00:00I think we have a lot of conversations, hopefully, to look forward to in our future as this bill goes down and developments come from it.
00:07I do want to ask about one more number, though.
00:09The number is $9.4 billion, and that's how much the White House is asking back from Congress in a rescissions package.
00:16What do you make of that number?
00:19Well, let's do that math on top of our head.
00:22If we borrow $6 billion a day, next year we're at $7 billion a day, so that'd be one day, four hours of borrowing.
00:30One day, four hours of borrowing.
00:32And there becomes, look, we don't have a choice.
00:39Don't tell anyone, because this is our secret.
00:42I actually like listening to NPR.
00:47I have a history of giving money to KBOC, which is our classical music station in Phoenix.
00:52But in a time where you have debates of do you have cash to even cover health care, but the corporation for public broadcasting, okay, so you reduce, you eliminate its spending.
01:08That's two hours and 15 minutes of borrowing for an entire year.
01:14And there becomes the rhetorical problem in the United States is we'll get dozens of tweets or Xs or whatever the hell we call those.
01:23There'll be lots of people commenting on media and then not telling the truth that some of these things, a tiny, tiny tick in interest rates wipes out the value of that $9 billion.
01:36If just the movement in interest rates so far the last few months is a couple trillion additional borrowing over this decade, the lack of understanding of the math.
01:49You've got to do everything you can to restrict spending, but if we don't convince the debt markets that we're serious, just small movements in interest rate wipe out every dime of savings we're working on.
02:04Congressman, I mean, that's just a fascinating, eye-opening, jaw-dropping point.
02:10Four hours of borrowing is how much $9.4 billion would be.
02:15No, no, no, one day, four hours.
02:16So one day and four hours.
02:18Okay, so what, but still, I mean, that's still, it's a crazy number.
02:22It's nothing.
02:23It's nothing.
02:24And to that point, then, do you think, and I am, before we, I even ask this, I'm not poo-pooing a couple billion dollars.
02:30Obviously, that's it.
02:31That's just, it's a lot of zeros, but it's comparatively small to, as you said, the national debt.
02:38It's comparatively small to the budget.
02:40So do you think it's worth cutting these types of things?
02:42Is that more just for show?
02:44No, actually, I would take you a different way.
02:49Think of the concept of muscle memory.
02:52You have to do something and then do it over and over and over to get it into your culture that you have a society that has gotten old.
03:04You know, I tried to explain this last night.
03:0920 years ago to today, we had the same number of 18-year-olds.
03:13But we have doubled the number of people 65 and up.
03:17If we're going to keep our promises, the earned benefits that are promises, if we're going to keep them, we don't have a choice.
03:26We're going to have to actually go up and down government and modernize it, redesign it, and make actual decisions on what we spend money on.
03:35And if this is $9 billion here, or some of the major bills I'm working on that are much, much bigger, how do you build it as part of your culture that this is our reality?
03:50This is not 20 years ago where U.S. debt was 3% of GDP.
03:57This year, it's going to be like 7.2%, 7.3% of the entire economy is borrowed.
04:02And in nine years, it's over 9% of the entire economy is borrowed.
04:10Think of this.
04:11In nine years, about 30% of all tax collections just pays interest.
04:16You don't have a choice.
04:19We're going to have to start doing adult, difficult things.
04:25This is the reality of what we are as a society.
04:29Well, Congressman, I think that is a good place to end the conversation.
04:34And like I said, I hope we can have plenty more of these soon, especially as we see the one big, beautiful bill go through the Senate, back to the House.
04:43Congressman David Schweikert, I really appreciate the conversation.
