-
Unknown A
The country is going to stop working.
-
Unknown B
We have massive amounts of fraud that we caught. I think we probably caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in, what, two weeks?
-
Unknown A
Yes.
-
Unknown B
And it's going to go to numbers that you're not going to believe. We have, for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention. Yes, correct.
-
Unknown C
And we are moving fast.
-
Unknown B
So we will make mistakes, but we will also fix the mistakes very quickly.
-
Unknown C
Musk's ex agrees to pay about $10 million to settle Trump lawsuit. Trump just running around and suing every single social media platform whose CEO he's, like, best friends with. This is, like, the best way ever to just print money as the president, I guess. Jesus. For violating his First Amendment right by banning his account. Mosque just went in and stole New York FEMA funds from their bank account. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released the following statement this morning. My financial team shockingly uncovered that President Trump and his crony, Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally approved FEMA funding from New York City's bank accounts late yesterday afternoon. This is money that the federal government previously dispersed for shelter and services and is now missing. This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.
-
Unknown C
Really? This was just published today, what, a few hours ago.
-
Unknown A
I don't think this is about usaid. You and I both know that that agency does lots of amazing work. It is a very cheap way to keep the world more stable and more diseases controlled and fewer people suffering. But I don't think that's, like, the core issue here. The core issue is the extent to which the Constitution matters anymore. This country is founded on the idea that separate branches share power. And while it is frustrating that a narrow congressional majority seems to have happily given up that power, at least temporarily, it can't actually do that. It isn't allowed to give its power to the President because the separation of powers is the whole idea that the nation is based on. USAID was created by a law passed by Congress. It is funded by laws passed by Congress.
-
Unknown C
Usaid. Close, but close enough. Technically, I think USAID was authorized by Congress, and then it was created by executive order, and then it was solidified as a separate office by Congress. But this is like getting real into the weeds. But for the most part, it's close enough.
-
Unknown A
I think we all learn in elementary school that Congress has the power of the purse. Congress decides how almost all money in America is Spent. Not the President. The president unilaterally dissolving USAID is illegal. He could have worked with Congress to get them to pass a law to dissolve usaid, which would be the legal way to have it no longer exist, but he did not do that. This isn't a violation of a law that was passed by Congress. It's not even a violation of an amendment to the Constitution. It's in Article 1, Congress passes laws to determine how money is spent. And if the President can just.
-
Unknown C
I'm not ready for, like, the extremely crazy argument. So, Andrew, I'm just not psychologically prepared. Andrew Wilson, this morning on Piers, his argument was, the process is working. And I was like, wait, what do you mean the process is working? He was like, well, if he breaks the law, then the judges will say, stop breaking the law. And it's like, wait, is that the process? You just break as many laws as you can and then whatever. The judges tell you to stop breaking the law, and you wait, what?
-
Unknown A
Walk in?
-
Unknown C
And then I had to say that, like, three times, but neither of them would acknowledge it. I was like, there's a judge has already said they've continued to break the law. They're already doing that. But.
-
Unknown A
Dismantle the work of Congress? That isn't just a refutation of the founding document of the country. It's a logistical nightmare. It calls into question why Congress exists at all. You can't run a country if everything is burned down and st.
-
Unknown C
True. Wait, hold on one sec.
-
Unknown D
Sorry.
-
Unknown A
But Trump or Elon Musk or whoever seems to want to test the limits of this country, and so they are testing those limits. I don't know if USAID is, like, a good first target for that, because it's not something that immediately affects very many Americans. So it doesn't have a ton of people here to defend it. But again, I don't think this is about usaid. It's about whether or not the President suddenly has a bunch of unconstitutional powers. And I would simply like to make the case that he obviously does not. A press release from the White House recently referred to Donald Trump signing an executive order into law. I know this is like nuts and bolts, boring Schoolhouse Rock, civics, but that's not how laws get made. And if we don't remember that, the country is gonna stop working. That's why we had Schoolhouse Rock, so that when people try to do it a different way and then the courts tell them that they're wrong, we all agree with the courts.
-
Unknown A
I've been thinking this whole week about a line from Ben's recent essay on Trump's first few weeks back in office, which is also a YouTube video. That's good. You should watch it. I'll link in the description. But the line was, trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president.
-
Unknown B
If Trump tried to pass this agenda's legislation, it would fail, and that would.
-
Unknown C
Make Trump look weak.
-
Unknown B
And Trump, Trump doesn't want to look.
-
Unknown C
He remembers John McCain humiliating him in.
-
Unknown B
His first term by casting the deciding.
-
Unknown A
Vote against Obamacare appeal. Congress is a place where you can lose.
-
Unknown B
That is the tension at the heart of Trump's whole strategy. Today I will sign a series of historic executive orders. Trump is acting like a king because.
-
Unknown A
He'S too weak to govern like a president. In the essay, the case for Trump being a legislatively weak president is made pretty clear. The narrowest majority in the House, since there have been 50 states, a narrow margin in Congress. He has a higher disapproval rating than any incoming president since we started doing polling. And so perhaps instead of trying to create durable change, he's governing largely through executive order.
-
Unknown C
And why is the president the commander in chief? Isn't that a problem with the balance of powers between the three bodies? So I think that the theory, the idea goes that you want to have a slow, deliberate, painfully agonizingly contemplative process when it comes to figuring out what the country should do. That's what Congress is for. That's what the House and Senate are for. You got a bunch of different people. You've got two houses, an upper and a lower house, which I don't know if that's even that common. I think usually the upper House is like a rubber stamp, I think, like the House of Lords. So you've got two deliberative bodies that are selected. It's just a lot of time to figure out what to do. But once legislation has been passed and handed over to the executive, the executive should be able to act swiftly and vigorously.
-
Unknown C
Once you have a law passed, you know what you want to do, then you should be able to have an executive just carry things out. You don't want two people with power that are second guessing each other in terms of how do you function, how do you wield that power? That's why the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces. You're not supposed to have people second guessing each other at the top. It's by the executives in charge of carrying out laws once they've been passed. Like the President is supposed to be able to function in that way. And arguably that's a good thing. You have the gridlock in Congress, but then once the gridlock is resolved, you have a vigorous executive that carries things out with all the swift and vigor of a powerful, enabled executive body, also.
-
Unknown A
Through other untested, probably illegal, unilateral actions. And there are really three ways, I think, to see this. First, if you're super sympathetic to Trump, you might see it as the United States has become so corrupt, is so broken, that we have to stop caring about the Constitution, maybe just for a little bit. We have to let the world's richest man into the treasury so that he can stop payments at his whim. We have to remove security professionals for obeying the law. We have to say that it's okay for the president to take the power of the purse away from Congress, to let him defund whichever parts of the government he would like to defund, because as he has always said, he alone can fix this. Second, perhaps there's like a flood the zone tactic going on. He's just trying to keep everyone distracted and confused and to try every wait.
-
Unknown C
It's very common. The problem is that the US doesn't have another higher executive than the President. This is usually the Governor General in Commonwealth nations. It stops from doing f ed up shit. Well, what if the governor General does.
-
Unknown A
F ed up shit as fast as he can to occupy the press and the courts and the public and to just see what sticks? Or third, perhaps he is doing this because he wants to change things, but he knows that trying to pass legislation when he has narrow majorities in the House and Senate would likely fail. And he hates the idea of failing. And those second two do look more like the reality at the moment. Already lots of Trump's executive orders have done nothing but be news stories for a moment before getting blocked as obviously unconstitutional. But the reality is there's two ways of seeing either it is okay to ignore the Constitution when your side is doing it, or this is the unacceptable action of people who are not strong enough, either politically or in character, to actually govern.
-
Unknown C
So the question We've gotten three different emails. I don't know how true anything is just I always preface these are just emails. But I've gotten three different emails at this point from people who are like, I want to tell you something about what happened with the NIH because A, it may not receive much attention outside of research medical circles and B, I noticed something that punctuates an idea you've mentioned regarding how Processes can often be more important than conclusions or outcomes. Skip to point three below, if you only have time for the latter. Actually, wait, we'll finish watching this and then I'll read this guy's email, because I think it ties into this a.
-
Unknown A
Little, becomes, if you don't like that, then how do you make it not happen? And the big way is to simply not believe them when they say that they are more powerful than the Constitution. The reason the Constitution is more powerful than Elon Musk or Donald Trump isn't just the legacy of this nation or the laws it is bound to uphold. It's that the Constitution is a good document that we collectively believe in. That separation of powers isn't something that somebody thought would be a fun thing to try out. It's a very good idea. It's a good idea that was created by people who had been living under a king and didn't want to do that anymore. And the result of that, of that hard work, that hard thought, and the creation of that good document was America. And the times when we have violated those principles are real and they exist, and they are shameful.
-
Unknown A
And we don't want to be living through one of those times. We do not want to be part of that kind of shame. And I do think that the law will stand, and I hope that the American people will say, yes, that was the correct thing to have happen. Not just, oh, Trump tried to do this and then the courts blocked him. No, Trump tried to do this. The court said it was unconstitutional. And I don't like any president as much as I like America. Already multiple lawsuits have been filed outlining why shutting down USAID is illegal. Trump fans might see that as the deep state fighting back, but what it actually is is people saying that there is a reason why we have laws. And it isn't just to tell you what you can and can't do. It's to uphold the structures that have upheld this nation for 250 years.
-
Unknown A
John, I'll see you on Tuesday.
-
Unknown C
Thanks, Hank. Right, That's Hank, Right. The change is that the NIH capped indirect cost rates at 15% for grant funding. The average is currently about 30%, effective immediately. Indirect costs are given as part of a research grant to cover pooled costs for the university that cannot be applied to any one research project. The image below gives you more information. He gave me an image. This move appears to be done for government spending efficiency. It would save the NIH $4 billion. As you can expect, this has sent researchers and universities scrambling in Part because universities have already negotiated and budgeted their rates. But this new rate appears to go into effect immediately. Researchers have already been scrambling since an unprecedented freeze on NIH communications that lasted for two weeks. But this is a new development and probably worse. And then he links an image and the image says what are indirect costs?
-
Unknown C
Indirect F and A Facilities and administrative infrastructure costs required to conduct research but cannot be specifically identified or easily allocated to individual projects. Rate determined every four years. Administrative are general administration, so services such as personnel, payroll, purchasing, financial management, presidents, provosts, VPs, departmental administration, program and administrative costs at the college, school or department level Sponsored research units establish research or training regardless of source compliance with research requirements student services, graduate student services and then it says administrative costs are capped at 26% for universities facilities. Research infrastructure costs are building depreciation so the space study fraction of building use that can be attributed to research efforts Interest on debt for certain buildings equipment and capital improvements Equipment depreciation on equipment not purchased with federal funds when located in a room in space study and then operations of maintenance, utilities, maintenance, custodial, environmental health, transportation and security.
-
Unknown C
Yeah, so cynical. Brit in chat says as an example, the university maintains an expensive electron microscopy core used by multiple departments and projects. So that makes sense. There's probably going to be some places that have good infrastructure, but like you wouldn't be able to attribute those to a singular research project. So it's kind of like pooled costs over several research things. Point one is about some of the likely impacts of this decision. There's not much actionable here, in part because the impacts will play out in the long term, but I have just provided it for some background on initial reactions from the research community. 1. Damaging to US interests, research and economic Subpoint A Encouraging university researchers to pursue more non government funding sources for research could open them up to conflicts of interests from private funding institutions restricting the independence of researchers. Sub point B these indirect costs are analogous to infrastructure funding.
-
Unknown C
Money that goes to universities pays for contractors to build and maintain buildings and equipment, it to troubleshoot computers, et cetera. Universities are already economic powerhouses and spending money on indirect costs creates positive economic outcomes in terms of jobs, manufacturing and further spending. Reducing that funding could lead to worse economic outcomes. And then sub point C it seems like basically no university actually gets their negotiated rate in indirect costs. If NIH cuts the negotiated rates to 15% but retains caps in place that lower the base amount from which the indirect rate is calculated, then the actual calculated rates the universities get toward indirect costs will be even lower Later I mentioned the universities already cost share administrative costs with the nih, in part because enforcing modern regulations has put them over the 26% cap. It's pretty easy to see how further budgetary strain would tighten the squeeze on researchers and cause universities to cut research activity.
-
Unknown C
Point two shows how ideas about unregulated money being handed out to universities for administrative bloat are lies, which also obfuscate the fact that the NIH had multiple ways to approach the problem of wasted grant money. Yet they chose the most inflammatory one. Point two is their regulation. Subpoint A. The NIH in 2015 suggested that indirect costs are important to provide the infrastructure for the research conducted under direct costs of grants. Moreover, it appears that the indirect costs are limited to research activities. For example, if the university builds a building and one third of the building is being used for research, then only that 1/3 can fall under the indirect costs. The NIH's policies do not authorize randomly spending grant money under the guise of overhead. Lastly, the amount indirect costs can be put towards administrative costs already capped at 26%. Regulations regarding research projects have increased such that universities were already cost sharing with the NIH in 2015 because their administrative costs exceeded the capacity.
-
Unknown C
The notion that universities shouldn't spend grant money on administrative waste has been addressed. If there is still a problem with waste, and there may very well be, then the government has already demonstrated that it can take regulatory action that doesn't require dramatically cutting funding and risking the competitiveness of US research. Further sourcing on the idea that the NIH funding is meant to go specifically towards research, even in indirect costs. If you links here Subpoint B Directly hhs, that's Health and Human Services rfk, who's now confirmed I think his new department is usually in charge of negotiating indirect costs, cost rates and their negotiators do not just offer blank checks. HHS offers one level of regulation, but there's another level of regulation via the Government accountability office, the GAO. In 2016, the GAO conducted a report on the problem of potential waste and indirect costs. They found issues that could enable waste and issued recommendations.
-
Unknown C
HHS implemented all recommendations and indicated further actions. You already heard the third level of regulation when the OMB instituted a 26% cap on administrative indirect costs. The GAO also examined the effects of that policy soon after it was implemented, offering another level of regulation. C. Why harpen regulation so much? The job of this cohort of Russian bots, Elon, Musk, Doge, et cetera is to convince people that the government operates in chaos and that there's no accountability for anything that occurs. They have to keep lying in their justifications for curtailing agencies because they are wrong. Checks and balances are not only a macro governmental idea, they also work in micro governmental areas. And then point three shows where this idea came from. Decisions by federal agencies cannot be taken for granted under this administration because their logical processes may just be may be just as bad as Trump's and Musk's themselves.
-
Unknown C
Point three is indicative of a broader takeover of all agencies under the executive branch by intellectually deficient sycophants towards Trump. Project 2025 subpoint A the NIH offered two justifications for cutting indirect cost funding and then sub sub point one private foundations offer lower indirect cost rates than the average NIH indirect cost rates. This is a dishonest comparison. The NIH has offered about the same indirect cost percentage over time. Why didn't anyone think about matching private institution rate? As you can probably expect, it's because the federal government's role in indirectly funding is different than those of private foundations. The NIH is a much larger source of funding for universities than private nonprofits. They offer a broad mandate allowing for infrastructure to be built that assists many research projects at a university. Then, on top of that federally funded infrastructure the fourth paragraph in the end, in a linky sentence, private foundations assign further funding for narrower projects.
-
Unknown C
Drastically cutting federal funding would affect broad infrastructure and maintenance in a way that private foundations cannot fund. This is a dishonest justification because administrators at the NIH know all of this. If they're that stupid that they don't, then we're in an even worse situation. The NIH also knows that the indirect cost rate of, say, 50% of universities grant funding conservative estimate of the NIH percentage is not comparable to the indirect cost rate of, say, 10% of a university's grant funding. Conservative estimate of private foundation percentage is not comparable to the indirect cost rate of, say, I don't know if you talk about that. It gets worse. Where did the delusional idea to compare the NIH rates to private foundations come from? This doesn't look like a justification that came from discussion within the NIH unless they literally plagiarized it from Project 2025. Oh, and then you copy paste something from Project 2025 that says that they should cap indirect cost rates at universities.
-
Unknown C
It gets even worse. The NIH also mentions something that doesn't sound possible in their justification quote. Indeed, one recent analysis examined what level of indirect expenses research institutions were willing to accept from finders or from funders of research. Of 72 universities in the sample, 67 universities were willing to accept research grants that had 0% indirect cost coverage. One university, Harvard, required 15% indirect cost coverage, while a second, California Institute of technology, required a 20% indirect cost coverage. Only three universities in the same, or, I'm sorry, in the sample refused to accept indirect cost rates lower than their federal indirect rate. These universities were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, end quote. Many of these universities negotiated indirect cost rates of 50% plus or minus with the HHS, yet they're saying they would be okay with 0% fractions of their currently negotiated rates.
-
Unknown C
I had to go find the actual analysis to confirm. And lo and behold, the most common minimum acceptable indirect cost rate the university would accept from private organizations is 0%. Oh, so now he's quoting where the research was from and that was only from private organizations, not from the nih. The NIH makes it sound like the analysis asked universities about decreasing their indirect cost rates from HHS and they were completely fined with fractions of the current rates. Every part of that is a lie. The analysis doesn't seem to ask. Universities seem to report their published policies, funders of research from the nhs, blah, blah, blah. Okay, okay, so this is just basically how they're aligning. Yeah. Okay.
-
Unknown D
I know almost nothing about almost everything. I don't know how helicopters work or how to measure the distance between the stars, etc, etc, ad literally infinitum. But I do know a lot about tuberculosis and how TB medication works because I spent the last four years writing a book about tuberculosis. So I can't tell you much about stars or helicopters, but I can tell you what is likely to happen when TB medication and diagnostics that have already been paid for rot in warehouses due to stop work orders issued by the US government. So a bit of background. Tuberculosis is a curable disease, but it's not easy to cure. The TB bacteria has a thick fatty cell wall that's very difficult to penetrate, making the bacteria hard to kill. So while a strep infection might be cured with like seven days of antibiotics, TB requires several months of antibiotics.
-
Unknown D
In the past it was common to take antibiotics even for years to cure the disease. Like I have one friend who survived TB after taking between 20 and 30,000 pills. But with the current standard of care, so called drug sensitive tuberculosis, that is TB that responds to our first line, antibiotics can be cured with between four and six months of daily therapy. TB that doesn't Respond to one or more of those drugs known as drug resistant TB takes at least take a.
-
Unknown C
Guess right now how many people die yearly to TB? I'm gonna say 1 million. I don't know how many people die every year. TB 1.25 million. I'm a God, okay? I'm just, I know everything.
-
Unknown D
At least six months to cure, and often much more than that. Okay, so here's the critical thing to understand about our fraught if we interrupt TB care in the middle of that four or six or more months, it is potentially catastrophic, both on, like an individual level and on a societal level. First off, people who are on appropriate treatment almost never spread the disease because the bacteria is too well controlled to be infectious. So when people are not on appropriate treatment, TB is extremely infectious. Like, the average untreated case of TB will infect 10 to 15 more people per year. So if we suddenly stop treating tb, and in many communities we have, we will see a sudden increase in disease prevalence.
-
Unknown C
We're still, oh, and if they' treated a little bit with antibiotics and then they stop treating them, then you're also letting like the most antibiotic. My guess is that's gonna be the next point.
-
Unknown D
Even a brief pause in treatment gives the bacteria a really good chance of developing drug resistance. So if you go back a couple weeks or a month or three months later and treat the disease with the same drugs that were working before, those drugs will no longer work. This makes TB harder or even impossible to cure on an individual level. But on a societal level, it's also catastrophic because it means more drug resistant TB spreading throughout the world and having more opportunities to develop further drug resistance, potentially leading to a situation where we have strains of TB that we just can't treat effectively, which is a truly terrifying prospect. By one estimate, Hank, TB has killed about one out of every seven humans who have ever lived. But in densely populated communities, the statistics are even more sobering. Like in early industrial England, about one out of every three people were dying of tuberculosis.
-
Unknown D
And so a resurgence of tuberculosis, especially drug resistant tb, is not a matter of like thousands more premature deaths, but millions or tens of millions. Right now, the United States is the primary funder of tuberculosis response in impoverished communities. And I want to be clear that's not ideal. I would like to see more wealthy countries participating more meaningfully in the fight against diseases of injustice. But it is absolutely devastating to watch as the US haphazardly and chaotically freezes all tuberculosis funding, which is functionally what's happened. And like the US Government can say that medicines are still flowing, but from Tanzania to Sierra Leone, I'm hearing over and over again from people on the ground who aren't able to access their TB medication. And again, that is a catastrophe both for those individuals and for our shared human story. I have friends asking me how do I get my meds?
-
Unknown D
And I don't know what to tell them because the supply chains are just frozen. And I want to be clear. There is no way individuals or philanthropy can step in and work at this scale. Because in order to respond to the size of the crisis, we need a size of at scale logistics that only governments can provide. So I feel utterly powerless as I watch us risk decades of progress against TB and other diseases of injustice, not for a lack of tools, but for a lack of political will. In response to all this, TB fighters in our community have been organizing Call a THONS and other responses. And I know that seems like totally inconsequential, but I've actually felt quite empowered talking to my senators and congresspeople or their offices on the phone. Someone has to make the case and I'm grateful that we still have some say in our governance.
-
Unknown D
And while philanthropy can't replace the at scale responses of usaid, supporting global health charities is more important than ever. Which is why I'm so proud that half the money raised during the Project for Awesome will go to Save the Children and Partners in Health. Hank, I need the Project for Awesome every year, but I really, really need it this year. It's silly, it's fun. But it's also a serious fundraiser that's raised over $22 million for charity in the last 19 years. Again, the fundraiser is live as of this moment. You can get lots of great perks, including the first couple chapters of my next book. You can also get a signed frog postcard of a frog version of horizontal video sensation John Green. I mean, the perks are endless. You can find it all@projectforawesome.com Donate Hank in the face of big global problems, especially when we risk reversing progress, it is easy for me to feel despair.
-
Unknown D
I feel quite close to it at the moment, to be honest. You but I really believe that despair is not the correct response right now. In the last 25 years, we've reduced tuberculosis deaths by more than half. That progress is very much under threat at this moment, but that progress is still real and it's a reminder that progress is possible. So, Hank, here's the better days ahead. I will see you on Friday for the Project for Awesome RIP Thought this.
-
Unknown C
Was interesting from Scott Galloway. Kind of spooky for the US and world economy. Is it all spooky stuff today after the month, I'm sure it'll calm down, right? Like in a week they'll be like chill.
-
Unknown B
Anyways, he said something just blew my mind. I of course was like doing my party trick and throwing out stats. And I said that the US equity market now was 50% of the total value of all equities globally. And he said no, it's actually if you add in debt, corporate debt, America represents 70% of all value globally. So if you think about it, would you rather own the world? Would you rather own America for $70? Or if you could own everything but America for 30, which would you pick? And what that says to me is that America is overvalued. And not only is America overvalued, it's really the whole world is vulnerable because there are 10 stocks that represent 28 to 33% of the value, meaning that somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in $5 globally is dependent upon a small number of companies.
-
Unknown B
And if Amazon and other folks show any slowdown in AI or cloud, oh my God, there's an AI meltdown. These economists noted that that's going to be an echo felt around the world. Watch. We're going to have to bail out.
-
Unknown D
The tech Bros at some point anyway.
-
Unknown C
All right, we'll see.
-
Unknown B
Let's go on a quick break. And we come back Trump's latest tariffs.
-
Unknown D
Speaking of bailing out people and doziers.
-
Unknown C
Wow. Did you see Congressman David Schweikart speak on the House floor about the national debt and US spending? First route I have seen in a while. That wasn't talking nonsense.
-
Unknown B
For anyone listening, whether it be staff, another member, anyone that actually gives a darn. Give me your first four minutes because the first four minutes is. I need to explain why we've been joking about it in a dark way.
-
Unknown C
Wait, maybe I'll watch this in a second.
-
Unknown B
Hold on.
-
Unknown C
Mitch McConnell voted no on Tulsi Gabbard and wow. Not that I don't think it mattered, but the US government is currently planning to award Tesla a $400 million contract by armored Teslas. State Department's most recent procurement Forecast, updated in December 2024, names Tesla as the recipient of the largest projected contract. The anticipated award date is 9:30, 2025 with a 5 year contract length. That's not Elon Musk though. It's just one of his companies. No conflict of interest here True. It's worth noting that this procurement forecast was revised in December 2024 when Biden was still president. The Tesla line item was Last modified on December 13th.
-
Unknown B
We're in the budget wars. It's about reconciliation. Why is there such angst by some of us? You know, I get. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I chair the Joint Economic Committee. So I'm the idiot with all the economists. I'm number four in ways and means means. I'm not good at many things in life. I'm okay at math. What's going on that is stressing as last night I could barely sleep because I had read report after report after report and the math was devastating. And, and this is what we need to understand. Here's our reality and forgive us, we just, we've been going as fast as we can in our office to find some way to explain what the hell's going on at the end of this budget year. So the. What is it? September 30th into this budget year, United States debt by Congressional Budget Office is projected to be $37.2 trillion.
-
Unknown B
Okay. They're projecting over the next 10 years we add another $20 trillion. But if you Then on top of that we're sort of. The debate that's been going on is we have these provisions of the 2017 tax reform. Thank you. The 2017 tax reform that are expiring at the end of this year. If you go take it to 2035 because that's sort of the ten year window, nine budget years, it's another five and a half trillion. Then you add on to that the interest because it turns out if you were to finance it, not pay for any of it, that's another 1.3 trillion. On top of that, then if you were to come in here and then take the president's requests. So let's just, because we have a couple members here, just say just do everything, make everyone happy. Screw my retirement. The next generation America will be fine.
-
Unknown B
If you add it all up by 2035 you have over 74 trillion in debt. You're somewhere in the 155 or so percent of the entire economy is borrowed. Today we're a little less than 100. So the point I'm trying to make here, even if you do the calculation of publicly sold debt, because as I tried to explain, you have like the Social Security trust fund which is gone in eight years, but we borrow the money out of that and we do pay interest on it. But if you take everything where we sell bonds to the world to each other, to our retirement accounts, to pensions. When the day we got elected Mr. Speaker. So long time ago. What was that? November. US sovereign debt that was held by the public was around 28 trillion. These numbers right now say that number that took what, 240 years.
-
Unknown B
A publicly held debt we intend to double in nine years. In nine years we're going to functionally add another 28 trillion of publicly held debt. Actually a little more. If you, if we do these things on finance, you know, excuse me, finance them and don't try to pay for them. This is my four minute spiel. When you see some of us stressing out, when you see some of us, he's being disharmonious. Maybe it's because I own a damn calculator. If these numbers don't make you pucker up and scare the crap out of you, you don't understand yet. The hallways around here are full of people that demanding we give them more money or they want more barriers to entry or they don't want to change their business models, they want to do it in archaic fashions because it might make them have to compete.
-
Unknown C
Like, I just don't know what to say. This is all like theater. If you want to control the deficit and lower the debt, there's like three ways that you can do this. You can either increase your revenues, that means more taxes. Or you can decrease your spending, that means you have to make actual cuts to federal programs. It's not going to be waste, fraud and abuse. Or three kind of ties to number one, you can increase the overall size of your economy because as your economy gets bigger, then your tax receipts naturally grow as well. Like this is what you can do. Like these people constantly obsess over this. And I agree that this can become a problem. Maybe it's a problem now, I don't know. But then fine, if this is a problem, then let's get serious about it and stop just fucking virtue signaling on waste, fraud and abuse.
-
Unknown C
Increase taxes or expand your tax base or make some significant actual cuts to government spending. But the Republicans are not willing. Donald Trump especially hasn't shown his willingness to do any of that. And if you're unwilling to do any of that, then everything else is just a joke. This is a 41 1/2 minute thing. Is he going to talk about any of those three things? Or is it all just going to be a virtue signal on waste, fraud and abuse? Is that what this whole thing is going to be? Or.
-
Unknown B
This is no longer the next generation. This is Your own retirement. Look, I. I accept. I'm traditionally, I tease behind this microphone. I'm pathologically optimistic. My wife and I were both 62 years old, and we have a two and a half year old we've adopted, but we also have a nine year old. When my little boy is functionally 24 years old, the math says every single tax in america needs to be doubled just to maintain baseline services. The wheels are coming off. Do you really think the bond market. Oh, we want to keep buying u. S. Sovereign debt. Even though you've gone and doubled it in nine years, you don't think we're going to start to pay? We did a math problem a couple weeks ago on this floor and we showed that if we stress the bond markets, if we got up to a 6% handle, and it wasn't that many decades ago, u.
-
Unknown B
S. Sovereign debt was up, kissing up around 6%. In nine years, 45 of all U. S. Tax receipts went to interest. You think this is a game? The bond market is on the edge of running this country, not us. If you're a member of congress and you claim that you care about debt and deficits in the next generation and working people and people's retirement and you don't have this poster up somewhere in your office, how do you understand the math? The wheels are coming off. And I'm going to show in a bunch of these slides, there's a path we can produce. Some level of stabilization means doing really hard things, which you know how good we are at doing hard things. Because once again, there'll be an army of people outside the door all upset with us because we're trying to do hard things. You've known this has been coming for decades.
-
Unknown B
When I was an idiot kid, you know, in the 80s, I remember my statistics professor, she basically did a chart, this is like 1983, saying, okay, here's baby boomers. This is going to happen. There's this huge bubble. The thing we weren't prepared for is u. S. Fertility rates started to collapse in 1990. We don't have enough young people. I'm going to show some charts of how hard it is to keep up producing productivity and growth. And it's not just the united states. It's all across the world. There's a shortage of young people. But we're going to pretend we can just grow our way out of things. That's complete untruth. Say if we do what a handful of our members are asking and just look the other way and just give everything to Everyone without paying for it. And look, I think it's outrageous as a discussion it would be more likely to raise to allow the tax rates to go up on working people.
-
Unknown B
But it's also immoral not to find a way to pay for it. Are you ready to condemn this country in nine budget years, 10 calendar years to functionally our financial Armageddon? Because this is actually in the ten year window now. This is, no, not some theoretical number years and years and years and decades from now. It's here. And if interest rates were to move against us, if interest rates were to move against us, it functionally almost armed. Again, I'm gonna skip, I'm gonna bounce around a little bit. So think about this. Why are some of us trying so hard to get as much in the way of modernization? Cost changes, those things. So we have five and a half trillion.
-
Unknown C
If you do the 20, does the debt really matter? If the economy isn't just right at 37 trillion, then what number will it? First of all, talking about it in absolute terms doesn't matter that much. It's more like percentage of GDP that you probably have to consider it as. However, I imagine, well, there's two things that you should be worried about probably. One, I think you should be worried about it maybe, but although we never can agree on if we should or shouldn't be, is that if the debt gets too high and so much of your money is going towards interest payments, that maybe that could snowball out of control in a way that becomes uncontrollable. And now you get into some crazy inflated period where you're spending so much money to just cover the interest on your debt. That could be a concern depending on what the debt is as a percentage of gdp.
-
Unknown C
There is a second thing that's like lurking though in the background now and that's that my guess is going to be that the United States probably enjoys a lot more flexibility with our monetary policy because we're so interconnected with the rest of the world, because our economy is so large, because we have so many friends and allies like all over the planet, we enjoy our status as the global reserve currency. That probably gives us a bit more stability to our monetary policy than we deserve otherwise. Now, if Trump continues running us into this insane isolationist route where people don't trade in US denominated dollars anymore or people don't have as much faith in the US economy to be stable, if the world were to just eject itself from, from wanting to reliably hold US dollars, that could have A dramatic impact as well for either of these things though, like the debt getting too high or the USD no longer being the world reserve currency.
-
Unknown C
These are big macro questions that I wouldn't be able to give you a good answer to. I think, I think just both things would probably be pretty bad. Would be my guess. Yeah.
-
Unknown B
35 of expiring provisions that would raise taxes on our brothers and sisters in this country. We need that not to happen. But understand its actual cost. It's not only the five and a half trillion trillion if you just did it, if you just pass it, it's another 1.3 trillion of interest over those 10 years. That means in 2035 the interest handle for America is $2 trillion a year. Just interest will be $2 trillion a year. Nine budget years if we don't find ways to do offsets. How can this not terrify people? Are there people in the White House that have calculators? Are the our brothers and sisters here. Do you really think the debt markets. Oh, we want a buy that much more U. S. Sovereign bond look, there's a funny fact, an interesting fact. It's not necessarily funny. The world today has the highest ratio of debt since the Napoleonic wars.
-
Unknown B
If you remember your history after that there was years and years and years of misery as governments tried to figure out how to unwind and go to war with each other and those things because of the depressions that it caused. We're not the only country binging on debt. And I'll say this a couple times, and it's the one thing that gets me really hateful. Emails and text messages. 100. Well, almost 100 of the next 10 years of debt is interest and demographics. Almost all of it is medicare. Our brothers and sisters, people like me, baby boomers, gray hair, we're moving into our earned benefits. We didn't set aside enough money and we've been unwilling to modernize how we deliver services because it annoys the lobbyists and the people at home and people get uncomfortable. David, you want to use technology, you don't have a choice.
-
Unknown B
You just don't have a choice. It's not my feelings, it's math. But you start to look at this if you look at the data right now. If we were to do the tax, the expiring tax provisions within the budget window, United states will pay 2 trillion-plus a year just in interest. And that's at today's interest rates. That's without even a calculation, raising interest rates going up. I've been trying to figure out how to sort of explain, I can say this one easier year.
-
Unknown C
Okay.
-
Unknown B
We're going to come close to spending the 7% of the entire economy this year in borrowed money. If we do these things without paying for them, in 10 years, we're not going to be borrowing 7% of the economy. We're going to be borrowing around 9.2% of the economy. This is not a game. So let's actually walk through one or two more of these to try to get our heads around what's actually going on. You gotta understand the. You see the blue here? Okay. Dark purple. If that's purple, you know, forgive my. This is interest. That's our debt we're adding. And here's our problem. What happens this year if we borrow a couple trillion dollars this year? You do realize half that's interest. Half of it is now interest. Interest now is the second biggest expense in the United States government. Defense is actually number four.
-
Unknown B
You know, I always love it when I'm having a conversation with one of my friends on the left. Well, if we just cut defense, defense is now number four on the spend stack. Interest is number two. And there's a couple models that if we keep borrowing an interest rates move against us, in a decade or so, interest could be the number one expense in the United States government.
-
Unknown C
Wow.
-
Unknown B
And I've done presentation after presentation of this concept called interest fragility. I think I'm probably the only one that listened to it. And sometimes I wonder if I even listen to myself. This isn't a game. There's a reason the British government collapsed this summer. You know, Liz Truss. Yeah. We're a hell of a lot bigger economy. Do we really think because we have the two great extraordinary privileges of the reserve currency and being a country that people want to do business and live in.
-
Unknown C
Oh, oh, he's got my talking points.
-
Unknown B
True prospering. Do you think we keep those things if we keep this sort of clown show going. So let's actually walk through a couple more of these and then I'm going to try to have a little fun mocking some of the suggestions that keep coming in debt held by the public under alternative conditions, trying to make increase in primary deficits. This is where. And I need to explain this is going to be a little tricky in 2033 because what was done in this body in lame duck where we functionally took another couple hundred billion dollars as Social Security and paid it out without replacing the money, now it looks like the number is in mid-2033. Social Security plus one is empty CBO. Now, the law, the law for Social Security says you cut seniors benefits. Math is about 20. So we will double senior poverty.
-
Unknown C
How old is this video?
-
Unknown B
One day old the following year. But that's not how CBO is forced under the law to do the math. The math, there's an actual law that says you're not allowed to show a zero balance. That's why we're doing this. So that means in 2034 there's $600 billion of borrowing that's shoved in. That's actually to make up the balance. The shortfall in Social Security next year, it's more. So if you add up 20, 23, 24, 25, there's like another 1.7 trillion. Because Social Security is empty and you don't want to double senior poverty. But we're also far too fearful to actually tell AR voters the truth. And the fact matters. Every time one of us idiots, excuse me, me, gets up and tries to find a way to stabilize the Social Security trust fund, that side starts running attack ads on you because they care more about winning the next election than they do doubling senior poverty in America.
-
Unknown B
It's just absolutely immoral. It's almost like the math. So you start to look at what's going on here. If we're really heading towards a time or just the primary deficit that's publicly sold without the other request from the President, we're at 55 plus trillion.
-
Unknown C
And that's one thing I never understood stand with these budget arguments that they talk about. Our largest expense is Medicare and Social Security, but these programs are paid for by targeted taxes. And all these programs already pay for themselves kind of. I think Social Security, if the trust fund is completely drained, I think that the current taxes would only pay about 75% of benefits. People say that it'll go bankrupt and you can't take anything that's not true. I think it would pay for about 75%. So the payments will be reduced. I don't know as much about Medicare. I, I don't know if the taxes that people pay into Medicare generally, like pay it, like pay for what Medicare ends up paying out. I'm not sure if that's the case or not.
-
Unknown B
We're playing a very dangerous game here. And yet my sense of frustration is off the charts. And look, look, this one's, it's very simple. Within the budget window, publicly held debt. Not, not, not, not. Also the borrowing from the trust funds, publicly held debt. If we were to do the expiring tax provisions without paying for them, we're at 149 of debt to GDP.
-
Unknown C
Oh, well, at least this guy's having, like a real conversation on the debt expiring tax provisions. He's talking about the tax jobs. The, the tax cuts and jobs act from Trump. Right.
-
Unknown B
It.
-
Unknown C
If we don't pair it with spending cuts, which I don't think Trump has any plan of doing.
-
Unknown B
Publicly held debt. Not, not, not. Not also the borrowing from the trust funds. Publicly held debt. If we were to do the expiring tax provisions without paying for them, we're at 149% of debt to GDP. We will functionally have raised U. S. Debt by 50% in nine budget years. So how many members here ran on a promise, we're going to save America, we're going to save our retirements, we're going to save our kids, we're going to save the future. We're going to pretend math doesn't exist because this is what's going on. So let's actually walk through some of the ideas that have been coming into our office. And when I do this, yeah, there's gonna be a little tone.
-
Unknown C
Oh, now that he disagrees with Trump, he's making a good point, but not prior to that. What? I just. He's been making a decent way the whole time. My biggest criticism of people who talk about shit like this are people who just say waste, fraud and abuse is going to save us money. That's a retard talking point. I don't think this guy's brought that up a single time. His whole point is that there probably have to be cuts made in programs that people don't want to make cuts for, like Medicare. That's been his point the entire time. Have you been listening or do you hear anything? Or do you just hear whether or not it's pro Trump or anti Trump? Is that how you filter every single fucking political statement through your ears? It's like, is it proud Trump or anti Trump? And then that decides if it's good.
-
Unknown B
Or bad, like on the sarcasm. But it's more for my own personal amusement trying to help people understand how Big 12 zeros is. Trying to understand how difficult this math is. Because if I watch one more idiot on talk or cable television saying, all we have to do is this, look how wonderful that is. That's not the math. So let's actually have a little fun here, okay? Great. Wall Street Journal yesterday said, hey, there's 40,000 federal employees which have said they'll take a retirement package. Okay? I'm ignoring, hey, if they, you know, if they took the package today, we pay them through the rest of you. I'm just ignoring that map. But what is 40,000 federal employees times an average salary? I think we used 106,000, which we got from one of the reports. And you just multiply that and understand, and this is the conservative number.
-
Unknown B
We're borrowing about $6 billion a day. That 40,000 federal employees leaving is a single day of borrowing for an entire year. All those folks leaving, single day of borrowing. You got 12 hours or 24 hours of borrowing by 40,000 federal employees leaving. Yet I watched someone on television last night saying, well, look, we're gonna make a huge debt in the US deficit with these 40,000 taking early retirement. It's one day of borrowing. That's not spending, borrowing. And remember, by the end of the decade, that borrowing is up per day dramatically. Take this in. This is one of the grand solutions. Now, the point I want to make is you probably have to do it. You got to do all of them. It's going to be dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of things all stacked up just to provide some stability. Because can we as a country get back to just borrowing about 3% of our economy a year instead of 7, or, God forbid, a decade from now?
-
Unknown B
Over 9. But you got to stop lying to each other. Our staffs have to stop lying to us. The press has to stop making crap up, and we gotta help the public understand the scale of what the hell's going on. 40,000 employees taking early retirement. The salary savings is one day a borrowing. So let's have a little more fun. Okay, so someone yesterday said, okay, let's get rid of the federal subsidy on tax exempt bonds for stadiums. Okay, great. We calculate that's about six or seven seconds of borrowing for a year. Seven seconds. But this is worthy. Yeah, I've got Jordan.
-
Unknown C
Oh, well, this guy was part of literally writing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I was proud to help write the Tax Cuts and Jobs act legislation that was sending along 2017. Good one. Good job. Okay. I don't want to watch the rest of us. Does he get into what the solution is or what does he say?
-
Unknown B
Or now is getting old and the numbers are actually worse. Lie about it. We campaigned week one. The American people gave us the House, they gave us the Senate, they gave us the presidency, and suddenly the obligation, you know, we did all this moralizing and now we run away from the difficulty. So let's actually now have the other thing where I'm Going to start to really make a couple of my brothers and sisters annoyed around here. United States, according to the Census Bureau from last month, will have more deaths than births in eight years.
-
Unknown C
Wow.
-
Unknown B
Not a single country in the world. And this is not just the United States. It's basically all the industrialized countries and many, much of the world is way ahead of us in this almost dystopian collapse that they're being young people. No other country has actually been able to change natalist fertility rates, whatever pop culture word you want to use. There's countries out there that on your third child, they buy you a house and all they did is move fertility forward and boom, a couple years later, they just moved back to the mean.
-
Unknown C
This guy sounds like. Or maybe these are congressmen who aren't like TV famous. Like it. This guy sounds like he has like a good general base of knowledge at least. Like he doesn't sound like a fucking retard. Although, I mean, he. I mean, if he voted for that or helped author that tax cut, and then they didn't pair with any spending cuts. I mean, I don't know what he's planning or how he's ever planning on this braining and spending it all. But at least like. Like this point that he's bringing up is true as well. One of the biggest issues related to fertility, at least as far as I'm aware, because I remember arguing with the Nazis about this. It's actually incredibly fucking difficult to have the government just get people to make more kids. Like, I don't think anybody has ever been able to do it.
-
Unknown C
They tried it in fascist Italy. I think Mussolini had a huge program for it. Like, other countries have tried to incentivize it in different ways. And it's just like, I don't think that. I don't know if anybody's ever been able to successfully do this. Like, I think the kids thing is a huge economic organization problem plus culture thing. But I don't know if any country's been able to do this ever with any kind of policy. And that's what he's bringing up now.
-
Unknown B
They buy you a house and all they did is move fertility forward and boom, a couple years they just moved back to the mean. Why is this a big deal when you start to understand total fertility rates and what it means to being able to grow an economy? I'm begging you, give this a chance. If you're watching this, you're obviously unusual. You're smart. If you have a shortage of young people in your country, how do you grow? How do you reach productivity? And there becomes, we can do it by policy. You're not gonna have more children, but are you willing to make it easier to adopt technology? Are you going to be fearful of AI machine learning? Are you going to allow synthetic biology to cure diseases? Are you going to promote automation everywhere you can? Because you're gonna have a shortage of workers? Are we going to remove the regulatory barriers, the financing barriers to basically having a much more productive society?
-
Unknown B
Because if you don't, there's absolutely no way you can make the math work. Network. This is their reality. And we. A couple weeks ago, I did a whole series of charts showing if the United States would take on the rest of the world. Because do you understand, besides the tax arbitrage the world uses by refunding their value added tax, yet when we send them something, they put it on. So there's already this tax arbitrage the rest of the world uses on us. The other stupidity we engage in in this country is we educate people in our fine universities and we send them home to compete with us. Wall Street Journal today actually has an article on drug discovery and drug research and how fast China is basically competing with us now and new biologics and those things. And the basic premise is that we educated the very people that are competing with us because we sent them home because we're idiots.
-
Unknown B
And yet I will get folks who.
-
Unknown C
Will now, like, this is a really, really, really good point. Who is this guy? He's a Republican. He doesn't sound like, oh, he's from Arizona. Arizona is a very purplish state. Right. Like, we want to be competitive in all these areas, but we like, want to also ship all the illegal immigrants back. We want to send everybody home. We don't want people coming to our schools from other countries anymore. We want to lock down our borders. We don't want H1B workers. We don't want any of these people like this. It's a good point. It's true.
-
Unknown B
We engage in, in this country is we educate people in our fine universities and we send them home to compete with us. Wall Street Journal today actually has an article on drug discovery and drug research and how fast China is basically competing with us now. And new.
-
Unknown C
What are these tweets though? 2. If as many of us suspect, DIMA KKK rats have been patting the roles. Holy. Does he believe in the. In the 2020 election steel or whatever. Oh, man.
-
Unknown B
Biologics and those things. And the basic premise is that we educated the very people that are competing with us.
-
Unknown C
Because isn't that a different guy? Representative Schweigert. Wait, is this a different guy? Larry Schwiegert. Oh wait, this isn't the same guy, is it? No. Wait, who linked this? Fucking retards. Nevermind.
-
Unknown B
Because we sent them home because we're idiots. And yet I will get folks who will now right now pounding out text saying what? I don't want foreigners in it. Do you want us to be able to pay your Medicare bills?
-
Unknown C
Oof. Like this is a really unpopular talking point. But it's true. Like if you wanted to shore up Medicare and Social Security right now, the quickest and easiest way to do it would be a path to amnesty for every single illegal in the country. That's like your number one. Like you just expanded your young voters or not your young voters, you just expanded your young tax base by like 15 million people to pay into FICA. Like it would be the number one quickest way to have a huge surge of money. And these people aren't drawing down fucking Social Security, Medicare. These people are all young and working. But.
-
Unknown B
Because if we don't get the growth. So it turns out, what are the two extraordinary privileges of the United States? It's our currency. The world borrows and trades and denominates in US Currency.
-
Unknown C
Yep. But for how long?
-
Unknown B
And, and the economists will tell you it's worth even more than being the reserve currency of the world. People want to do their business. Their investments bring their.
-
Unknown C
Because we have a big economy. Yeah.
-
Unknown B
Their passions, their entrepreneurialism to the United States.
-
Unknown C
But tariffs and isolationism like threaten both of those things.
-
Unknown B
So in the 70s, 80s, 90s, the world knifed each other for hydrocarbons, oil. Last decade we competed whether you know it about for rare earths. The rest of the world figured this out about 10 years ago when Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Canada all moved to talent based, STEM based systems of saying they need smart people to be able to continue to grow.
-
Unknown C
And in the US we're like I need manufacturing, I need a manufacturer, I need to steal here, I'm going to make a still in US I think.
-
Unknown B
The United States is the only major country still doing a familial based immigration system.
-
Unknown C
Oh my God, he's even bringing up immigration reform. True. Why do we do family based immigration if worried about Mexico steal? I've said this a million times. Worried about Mexico, Mexico stealing all of our factory investments. Why not just let them all fucking come here and work?
-
Unknown A
Fuck it.
-
Unknown C
If you want to come to the US and work, and you're Mexican, just fucking come up here and do it. Let's do it. And then we'll build the factories up here and they can work them up.
-
Unknown B
Here is the only major country still doing a familial based immigration system. And this upsets people when I say this. I want to be able to sponsor my grandma. Great. I'm sure she's lovely. But from an economist standpoint, if we are going to survive as an economy, and particularly if we're about to put together a package on how we're going to cover the five and a half trillion dollars of expiring provisions while you're saying here's the cuts and we're going to build growth in, are we willing to do the things that are required to hit that growth number? Well, it turns out, yes.
-
Unknown C
Yes.
-
Unknown B
You know, modernizing regulation. Great. Turns out as an economist, you can't hit the number without a talent based, STEM based immigration system. We just can't. Because here's your problem. We built the models. So if we're going to extend expensing for research and development so we're doing things better, faster, cheaper, what happens when the very companies that are doing that, the research labs that are doing it, continue to show up in my office, say we can't get enough people, we're being squeezed, we're going to have to do part of the research on the other side of the world. True.
-
Unknown C
A lot of your huge funding cuts from the NIH and everything are playing into this. A lot of huge cuts into H1B or other talent based, worker based visa cuts are like playing into this. Yeah.
-
Unknown B
Lost our minds. Oh, but David, you can't tell that that will upset someone. Look, the chaos that was created at the border over the last four years crushed the working poor because the working poor sells their talents, their willingness to show up. And now you have billions and millions and millions of other entries. So there's a couple great articles out there that's basically talking about the working poor's wage growth will probably be flat for the next decade. But there's also part of that same report says you're getting close. I think it was 900 billion. Almost a trillion dollars over 10 years of new tax receipts. If you move to a STEM based talent based immigration system and the next decade, it's parabolic. It just explodes because that way you're integrated in the economy. Are we allowed to have that conversation, Mr. Speaker, saying okay, we're going to do this, we're going to tell ourselves we're going to start growing at these great rates.
-
Unknown B
Are we going to do the very tools that allow us to grow, that allow us to prosper, to allow us to raise the productivity? Because. And this chart I know is almost impossible to read. Its punchline is very simple. Unless we have this productivity spike, we're gonna get poor. We see it around the world that productivity, the ability to have that productivity growth is how you keep up standards of living. We've had a great pop the last couple years. You know, the investments in AI, those things. But are we gonna keep it up? Are we basically going to give our competitive advantage to the rest of the world? Because we're going to educate the very talent that's bringing it to us and send them home. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm hoping I accomplish three things here to give you a sense of how just absolutely brutal the math is and why it's absolutely necessary.
-
Unknown B
We do the moral thing of reduce the spending, modernize the way we deliver services, make the tax code actually grow, and then deal with the reality of what draw drives our debt and deficit, and then deal with the reality of how we maximize growth and productivity and wealth. Prosperity is moral. I actually believe it is actually the American ethos. My kids, your kids deserve to be more prosperous than the generation before them. And every data point we hold says our kids will be poorer than our generation. Is that the morality we've decided to bathe in with that? Mr. Speaker, I yield back.