Speaker 1: Welcome its verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with
Speaker 1: you as always, and Senator the number one question that
Speaker 1: everybody wants to know right now on this Memorial Day
Speaker 1: is the Biden debt deal, the Biden debt ceiling. Is
Speaker 1: there a deal with the Republicans, and if there is,
Speaker 1: what does that look like for the American people.
Speaker 2: Well, and it was announced on Sunday that there was
Speaker 2: a quote agreement in principle between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 2: And the agreement in principle included some cuts and spending
Speaker 2: from what Biden wanted. It also included an extension in
Speaker 2: the debt ceiling. And I would say, as we sit
Speaker 2: here you and I are recording this Sunday night, at
Speaker 2: this point, we don't have the text of the bill.
Speaker 2: We have not seen exactly what's in the bill, so
Speaker 2: it is not entirely clear all of the details. But
Speaker 2: based on what we know now, there are some good elements,
Speaker 2: but there are a lot of things that are disappointing.
Speaker 2: As I'm sitting here right now, I'm disappointed that this
Speaker 2: agreement does not cut more. And I'm also disappointed that
Speaker 2: this agreement adds a lot of debt in exchange for
Speaker 2: relatively little cuts. Now we can break that down piece
Speaker 2: by piece and walk through what's in it and what's not.
Speaker 2: With the caveat that the bill text at this point
Speaker 2: we still haven't seen, and presumably we will see sometime soon.
Speaker 1: Let's start with is there something in this bill that
Speaker 1: we could probably get excited about as conservatives? Because I
Speaker 1: know this is a fight, but there are many concerns saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we won back the House, surely we're going to get
Speaker 1: something that's positive for us from winning back to house.
Speaker 1: Is there a light at the end of the tunnel
Speaker 1: saying hey, at least from what we've been told. Obviously
Speaker 1: we don't have the text yet, but there are going
Speaker 1: to be some victories for us.
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you what House leadership is emphasizing.
Speaker 2: So on Sunday afternoon, I sent out a tweet critical
Speaker 2: of this deal, and in particular that that House leadership
Speaker 2: had been saying that there's not that the Democrats don't
Speaker 2: get a single thing from this deal. And I sent
Speaker 2: out a tweet and said, well, actually they get four
Speaker 2: trillion things, which is the four trillion in new debt
Speaker 2: that this deal adds and that they also get I said,
Speaker 2: eighty seven thousand new things with the eighty seven thousand
Speaker 2: IRS agents. And I'll tell you, within minutes of sending
Speaker 2: that tweet, I was on the phone with Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 2: and Kevin called me. Kevin and I are friends, and
Speaker 2: he was unhappy with what I had expressed. And look,
Speaker 2: I respect that. Kevin picked up the phone and called
Speaker 2: me and he pitched what he saw as the benefits
Speaker 2: of this agreement. And I listened to him and gave him,
Speaker 2: gave him respectful hearing. And actually later in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: I was on a call with Kevin McCarthy and with
Speaker 2: all the Republican senators where he walked through the benefits.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you, according to House leadership, the biggest benefits
Speaker 2: in the deal are as follows.
Speaker 3: Number one.
Speaker 2: They're leaning in aggressively on the permitting reforms. They say
Speaker 2: that there were significant permitting reforms that will speed up
Speaker 2: the development of energy, that will speed up the development
Speaker 2: of construction projects, that will reduce the time spent on NEPA,
Speaker 2: which is very costly and slow environmental regulations. And if
Speaker 2: those reforms are real, that's good. We haven't seen the
Speaker 2: details yet, but that's at least House leadership is pitching
Speaker 2: that as a significant victory. Secondly, what they're pitching is
Speaker 2: a significant victory is work requirements for SNAP and tan
Speaker 2: ifs now SNAP our food stamps and TANIF is what
Speaker 2: used to be aids to families with defending children with
Speaker 2: dependant children, and from what we understand, it expands work
Speaker 2: requirements from individuals from age forty nine. It expands it
Speaker 2: up to age fifty four, so it adds five more
Speaker 2: years rather of work requirements. They're pitching that as a positive.
Speaker 2: The third positive they're pitching is they say that there's
Speaker 2: a provision in the bill that if Congress does not
Speaker 2: pass the appropriation bills this year, that a budget cap
Speaker 2: kicks in automatically that is current spending minus one percent,
Speaker 2: and so they're pitching that as another fiscal benefit. Those
Speaker 2: are the main arguments they're laying out, all three of them.
Speaker 2: The details matter if they are as leaderships describing them,
Speaker 2: those are positive, those are not nothing.
Speaker 1: There's obviously the big question that many have heard about.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of attention on this center on
Speaker 1: social media, and that's about IRS agents. There is a
Speaker 1: concern that the IRS cannot be trusted. They're targeting people.
Speaker 1: We saw what happened with Matt tb when he was
Speaker 1: testifying before Congress and the RS is knocking on his door.
Speaker 1: And many people believe that these new IRS agents would
Speaker 1: in fact be nothing more than harassment agents for those
Speaker 1: that are Christian, those are conservative in general. Look at
Speaker 1: Matt Tebe is a perfect example of this. We know
Speaker 1: what happened in the past with Tea Party and conservative groups,
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Speaker 1: IRS agents center are something that so many are concerned about.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that as well in your tweet today. Where
Speaker 1: are we on those this army of IRS agents? Is
Speaker 1: that in this deal? Are we going to be able
Speaker 1: to stop that?
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's not entirely clear. So the original bill,
Speaker 2: the House pass what was called the Limit, Save and
Speaker 2: Grow Bill that zero rode out the eighty billion in
Speaker 2: new funding that Democrats ram through in the prior Congress
Speaker 2: for the IRS. That eighty billion was going to be
Speaker 2: directed to eighty seven thousand new IRS agents and employees
Speaker 2: to be hired to harass the American people, and the
Speaker 2: first bill the House passed zero that out. We don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what's in the Biden McCarthy deal. The New
Speaker 2: York Times reported that the IRS new spending was reduced
Speaker 2: by ten billion, in other words, from eighty billion to
Speaker 2: seventy billion. So that's pretty disappointing. And one House Republican
Speaker 2: tweeted out that the cuts are only one point eighty
Speaker 2: eight billion, so one point nine billion instead of ten billion.
Speaker 2: We don't know for sure, I will say when I
Speaker 2: tweeted out based on the public reporting that the eighty
Speaker 2: seven thousand new IRS agents were still there, and Kevin
Speaker 2: called me. What he argued is he says, in this
Speaker 2: bill they zero out the new spending for the IRS
Speaker 2: for next year so that they cannot hire the new
Speaker 2: IRS agents next year. And the pitch he made is
Speaker 2: we zero it out next year and will fight over
Speaker 2: subsequent years and appropriations to stop Biden from hiring them
Speaker 2: in those years. Until I see the text, I can't
Speaker 2: assess that, but that's at least his response. If it's
Speaker 2: right that they zero it out next year. That's good
Speaker 2: on its face. I'm glad they zero it out next year.
Speaker 2: If that's in there, I'd rather see the whole eighty
Speaker 2: billion zeroed out, But zeroing it next year is a
Speaker 2: significant step in the right direction. But again, the devil's
Speaker 2: in the details.
Speaker 1: A lot of Conservatives that were just recently elected to
Speaker 1: the House, they have pledged and they've been doing this
Speaker 1: a lot on social media that they are going to
Speaker 1: try to do everything they can to stop this from
Speaker 1: passing the House of Representatives. There have been a lot
Speaker 1: of hardline members of the House Freedom Caucus. Chip Roy
Speaker 1: is one of those who said on Twitter exactly that
Speaker 1: we're going to try to stop it this from happening.
Speaker 1: After you talk to House leadership, do you feel pretty
Speaker 1: confident that Democrats and Republican negotiators are in fact able
Speaker 1: to iron this out the final details this agreement, and
Speaker 1: to be clear, what this is, suspend to suspend the
Speaker 1: federal government's thirty one point four trillion dollar debt ceiling
Speaker 1: in the coming days. And they're acting like this victory.
Speaker 1: I worry that, yes, this is a short term victory.
Speaker 1: Center and many Americans, I think, worry that, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is short term, but how much damage are we doing
Speaker 1: this country when we're going this much into debt without
Speaker 1: real cuts to spending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look that that is my principal concern. So
Speaker 2: in the original bill, the Limit, Save and Grow Bill,
Speaker 2: what it did is it rolled back discretionary spending. So
Speaker 2: what does discretionary spending mean the federal budget? There two components.
Speaker 2: There's what's called mandatory spending and there's what's called discretionary spending.
Speaker 2: So man spending are things like Social Security and Medicare
Speaker 2: and medicaid. They're things that are on autopilot in the
Speaker 2: federal budget and they grow automatically. Congress doesn't appropriate every year.
Speaker 2: They're set to be automatically appropriated. Discretionary spending is essentially
Speaker 2: everything else, and so that is what Congress takes up
Speaker 2: and appropriates each year. The Limit Save and Growth Grow
Speaker 2: Bill cut discretionary spending from one point seven trillion in
Speaker 2: fiscal year twenty three to one point four to seven
Speaker 2: trillion in fiscal year twenty four. So that was two
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty billion cutting the actual spending levels. And
Speaker 2: then it caps spending at one percent per year, and
Speaker 2: that was calculated just that reduction in spending was calculated
Speaker 2: to save a total of three point two trillion dollars. Now,
Speaker 2: we don't know for sure, but what has been reported publicly,
Speaker 2: according to The New York Times, is that this deal
Speaker 2: leaves discretionary spending at the exact same level one point
Speaker 2: seven trillion that it was in fiscal year twenty three.
Speaker 2: In other words, that it we lose the entirety of
Speaker 2: that cut, and it then grows from one percent from
Speaker 2: there on. Now it's a big difference if you're growing
Speaker 2: one percent from one point seven trillion or growing one
Speaker 2: percent from one point four to seven trillion, Because it
Speaker 2: makes a three point two trillion dollar difference over time.
Speaker 2: What does that mean in total? The New York Times
Speaker 2: is reporting that the total savings of the deal are
Speaker 2: about six hundred and fifty billion. That is a massive
Speaker 2: reduction from the four point eight trillion total savings in
Speaker 2: the limit Save and Grow bill. Now, I can tell
Speaker 2: you when I asked Kevin about that this afternoon, he
Speaker 2: pressed back pretty hard and he said, why are you
Speaker 2: believing the New York Times? And I said, look, I
Speaker 2: don't have biltecks. What else do you want me to believe?
Speaker 2: All all I have are the public reports. If the
Speaker 2: bill tech shows something different, then we'll discuss it on
Speaker 2: the pod. But what the New York Times is saying
Speaker 2: right now at least, is that this agreement is giving
Speaker 2: four trillion in new debt in exchange for much, much
Speaker 2: smaller spending cuts. If that is true, that's pretty deeply disappointing.
Speaker 1: There's always people centered that are saying the sky is
Speaker 1: falling when they don't get what they want. And I'll
Speaker 1: just give you examples of the spectrum here. Representative Norman
Speaker 1: on the debt deal today said what I'm hearing is quote,
Speaker 1: anything but fiscal sanity. Then you move over to Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 1: He's raging against this debt deal, warning that the cuts
Speaker 1: could quote cripple the military. And then Kevin McCarthy says,
Speaker 1: the debt ceiling deal is quote worthy of the American people.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty big spectrum swing there, which one is it?
Speaker 2: Well, there may be some truth to all of those. Look,
Speaker 2: leadership in both the House and Senate are going to
Speaker 2: pitch that this is the greatest deal since Slice spread.
Speaker 2: The White House is pitching this is a terrific deal.
Speaker 2: A lot of Democrats are pitching this is a terrific deal.
Speaker 2: The number of Democrats who are happy with this should
Speaker 2: give you real pause in terms of the military hawks.
Speaker 2: And part of the way we got into thirty two
Speaker 2: trillion dollars in debt is there's a dynamic that that
Speaker 2: that the Democrats play against Republicans, which is, we have
Speaker 2: a big chunk of the Republican caucus that consider themselves
Speaker 2: military hawks and that always want to spend massive amounts
Speaker 2: of the military. Now I consider myself a military hawk.
Speaker 2: I put myself in that camp, but I'm also a
Speaker 2: fiscal hawk, so I don't want to bankrupt the country
Speaker 2: while we are investing what we need to invest in
Speaker 2: our military. And Lindsey is one who who focuses very
Speaker 2: much on the military side and far less on the
Speaker 2: fiscal side. And the trade off the Democrats always do
Speaker 2: is well, if you know, if you want your guns,
Speaker 2: we get our butter and and so they they typically
Speaker 2: leverage the military hawks and the Republican Party to get
Speaker 2: the trillions in spending they want on the social side.
Speaker 2: This trade off, I think on the military side, much
Speaker 2: of the gnashing of teeth may be overstated, but again
Speaker 2: we haven't seen the bill, so we will see the details.
Speaker 2: I will tell you something that leadership is pitching is positive.
Speaker 2: So the first version of Limitsave and Growth rescinded the
Speaker 2: unspent COVID spending that Congress had appropriated. That saved about
Speaker 2: thirty billion dollars. This agreement is likewise expected to rescind unspaced,
Speaker 2: unspent COVID relief funds and also vaccine research and disaster relief.
Speaker 2: We don't know that know the details of that, but
Speaker 2: we're being told that could be saving fifty to seventy
Speaker 2: billion dollars. So depending on what that is, that could
Speaker 2: be a positive element. Now let me give you a
Speaker 2: negative element. The Limit Saving Grow bill repealed almost all
Speaker 2: of the ridiculously named inflation reduction Acts, energy and climate
Speaker 2: tax credit expansions, which saved five hundred and sixty nine
Speaker 2: billion dollars according to the public reporting. No changes are
Speaker 2: made in this, So this is something that the Biden
Speaker 2: White House won and that House Republicans were not able
Speaker 2: to prevail on.
Speaker 3: So that's disappointing.
Speaker 2: Focusing on the work requirements, the House included work requirements
Speaker 2: not just on food stamps and welfare, but also on
Speaker 2: medicaid which is a huge component. Based on the public reporting,
Speaker 2: there are work requirements, so that we'll see how stringent
Speaker 2: there are. But there at least some work requirements for
Speaker 2: food stamps and welfare, but not for Medicaid, and Medicaid
Speaker 2: is a massive program. So back and forth. What's reported
Speaker 2: at least is that House Republicans got some of what
Speaker 2: was included in the first bill, but it's not clear
Speaker 2: how much.
Speaker 1: I want to play part of what Joe Biden said,
Speaker 1: and rarely does he take questions from the media. Rarely
Speaker 1: does he have press conferences. He did have a kind
Speaker 1: of a press conference day live from the White House.
Speaker 1: I want to play for you what he said about
Speaker 1: reaching this byparts and agreement, and then he was asked
Speaker 1: about from a reporter about hey, why did you compromise?
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Speaker 1: I want you to hear how Biden described it. Some
Speaker 1: thought he was, you know, not that excited, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it is Biden. It's kind of hard to read him
Speaker 1: on most days. Let's be honest. Here's what he had
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 3: Sorry to keep you waiting, but we've got good news.
Speaker 4: We've got to spocus Speaker McCarthy, and we've reached the
Speaker 4: bipart of some budget agreement that we're ready to move
Speaker 4: to the full Congress. And I think it's a really
Speaker 4: important step forward, excuse me. And it takes a thread
Speaker 4: of catastrophic to fall off the table, protects our hardware
Speaker 4: and in historic economic recovery. And the agreement also represents
Speaker 4: the compromises. Me A's known got everything they want. That's
Speaker 4: the responsibility of governing. And this is the deal is
Speaker 4: good news. I believe you'll see for the American people,
Speaker 4: the agreement prevents the worst possible crisis on the fault.
Speaker 4: For the first time in a nation's history, an economic recession.
Speaker 4: Retirement accounts devastated millions of jobs lost. It also protects
Speaker 4: key priorities and accomplishments and values that Congressional Democrats and
Speaker 4: I have fought long, for long and hard for investing
Speaker 4: in America's agenda. That's creating good jobs and communities throughout
Speaker 4: the country. It protects Social Security, Medicare, and veterans, and
Speaker 4: so much more. The Speaker and I made clear from
Speaker 4: the start that the only way forward was a bipartisan agreement.
Speaker 4: That agreement now goes to the United States House and
Speaker 4: to the Senate. I strongly urge both both chambers to
Speaker 4: pass that agreement. Let's keep moving forward on meeting our
Speaker 4: obligations and building the strongest economy in the history of
Speaker 4: the world. I'll take a few questions.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the Q and A part. There
Speaker 1: is a large portion of the American people, and a
Speaker 1: large portion of people especially that listen to this podcast,
Speaker 1: and they sit there, they go, let me get this straight.
Speaker 1: He wants now credit for creating a crisis and then
Speaker 1: now saying we've averted said crisis, which was a massive default,
Speaker 1: so therefore you should be happy. And the red flag
Speaker 1: goes up, which is okay, So you drive us down
Speaker 1: this road so that there's this deadline in our face
Speaker 1: with a gun to our head, and then you can
Speaker 1: throw in a bunch of pork and a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff we don't like because the guns to our head
Speaker 1: on default, and then you want us to clap for
Speaker 1: you doing a great job.
Speaker 3: And I'm not just referring to him, I'm referring to Congress.
Speaker 1: Are we ever going to find a way to get
Speaker 1: us off this merry go round?
Speaker 2: Well, look, I think Joe Biden is going to continue
Speaker 2: to try to create crises and continue to go hard
Speaker 2: left and try to ram through his hard left agenda.
Speaker 2: It's going to be much harder with the Republican House,
Speaker 2: so I expect more and more of it to be
Speaker 2: on the executive side and regulatory side. But in this instance, look,
Speaker 2: if you want to know how to assess this deal,
Speaker 2: one of the ways to do so is listen to
Speaker 2: what the Democrats are saying.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: Joe Biden is urging every Democrat to support it. Here's
Speaker 2: Ron Klain as former chief of staff. He tweeted today,
Speaker 2: quote every dem should support this deal and then rally
Speaker 2: behind Joe Biden and help him win the White House,
Speaker 2: the Senate, in the House in twenty twenty four, so
Speaker 2: we can save our economy now and get better policy
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five. That was Ron Klaine's reaction. Let
Speaker 2: me give you another reaction to it, and this was
Speaker 2: Bill Crystal.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Bill Crystal used to be somewhat conservative. When Trump became president,
Speaker 2: Crystal lost his mind and has been a hard left
Speaker 2: Democrat cheerleader ever since. Here's Crystal's reactions quote first reactions
Speaker 2: to the deal. One good for the US through the
Speaker 2: need to get rid of the death ceiling in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, and two good for Biden EEP policy. Domestic
Speaker 2: spending freezes no worse than the CRS that a GOP
Speaker 2: house would have produced, and over the four years, spending
Speaker 2: on liberal priorities up. So that's Bill Crystal's assessment and
Speaker 2: Bill's Crystal's assessment. Beyond that, he also quote tweets a
Speaker 2: tweet from a reporter guy named Max Cohen, who tweeted
Speaker 2: the follow following He said, quote, I asked McCarthy about
Speaker 2: how he would describe his interactions with Biden during negotiations.
Speaker 2: Quote very professional, very smart, very tough. At the same time,
Speaker 2: McCarthy replied, and here was Bill Crystal's reaction to that. Wow,
Speaker 2: McCarthy seems to be all in for now on undercutting
Speaker 2: the MAGA narrative about President Biden being out of it,
Speaker 2: which is good for Biden and for the country. And
Speaker 2: then he said, and for the future, wouldn't MacCarthy prefer
Speaker 2: being speaker with a President Biden than having to deal
Speaker 2: with a President Trump? Asked to that last question, Hell no, Bill,
Speaker 2: and you have Trump derangement syndrome, which makes you think
Speaker 2: the country is better off handing the nation over to
Speaker 2: out of control Marxists than actually winning policy victories in
Speaker 2: the White House. But that does tell you something about
Speaker 2: how people are reacting this deal, that folks on the
Speaker 2: far left are cheerleading it right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's one other question, and that is this
Speaker 1: from a reporter, and I want to get your reaction
Speaker 1: to it. A reporter asked the president about him quote compromising,
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned it there, it seems the Democrats
Speaker 1: in many ways got a pretty good deal here, and
Speaker 1: Biden was trying to act like he was some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, well, it was really hard for me
Speaker 1: to do this, really tough, but you know what was
Speaker 1: my alternative?
Speaker 3: Listen at the beginning that the death.
Speaker 1: Cent was not negotiable.
Speaker 3: Doesn't that being just done here?
Speaker 4: Or does that? And you guys said, look, we're not negotiating.
Speaker 4: Here's the deal they passed. They said they're going to
Speaker 4: They passed the debt ceiling, and they said they'd only
Speaker 4: do it on condition that it had all these cuts
Speaker 4: in it. I said, I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 4: You passed the debt ceiling. Period, I'll negotiate with you
Speaker 4: on the cuts. What you say, what's going to happen,
Speaker 4: What the budget's going to look like. That's what we
Speaker 4: are negotiating in order to get to them deciding that
Speaker 4: they're going to go along with a new debt ceiling,
Speaker 4: meaning that it's not attached, so something totally different attached
Speaker 4: was attached before. But you want to try to make
Speaker 4: it look like I made some compromise in the debt ceiling.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: I made a compromise on the budget. That's what they
Speaker 4: wanted to do, to make a compromise on the budget,
Speaker 4: and that's what you've done, even though you haven't gone
Speaker 4: as far as they wanted, isn't that sure? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 4: can you think of an alternative?
Speaker 3: Can you think of an alternative? And then there's the chuckle.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, that's what you've got from the President
Speaker 1: in the White House tonight.
Speaker 3: Oh look what he just said.
Speaker 2: There was complete gobbledygook.
Speaker 3: And it is absolutely right.
Speaker 2: That Biden suffered a major defeat. Initially, he staked out
Speaker 2: a position that was patently unreasonable. He said he wasn't
Speaker 2: going to talk, he wasn't going to negotiate. The only
Speaker 2: thing he would take was a clean debt ceiling. That
Speaker 2: was objectively unreasonable. But frankly, it's been the position of
Speaker 2: a lot of Democrat presidents in the past, and sometimes
Speaker 2: they've held that line, sometimes they haven't. Unfortunately, sometimes Republican
Speaker 2: leadership in the Senator House has echoed the line of
Speaker 2: Democrat presidents that it must be a clean debt ceiling
Speaker 2: with nothing attached, which is beginning with unilateral surrender. I
Speaker 2: will credit the House, the House Republicans, and I think
Speaker 2: it is House conservatives that drove this that the clean
Speaker 2: debt ceiling was off the table and Biden was forced
Speaker 2: to completely surrender on that demand, and his whole convoluted
Speaker 2: explanation there made no sense. He ended up abandoning his claim.
Speaker 2: He wasn't it going to negotiate, and he came to
Speaker 2: the Oshing table, and look, it was always obvious that
Speaker 2: what was going to pass was going to be somewhere
Speaker 2: between what the House initially passed and nothing. And so
Speaker 2: I did not stake out the position that every word
Speaker 2: of what the House passed initially has to pass or
Speaker 2: else it's unacceptable. My criticism is it's closer to nothing
Speaker 2: than it should have been. So for example, in what
Speaker 2: the House originally passed, it blocked the illegal and unconstitutional
Speaker 2: Biden's student debt cancelation that would have saved at least
Speaker 2: four hundred and sixty billion dollars. What's been reported publicly
Speaker 2: is nope, all of that's still in there now, allegedly.
Speaker 2: And what Kevin said is is there is something in
Speaker 2: there saying that if the court strikes it down, people
Speaker 2: have to resume paying their debts. I didn't quite understand
Speaker 2: and what he was saying when he described that, But
Speaker 2: we'll see what the text is at the end of
Speaker 2: the day. The old version eliminated altogether, and this one
Speaker 2: at best punts it to the court. It's worth comparing
Speaker 2: the overall numbers. What the House did initially was increase
Speaker 2: the debt limit by one point five trillion, or until
Speaker 2: March of twenty twenty four, so it was a partial
Speaker 2: debt increase, but not a blank check. What this is
Speaker 2: does is it suspends the debt limit altogether until January
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five on. So on the face of it,
Speaker 2: instead of one point five trillion, it's about four trillion
Speaker 2: in debt. Now, that's more than twice as much debt.
Speaker 2: That is a lot of debt. And if you're giving
Speaker 2: the Democrats that much debt, I think you should be
Speaker 2: getting real and material spending increases. And the big thing
Speaker 2: to understand is what happened for the federal government. In
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, the total federal budget was about four trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: It's now six and a half trillion dollars. That's happened
Speaker 2: in just five years.
Speaker 3: Why.
Speaker 2: The biggest reason is because of COVID and the massive
Speaker 2: spending on COVID, and then because the Democrat majorities the
Speaker 2: last two years rammed through massive spending and Unfortunately, this
Speaker 2: deal may slightly slow down the rate of growth going forward,
Speaker 2: but it does very little to turn the clock back
Speaker 2: on the explosion of spending that was given with COVID
Speaker 2: as the excuse, and that is driving inflation. If you
Speaker 2: don't like paying more for every bill you've got, having
Speaker 2: the federal government spend like drunken sailors is one of
Speaker 2: the big causes of it. And so if you just
Speaker 2: think in terms of big picture comparison, increasing the debt
Speaker 2: limit from one point five trillion to four trillion is
Speaker 2: a big increase and the spending reductions are much much smaller.
Speaker 2: That's the biggest reason I'm disappointed by what we're looking at.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you a hypothetical here, will we ever?
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of people that are listening.
Speaker 1: I'm one of them that thinks this, every time we
Speaker 1: go down this road, Are we ever going to get
Speaker 1: a balanced budget?
Speaker 3: Amendment center?
Speaker 1: Is that now just the biggest load of crap ever
Speaker 1: Promised by a lot of politicians to get people to
Speaker 1: go to the polls and vote for them, that I'll
Speaker 1: do this, and I'm going to do this.
Speaker 3: There's been opportunities to do it. Never gets done.
Speaker 1: People love the drunken sailor spending when they get into office.
Speaker 1: You're one of those that criticize it every single time.
Speaker 1: But when you see where we're going with our debt,
Speaker 1: is there any chance that we will ever get a
Speaker 1: balanced budget amendment, even if the Republicans got back the House,
Speaker 1: sent in the White House all at the same time.
Speaker 2: Well, look, if we're counting on current members of Congress,
Speaker 2: there's no chance whatsoever. All of the Democrats oppose a
Speaker 2: balanced budget amendment. All of them like spending like drunken sailors.
Speaker 2: And the unfortunate thing is about half the Republicans do.
Speaker 2: And Republican leadership loves the spending. Anytime we have a
Speaker 2: big spending fight in the Senate, they are about twenty
Speaker 2: Republicans who are willing to vote no, And you usually
Speaker 2: get all the Democrats and twenty to thirty Republicans who
Speaker 2: will vote for damn near any spending bill they see.
Speaker 2: I did last week. I was on Squakbox on CNBC,
Speaker 2: which I really like. Doing squakboxes, you actually get into
Speaker 2: substantive conversations in greater depth than the five or six
Speaker 2: minute SoundBite you get on most other shows. But in
Speaker 2: the course of being on Squawkbox, at one point we
Speaker 2: were talking about the out of control spending and they said, well, gosh,
Speaker 2: you know, you had the Inflation Reduction Act, you get
Speaker 2: the infrastructure bill, and you had this other bill. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, and I voted against all of those,
Speaker 2: and the hosts were a little surprised on that. But look,
Speaker 2: I don't think we ought to be bankrupting our country.
Speaker 2: And the simple math of it, five years ago, the
Speaker 2: national debt was just over twenty trillion dollars. Today it's
Speaker 2: thirty two trillion dollars. That is a massive, massive increase,
Speaker 2: and I think we should be using this leverage now
Speaker 2: to make a greater step to stopping that spending and
Speaker 2: that out of control debt.
Speaker 1: Last question for you, Senator, how close are we to
Speaker 1: just being in total chaos? And I'm talking about as
Speaker 1: a country with debt. You look at a national debt
Speaker 1: clock and those numbers if we want to pay it
Speaker 1: all off of the US national debt debt per citizens
Speaker 1: over ninety five thousand now for the first time ever.
Speaker 1: But not every citizen pays taxes, So if you had
Speaker 1: debts debt per taxpayer, you'd be two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: eight thousand, and that would just pay off the debt
Speaker 1: for one one thousand of a second, and we'd still
Speaker 1: immediately go back in the red. You look at the
Speaker 1: US federal debt ratio, for example, in two thousand, it
Speaker 1: was fifty seven point seven eight percent the US federal
Speaker 1: debt to GDP ratio. Now it's the worst that's ever
Speaker 1: been in history, one hundred and twenty point forty seven percent.
Speaker 1: That is something that every economist in the world would
Speaker 1: say is impossible to sustain. And when you see this
Speaker 1: now and you look at the debt and you look
Speaker 1: at our kids.
Speaker 3: I look at my kids.
Speaker 1: I know you look at your kids, and you see this,
Speaker 1: and you think, at some point this debt time bomb
Speaker 1: is going to explode. Is there anyone really that cares,
Speaker 1: that's in a high leadership role in DC over this?
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Speaker 1: Com center that ask me that question for you. I
Speaker 1: see a US debt taking time bomb. I think every
Speaker 1: economist says it. Uh, this is not just about our
Speaker 1: kids and our grandkids having debt. This is about losing
Speaker 1: control of a country in essence when that's explodes. If
Speaker 1: we don't write this ship, how concerned are you on
Speaker 1: that level?
Speaker 2: So I'm very concerned. But let's wrap this podcast up
Speaker 2: with a note of optimism. Yes, absolutely, yes we can
Speaker 2: solve this. I don't believe this is unsolvable. I don't
Speaker 2: believe we're in a hole that is too deep. If
Speaker 2: you look at the federal budget, and if you're a
Speaker 2: numbers person, and look, I'm someone who cares about numbers,
Speaker 2: cares cares about the budget, there is only one first
Speaker 2: order variable when it comes to the budget, and that
Speaker 2: is economic growth. Everything else is a second order or
Speaker 2: third order variable. In other words, we cannot cut spending
Speaker 2: enough doing nothing else to solve this problem. The only
Speaker 2: way to get out of it is to increase GDP growth.
Speaker 2: And if you look at when growth is booming. Since
Speaker 2: World War Two, GDP growth has averaged about three point
Speaker 2: three percent a year. That number is critically critically important.
Speaker 2: During the second half of the Obama years, GDP growth
Speaker 2: averaged less than one percent a year, zero point nine
Speaker 2: percent a year. The preceding time GDP growth had averaged
Speaker 2: less than one percent a year was nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: to nineteen eighty two, coming out of Jimmy Carter. If
Speaker 2: you have anemic GDP growth, you can't solve the budget problem.
Speaker 2: It's impossible. On the other hand, if you have booming
Speaker 2: economic growth, it's a double whammy on the budget because
Speaker 2: when you have booming growth, number one, tax revenue surge
Speaker 2: and so the federal government takes in more revenue. But
Speaker 2: number two, when you have booming economic growth, a lot
Speaker 2: of federal spending drops. Welfare spending drops, so people who
Speaker 2: were getting welfare get jobs, and when they get jobs,
Speaker 2: they stop getting welfare and they start paying taxes. So
Speaker 2: you get a double whammy. And to give you a
Speaker 2: sense of how potent it can be. Look, if you
Speaker 2: ask can we ever solve it? The natural question is
Speaker 2: to ask, well, when's the last time we solved it
Speaker 2: and didn't have a deficit. And the answer to that
Speaker 2: would be after twelve years of Reagan, Bush coming in,
Speaker 2: cutting taxes, simplifying the tax code, reducing job killing regulations.
Speaker 2: And Reagan came in and did that, came in, inherited
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter's anemic growth. He slashed the tax code, he
Speaker 2: simplified the tax code, and he cut job killing regulations.
Speaker 2: And Ben, do you know what GDP growth was in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four?
Speaker 3: I would love to know, and I know you know
Speaker 3: that number, So tell.
Speaker 2: Me seven point two percent. Wow, that's Those are developing
Speaker 2: country numbers. Those are numbers you see in countries like
Speaker 2: India and Singapore. Those are not what you see in
Speaker 2: major industrialized countries like the United States. Typically. That's the
Speaker 2: power of growth. And what happened after we saw the
Speaker 2: growth unleashed through eight years of Reagan and four more
Speaker 2: years of Bush is Bill Clinton inherited an economy that
Speaker 2: was booming so strong that we had a four trillion
Speaker 2: dollar budget surplus. That's how you do it. That's how
Speaker 2: you fix it. And if you want to fix it again,
Speaker 2: we got to do the same thing. By the way,
Speaker 2: rewind to JFK. JFK, if he were running today, the
Speaker 2: Democrat Party would chase him out of the party. They
Speaker 2: tar and feather him. JFK ran for the presidency on
Speaker 2: tax cuts and defeating communists. Neither one of those are
Speaker 2: welcome in today's Democrat Party. But you look at JFK
Speaker 2: cut taxes, JFK reduced regulations, and JFK campaigned on five
Speaker 2: percent annual GDP growth and we produce that during his
Speaker 2: presidency and it was an economic boom. We can do
Speaker 2: that again, but Ben, we're not going to do it
Speaker 2: again until we have a president who is thoroughly committed
Speaker 2: to doing so. And that means raining and the spending.
Speaker 2: But that also means the aggressive pro growth tax cutting,
Speaker 2: tax simplification, and repealing of job killing regulations that let
Speaker 2: small businesses prosper and flourish. Until that happens. If we
Speaker 2: don't have the growth, you can't all of the problem.
Speaker 2: But with the growth, I believe we can solve it.
Speaker 2: You also asked a minute ago if we'll ever get
Speaker 2: a budget Ballace Budget Amendment, not through the current members
Speaker 2: of Congress, but I do think the States are very
Speaker 2: close to calling for a constitutional convention to pass one,
Speaker 2: which is the only way it will ever happen with
Speaker 2: pressure from the States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of support and a lot of growth
Speaker 1: and a lot of people finding out about that movement
Speaker 1: as well, which is a great thing, Senator. Always a
Speaker 1: pleasure for everyone listening. Don't forget to hit that subscribe,
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