Coming off of an exhilarating and well-deserved playoff win for the Detriot Lions, ending the longest playoff drought in professional sports, President John Pudner traveled to the motor city to discuss an issue afflicting families there and across our Republic - our ever-increasing, record-setting, $34 trillion US National Debt. More specifically, both he and hosts Kevin Dietz and Tom Jordan analyze how the Biden Administration, over the past four years, alongside COVID-19 stimulus and emergency spending, has added a record amount to the debt.
Adding a record $7.1 trillion to the national debt, the Biden administration now owns the record for the largest increase to the debt in a single term in American history, spending 40% more than pre-COVID 2019 levels and surpassing the total deficit addition by the Trump Administration within three years, which included the $2.2 trillion CARES Act stimulus bill in response to the initial COVID-19 lockdowns. In addition, if President Biden’s currently proposed 2024 budget holds true, then by this time next year, the Biden administration would have added more to the national debt than both the W. Bush and Trump administrations combined.
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The following transcript from this interview is presented in its entirety with minor edits:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Biden, currency, shutdown, national debt, spending, cuts, economist, blame, blank checks
SPEAKERS
TBOR Action President John Pudner, Kevin Dietz, and Tom Jordan.
Tom Jordan 00:00
Let's bring in John Pudner, the President of Take Back Our Republic Action. Good morning, John, how are you?
John Pudner 00:04
Good, thanks for having me.
Tom Jordan 00:06
I appreciate you being here. This thing drives me crazy and it doesn't even bother me that the Biden administration wants to blame the Trump administration. I blame everybody because nobody seems to be doing anything serious about the national debt. Is $34 trillion a problem?
John Pudner 00:25
Well, it is, and I think we're used to feeling like it's not a problem just because the dollar is this standard around the world, but the Chinese are not missing this opportunity to make their case that they should have the currency. They've got the Saudis doing deals now in Chinese currency, obviously Russia. but also Brazil, Argentina, and that's the problem. They want a long-term play, where they question whether or not the dollar is the standard that the whole world is based on and that's where this starts becoming a problem.
Tom Jordan 01:01
Walk us through why that's so important that the dollar remains the main currency?
John Pudner 01:06
Because as long as the dollar main currency, we can always sell all the treasury bonds, basically printing money. We're printing treasury bonds whenever we want and we know that there will be buyers in the world because the dollar is the thing you have to have to pay anything, so you've always got a willing creditor. But now that you have these other countries saying you can also trade and Chinese currency instead, it seems pretty stable, as much as they manipulate currency, that's where you start to see the beginning of a real problem, which isn't going to hit us two weeks from now, but it is setting the stage for the real, potential long-term catastrophe.
Kevin Dietz 01:50
Was the White House correct yesterday when it said that the reason why we're at $34 trillion in debt was because Donald Trump gave Americans tax cuts?
John Pudner 02:02
I guess in the last three months, we added a trillion, so I think that was quite a while after President Trump left office and the tax cuts, so it's just pretty far-fetched the things they are grasping for.
Kevin Dietz 02:16
As you said, if you look at it, but you don't include how much money we spent for emergency spending, which included all that COVID spending in March 2021, then you can see your point. How much of the spending that this administration has done over the past two and a half years contribute to the national debt?
John Pudner 02:36
Well, I won't try to break down dollars because even the economists are having trouble, but certainly the spending and, I mean, losing energy independence is the key factor in this. If you're producing enough energy that your country does not need to, theoretically, buy energy from overseas, then this is much less of an issue. But, we have all these things working together, and the other things that factor into this are just when the US looks weak, go back to Afghanistan. Anytime you're pulling out of places, and the military is looking weak, that ties into how we've got the military, we've got the standard currency, all these things going for us, and we still do, but to any degree that's weakened or questioned, all of that feeds into us having trouble with credit moving forward.
Tom Jordan 03:37
I talked to some people, and they say there's also some actual pros to borrowing money, you can fund central programs or infrastructure that might help the economy. Is that true no matter how big the debt gets, or at some point, does that turn on you and limit what you can?
John Pudner 04:00
I think there's something to that. I won't say I'm an economist, but I will say is, when I've been able to talk to some real economists offline, their basic line is this thing is so much big that we don't know. I mean, that's just what's scary, even if you had a great economist, as opposed to me on the line, they don't really know, they're kind of guessing, and of course, there's always some benefit to how much money is moving around, but overall, I just think people have to try to dial it back to $100,000 for every one of us it's owed, and what happens when I've been in serious credit card debt, and as you said, all I'm paying is interest on it every month, and I'm not seeing it go down? These are systemic problems we're gonna have to address.
Kevin Dietz 04:53
I think you're right when you said earlier that Americans are just kind of accepting that this is the lot we're in and we're gonna stick with it. That's not a winning philosophy if you want continued success. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that we wouldn't hit this debt level until the year 2029. They're way off the mark here. What does that say about the trajectory we find ourselves on right now?
John Pudner 05:21
Well, it is scary, and it's because of everyone just wrote blank checks during COVID. Some things had to be done, but at the same time, those projections, right before the shutdown, said 2029, and for it to be moving this fast and accelerating this fast is a big concern. They're saying another few decades until we add another 34 trillion, but you start to question if that's realistic? Are we really doing that in 10 years when, after helping Bush in 2000 Obama's big talking point eight years later was $4 trillion had been added during his administration, and of course, he added $9 trillion a year, so you can just see it ramping.
Tom Jordan 06:11
I know the United States economy deficit is like on steroids, but are there any other countries that we can look to that have had success managing extensive national debt?
John Pudner 06:23
That's a good question. We certainly don't really have examples in Europe right now. Germany has been bailing out other countries for a long time. The trend in the West has not been good on this, and it's just hard to have political will on it. One of the polls, right for the shutdown last time was 29% of Americans blamed Republicans, 27% blame Democrats, and 32% basically said we hate you both. There's no real political points to be made by my making cuts you have to make.
Kevin Dietz 06:58
It seems like there's been a lot of just really limited budgetary progress in Congress. We got a couple of looming deadlines, January 19th, is the first deadline where we could see that another shutdown of the government unless we come to some agreement here. What do you think's gonna happen?
John Pudner 07:14
I think they pressed it in October and eventually got it extended. I think they'll kick it down the road again. If you couldn't do anything more than just to continuing what we're doing back in October, I certainly don't think now that we're closer to elections, anyone's gonna risk it. I mean, election years, it's even tougher, so they're gonna kick it down the road.
Tom Jordan 07:38
Continuing resolutions cost Kevin McCarthy his job. Now, you have another Speaker in there with the same exact problem. I feel like Americans would get behind the idea of reducing the deficit, but maybe once it actually started, they started cutting where they live, they might change their tune.
John Pudner 07:59
That's right. In theory, people want to cut it, but it certainly becomes so much further down people's list.
Kevin Dietz 08:06
It's hard to do, even with our own economy, if you want to call it that. Appreciate you joining us again on the program.