You want to know why we’re seeing populist movements and people are pissed off and trust is at a bottom? You want to see what the problem is? What’s killing us in America? What’s killing our democracy? It’s right in front of our faces.
Chris Cuomo here. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. The big beautiful bill is a [ __ ] you to the people in this country who are angry about government and are angry about a system that is clearly set up to [ __ ] you if you are not already in a position of power and influence. Okay? Now this is coming from somebody who is set up to be a winner in the big beautiful bill.
All right. This was Trump’s ultimate overreach. It was his ultimate hypocrisy, this bill. All right, let’s give him the best reckoning. Why is this bill good?
It locks in the tax cuts that he passed in the first administration.
Okay, do your own research if you want to, but I am telling you those tax cuts did not pay for themselves. He inherited a strong economy. Do you understand? He did not build anything and it matters.
Does he get credit for the economy on his watch? Yes. Well, then why doesn’t he have to take the blame for COVID on his watch and [ __ ] it up and putting out too much money into the economy? Payments people didn’t need, loans that were never going to get repaid, and all the graft and all the stealing. Okay, fine.
You want to have it both ways, fine. But you want to use those payments during COVID to artificially inflate the impact of the tax cuts. See, that’s the [ __ ] here. And by the way, Trump wasn’t a fiscal conservative back then either, just like he isn’t now. He likes to spend our money because he knows that’s what people wind up voting on.
We say we want to cut the budget, but you want the pork. You want what comes to your districts and the programs and things that work for different communities. So before CO Trump blew up our deficit and our budget gap, he blew it up.
Do the research. Google it.
Why did the guy who was speaker of the house, okay, the guy from Wisconsin, Paul, why did he wind up leaving politics? He was a fiscal conservative and he said, “This is crazy. We’re spending like crazy and the tax cuts reduce the revenue.” And this magic of of trickle down is just that. It’s magical thinking.
It’s as magical as thinking socialism can fix things.
These are both extreme ideas that are easy to sell, impossible to deliver on, and they’re a deception. So, you take people with real disaection, real desperation, real problems with affordability, you sell them on [ __ ] that sounds like magic that’s going to change everything, and then you do nothing. And that’s what’s happening with MAGA when it comes to changing the fiscal reality for people.
And that’s what’s going to happen with this mirror maga or whatever they’re they’re calling what’s happening on the left where socialism is going to take care of it.
Free everything and getting rid of capitalist incentives in a capitalist society. It’s never going to happen. But it sounds good when you’re pissed off. And that’s the same thing that’s happening right now with this bill. He’s putting it in your face.
It’s beautiful. Beautiful for who? Let’s talk about what it does. Okay, let’s just be straight. It locks in the tax cuts.
Great. You’re getting a tax cut. Oh, are you are you Oh, yeah. I had $4,000 more in my pocket during Trump. Yeah, I know.
I’ve heard that stat, too. You know where the money came from, right? It came from the COVID payments. You know that, right? You know that that’s what they’re doing is capturing the COVID payments to everybody and saying that they were from the tax cuts.
And look, I’m the guy who got the tax cut.
Now, he wound up [ __ ] us because he messed with the salt taxes in the big blue states. So the state and local tax deductions got guys like me, right, who I’m I’m uh I’m house what do you call it? House rich or house poor. I have most of my money in my house, right?
So when you mess with my taxes, you you mess with my main asset.
And that’s how he kind of got his payback against the big blue states. So he wound up coming after guys like me also. But on the income tax side, I’m the guy who got the cut. Disproportionate to people who make under $100,000.
Now, who really needs the tax cut? I have no problem with paying taxes. I have a problem with how they use my tax dollars. That’s my problem. It’s not the amount necessarily.
I mean, you know, it ain’t cheap. It’s almost like 50% of the vig is about 50%. For you in the top bracket, you know, federal, state, local. Uh, and I’m not even including property taxes on top of that. But the vig is big, but it’s that it gets wasted.
That’s what the real concern is. But when you look at this, he says he cares about what matters. What matters? The debt and the deficit. Now, by the way, at some point, I’m going to do an episode of this podcast where I argue to you that concerns about the debt and the deficit are [ __ ].
That they’ll be able to keep running it this way for generations and that this is a false urgency. And I believe that for two reasons. One, the economic realities of uh how global finance works. But secondly, because they’ve always been saying this, and yes, it did balloon in recent years because of spending and because of uh different manipulations of currency. But let’s say you do care about it.
How do they justify this bill adding trillions of dollars by everyone’s estimate except their own? See, we’re going to deal with what’s obvious about the bill and then what’s even more ugly and obvious about the politics of those who voted for it. This is what’s making everybody crazy. Okay, Lisa Marowski seemed like the last one who was speaking obvious truth. I may have to change parties if my the Republicans could be so completely irresponsible fiscally.
And then she votes for it. Oh, well, there was a carve out for Alaska in it where it won’t affect us the same way, so I’m taking care of my constituents.
The [ __ ] you are. You just want to get elected again, and you got to go with your pack because it is party over country 10 times out of 10. And you guys are fighting over shrinking bases, okay?
Because more and more people are going independent and saying [ __ ] you to both of you. So, you’re fighting over these smaller, more extreme pockets of people, and that’s what this bill represents. People holding their nose, and the only people who are telling the truth are people who are freaking resigning.
They’re the only people who are telling you the truth. Mansion, right?
Truth teller. Democrats are mad at him. Why? He’s telling the truth. Tillis, Republicans are mad at him.
Why? Because he’s telling the truth. That’s that’s where we are. Three to four trillion dollars over the next decade. It boosts the debt ceiling by up to $5 trillion.
Why do you call it a [ __ ] ceiling if you keep raising it? Why? How is it a debt ceiling? You know what I’m saying? What other roof can you raise that way?
It’s an illusion. It’s [ __ ]. And you know it. And this is why you people are so sick and tired of government and you don’t believe anything anymore. And it makes you susceptible to more extreme ideas because you’re so justifiably pissed off at the people who are supposed to be telling it to you straight.
I get it. I get it. And it matters that the places you decide to cut hurt the people who deserve to be hurt the least. You’re adding to the Department of Defense and you’re cutting Medicaid and SNAP.
Why?
Well, it’s just making people who are able-bodied work. That’s [ __ ]. Do the research. You are dealing with less than 10% by HHS’s own standards, by Medicaid’s own standards, okay? their own accounting.
You’re dealing with less than 10% of people who are able-bodied and can work but don’t have a legitimate excuse. It’s somewhere in the single digits. That’s the game changer that justifies this cut. It’s [ __ ]. It’s playing on a stigma that people who are on Medicaid are lazy.
This bill’s work requirements will cut coverage and restrict SNAP, which is basically food stamps. They changed it because, you know, there was a stigma attached to that.
Oh, but this isn’t a stigma, right? This this isn’t proof of the stigma. 11 to 12 million people, do you know what?
They are disproportionately people who voted for President Trump. And then you see how Medicaid is going to redound into rural hospitals. Why rural and not urban? I had this question myself. Didn’t make sense to me.
Aren’t there more poor people in urban centers than in rural? Not by percentage. Not by percentage. And rural hospitals, it turns out, are more dependent on Medicaid. Oh, and you know where they spend a big part of their money?
Births for broke people. Well, why are they having babies? [ __ ] you. That that’s that really that’s where we want to be now.
Really?
Because let me tell you something. My parents were broke when they started having a family. Really? We’re going to means test having a family now. You’re comfortable with that?
Rural hospitals are going to take a hit. You don’t think that’s disproportionately MAGA country? People voted for a guy who is now doing things that are not in their best interests. He’s taking care of the exact people that he likes to talk the talk about demonizing. The swamp, the elites, the corporate class.
Now look, I got problems with making them a boogeyman. I really do. Why? Because look, I’m a tweener, right? I make good money but as an income of wage, right?
I’m an employee.
I’m a wage worker. I make a great wage, but I’m not a wealth guy. I don’t have equity deals. You know what I’m saying?
Like, I don’t have anything that you can hide from taxes. Everything I have is taxed. You know what I mean? I’m not one of those guys. I’m not a hedge fund guy.
I’m not a private equity guy. You know, I’m not a businessman who’s got a way of running [ __ ] through things now. So then why am I against it? I’m against it because you don’t want to punish innovation.
You don’t want to punish competitiveness.
You don’t want to punish success. Uh I I think you got to be really careful about that in America. And entrepreneurs who find a way to make money. Now I would argue the problem is that 60 plus% of the businesses 65 66% of the jobs in our economy are small business. Small business doesn’t get the breaks that big business do.
Now what they’ll say is yes they do because they wind up being in that top tax bracket and so they get the benefits of that. But that’s not really true all the time. A lot of entrepreneurs aren’t wealthy and they’re not in the top tax bracket. But even still, they don’t get the deductions and the ability to manipulate the system the way the big corporations do. And I don’t understand that when they are the more of the engines of the economy than uh the big corporations are.
And then you have this other inverted part that this bill plays on, which is people have a few employees get hit harder by things like mandatory minimum wage and and different insurance coverages uh than the big companies.
They can absorb it differently. They can spread costs differently. And it’s really unfair. And this bill plays into all of it.
And they label in the bill $3.8 trillion in tax extensions as costfree. Why? Because they say it will return that amount in added um output. Because when you cut people’s taxes, they spend more and they pay people more.
Both of those things prove to not be true in our last economic cycle. Yes. the clean energy stuff, um the tax credits, um on solar and on wind. Look, that’s just politics. And let’s be honest, alternative fuel sources aren’t where we need them to be in terms of cost structure and productivity.
And our grid isn’t ready to take them anyway. Fossil fuels have to be part of the answer. We have to work on efficiencies on that. I don’t know why the fossil fuel companies get the subsidies they get, the billions and billions in subsidies they get.
Why?
when they’re killing it in the marketplace, why do we subsidize them? I just I don’t get it. Okay. Um, now look, this bill and people voting for it on the Republican side and now in the House, you got Republicans who are going to vote for this bill who won’t talk about it. What does that tell you?
It tells you that in their district, they have people who are middle inome and lower income who are going to get [ __ ] by it and they don’t want to own it, but they’re going to vote for it.
And this is why you’ve had enough. Okay. The tax cuts disproportionately benefit highincome earners by extending and making permanent tax era uh Trump era tax breaks. It is over 80 cents of every dollar of cuts goes to the top.
Yeah, but they pay the taxes. But then call it a tax cut for the rich. Don’t call it a middle class tax cut. Oh, but people in the middle class did get a tax cut. Yeah, but pennies on the dollar compared to the rich.
Yeah, but they pay more. But that’s not what you said. You said you were going to help the people who needed it most. And you didn’t. You didn’t say, “I’m going to give a tax cut that is uh geared towards your percentage of tax burden because that’s what’s fair.
” But it’s not fair because the outcomes aren’t fair.
There aren’t equal outcomes. People who are making a million dollars have a different set of realities than people making $100,000. And by the way, $100,000 is something in this economy. See, that’s what people are keep missing.
They miss it in my brother’s race. They miss it uh in the populist movement that’s driving uh Bernie and AOC as reaction formation to MAGA. They missed it in MAGA. My frustration with these splinter efforts and these fringe movements is the people should be united. The people in MAGA and the people in mirror MAGA share more than what divides them.
And what does divide them is this [ __ ] culture war [ __ ] that is artificial and was injected to create exactly this division. Trans sports. That’s what we’re going to argue about. That’s what’s going to separate lefty MAGA from righty MAGA. Really, all of you want immigration laws enforced.
None of you want everybody who’s in this country illegally to be treated the same way. You want the same things. Everybody wants that billionaires aren’t the fastest growing socioeconomic group and everything in the system seems to benefit them and not the people who make the money for the same companies that wind up uh creating this huge gap between the CEO and the rest of the workers.
All of you want that. So why the divide?
Because of the politics. Because it works for the two parties. Because it keeps us weak. because it doesn’t make us understand how much we share. And when you take care of only the top, you wind up breaking people’s hearts because you wind up being exactly what you said you would oppose.
And that’s why this big, beautiful bill, it’s big, but it’s only beautiful for the few, not the many. And it’s a [ __ ] you. And the lawmakers know it. Now, one problem I have with the Democrats push back of this bill sucks. This bill sucks.
This bill sucks. What’s better than this bill? How would you tax the country? What would you use it for? How would you deal with spending?
Where would you cut it? Where are those ideas? Where is the there there so that I can believe in you more than I believe in what’s out there right now? Yeah, but they’re lying to you.
But you all lie.
You all lie. You’re all full of [ __ ]. Nothing ever changes no matter who’s in power. So where are the better ideas? This is supposed to be a bold tax and defense package, but the tax stuff just locks in.
It doesn’t improve on what was there already. And what was there already was upside down. And that’s why, you know, you have to deal with the economy as it comes.
You got to deal with COVID. You got to deal with what happens after it.
You got to deal um with inflation. You have to deal with these things. What did you think was going to happen when you put all that money into the economy during the pandemic? Of course, you were going to turbocharge inflation. And Trump was there for it.
He started it. And he said that the money that Biden added on to what he already gave, he would have been in favor of. This is a historic shift towards regressive tax policy.
Meaning what? Meaning the more you make relatively the less the burden is.
And aggressive cuts in the safety net that matters to people. So you’re taking care of the top and you’re [ __ ] the bottom. That’s what it does. That’s what it does. And for Marowski to acknowledge it and then vote for it anyway.
for Senator Ron Johnson to come on with me and say I’m against the spending but I got to vote for it because it locks in the tax cuts and I don’t want to raise people’s taxes is [ __ ]. And this is why people want radical change. This is what brought in MAGA. This is what is driving this free everything. It’s reaction formation to being disgusted by the status quo.
And I’m telling you, they can call it fiscally conservative. You can’t find an estimate that isn’t in the trillions of how extending the tax cuts will add to the debt and thereby the deficit. Trickle down is [ __ ]. And the key word is trickle. It adds no new revenue.
and it doesn’t cut the spending to make up for the cuts in revenue.
This is why the politics about tax cuts have always been [ __ ]. Are tax cuts good or bad? That is a false premise. It’s about when and for who and why.
That’s when tax cuts make sense. When meaning what? You’re in a period of economic growth where you have more money coming in so that you can justify reducing revenue by cutting taxes and you should target it for the people who need that relief. That’s when a tax cut makes sense. The idea that low taxes just always drive economic growth is an incomplete analysis.
Can tax cuts drive growth? Yes.
Must they? No, we’re seeing that right now. So, according to the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, okay, not a partisan organization, it could be as much as 4 trillion in the federal balance sheet.
That’s how much it’s going to take. The bond markets who make money off analyzing this [ __ ] are looking to downgrade US debt because of this bill. What does that tell you? If the guys who make the money off understanding this [ __ ] think our debt’s going to go up, who do you want to believe, Trump or the guys who get paid to be right about it? This is a [ __ ] you to fiscal hawks and to people who are real conservatives and they’re asking you to buy it with a name change.
And look, I look, Schumer changed the name of the bill in some kind of Senate thing. Oh, that’s a win for Democrats. No, it isn’t. This whole thing is proof of why Democrats lost. You couldn’t do better than this.
You couldn’t have better ideas than this. You went all in on trans [ __ ] sports and Trump being the devil. And now this is where we are. And look, I’m underelling the clean energy incentives because I I think that those have been overdone. I don’t think our power grid is ready.
I don’t think our economy is ready. I don’t think our people are ready for this radical switch of going against fossil fuels. I don’t think it makes sense. I mean, I get it idealistically, but I think you can do a lot more with cleaning up fossil fuels and building up our power grid.
I mean, look, here’s here’s my cell on it.
Okay, you buy an EV, how is the electricity made? There’s better than a three in four chance it’s made with fossil fuels. So why would we have more electrical vehicles if the electricity is made with fossil fuels? Why force me to buy one of those when there are issues with the batteries and how they affect the environment in terms of how the batteries are produced and what they do for the environment in general as vehicles, the efficiencies of the charging, the strains on the grid and where the electricity, the power comes from.
We’re just not ready.
So forcing it was a mistake. Um, and yes, I get why people are upset about uh solar and EV tax credits, but again, that’s politics and that’s, you know, that’s why we have elections. And that was a lefty thing, even though the guy who benefited the most from it wound up becoming the biggest MAGA guy, Elon.
But look, the biggest [ __ ] you in this bill is the fuzzy math. The math isn’t mathing.
The bill uses reconciliation to get past the filibuster, the 60 vote threshold, right? And that means that everything in it has to have a direct impact on the budget. So it treats the tax cuts as if they’re free because they have to in order to keep it in reconciliation because otherwise it would have an impact on the budget, which it does to the tune of trillions and then it would need the 60 vote threshold. So they extend existing policy and that is a gimmick to say that it is budget neutral. It is not budget neutral.
And there’s no full CBO score on it yet. Why? Because they haven’t allowed it. Because they don’t want to hear it. And look, the top 1% of earners benefit most from the extended cuts.
It keeps the lower corporate tax rate at 21%.
While cutting social spending. And look, guys like me are going to like that it restores full deductibility of salt cuz it’s going to allow me to save money on my taxes. So, I’m a winner. And if you’re on Medicaid, you could be a loser.
And I think that’s [ __ ] up. And I think it’s what drives fringe populist movements like what we see on the left and frankly the right. This is a regressive bill and it punishes the people who are struggling more than the people who are not. And there is a funding surge where they want it to be. ICE, military, and I would argue those are not our biggest needs.
That funding mass deportations is not the biggest need for our economy or our national security.
Undocumented people who commit felonies are not as big a threat to the national security as fundamentalism and extreme thinking yielding violence in our ranks. Moderate Republicans, especially in suburban swing districts, are going to get blowback because the Medicaid and SNAP, and they should. They should. There’s a reason the House Freedom Caucus is against this bill.
It doesn’t cut the way it was supposed to and it rewards people with a tax cut. So, you’re lowering revenue and increasing spending. It’s the opposite of being responsible. It’s [ __ ]. and people know it and they’re voting for it anyway.
And Marowski is the face of that. Shame on her. Shame on her. Shame on these sellouts. Shame on these party first people.
Look, I didn’t want my brother to run as a Democrat in that party cuz I knew what was going on with it. And he is not a socialist populist demagogue. Okay? And I get why they are into magical thinking because they’re disgusted. The same way with MAGA and going after Trump isn’t going to change those people’s disaection and their and their dislocation from their dreams.
And going after the mascot on the left isn’t going to do anything different. You’ve got to deal with the real grievance and the problems. And this bill is a [ __ ] you to those people. and you’re going to get a [ __ ] you back. And remember why we’re here because we’re going to wind up going to a worse place.
Things are going to get worse. There’s going to be more violence.
There’s going to be more extremism. And there is no one to blame but ourselves and our people in power. And I don’t know that replacing them with a bunch of extremists is going to make it any better.
Okay? I don’t see Marjorie Taylor Green and AOC as a better future for America. But I get why they’re resonating with so many people beyond the rationality of what they say because you have lied to them for too [ __ ] long. And I’ll put another button on it for you. The Diddy verdict is an extension of this of people saying the government says [ __ ] that isn’t true and it goes too far and it flexes too much.
Diddy is a piece of [ __ ] for what he did to Cassie. And if you want to judge his pay for sex lifestyle, go ahead. But that’s morality, not legality.
Not really. Yes, the man act.
Yes, he was found guilty on it. But a federal case for paying for sex. Really? People got in that jury box that this ain’t Rico. Rico’s the mob.
Rico is criminal organizations. This was one guy. Where’s everybody else in the conspiracy? Sure, it would pass the law school exam test about whether or not they made the case, but I’m glad the people in that box said, “You know what? The government doesn’t just get to punish whatever the [ __ ] they want to because how they feel about the person they’re prosecuting.
” Does that mean I like what Diddy did? No. The Cassie tape alone to me disqualifies him for ever being somebody that should ever be put up as anything good again. But that’s a a personal judgment. That’s not a legal judgment.
I mean, legally, he’s dead all day on that.
If she had decided to prosecute at the time, I have no respect for men who put women uh put hands on women. Now, you can call that sexist. Probably is. Um, strictly speaking, but that’s how I was raised and that’s what I believe.
You men want to hit each other, it’s fine. um depending on the reason, making sure that it’s balanced, you know, not a slaughter, but you don’t hit women, you don’t abuse women. That’s not what a man does. And Diddy failed that test big time and lied about it. But to then make a federal case out of it and not on the specifics of that act rire of [ __ ] and overreach.
And people are sick of it. They’re sick of the lawfare, and this is an extension of it. They’re sick of the lies. They’re sick of the abuse. They’re sick of using government for your own ends, for the few instead of for the rights of the many.
And that’s why you’re seeing what you’re seeing on the left and on the right.
And I am okay with it because these parties need to [ __ ] die in the form they’re in. And they got to get back to reflecting the common interests of the American people where co cooperation and solutions wind up being what drives our government and not petty [ __ ] division. Shame on you, Macowski. Shame on you Republicans who vote for this when you know it’s not fiscally responsible.
And frankly, it’s not both sides of them. Shame on you Democrats for allowing us to get into this position in the first place by not having better ideas and fighting on the the losing ground of Trump sucks. So everybody who’s mad about their lives who are voting for him suck also.
And let’s talk about stupid fringe issues that mean nothing to the majority. That’s why we’re here.
And we’re not getting anywhere better anytime soon. And that’s the [ __ ] truth. And I’m not gonna lie to you about it. And the shame is we can do so much better. We share so much than what divides us.
The solutions are so apparent. They’re just as easy. They’re actually easier than us playing at this game of division. But if you want to know why America is where it is, you look at what’s happening right now with the big beautiful bill. And you will see a really ugly reality.
Look, you don’t need me to tell you that there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to what’s going on with our markets and our money. Things just are not in a good place. Inflation is up. How much? Well, it depends on the day.
Banks, borrowing costs, uh prices, everything that’s going out there right now is really hard to predict. And we all have the same question. What do we do to protect what we have? That’s why more and more people are turned into gold and silver because they’re not make believe, man.
They’re not some digital thing that some guy can just hack and it’s gone forever.
It’s real. It’s proven. It’s tangible. It doesn’t just crash with the rest of the market. It is the oldest tried andrue hedge.
But here’s what nobody tells you. Just buying gold is not a thing. You got to buy the right kind. Okay? Cuz you can buy the wrong kind.
Like what? How about those flashy coins and the TV ads? Oh, it’s a collector’s series, right? Or the, you know, some celebrity says, “Oh, this is what I do.” Yeah, ask them how much they really have.
These gimmicks are built to make someone else rich, not you. I want you to hear from Dr. Kirk Elliot. two PhDs, one of them is in theology. Think about that.
When’s the last time you met an investment guy that has taken the time to study their religion? No gimmicks, no commissions when you sell.
Okay? He does it differently and I would say he does it the right way and you wind up getting an option to buy real bullion that you can actually use. Right now, Dr.
Kirk and his team, they’re partnering with me at KPM and offering free consultations. No pressure, just straight talk. Go to kpm.com/quomo and take control of your future. Knowledge is power.
Get smart. Get moving before the next shock hits. [Music] So, what do you do with all this talk about the budget bill and what it means? Now you got the political mind, but really you have what matters most, which is what does it mean to you and your family and what are you supposed to pay attention to and not in terms of what you do with your own finances.
You know how I handle that here.
I’ve made a partner in Dr. Kirk Elliot to help us understand that nexus between politics and our own finances. So, let’s get after it. Dr. Kirk, the big beautiful bill.
I know they’re going to change the name to it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s about the substance of it and everybody has a take and it seems like a little bit of a roar shack test. When you look at what’s in this bill and what it will mean to people in terms of where your head should be on your money, what matters to you? What matters to me is is you you can’t throw the baby out with the bath water, right? There’s there’s some good pieces to it that I like.
I like it. You know that that um tips and overtime aren’t going to be taxed, right? I mean, that’s all good things, right? But but when you look at it, here’s the problem. It adds $4 trillion worth of deficits, right?
We’re already can’t afford to pay off our debt as a country. I mean, just the debt service right now in our country is a well trillion dollars a year. Trillion. Trillion. Just interestonly payments.
Right? So if you continue to add debts and deficits without changing any other factors, this becomes instead of a big beautiful bill, a big horrible bill, right? So now how do you generate revenue to pay for these deficits? Well, the only way to generate revenue is to stimulate the economy, get people working.
When people are working, people are spending.
See, this is all part of, you know, as as you look at it, why Trump and Jerome Powell are just fighting tooth and nail, you know, and Trump’s calling Powell, you know, big idiot and [ __ ]. You don’t know what you do, stupid Powell. You should get out. You know, we’re going to get rid of you sooner rather than later. Um because Powell is not lowering interest rates.
And I get why he’s not. You can’t lower interest rates too much when you have inflation or it makes the inflation worse. But if you do do it incrementally, which is what I would do right now, just small little chunks to actually get the perception of, wow, my my credit card payment just went down a little bit, right? And so you start spending, right? And so that will stimulate the economy.
Would that be enough to actually pay off these these debts and increasing deficits? Kind of doubt it, right? I really kind of doubt it. So now what about the tariffs from other countries? Well, maybe that’ll pay for part of it.
Well, this is where you add Doge into the mix. You know, when there, okay, well, let’s cut all these expenses. So, now we’re trying to raise revenue a little bit. We’re trying to cut expenses here and there. The the bottom line is I think the revenue generated from trying to grow the economy plus the expenses that have been cut still aren’t enough to actually pay for these deficits.
And I I it’s just I’m looking at it economically. Um and part of it doesn’t make sense. Which means I think ultimately Jerome Powell is going to have to go so they can start lowering rates to decrease that debt service. It’s the only way that I think that these deficits will work. Is that going to happen soon?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s too little too late.
But there’s I don’t like the American way, which isn’t just this presidency. It goes back numerous ones where it’s like, hey, it makes sense to add more debt to get rid of debt. It’s like, okay, that’s stupid, but that’s how it’s always been done, right?
Let’s just keep raising the debt ceiling so we can keep things going on. We’ll kick the can down the road a little bit farther. What about when the road ends at the cliff, right? There is no more road. We might actually be there risk because you you’ve hit the point where sometime you have to pay the piper.
There’s just you’ve hit critical mass. This is why I don’t like this at this time in history because it adds too much debt. It adds too much deficits. Um but but don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot in that bill that I absolutely love. I I I do.
I just wish there were more ways to generate revenue and not add so much debt to it.
Well, you know, they always say you can’t have everything. And he wants those tax cuts, which he will insist, his administration will insist paid for themselves. It’s hard to find anybody in your business or anyone who measures our economic metrics who will agree with that, unless you include the pandemic payments, which is of course artificial juice. and you look at the provisions of it that are supposed to work for the working people and no tax on on tips.
That sounds great. Does it matter that it has a 25 grand cap on it? And what does that mean in terms of who it benefits and who it doesn’t? I mean, it it’s going to impact a lot of the service workers. I I you know, I haven’t studied it, right?
But how if there’s a 25 grand cap on it, how many people make more than 25 grand in tips? you know, it’s like I I don’t know.
Maybe it maybe it will impact 90% of the people or capture most of it. I I really don’t know. But that’s actually probably not a huge part of the population that this is going to impact, right?
when you’re talking I mean it might be a massive number of people but you’re talking about tips not wages like somebody making 100 $150 $200,000 a year uh with an engineering job right so it’s not impacting that it’s really your your food service people who who and hospitality workers and this has had a lot of energy but behind it for years and Trump finally acted on it and it does sound good but you’re right in that it sounds good for those people, but how big a part of our economy are people who just get paid in tips? Not too much by percentage. Yeah, probably not too much by percentage. Um, I don’t know. But maybe this is changing because no matter where I go, people are asking for tips.
It’s like, what? The job that you just did didn’t deserve a tip.
You know, we we bought a bag of chips at the at the convenience store. You don’t get a tip for that. But they’ll ask.
They’ll ask. Um, and when when you look at this, the argument that there or one of the arguments that they’re having about this is whether or not it adds to the deficit. So, the CBO, even though it has an incomplete score, and all these other independent organizations are all saying it adds to it because you’re cutting uh you’re cutting the revenue that’s coming in, but you’re not cutting the spending enough. And then of course as an ancillary argument that’s not for us about where you are cutting it is hurting the wrong people. But that’s not economics um strictly.
It’s politics. Those are choices. But how hard is it to know whether or not this bill adds to the deficit or doesn’t it? Is it really a mystery? Well, it is kind of a mystery um in the sense of we won’t know until some time passes and see how successful some of the economic stimulus measures are and does that really accelerate things.
Um but what we do know is the spending part of it. What we don’t know is what’s POW going to do with interest rates, right? Because as the debt increases and if interest rates go up, that amplifies the problem really bad. Really bad. which is why Trump really wants POW to lower interest rates.
See, this bill doesn’t I don’t I wouldn’t care if it was absolutely magnificent all the way across the board. If you have a lot of debt already in this country, $37 trillion, you’re you’re adding possibly 4 trillion to it with this bill over the years that that this is going to span.
You know, it’s maybe adding another 12% to the debt. So it’s not like in the grand scheme of things, it’s it’s this massive amount, right? It’s it’s but what you do have is everything prior from 1776 until now, we have to pay it back.
We have to pay it back. So this is where it’s like when when you pass bills, when every Congress person passes a bill right now, you can’t just take it at face value for what it is. You have to look at everything that’s been passed prior. And we have $37 trillion worth of debt already, right? So if our debt were to go from 0 to4 trillion, it’s like, all right, well, we can pay for that easy.
But it’s harder when it goes from 37 to 41. Kirk, help me understand the debt ceiling. How is it a ceiling if we keep raising it? And that’s one of the provisions of this bill that raises the ceiling a lot, which we understand why the administration wanted to do it. It’s to help pay for the tax cuts because you’re going to need to borrow more because you’re going to have less in revenue.
But why do they call it a debt ceiling if they keep raising it all the time? It’s a good question. I mean, it’s a dumb word because it it doesn’t exist, right, when they keep raising it. So, you know, but but I think the debt ceiling is more of a of a political thing, right? Because every time you get to the end of the fiscal year when you run out of money, it’s like we got to vote.
We got to raise this debt ceiling or else the government’s going to shut down.
Like, okay, shut them down. I mean, if they’re not working, they’re not spending money. So, why not, right? But but really it it’s a meaningless term at this day and age because can you think of a time other than maybe once or twice where they’ve actually hasn’t haven’t raised the debt ceiling.
It’s like they always raise it, right? They always raise it and even if they don’t immediately two 3 weeks later, you know, the government shut down and they decide, well, we got to keep things we got to keep things.
So they punish all these people who don’t have the power and then they wind up raising it anyway. Always. Always.
I I mean I can’t think of a time where they ultimately haven’t. Where if it were you and me and we reached our debt ceiling as a family, what do we do? We either have to go find another job or we cut our expenses. Well, this the only two things that you can do. So, so the problem with Congress is, okay, we’re not going to cut expenses.
They only look at the other side of the balance sheet, right, and of the income statement. So, so this is the problem. We we keep kicking the can down the road.
You you’ve got to cut expenses somewhere at a at a But this is where this becomes very difficult. When you look at the federal budget, you know, go to table S2 and and the white house.
gov look at the budget and it’s going to show you how much of our $4.8 trillion that we bring in every year goes to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, women, infant, children, basically entitlements, right? And social security, which is not an entitlement.
You pay into it your whole life. You should get something from it.
I don’t consider that an entitlement. But but it’s 80 over 80% of everything that we bring in is now going out towards entitlements or mandatory payments. 80%. You can’t run the country on the 20% that’s left. So if you start cutting expenses, what are you going to do?
You’re going to ultimately lose votes because it’s going to impact 80% of everything in our budget.
This is the problem. And and you can’t blame Trump for that. You can’t blame Biden for that. You can’t blame Clinton for that or Bush.
You You can blame the aggregate of all presidents together that have gotten us to this point where politicians people will vote for the politicians who will give them the most money out of the government treasury. Right? That’s generally how it works. So, the left is going to start a new argument.
I I suggest that uh builds off of modern monetary theory and people can look that up for themselves if they want to see.
But basically it is look uh the world wants our debt. Uh it is bought uh exclusively what we owe is in US treasuries. We control our own currency. Uh so we will never run out of money to pay it and the percentage has always stayed pretty consistent in terms of our percentage of output. There’s an argument that debt drives output, but the bottom line is we make our own money, so this will never really be a problem and it’s a little bit of a boogeyman.
What do you say once that starts becoming something that we’re hearing on a regular basis? So when when the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency, that’s been accurate.
You know, when there’s built-in demand for our currency from because international settlements are traded in US dollars. Oil, this is what the petro dollar is. Oil settlements are traded in US dollars.
Yeah, you you could print like a drunken sailor and still have built-in demand for the currency, but the world is changing, Chris. This is this is where you already have bilateral and multilateral trade agreements between countries that like um China and Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates.
Yeah, we’re not going to use US dollars to pay for oil anymore. We’ll use the yuan. Okay, great.
So that piece by piece by piece, the petro dollar is being obliterated. the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency being obliterated. At some point down the road, if we don’t have that, there is no built-in automatic demand for our currency and we’re going to have to face the music of, hey, in in our country, do we have enough revenue to pay off our debts? What’s the propensity that we’re going to default? And if it’s if it’s not, then people will continue to invest in the dollar.
If they don’t think that we’re going to be able to pay off our debts, countries are going to stop investing in the US dollar. How do you attract more foreign capital? Jack up the interest rates. Oh boy, that’s a problem. Can’t jack up the interest rates when we have $37 trillion worth of debt to attract more foreign capital.
I mean, this is why I think it’s about time that that the Piper has to be paid. And we happen to be the generation that’s alive that’s probably going to see it happen.
Hm. Uh, that is very interesting and appreciated as always. Dr.
Kirk Elliot, thank you uh for making our money minds matter. You bet. At the end of the day, you can feel however you want. You’re still going to always have to figure out what to do about it, right? It matters in your professional life, in your personal life, and yes, in your political life.
I get being angry. I’m right there with you. All pain is personal. We all have our own reasons, right? And we’re certainly being coaxed every day to see things through a negative perspective.
And the younger you go, the less people seem to love this country. I get it all, but what are you going to do about it? That’s the question, and that’s what we have to be about together. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for paying attention to me at NewsNation at 8:00 and 11 every weekday night.
Thank you for subscribing and paying at Substack. And I will take your comments and your questions for my interviews and my own feedback. I appreciate all of it. And I appreciate you wanting to wear your independence and buy free agent gear to show that you are no party psy, okay? And that you are a critical thinker.
So, thank you for each and all of your efforts. My friends, the challenges are real. Let’s get after it. [Music].
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