| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Federal Debt Explosion
00:01:40
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| Hello everybody. | |
| Thank you for tuning in to the weekly report. | |
| A small continuing resolution victory could have big consequences. | |
| Federal spending is so out of control that it only took three months for the federal debt to increase by $1 trillion to over $33 trillion. | |
| In contrast, it took almost 200 years for the federal debt to reach $1 trillion. | |
| So that the federal government racked up more debt in the last three months than it did from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution until Ronald Reagan's first term. | |
| There will be even more shocking increases in the future, since, according to some experts, federal debt is increasing by approximately $14 billion a day. | |
| Those tempted to blame the increases on President Biden, the Democratic Congress, or the COVID-related spending spree should consider the debt increase by around a trillion dollars a year in 2017 and 2018, years when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. | |
| One more statistic to keep in mind is that the government's debt already exceeds America's gross domestic product. | |
| In other words, the U.S. national debt, according to the government's own figures, is already worth more than the value of everything produced by American businesses. | |
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Ukraine Funding Stripped
00:03:02
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| Americans should keep these facts in mind when the media attacks as irresponsible the small group of Republicans who refuse to vote for a continuing resolution or CR and thus risk a government shutdown unless the CR is accompanied by spending cuts and reforms that would take federal spending off autopilot. | |
| Unfortunately, the Welfare Warfare Spending Coalition has once again triumphed over the small group of fiscal conservatives as a continuing resolution that did not even pretend to cut spending passed in Congress over the weekend. | |
| Fiscal conservatives and the growing wing of the GOP opposing foreign intervention did achieve one significant victory. | |
| The CR did not contain the Biden administration's requested additional aid for Ukraine. | |
| The successful effort to strip Ukraine funding from the continuing resolution may threaten President Biden's effort to obtain billions more in funding for Ukraine. | |
| Since the start of the conflict, the U.S. government has wasted more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine, which is close to Russia's entire 2023 military budget. | |
| Not only does the Ukraine-Russia conflict have no impact on America's national security, it could also have been avoided had the U.S. not helped orchestrate a 2014 coup in Ukraine. | |
| The Ukraine conflict is thus another example of Ludwig von Mises' observation that the unintended or intended consequences of government intervention are used to justify further government actions. | |
| Unless the U.S. reverses course and begins to cut spending, the Federal Reserve will be forced to end its limited efforts to fight price inflation. | |
| Instead, the Fed will bow to political pressure to keep interest rates low in order to help government manage its ever-increasing debt. | |
| This will lead to both a rejection of the dollar's world's reserve currency status and a major economic crisis. | |
| The best place to cut spending is the so-called defense budget that makes Americans less free and less safe. | |
| Hopefully, the successful effort to strip Ukraine's funding from the CR is the first of many victories by the anti-war fiscal conservatives over the military-industrial complex and its politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists. | |