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.