320 During the second half of the Obama years, GDP growth averaged less than 1 percent a year, 0.9 percent a year.
00:36:26.020 The preceding time GDP growth had averaged less than 1 percent a year was 1978 to 1982 coming out of Jimmy Carter.
00:36:34.160 If you have anemic GDP growth, you can't solve the budget problem.
00:36:40.600 It's impossible.
00:36:41.300 On the other hand, if you have booming economic growth, it's a double whammy on the budget because when you have booming growth, number one, tax revenues surge.
00:36:52.100 And so the federal government takes in more revenue.
00:36:54.500 But number two, when you have booming economic growth, a lot of federal spending drops, welfare spending drops.
00:37:00.480 So people who are getting welfare get jobs.
00:37:03.740 And when they get jobs, they stop getting welfare and they start paying taxes.
00:37:07.780 So you get a double whammy.
00:37:09.960 And to give you a sense of how potent it can be.
00:37:12.840 Look, if you ask, can we ever solve it?
00:37:15.120 The natural question is to ask, well, when's the last time we solved it and didn't have a deficit?
00:37:21.800 And the answer to that would be after 12 years of Reagan Bush coming in, cutting taxes, simplifying the tax code, reducing job killing regulations.
00:37:32.700 And Reagan came in and did that.
00:37:34.800 He came in, inherited Jimmy Carter's anemic growth.
00:37:39.500 He slashed the tax code.
00:37:40.700 He simplified the tax code.
00:37:42.440 And he cut job killing regulations.
00:37:45.060 And, Ben, do you know what GDP growth was in 1984?
00:37:49.500 I would love to know.
00:37:50.560 And I know you know that number.
00:37:51.540 So tell me.
00:37:53.240 7.2 percent.
00:37:56.540 Wow.
00:37:58.060 That's that's those are developing country numbers.
00:38:02.120 Those are numbers you see in countries like India and Singapore.
00:38:05.060 Those are not what you see in in major industrialized countries like the United States.
00:38:10.960 Typically, that's the power of growth.
00:38:13.540 And what happened after we saw the growth unleashed through through eight years of Reagan and four more years of Bush is Bill Clinton inherited an economy that was booming so strong that we had a four trillion dollar budget surplus.
00:38:32.720 That's how you do it.
00:38:34.040 That's how you fix it.
00:38:35.440 And if you want to fix it again, we got to do the same thing.
00:38:38.280 By the way, rewind to JFK.
00:38:42.180 Hey, JFK, if he were running today, the Democrat Party would chase him out of the party.
00:38:47.120 They'd tar and feather him.
00:38:48.640 JFK ran for the presidency on tax cuts and defeating communists.
00:38:52.940 Neither one of those are welcome in today's Democrat Party.
00:38:55.760 But you look at JFK cut taxes, JFK reduced regulations and JFK campaigned on five percent annual GDP growth.
00:39:05.220 And we produced that during his presidency.
00:39:07.800 It was an economic boom.
00:39:09.480 We can do that again.
00:39:11.600 But, Ben, we're not going to do it again until we have a president who is thoroughly committed to doing so.
00:39:16.800 And that means reining in the spending.
00:39:18.920 But that also means the aggressive pro-growth tax cutting, tax simplification and repealing of job killing regulations that let small businesses prosper and flourish.
00:39:30.900 Until that happens, if we don't have the growth, you can't solve the problem.
00:39:35.980 But with the growth, I believe we can solve it.
00:39:39.060 You also asked a minute ago if we'll ever get a balanced budget amendment, not through the current members of Congress.
00:39:44.600 But I do think the states are very close to calling for a constitutional convention to pass one, which is the only way it will ever happen with pressure from the states.
00:39:55.420 Yeah, a lot of a lot of support and a lot of growth and a lot of people finding out about that movement as well, which is a great thing.
00:40:02.260 Senator, always a pleasure for everyone listening.
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00:40:36.740 As always, Senator, pleasure being with you.
00:40:38.520 We'll see you back here in a couple of days.
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