Speaker 1: Billy Cunningham, the Great America, of course, the junior Senator
Speaker 1: soon the senior Senator from the state of Kentucky. My
Speaker 1: home state is Ran Paul. And Ran Paul welcome again
Speaker 1: to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, I
Speaker 1: love your comments on Squakbox and elsewhere about the deficits.
Speaker 1: The most predictable financial crisis ever hit any country. It's
Speaker 1: going to be America in the next few years, before
Speaker 1: we get to the Rains Act, before we get to
Speaker 1: the crisis sixpenny plan. Tell me your reaction. The news
Speaker 1: of the day, of course, is the great debate between
Speaker 1: Kamala and Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Who won, who lost? And where do we go from here?
Speaker 3: Their presidential debates are a unique bear. They are targeted
Speaker 3: mostly towards the people in the middle. You know, about
Speaker 3: forty forty five percent of America are Republicans forty forty
Speaker 3: five percent or Democrats, and there's ten or fifteen, maybe
Speaker 3: twenty percent in the middle. And so when you're doing
Speaker 3: these debates, you got to try to attract those people
Speaker 3: in the middle. And you kind of wonder who these
Speaker 3: people are. And I tell people to imagine going to
Speaker 3: a dinner party and somebody comes to your dinner party
Speaker 3: and they say out come, but only if you don't
Speaker 3: talk about religion or politics, and nobody raises their voice.
Speaker 3: And that's who the Independence are. And so Donald Trump
Speaker 3: has to struggle a little bit because of his larger
Speaker 3: than life personality that sometimes the Independence think he's too pombastic.
Speaker 3: If they hear his policies, I think he can win.
Speaker 3: I think in some ways it was a draw. You know,
Speaker 3: last night, I think sometimes he took debate too much.
Speaker 3: But I do think that when you compare the policies
Speaker 3: between what Trump is presenting. You know, Trump passed, along
Speaker 3: with our health Republican Congress, a large tax cut which
Speaker 3: caused a booming economy and some of the lowest unemployment
Speaker 3: ever recorded. We didn't hear enough of that. We didn't
Speaker 3: hear enough of the ensuing inflation that we got from
Speaker 3: the Biden administration. You know, we have most average American
Speaker 3: working families have less money to go on vacation, less
Speaker 3: money for gas groceries. People are actually in the mew
Speaker 3: trying to decide what meat they can they can afford.
Speaker 3: And that's all because of Biden's spending and borrowing so
Speaker 3: much and creating this inflation. I don't think we've heard
Speaker 3: enough of that in the debate. I think if we
Speaker 3: hear more, policy wins. But if we get stuck in
Speaker 3: the run of how big the crowds are, sometimes that's
Speaker 3: just not a winning, winning approach.
Speaker 1: Senator on that front, I'm holding a story here from Reuters,
Speaker 1: and I agree with you. When it was done about
Speaker 1: ten forty five at not I had a feeling in
Speaker 1: the pit of my stomach that wasn't good. I said,
Speaker 1: this isn't good. But then I didn't go to sleep
Speaker 1: till like three or four o'clock in the morning. Finally
Speaker 1: got a couple hours rest. I woke up and said, now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. She may have won the debate, but
Speaker 1: her policies are the same. We're in the same position
Speaker 1: we were in before. I'm looking at the story out
Speaker 1: of Reuters and Reuters identified and interviewed in researched ten
Speaker 1: undecided voters, three in Wisconsin, three in Michigan, four in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and they were all unconnected to each other, so it
Speaker 1: would be more legitimate. And at the end of the
Speaker 1: debate they had to say who won the debate. Six
Speaker 1: of these undecided voters shifted towards supporting Trump, three ling
Speaker 1: toward Harris, one remains undecided, and a small sampling they
Speaker 1: said basically, well, she's in power now, why can't she
Speaker 1: do what she's already saying? She's in the future. Why
Speaker 1: hadn't she done it yet? And they also said her
Speaker 1: facial gestures didn't look presidential. She looked a little according
Speaker 1: to some woman, looked a little goofy. And so is
Speaker 1: it possible that those of us in politics who live
Speaker 1: and diet see it through a different lens than someone
Speaker 1: who is undecided, who's not clear who's running for president.
Speaker 1: I was with a dentist about two nights ago, and
Speaker 1: she's very bright, intelligent, smart, And she asked me, is
Speaker 1: the debate this week or next? Is Kamala Harris still running?
Speaker 1: Or is it Biden? And this is a smart person
Speaker 1: who doesn't watch the news, doesn't care about politics, thinks
Speaker 1: she's going to vote for Trump. So is it possible
Speaker 1: that we in the field see things that the undecided
Speaker 1: voters don't see?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because a lot of people are going to make
Speaker 3: their decision not necessarily on a debate, but on their
Speaker 3: own personal circumstances. So if you make sixty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a year, or you and your wife make that as
Speaker 3: a combined income, and it's only buying fifty eight thousand
Speaker 3: dollars worth of stuff because you're losing two thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to inflation. You see that every day. They know whether
Speaker 3: they could go on vacation this year, whether they can
Speaker 3: drive across state lines or go to a park, or
Speaker 3: do the vacation they'd like to do, whether they can
Speaker 3: afford what they want to buy in the grocery store.
Speaker 3: So that is an economic reality they can't escape. But
Speaker 3: elections do come down to, you know, sort of Santa
Speaker 3: Claus versus the American dream. The American dreams want of opportunity.
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily concrete, but it's it's freedom and the
Speaker 3: opportunity to strive, to learn and succeed and to prosper them.
Speaker 3: Santa Claus is someone who just offers you free stuff,
Speaker 3: and they pander to you, and they say, hey, here's
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars for a house. Some people will
Speaker 3: jump to that and say, I can't get a house,
Speaker 3: and no bank will give me the mind, and I
Speaker 3: don't have twenty five thousand dollars. So I'd love to
Speaker 3: have Santa Clau it's giving you twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: But there's also are there enough thinking people who will
Speaker 3: think of the repercussions of putting up twenty five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars that isn't real, giving it to people, and then
Speaker 3: causing more price inflation. Maybe the house actually goes up
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars more because you've stimulated an artificial
Speaker 3: demand with fake money. So I think there are enough
Speaker 3: voters out there. So we have to make the debate
Speaker 3: over who is going to lead the country and which
Speaker 3: party will lead the country on policy, and you know
Speaker 3: that we've got to and get beyond certain impediments that
Speaker 3: for people who don't like Donald Trump. He has to
Speaker 3: get beyond that to the policy. And I think it
Speaker 3: could have been better last night, but he still has
Speaker 3: every opportunity and long enough to make sure people can
Speaker 3: get that message.
Speaker 1: Your father was excellent on this issue. I had your
Speaker 1: dad on several times. I've had you on a few
Speaker 1: times about the deficit. And it's out there. It's a
Speaker 1: looming giant. It's terrible. It's almost like an asteroid that
Speaker 1: we know it's coming. I can tell you when it's
Speaker 1: going to hit within five years. But when it hits,
Speaker 1: it's going to destroy humanity as we know it. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's thirty six trillion. We're going up the rate about
Speaker 1: a trillion every one hundred day. He's going to add
Speaker 1: two trillion this year to the national debt, and as
Speaker 1: far as the eye can see it, it'll be a
Speaker 1: fifty trillion dollars by twenty thirty two fifty trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: And when I watched you with Joe Kernan and Becky
Speaker 1: the other day on squad Box, you talked about what
Speaker 1: will happen when the world quits buying our debt or
Speaker 1: the dollar is not the reserve currency. There's an unbelievable
Speaker 1: crisis coming. Can you explain that to the American people?
Speaker 3: Know, we spend about six trillion, we bring in about
Speaker 3: four trillions, So we're gonna have a two trillion dollar debt.
Speaker 3: That debt we sell, We pay for it with the
Speaker 3: Treasury bond. Somebody buys them. The public buys about a
Speaker 3: third of those, foreign countries buy about a third, and
Speaker 3: the Fed bas a third. When the Fed buys the debt,
Speaker 3: they do it by just printing up money, so that
Speaker 3: cost is inflation. But if there's a loss of confidence,
Speaker 3: it doesn't always come gradually. It might happen tomorrow, it
Speaker 3: might happen next week. It might not happen for five years.
Speaker 3: But there can come a time where there's a cataclysmic
Speaker 3: loss of faith. Realize that even in Europe, as bad
Speaker 3: as they are in Europe, over half of the countries
Speaker 3: in the European Union balance their budget on an annual basis.
Speaker 3: Most of them have high taxes, but they don't go
Speaker 3: into debt for their social Security and their Medicare programs.
Speaker 3: Most of them have the age increasing for all these
Speaker 3: programs based on longevity. We don't do any of that.
Speaker 3: We've got real problems. It's going to hit the fan
Speaker 3: at some point in time. My hope is that we
Speaker 3: wake up and realize this and try to slow down
Speaker 3: the accumulation of debt before we get to a catastrophe.
Speaker 3: But I fear that both parties are ignorant of this
Speaker 3: and terrible with the spending. I mean, the Trump administration
Speaker 3: added eight trillion in debt. The Biden administration is going
Speaker 3: to add eight trillion in debt, So there really has
Speaker 3: not been a lot of difference between the addition of
Speaker 3: debt between Republicans and Democrats. And that's the sorry truth.
Speaker 1: From George Washington in seventeen eighty nine to George Bush
Speaker 1: and twenty oh one. Think of the economic military difficulties
Speaker 1: America had between George Washington and Bush. Forty three, we
Speaker 1: went through Hell's half Acre, Great Glory one wars. The
Speaker 1: total accumulated national debt in twenty oh one was about
Speaker 1: four and a half trillion dollars. We add twice as
Speaker 1: much of that. We had that same number every two
Speaker 1: years now, So seventeen eighty nine, the two thousand and
Speaker 1: one was about four trillion. We now add that same
Speaker 1: amount four trillion every two years.
Speaker 2: How's that sustainable?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know the George w. Bush doubled the national debt
Speaker 3: from your right just a little under under five to ten.
Speaker 3: Obama doubled it from ten to twenty. And now it's
Speaker 3: going up at an even faster pace. During COVID, when
Speaker 3: we made a terrible decision to close the economy down
Speaker 3: and pass out pre checks to everybody, the deficit exploded
Speaker 3: like it's never done before. So you know, I've offered
Speaker 3: for years a penny plan, cut one percent across the
Speaker 3: board to balance the budget. But it no longer works.
Speaker 3: It now has to be called the sixpenny plan to
Speaker 3: it'd be a six percent cut for five years, would
Speaker 3: balance the budget. But I actually will get a vote
Speaker 3: on this in the next two weeks. I will force
Speaker 3: them to vote on it. Right now, there is no budget.
Speaker 3: There's been no vote on a budget. Republicans didn't produce
Speaker 3: one in the House, Democrats didn't produce one in the Senate.
Speaker 3: There has been no vote on a budget. So we're
Speaker 3: spending six trillion dollars with no budget plan. And this
Speaker 3: is outrageous. No corporation would go through a year, you know,
Speaker 3: a billion dollar corporation wouldn't go through a year without
Speaker 3: a spending plan. But I'm going to force them to
Speaker 3: vote online and it will be the sixpenny plan. We'll
Speaker 3: cut six percent a year each year for five years,
Speaker 3: balances in the fifth year. And my I guess is
Speaker 3: I'll get somewhere between about sixteen and twenty five Republicans,
Speaker 3: about maybe half the Republicans if I'm lucky, no Democrats,
Speaker 3: and then half the Republicans will vote with the Democrats
Speaker 3: against my budget, but at least somebody will put forward something,
Speaker 3: put something on paper and force them to vote.
Speaker 2: We have about two minutes remaining.
Speaker 1: In a concrete way, what happens when the world quit
Speaker 1: spying our debt or the dollar is not a reserve currency.
Speaker 2: What happens? How does the crisis manifest itself?
Speaker 3: Well, this is the question, and the question is whether
Speaker 3: it's a gradual crisis and it looms over weeks and months,
Speaker 3: or whether it happens in one day. This is a
Speaker 3: scary thing about it. If you look back at the
Speaker 3: calamities of the last one hundred years, most of the
Speaker 3: stock market calamity is unfolded in a period of twenty
Speaker 3: four hours. So we sell our debt periodically, and when
Speaker 3: they go to have this auction of our debt, people
Speaker 3: show up and buy it. There could be a catastrophic
Speaker 3: day when nobody shows up and people just say we
Speaker 3: have lost confidence. What will happen on that day is
Speaker 3: a federal by one hundred percent of it. But what
Speaker 3: it happened is to get any of the private marketplace
Speaker 3: to buy it again, they have to raise the interest rates.
Speaker 3: And you know, we had a significant crisis like this
Speaker 3: with when in nineteen eighty when Volker raises interest rates
Speaker 3: all the way to nineteen percent. Part of that is
Speaker 3: to get people to buy the debt. But also realized
Speaker 3: is that we have so much debt, is thirty five
Speaker 3: tillion dollars debt, that the interest payment we've been doing
Speaker 3: was under two percent, and we were keeping you know,
Speaker 3: we were doubling the debt and actually staying with the
Speaker 3: same interest payment. But now the interest rates just begin
Speaker 3: to rise. They're paying a little over three percent on
Speaker 3: the debt, but our interest payment's over eight hundred billion now,
Speaker 3: it's about equal to the military spending. It's becoming the
Speaker 3: number one item in our budget. So I don't know
Speaker 3: whether it's a gradual or abrupt ind but there are
Speaker 3: people who talk about a black swan. A black swan
Speaker 3: can be in the stock market, can be an abrupt
Speaker 3: loss of confidence, but it could also be in the
Speaker 3: in the marketplace for the dollar, because the dollar really
Speaker 3: isn't backed by anything anymore. At one time it had
Speaker 3: a link to gold, but with no link. It's the
Speaker 3: full faith and credit of the United States, and the
Speaker 3: people believe in the taxing power, and we've destroyed our
Speaker 3: currency at a slower pace than you know, say Argentina
Speaker 3: or some of these other countries. But you know, there
Speaker 3: are other things that people can go to.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a story in the Wall Street journals
Speaker 3: today about tether, which is a stable coin. It's a
Speaker 3: cryptocurrency back to one to one with dollars, and the
Speaker 3: extraordinary amount of commerce going through that now. And the
Speaker 3: question is, one day will people bail out not just
Speaker 3: for gold, but will they bail out for a cryptocurrency
Speaker 3: that is backed one to one with some kind of
Speaker 3: hard asset in the stocks or with gold.
Speaker 1: Well, in today's world, things don't happen slowly. I would
Speaker 1: anticipate almost a nineteen eighty seven crash, and that within
Speaker 1: one or two days there'll be a precipitating factor and
Speaker 1: the world's going to figure out we can't repay our yet,
Speaker 1: we have no chance that we're paying the principle, and
Speaker 1: the interest rates must continue to skyrocket. The federal by
Speaker 1: most of the debt print more money, which means every
Speaker 1: dollar you got is worth less. Lastly, the fourth branch
Speaker 1: of government, some say the most powerful branch, is the
Speaker 1: regulatory branch. All the three letter capital letters, you have
Speaker 1: something called the Rains Act, Can you give us an
Speaker 1: update on what that is and what it seeks to do.
Speaker 3: This would transform the regulatory environment in our country. Regulations
Speaker 3: are killing business and have any huge cost to the economy,
Speaker 3: costs US millions of dollars in jobs and millions of
Speaker 3: dollars in prosperity. The Rains Act would say that any
Speaker 3: agency that creates a regulation that is a major regulation
Speaker 3: that will cost the economy over one hundred million dollars,
Speaker 3: they can't just write it without the approval of Congress.
Speaker 3: It would have to come back and be voted on
Speaker 3: by Congress. Unfortunately, only Republicans support this concept that no
Speaker 3: Democrats on the bill. We're forced to vote on occasion
Speaker 3: and never gotten a Democrat to support it. But this
Speaker 3: is a great distinction when people trying to think who
Speaker 3: they want to vote for. There are no Democrats that
Speaker 3: are for repealing any regulations. Just the truth of the matter.
Speaker 3: There are no Democrats that are for reducing any taxes.
Speaker 3: There are only Democrats out there that will say we
Speaker 3: need increased taxes on the rich. The truth of the
Speaker 3: matter is the rich pay all the taxes already. The
Speaker 3: top one percent of wage earners pay almost half of
Speaker 3: the income tax. The top ten percent of wage learners
Speaker 3: pay ninety percent over ninety percent of the income tax.
Speaker 3: But there are distinct differences. The Rains Act is difficult
Speaker 3: to pass. The only thing I can say that's good
Speaker 3: right now is this Supreme Court has gotten rid of
Speaker 3: this deference to regulatory agencies. And there is a chance
Speaker 3: that by lawsuits gradually making their way to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: that we will neuter some of these federal agencies that
Speaker 3: are writing such egregious regulations.
Speaker 1: And lastly, talk about corporate taxes, company business taxes. Every
Speaker 1: dollar from government requiring businesses to pay more. Corporate tax
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, are not paid by the companies.
Speaker 1: They're paid by the consumers in the form of higher
Speaker 1: cost higher prices for the goods and services produced by
Speaker 1: that company. And so the canard by Kamala Harris and
Speaker 1: the great debate that somehow corporate taxes are going to
Speaker 1: go up that means you're going to pay more for
Speaker 1: goods and services as a consumer.
Speaker 3: Correct, without question, that's true. Consumers pay the taxes, but
Speaker 3: also realize that if you raise taxes on American corporations,
Speaker 3: you'll have less American corporations, meaning that these corporations go overseas.
Speaker 3: So if you want American corporations to succeed, you have
Speaker 3: to have a level playing environment. You have to have
Speaker 3: equal taxes. For decades, Sweden, Denmark and all these countries
Speaker 3: we thought were more socialists than us actually had lower
Speaker 3: corporate taxes. We finally lowered it under Donald Trump. And
Speaker 3: lowering the corporate taxes low and behold calls an economic boon.
Speaker 3: And guess what, more tax revenue. Because the economy grew
Speaker 3: so fast that even at lower rates, more tax revenue
Speaker 3: came in. So this is a big distinction between the parties.
Speaker 3: And if we can make that distinction, and I think
Speaker 3: people will choose the prosperity that comes with lower taxes
Speaker 3: less regulation. But we've got to make that case, and
Speaker 3: got to make the case that we are the Party
Speaker 3: of the American Dream, where the millionaires of next year
Speaker 3: will be people who will have come from ordinary circumstances,
Speaker 3: ordinary backgrounds, who become the wealthy of an inter generation America.
Speaker 3: But only in America does that happen because of freedom, capitalism,
Speaker 3: international trade, you know, and only one party is offering that,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Quesse Senator rom Paul, thank you great having you on again.
Speaker 1: Even though Kamala Harris may have won the debate, the
Speaker 1: policy differences remain, and you have to think as a consumer,
Speaker 1: as an American. She may have won the debate, but
Speaker 1: I'm not voting for Trump. I'm voting for the United
Speaker 1: States of America. I'm voting for our system of government.
Speaker 1: I'm voting for the way the First Amendment should read.
Speaker 1: I'm voting for the Second Amendment. I'm voting for the
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment. I'm voting for a closed down border. I'm
Speaker 1: voting for legal immigration. I'm not voting for Trump. I'm
Speaker 1: voting for America. Senator ran Paul, Yeah, I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: just I wish there was more senators out there like you.
Speaker 2: So thanks a lot.
Speaker 3: Bill enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: Ill.
Speaker 2: Let's continue with more. Thank you, senator.
Speaker 1: Let's continue with more news and students report next at
Speaker 1: trume of the Reds News Radio seven hundred WW