Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all of the links, become
a patron, go to vpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you
hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right
to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so
much for your support the spending up in Washington, DC
and the reconciliation and the I don't even know what
these things are called anymore. I'm losing track of all
of the different concurrent budget resolutions, continuing resolutions, all of it. Well,
I figure this might be a good guy to talk
to about. His name is Ben Tomcik. He is the
vice president and deputy chief of Staff for the Committee
for a Responsible Federal Budget. The website is CRFB dot org.
And Ben, welcome to the show, sir. How are you.
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm good. I hope you're enjoying your travels around the
state of North Carolina. Understand you've done a couple of
appearances and so far, so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely I spoke to students at Wingate University this morning,
and I have to tell you, I was just blown
away by them. So it's been a really inspiring trip
down here in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Because nothing gets the kids excited like talking about the
federal budget.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, absolutely, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So explain to me, because like I've been kind
of following what happens with the spending and like I'm
a regular order kind of a guy, Like I want
them to go back to regular order. I think that's
a pipe dream at this point. I don't think they're
ever going to really go back to that. So what
exactly is the mechanism that the Congress is now using
to create. I don't even know if you Are they
budgets or are they just resolutions? At this point, I
don't even know what to call it.
Speaker 2: Right, So you talk about being a regular order guy,
I'm a passing a budget. I wish Congress would get
back to to passing a budget. And what I will
tell you is right now, what they're doing is they're
basically basically using a budget resolution and it's kind of
a show where they agree to how much they're going
to spend, how much they're going to cut and from
there what they do is that they agree to those
levels and then they fill in the details a little
bit later. On. So last Thursday, before Congress adjourned for
their Easter recess, the Senate had passed the budget resolution.
The House then passed with the Senate bill, or excuse me,
the House then passed with the Senate passed. And I
just want to put it into perspective. The bill that
the Senate and the House both passed, and this is
right before they left town, would allow up to five
point eight trillion in additional deficits over the next decade,
and that to me is incredibly concerning. It also has
the potential to add around seven trillion dollars to the debt. Now,
to put this in perspective for some of your listener's peep, Historically,
when we've used this process, it's known as budget reconciliation,
and I know that's a very Washington term. We've often
used reconciliation to cut deficits, and now it seems like
what we're really using it for is we're using it
to approve more borrowing and.
Speaker 1: To avoid and to avoid doing.
Speaker 2: Budgets right absolutely, and to.
Speaker 1: Maybe pass some you know, healthcare overhaul of one sixth
of the economy maybe, I like, yeah, just the way
they use these things. So what is the difference between
the reconciliation and the continuing resolutions and the omnibus stuff?
Speaker 2: Oh? So with with with a continuing resolution, what you're
basically doing is you're keeping funding levels at the same
you know, at the same level as they have been
while you normally try to figure out a budget. Okay,
with a budget resolution, the key thing about or sorry,
with reconciliation. The key thing about that is it's a
way to get around the filibuster, right, you know, And
an omnibus I like to think of an omnibus sort
of like a Christmas tree. It's like we have a
vehicle and we're basically just going to pile a ton
of stuff onto it. And it's another way of sort
of it's another way of getting around a budget, if
you will.
Speaker 1: So on the website crfb dot org crfb dot org,
I will point out they've got a bunch of very
y'all have a bunch of very helpful tools. You got
the reconciliation resources, a whole bunch of links to analysis
and blog posts and such. You have a reconciliation tracker,
you got the COVID money tracker. I saw on that too,
the Fixed US Project, which is an initiative to assess
the root causes of political divisions. So is there a
way that Congress breaks out of this this mold that
it has been in for like I guess it's probably
been what ten or fifteen years or so. It just
doesn't seem they have any incentives to try to go
back to doing it the way they used to do
it with actual budgets.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, the first thing I would say with Congress
is is if I had a member of Congress in
front of me, the first thing I would say is
I would have some just stop digging right. We're in
a thirty six trillion dollar hole right now, and so
just stop digging, right, That would be my first thing.
No new borrowing, pay for your priorities. One of the
things that you mentioned a lot of the resources we
have on our website. One thing we've been developing over
the last six months is something called the Budget Offsets Banks.
It basically is a list of resources where policy makers
can go to it and find potential policies that can
help raise revenue to help pay for priorities. So first
things first, stop digging, no new debt, and then the
third and then the second thing is pay for your priorities.
And then you know, if I could add a third
wish to that, it would be let's start not only
paying for our priorities, but starting to put a down
payment on our debt so we can get ourselves out
of this hole.
Speaker 1: What are the if you had that member of Congress
in front of you, and I suspect you've probably and
you and your colleagues at the Committee for a Responsible
Federal Budget. I'm sure you guys have talked to members
of Congress. What are the obstacles that they claim are
preventing them from doing these things? Because I assume, particularly
if you're talking to Republicans, but also I would suspect
a lot of Democrats too, Like I think everybody recognizes
that a lot of these programs are unsustainable, and the
budget and the debt, the deficit and the debt are unsustainable.
What are their excuses?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the most frequent things we often hear
from members of Congress is I don't hear about this
from my constituents. Right, members will say hey, I'm with
you on the debt, I'm with you on fiscal responsibility,
but I'm not hearing about this when I go home.
And so one of the things I and others in
my organization have been doing is we've been traveling the
country meeting with students, civic business, and local elected leaders
to help raise the profile of the issue, to help
people understand just how unsustainable our fiscal trajectory is and
what we can do about it, to really kind of
put that grassroots pressure and to help you raise awareness
on the local level, because that's one of the things
as well. You know, the other thing is, and you
have to address it, is you know, we live in
highly polarized and partisan times and if you look at
some of the big drivers of our debt and deficit,
one of one of which is social security. I mean
to address that, we're going to need both parties to
really come together and work together on solutions rather than
just demonize each other and say, well, I'm not going
to touch it, because not touching it is not an
option if we want to protect the program.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the demonizing gets you the clicks on social media.
So I mean, you've got to have priorities here, like
we need the clicks.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But here's what I would say, Here's what I
would say to that with the clips. Let me let
me give you a quick fact about our fiscal situation
as a country. Right now, Interest payments on the debt
are the fastest growing part of the federal budget. And
right now we spend more on interest on the debt
in the federal budget than we do on defense and
on children. And if that doesn't make your blood boil,
If that doesn't get you outraged about you know where
we are as a country, I don't know what will,
because to me, that says a lot about you know,
what we're spending our money on and what we need
to change.
Speaker 1: So how unsustainable is it? And can we grow our
way out of the out of the debt?
Speaker 2: So it's not sustainable and we cannot grow our way
out of our debt. It's worth noting that we were
at a previous level of debt right after the end
of the Second World War. But if you remember what
the state of the world was after the end of
the Second World War, I mean, we were the lone
manufacturing superpower left standing. We could generate the economic growth
that's not going to happen right now, and it isn't sustainable.
You're starting to see a lot of voices in the
fiscal community express concern. Jerome Powell was just on television yesterday.
One of the items he expressed concern about was the
debt the ratings agency Moody. I believe it was earlier
this month concerned about our debt load. It's something that
is not sustainable. Now there are some who will say, well, hey, hey,
ben Hap, Japan has a high debt to GDP ratio.
But we don't want to emulate Japan because while Japan
does have that, they also don't have economic growth. So
you know, it's it's not sustainable and we have to
get this under control before it's too late.
Speaker 1: All right, So in thirty seconds, how do you fix it?
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing you do is, I think number
one again, no new borrowing. You pay for your priorities.
You know. The second thing you do is, and this
is really up to our policy makers, is they've got
to work together. First. You've got to get together and
you got to pass a budget. Okay, a budget is
is your nation's priorities, and we got to get back
to doing that, you know, And then you know, the
second thing they got to do is we got to
start working and putting forward bipartisan solutions to some of
our big challenges. We know Social Security is going to
be insolvent in the next eight to ten years, so
what are are we doing about it? We know interest
payments on the debt are high, so what are we
going to do about it? Can we put together a
plan that puts the debt on a more sustainable path
than you know, what we're doing right now? That's what
I would say.
Speaker 1: I would may, I would just suggest that maybe, uh, Jubilee,
let's just forgive everybody's debt. Let's just everybody own the
planet start from zero again? Why not? I feel like
we're at the point of no return anyway, so why
not give it a shot.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, you know, I you know, the
thing that has always allowed the United States to stand
out as a global economic power is people have a
lot of belief in the full faith and credit of
the United States. They believe we pay our bills. Okay,
they believe they can trust us. And when we start
you know, forgiving debt, when we start thinking that we
can print our way out of this situation. Then that
starts to put that trust in us. That starts to
make that trust look a little bit shaky. So we
can't do it. We have to do it by doing
the hard choices. What we've done hard things before. We've
done hard things. We've gone to the moon. You know,
look at what we did in World War Two. We've
done hard things as a country. We can do that.
We can do it again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's hard. This is easier, all right. I'm
just kidding that may but it is true. Look, I
appreciate the work that you guys do up there and
in your time today. His name is Ben tom Chicken.
He is the Vice President and Deputy chief of Staff
for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget SRFB dot org.
A ton of good resources over at that site. Save
travels to you, Ben, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks Bete. Have a great day, you too.
Speaker 1: Take care. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too. And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why, Well,
because it's how you detect media bias, which is why
I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app,
and it's a website, and it combines news from around
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All right, So, as I mentioned, the CRFB dot org
has a ton of resources on the website about deficits,
about you know, spending. If you want to get deep
into the congressional abdication of financial responsibility, this is a
great resource. And no, they're not paying me to say
that it is. I was I spend probably too much
time on there this morning. Like, for example, they estimate
that enacting the legislation that has been so far proposed,
and you heard Ben tom Chik mention it, it would
add five point eight trillion dollars to the deficit, all right,
It would result in deficits that would be about eight
point two percent of GDP by twenty thirty four. The
Senate instructions, the Concurrent Budget Resolution instructions would allow for
more borrowing than any recent legislation and make it much
more difficult for policymakers to fix the country's fiscal situation.
So like this will make things much worse than they
already are. Under these instructions, annual deficits would be more
than three trillion dollars in about six years. It would
rise three and a half trillion to twenty thirty four.
If you don't do this and you just keep the
current law in place, you're only at two point six trillion.
So it's a trillion more what the Senate has proposed.
While deficits have increased during recessions and emergencies in the past,
these deficit levels would be unprecedented during normal economic circumstances
and present major risks to the country's economy and ability
to respond to crises. Also, their president, the President of
the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya McGuinness, put
out a statement when the House of Representatives voted to
adopt the Senate Fiscal Year Concurrent Budget Resolution, and when
the House did that, it unlocked the fast track reconciliation process. Okay,
and she said, this budget sets the stage for the
largest deficit increase in history. She called it an absolute disgrace.
The Senate took the houses borrowing allowance and doubled it,
more than doubled it, clearing the way for a bill
that could borrow more than the American Rescue Plan, the TCJA,
the Cares Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law combined combined.
That's outrageous. The Senate shrunk the Houses required spending cuts,
so the House had the borrowing allowance that was higher.
But then they had a bunch of cuts. The Senate
took the House's borrowing allowance. They said, yes, we liked
that idea, let's borrow more, but how about we cut
your cuts. Let's eliminate your cuts by roughly nine point
eight percent. The Senate required cuts that amount to three
dollars per household per year. That'll get you a cup
of cough. Will it even get you a cup of
coffee anymore? I don't even think so, She says. Attaching
such a debt blowout to the largest debt ceiling increase
in history just adds insult to injury. The House messed
up in deferring to the Senate this time, and they
must not continue to capitulate to them going forward. Fiscally
responsible members of Congress should insist that the final legislation
is fully paid for with substantial spending cuts and thoughtful
tax reforms. I heard somebody say the other day, actually
that the Tea Party was the limited government and fiscal
responsibility people, the Tea Party of twenty ten, twenty eleven timeframe.
That was us asking nicely. That's what that was. And
Trump represents what happens when you get ignored for another decade. Now.
I don't know if Trump is actually going to do
what's necessary to get the fiscal house in order. He
has said he's not going to touch Social Security, Medicaid,
everything else. Right, nobody wants to touch the entitlements. Third
rail of politics and all that, and the left demonizes
this over and over and over again. They just can't stop.
They can't help themselves. They've been doing it for so long,
it's just it's second nature to them. But this is unsustainable.
There isn't enough money. There isn't enough money. Cuts are
going to have to be made, and Congress is going
to have to do its damn job. But I don't
think they will because they've offloaded all responsibility onto the
executive branch. So this way they get to blame somebody
else for the bankruptcy that we are obviously on the
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McClatchy papers reporting that at the North Carolina State Capitol,
the State Senate took the first of two votes to
advance it's proposed two year, sixty six billion dollar budget.
Yesterday I went over the highlights of the spending plan.
It's a two year budget. Each year, it's like thirty
three billion and it's like thirty two and a half
and then thirty three and a half. I think, so
the end, this is normal. They do a two year
budget during their long session. They'll come back next year
in the short session make any tweaks to the budget,
but they don't overhaul the budget. They do the budget
on a two year rolling basis. Wow. Maybe the US
Congress could do something like that. That would be amazing,
blending tax cuts, modest raises for teachers and state workers,
increased reserves for helene recovery, and cuts to programs. Okay,
so it seems like there is a narrative calcifying here
for the state Senate budget plan. Now the House is
going to do its own. I think they're going to
do theirs the beginning of May. They'll roll theirs out
and then there will be differences. They will then meet
in a conference committee together, you know, they'll designate people
from the House and from the Senate. They'll go together,
they'll work out differences and stuff, and then they'll come
forward to the general body with their finished work. And
generally speaking, those votes tend to I don't want to say,
I mean, they are basically a formality you can make
some changes after the fact with amendments, but it doesn't
usually happen most of the time. You know, the budget
talks are going on with leadership involved, and so by
the time you get to the finished product and it
goes to the General Assembly to vote like that, people
pretty much know that's it. We'll wait and see what
the House version looks like. But the narrative is that
the raises are modest. These are modest raises. Now, one
thing I feel the need to point out because they
are talked about as two separate things. The pay raises
for teachers, state employees, you know, law enforcement, whatever you have.
You have that discussion that occurs, and then you have
the discussion about the income tax rates. And it seems
like reporters never they never combine the two. They never like,
they never take into account that, yes, the state employees
are getting a pay raise. And while it may be
depending on you know, teachers or cops or whatever. I
went over those numbers the other day, but the that
pay raise percentage represents a total you know, net paycheck
that you come home with, right, and then the income
tax rate by dropping means your net take home is more.
Does that make sense? So they lower the rate, they
give you a raise. You end up with more money
than just simply that raise, because the income tax rate
is now lower, you get to keep more of your
own money. But they never combine these two ideas, these
two concepts, and that is part of the budget. That's like,
they run all of these numbers and what kind of
impact is it going to have on revenue and all
of that. Because there is a philosophy on the right
that is, you made the money, you should keep your
money as you should keep as much money as possible.
If the state or any government ends up with a surplus,
it means that they took too much. They do not
want to operate at a surplus. The point of the
government is not to make money, right, it's to provide
core services. And the problem is, as I mentioned in
the first hour, government like fire, is a useful servant
and a fearful master. It will spread and it will
it will just keep taking more and more and more,
getting into all these different areas, crowding out private sector competitors.
That's why you have to constantly rein it in and
you do that by not granting it you know, powers
to do stuff, but also through the power of the purse,
through the funding. And so if you are constantly seeing
as our friends on the left usually see surpluses as
a reason to now enact new plans, new programs to
spend that money. This is the see a penny, spend
a penny philosophy that drives people on the left. That's
their economic way of thinking. They and I went over
the quotes the other day. The rainy day fund is like,
it's a offensive to them. Well, they'll say, you know, oh,
we should have you know, some rainy day fund. Sure,
but we should totally use that fund right now to
give teachers pay raises. That's not that's one time money.
Like they see that as proof though, that that we
can collect more taxes from people and then we can
spend it on more programs and services and the like.
And this goes back to the argument about core services. Right,
your core services are limited, and just because you end
up generating a surplus in revenue doesn't mean that you
should start expanding beyond your core services, because once you
start expanding beyond the core, you start losing focus on
what you're actually supposed to be doing. For example, public safety,
it is actually the only real reason public safety and justice. Right,
That's the whole point of having a government at all.
There's no other reason why. At the core base of
the argument, if you are ordering a society, you're trying
to build a society around you know, you got a
thousand people in some little village someplace, you have to
have some form of order. And who gets to use force,
who meets out the justice? Right, That's the reason why
people order themselves under a government giving them the power
the monopoly onforced Otherwise everybody else is committing violence on
each other for whatever perceived you know, slights or violations
that their neighbors may have committed. That's it. And so
when you and then you start now I'm not arguing,
you know, I'm not a capital l libertarian saying there
shouldn't be any government whatsoever to do these things. I
understand that there are practical benefits, but your core services,
when you start moving beyond them, you start now getting
distracted from the thing that you're actually supposed to be doing.
After a debate yesterday that lasted more than five hours,
the Senate voted to approve the budget with Senator Dan Blue,
a Raleigh Democrat, and the former leader of the Senate
Democrats joining Republicans to vote for the bill, along with
three other Democrats. One Republican voted against it, but you
had four Democrats that joined the what twenty six? I
think it is Republicans to approve it. Interestingly enough, though
the word bipartisan never mentioned in this story. I'm sure
it was just an oversight, but that would be the headline.
Senate approves budget proposal in bipartisan vote. That's a headline
for this story. But you don't get that when you're
the Republican majority and you can peel off some Democrats,
including the former Senate Democrat leader. All right, so spring
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mentioned that one Republican voted against the Senate budget. What's
the deal with that, Glad you asked? That would be
Republican Senator Bobby Haynig of Kuratuk County. Why would he
vote against it? Well, he wants to make sure that
the state's coastal ferries still remain free, not like free
from oppression, but like no cost to ride once again
core services. Republican Senator Bobby Haynig tried to He had
an amendment, it did not pass. I believe it would
have cut a provision of the Senate GOP budget item
that ends free rides on the state's coastal ferries and
start charging tolls to board the boats, which I kind
of feel like is a smart thing to do. No
free rides, because there ain't no such thing as free.
This is one of the things that like it's difficult.
I get it. This is your jurisdiction, this is your district.
You know, you want to make sure that people can
get on and off the ferries for free. I understand,
But is that really what gov Co should be doing?
Should they even be running the ferries at all? So
Hannick voted against the budget. I don't know what that means.
If Josh Stein veto's the budget, maybe the House puts
it back in and then Hannig can vote for it.
I don't know. We'll see, you know, if he is
able to get that the free rides continuing. I'm not
sure the reason. Senator Dan Blue, Democrat from Raleigh, why
he voted for it. He made an amendment to the budget,
and that would give County five additional assistant district attorneys. Okay,
so well that's a good thing. More assistant das. The
Meckliberg DA says he needs more das. I don't know
how many meckliberg counties got, but if they're not getting
more district attorneys, that might I don't know, that might be.
That might be a testament to the ineffectiveness of the
local Mecklenberg delegation, which is basically old Democrats, their inability
to get anything out of a Republican majority. And while
you could say, oh, that's the Republican's fault, you could
also argue that it's kind of the Democrat's fault too,
because if you can't figure out a way to get
Republicans to increase funding for district attorney's offices, to throw
more people in jail, right to crack down on crime,
if you can't figure out a way to convince Republicans
to sign on to that, I kind of feel like
that's a you problem. You know, you should be able
to because my suspicion is that Republicans would be happy
to add more das to Mecklenburg County for you, if
you were to run an amendment to ask for, hey,
we need ten more assistant das or whatever. I suspect
that if the Republicans agreed to do that, they would
expect you to vote for the budget but you don't
want to vote for the budget. You want your thing
in there, and then you want to vote against the
whole thing, so you can still get what you wanted
and not have to explain why you voted for all
of the other spending that's in the budget. A second
and final vote was to be today. I don't know
if they've done it yet or not. For the second reading.
The House is working on its own budget proposal that's
expected to be released in a couple of weeks here
sometime in May. Josh Stein, the governor, said that the
Senate spending plan is inadequate. We need to spend more money,
more money, more money. Also, I don't know if he'll
use the school vouchers issue like Roy Cooper always did
to veto and medicated expansions now off the table, right
because we already did that, So now Stein can't use that.
So I suspect he's going to say, you know, more
money for Helene recovery and get rid of the voucher
program and then he'll veto it or more pay raises
for teachers. So I'd rather veto the budget so they
don't get anything, right. I don't know, we'll see because
under the state plan, teachers would see a new salary schedule,
that's what they call it. You can actually go to
the website, the state government website, and you can look
at these schedules. You can look at the pay for
you know, all the teachers not by name, but by
years of service, and you know, the annual thousand dollars
step increases that they get every year for like the
first fifteen years, the additional bonuses basically annually for the
you know, certified if they become certified, if they well,
they haven't restored the masters. I think that is in
one of the that's in one of the pieces of
legislation that was run earlier this session. So I don't
know if they're going to restore that or not. But
you can look at you can look at the schedule,
see how much teachers make. And so the starting pay
would be set under this plan that got passed yesterday,
approved yesterday by the Senate. Forty five hundred ten dollars
is the starting teacher pay zero experience forty one five ten.
That goes to fifty six six fifty, so almost fifty
seven thousand dollars for those with twenty five years or
more of experience. Teachers will also get a three thousand
dollars bonus over the two year budget cycle and the
raises of two point three percent in year one, three
point three percent over both years, and again the income
tax rate drops, so they're keeping more of their own money.
Most state employees. I went over all of the data
on that the state employees. There are all different breakdowns
and there are additional They get a baseline of like
one and a quarter percent increase, but then there's targeted
increases across all these different job descriptions real quick. Meanwhile,
Central Piedmont Community College says that a planned training facility
will be a great resource for local law enforcement. It's
one hundred and eighteen million dollar project. It's called Community Lifeline.
But the activists are like, it's going to be cops
city like Atlanta that drew all the protests. Yeah from
the activists, so like, no, we want untrained law enforcement.
Wait what. CPCC is partnering with Mecklelnberg County to build
the facility at its Lavine campus in Matthews. It'll feature
simulation spaces replicating real life emergency scenarios like a townhouse
or hotel. According to the college's news release, there will
be a driving course and a soundproof firing range. I
don't know if that's indoor or outdoor, and it'll expand
academic programs as well, because yeah, I think this is
an outrage. Obviously we can't have trained police. My goodness,
what are these people thinking? All right, that'll do it
for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I
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