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David Friedberg Destroys the House Spending Bill: "Americans should be ashamed_" | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: David Friedberg Destroys the House Spending Bill: "Americans should be ashamed_"
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Republicans are working hard on the big
beautiful bill. The Trump bill would
extend the 2017 tax cuts and jobs act
through 2034. That's kind of the big
piece here is these tax cuts. And
there's a bunch of campaign stuff like
no taxes on tips or overtime things that
Trump promised. And the Tax Foundation,
this is a nonprofit that analyzes tax
policy, estimates the tax cuts would
reduce revenues by 4.1 trillion over 10
years. That's 400 billion a year. And uh
the bill also aims to cut 1.5 trillion
in spend over the next decade. Some
Republicans think this is weak and are
pushing for 2 trillion in cuts or more.
Freeberg, you actually I understand from
our group chat did a deep dive here and
you I think are responsible in many ways
for bringing the issue of our national
debt to the forefront especially
particularly with this administration
and doge which we give you a lot of
credit for you being a single issue
voter for this. Are you worried about
the budget now? We're we're 100 plus
days into Trump. Do you think he's got
any chance of cutting the deficit? I'll
talk about the House tax bill, which I
think is to use your term Jal absolute
discard.
I uh bill
is a bill is a disc. Wow. It is absolute
discard. If you're an American, you
should feel shame that your elected
officials are proposing that this is the
bill that gets passed, that we vaporize
this much money, that we put ourselves
this much further in debt, that we do
not treat this situation as the fiscal
emergency that it is. The bill
ultimately yields no real change in the
annual deficit. that the annual deficit
could climb to
$2.5 trillion being added to the federal
debt load every single year going
forward. In fact, if you look at the
Treasury yields, the 30-year is now
kissing
5%. So, the United States has called $
37 trillion of debt. At 5%, we're paying
close to $2 trillion a year just in
interest on our debt. As this debt gets
refinanced, the interest rates are going
up because the probability that the US
will default on its debt payments, which
is what you're buying when you buy US
treasuries, you're getting the US
government to pay you some number of
dollars with interest over time. And the
market is now demanding that that
interest rate be as high as 5%. Because
of this fiscal situation that the United
States finds itself in, we are now
burning an additional $2.5 trillion a
year, adding to our debt load. We are in
a fiscal crisis and we're not willing to
admit it. And I've said this from day
one that Doge can only do so much. And
clearly that's the case where they're
now talking about sub $300 billion a
year in potential annual savings from
Doge action. At the end of the day,
Congress needs to take action. And this
bill from Congress doesn't take much
action. I will tell you that if you look
across the board, all of these programs
are still being proposed to be run at a
cost that is well in excess of their
precoid levels. And so I would set two
guiding principles if I was to be the
benevolent dictator of the United States
of America. My guiding principle number
one would be that any program that we
intend to continue to persist have its
budget level cut to pre-COVID to 2019
levels. Second would be and if we did
that by the way we would be in a much
better fiscal situation. The second
would be that we add no new programs in
the moment. There's a whole bunch of new
thrown into this bill as well as
increasing the cost and a few cuts here
and there. I'll just highlight a couple
that I think are worth noting. You know,
there's a cut in the SNAP program, which
is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program. That's food stamps. And I
talked about this with Brook Rollins in
the interview I did a few weeks ago. You
can watch it on YouTube. And we talked a
little bit about how this SNAP program
has absolutely exploded in size from 60
billion a year in 2019 to 120 billion a
year today. So, in this budget proposal,
they're actually cutting it back by
about 30 billion. So, to 90 billion. So,
it's still 50% higher than it was
pre-COVID. And there's a lot of kind of
stories we could go through on what
happened during CO that caused this
thing to blow up the way it did, but
political wrangling pulled money out of
the government into people's pockets,
and that is persisting today. I'm a big
believer in cutting taxes. Obviously,
I'm probably more libertarian than
anyone else on this show or that we've
ever had on this show, but at the end of
the day, you can't just say, "Hey, let's
cut taxes and spend more than we're
making. It doesn't make sense." A lot of
this stuff's going to be exploitable.
The tips and overtime exclusions are a
way to pander to people to get votes and
now keeping your promises on those
votes. I think at the end of the day,
the tips and overtime rule could invite
a lot of gamesmanship and loopholes that
will be created and people will wake up
and be like, "Uhoh." For example, if I'm
an independent contractor, I will enter
into a contract with someone that says,
"Here's the service I'm providing you
for 50 bucks, and then there's an
optional tip you can give me at the end,
and then I won't pay taxes on that tip."
And I can give you a hundred other
examples that this will create an
inordinate number of crazy insane
loopholes. The interest on the debt at
$1.9 trillion a year equates to 7% of
GDP. That means seven cents of every
dollar that moves in every transaction
in this country is being used to pay
down interest on money we overspent in
the past. It has become an absolute
crisis. I think that there's a few folks
that should be shout out on this, which
is Senator
Paul and Senator Ron Johnson, who both
highlighted how ridiculously
underimpressive the spending cuts are in
this bill. I think we've got a lot of
work to do. I'm deeply disappointed. I'm
scared and I hope that um that this all
gets kind of fixed up and in recon. Do
you think that we should line item out
all the new spending irrespective of
what it is? All new spending line item
out. That's that's rule one. And rule
two is all existing programs got to go
back to pre-COVID levels. You do those
two things, we're in a great place.
Yeah. And just to put some numbers and
some charts behind it, here is the the
debt back to Clinton era. Clinton added
uh 392 billion in eight years. It's
barely noticeable on the chart. 40 50
billion a year. Bush 5.4 trillion four
years about 1.3 trillion a year. Obama a
trillion a year. And then we get to
Trump 1.0 two trillion a year. Suddenly
we decided we would double it. Biden
same thing. They added almost exactly
the same amount
to the right on track to do the same.
Yeah. It's not total dollar amount. It's
percent of GDP that you're adding. And
you know, right now at at two and a half
trillion dollars a year of deficit,
we're talking
about a deficit to GDP of like 8%. Yes.
8% a
year. This is like Argentina. This is
like insane. The fact that we don't
treat this like a fiscal emergency and
everyone goes up and they tout, oh,
we're going to make 60 billion in cuts
in Medicaid. That's out of $820 billion
of annual spend. you know, oh, we're
making 30 billion in cuts in SNAP.
That's still 50% higher spend in total
than we were in 2019, a few years ago,
when we didn't have that much of a
problem. This has become like such a
reset of expectations. And I worry again
that we went into this, I think, in a
very optimistic way thinking that this
administration was going to treat things
differently. We had Doge, we had
alignment on the importance of the
budget. Besson has highlighted it. And
then it's kind of back to gamesmanship
in DC. all these representatives from
Congress show up and try and get money
for their constituents in a way that is
not sustainable. We're not going to be
able to keep this up and we're not
really having the hard and tough
conversations we need to be having. And
every year, everyone wants to get
elected by keeping programs and keeping
money flowing that their constituents
elected them to do. And they want to add
new programs. They can go on CNBC and
say, "Look at this cool new program I
stood up. It's great. This is going to
create the future of America." And
meanwhile, there's no future of America
because we're burning $2.5 trillion
dollars a year. It is like an
existential crisis that no one's willing
to stand up and highlight just how
critical this emergency is. $2.5
trillion of deficit spending on a $28
trillion
GDP. Tell me when in history that's
actually worked out at the end of the
day except when you're in some war and
you're going to end up taking over some
country and getting all their resources.
And as you mentioned this actually this
has this has you know knock on effects
with regard to things like dd
dollararization. Why are you investing
in the American dollar if you believe
that's why it's going to this is the
debt this is the debt death spiral that
we find ourselves in because what
happens is people stop owning treasuries
when they start to question whether or
not 30 years from now the US government
is going to meet its debt obligations
even the smallest marginal question of
that drives interest rates up 1% 2%.
Suddenly your 30-year Treasury yields at
6% 7%. And then your interest rates
climb and then your deficit spending
climbs and that's how it becomes a
spiral. So now the debt goes up even
more than it did the year before and
then the next year it goes up even more
per year than it did the year before.
That's why it's called a debt death
spiral. One of the things I've heard in
a lot of members of the cabinet that
I've met with over the last couple of
months is we've got all these new
sources of revenue. I had an interview
with Doug Bergam. He talked about
unlocking America's assets. We've got
this balance sheet with lots of assets.
We're going to do land leases and all
sorts of other things. We we met with
Lutnik. He's going to sell the Trump
gold card, the immigration card. We met
with Bessant. He's got these ideas on
how we're going to drive. Everyone's got
great theory on how we're going to grow
GDP and actually grow government
revenue. But until those dollars start
to flow in, we have to get our fiscal
house in order. We have to cut spending.
When those dollars start to flow in,
then you can start to spend. But you
can't spend ahead because otherwise the
cost of the debt and the economics
uncertainty is going to limit our
ability to execute on the back end on
that revenue generation. And I'm very
worried about no one kind of paying
enough attention to this. So, I just,
you know, I feel very passionate having
seen this bill that we're just not on
the right track.
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