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