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America’s $39 trillion debt crisis! What happens when the bill comes due · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:06
  You're listening to the Hidden Lightness on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
• 0:10
  I'm your host, Jimmy Hinton.
• 0:12
  I hope you all had a very, very blessed Easter Sunday and Easter weekend and got to uh hang out with family and all that good stuff.
• 0:22
  Uh, we are so blessed.
• 0:24
  I you hear me say this all the time.
• 0:26
  I will continue to say it.
• 0:28
  As long as I have breath in my lungs, I believe we are blessed.
• 0:33
  It was resurrection Sunday.
• 0:36
  Uh, we had a great, great weekend, got to spend time with the family, and it got me to thinking this whole idea about uh resurrection and new beginnings and new life, and and what got me thinking about all this.
• 0:52
  Now, bear with me, is our national debt tracker.
• 0:58
  We just right before Easter weekend surpassed 39 trillion dollars of debt.
• 1:11
  And it's uh it's a little bit depressing.
• 1:14
  Uh, a little bit, uh, I'm being sarcastic here.
• 1:17
  It's quite depressing.
• 1:19
  And I want to break this down.
• 1:21
  As you all know, I talk about finances a lot.
• 1:24
  It's it's a deep, deep passion of mine.
• 1:28
  Um actually, while we're talking about debt, uh, I I did write my book, um, and it's on personal debt, and I'm gonna talk about that too.
• 1:39
  We're gonna kind of compare uh the national debt versus personal debt.
• 1:45
  But my book, Tithing Your Time, Treasure and Talent.
• 1:51
  Uh, I am gonna donate 100% of all book sales, 100% for the month of April is going to be donated.
• 2:01
  I will not take one single penny.
• 2:03
  And so all of the book sales to, you know, in order to practice what I preach, uh, and because it's just fun to do, I'm gonna take somebody and bless someone, and I'm gonna put something out on social media and let the audience decide who the recipient is of that money.
• 2:24
  So I will total it all up at the end of the month.
• 2:27
  I will be very transparent and tell people what the dollar amount is, and I will give 100% of that away to whoever the recipient is that social media decides, and I will take a video of that and I will put that on my social media, and I'm pretty excited about that.
• 2:48
  So uh when we live in a blessed nation, I believe God blesses us when we bless other people.
• 2:56
  And I want to bless people with uh with knowledge for how to handle personal finances because uh folks, we are up against a behemoth of national debt, and this is having a lasting impact on the American public.
• 3:14
  Hold on to your seats because I'm gonna talk about what the government uh secretly is talking about for how to pay down our national debt.
• 3:25
  And I'll give you a little bit of a teaser here.
• 3:28
  It's not about the government feeling a little bit of pain and pressure, it's about heaping that on the American people, but doing it in a backdoor way so that it doesn't make the government look like they're the bad guy.
• 3:43
  So we're gonna get into all of that more, and it's just uh it's fascinating to me, it's frustrating to me, and uh, we're gonna break this all down.
• 3:53
  So here's an article.
• 3:55
  Um I I first saw the article come up on Fox Business, and this came up the end of last week.
• 4:04
  Uh, but uh man, I started doing a little bit of digging, and the more I dig, the more frightening this gets.
• 4:13
  Uh, but I'm not here to scare you folks.
• 4:15
  I'm here to offer hope and direction.
• 4:19
  Because I'm telling you, if ever there's a time for the American people to get their personal finances in order right now, actually, yesterday, actually 20 years ago was the time to do it.
• 4:35
  But we have got to take this seriously.
• 4:38
  This is no joke.
• 4:41
  Uh, I I jest a lot.
• 4:43
  I I was uh nominated the class clown in high school.
• 4:48
  I I like to joke around a lot, but this is serious.
• 4:52
  I mean, this is this is people, it's their livelihood, it's their lives that the government's messing with.
• 4:59
  And trust me when I say these four words, they do not care.
• 5:09
  I don't care how much politicians talk about, how we're really in tune with the American people, and we're doing this because we care for the American people, and nobody cares for the American people like I do.
• 5:24
  You'll hear politicians use those catchphrases.
• 5:29
  I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.
• 5:31
  They don't care.
• 5:33
  They don't care about you, they don't care about me, they don't care about our future.
• 5:38
  They are very, very greedy for the most part, and again, not all politicians are bad people.
• 5:45
  Um I'm not making that argument, but the government as a whole, they are not here to help us.
• 5:53
  So this article here, the U.S.
• 5:54
  national debt is climbing at a rapid pace and has shown no signs of slowing down in 2026, despite the growing criticism of massive levels of government spending.
• 6:08
  The national debt, which measures what the U.S.
• 6:11
  owes its creditors rose to 39 trillion, and then a whole lot of numbers after that.
• 6:19
  As of March 30, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department.
• 6:26
  That is an increase of about 25 billion dollars, 25 billion increase from the figure reported.
• 6:36
  You ready for this?
• 6:38
  The previous day.
• 6:54
  Because of compound interest, it's picking up speed.
• 6:59
  Uh by comparison, just four decades ago, the national debt hovered around 907 billion dollars.
• 7:12
  This is crazy.
• 7:13
  Interest payments on the debt for the government's fiscal year, which begins in October, now exceeds the cost of Medicare and the defense budget.
• 7:26
  That's wild.
• 7:31
  The just the interest payments, the interest payments alone.
• 7:36
  We're on the hook for this, folks.
• 7:39
  And I know people make the argument, well, it's just digital, it's digital digital money.
• 7:46
  They're they're just making up numbers.
• 7:48
  Um it's not real money.
• 7:52
  They'll be able to wipe that out, and they'll zero the budget out, and uh, life will go on.
• 7:58
  The problem is it doesn't work that way.
• 8:00
  This is actual debt.
• 8:02
  We owe this money.
• 8:05
  And the interest payments are picking up steam big time.
• 8:10
  We're paying more and more on interest.
• 8:12
  This last year, the uptick on on interest climbed dramatically.
• 8:19
  And we're not even touching the principal at this point.
• 8:23
  I mean, this is this is the definition of irresponsible spending, and it just continues.
• 8:28
  They don't stop.
• 8:29
  They keep saying, well, let's raise the debt ceiling.
• 8:31
  And look now.
• 8:33
  Uh, look at how long the government has been shut down.
• 8:38
  They keep doing these partial shutdowns, and it's that they use it as a very nasty political move to get leverage to pay for all their little pet projects.
• 8:49
  I mean, essentially, that's what it boils down to.
• 8:54
  The Democrats want to they want to take funding away from ICE, and they're making it look like they're the good guys, like, hey, the American public, they're really outraged with what ICE is doing, so we're gonna take some of the funding away from them.
• 9:08
  And they walk away with the little halos over their heads, trying to make themselves look like the good guy.
• 9:13
  But let's be real, what they're really trying to do is pull funding away from ice and massively increase spending in different areas.
• 9:25
  All right, that's that's what they do every single time.
• 9:29
  And then they're like, oh, we don't have enough money to cover it.
• 9:32
  We we've got to raise the debt ceiling.
• 9:36
  Yeah, we got to take out more loans.
• 9:40
  So the article goes on the outlook for the federal debt level is bleak, with economists increasingly sounding alarm over the tourid pace of spending by Congress and the White House.
• 9:52
  This is intensified with the passage of President Donald Trump's one big beautiful bill act.
• 10:00
  Which the nonpartisan congressional budget office, the CBO, estimates will add 3.4 trillion to the budget deficits over the next decade.
• 10:11
  Trump's team argues revenues from tariffs and faster economic growth will more than help offset the rising debt.
• 10:20
  I've talked about this before.
• 10:22
  It's a gamble.
• 10:23
  What President Trump is doing is a gamble.
• 10:26
  If it works, then this is good for America.
• 10:30
  If it doesn't work, then he just dramatically increased the national debt.
• 10:37
  Well, the first domino has kind of fallen because in the month of March, the U.S.
• 10:45
  Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs were unconstitutional.
• 10:50
  So most of that tariff revenue fell off a cliff.
• 10:56
  And in fact, there are uh businesses and individuals, there are a ton of lawsuits right now.
• 11:02
  People are lining up for the lawsuits.
• 11:04
  Businesses are lining up for these lawsuits, saying we want the federal government to pay back what we lost in way of tariffs because they were unconstitutional.
• 11:15
  So the companies, Amazon, I think is one of them.
• 11:18
  They're saying we should have never had to foot uh that bill because they were unconstitutional.
• 11:23
  So why do we suffer for it?
• 11:27
  So a lot of interesting stuff going on right now.
• 11:30
  There's definitely a lot to keep an eye on.
• 11:34
  So uh it's really scary when we look at what if the debt materializes, it's going to do to America's economic standing in the world.
• 11:45
  Uh, here's Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G.
• 11:49
  Peterson Foundation.
• 11:51
  He says America's fiscal outlook is more dangerous and daunting than ever, threatening our economy and the next generation.
• 11:59
  This is not the future any of us want, and it's no way to run a great nation like ours.
• 12:05
  I agree 100%.
• 12:06
  I 100% agree.
• 12:10
  They're saying that in the next decade, we're going to be facing somewhere in the ballpark of $50 plus trillion dollars in deficit.
• 12:24
  Uh 54, I think was the number, 54 trillion or somewhere in the ballpark.
• 12:31
  It's out of control.
• 12:32
  It's spiraling.
• 12:34
  The unrelenting increase is what prompted Fitch ratings to issue a surprise downgrade of the nation's long-term credit score in mid-2023.
• 12:46
  The agency cut the U.S.
• 12:47
  debt by one notch, snatching away its pristine triple A rating in exchange for an AA plus grade.
• 12:59
  In the make in making the decision, Fitch cited alarm over the country's deteriorating finances and expressed concerns over the government's ability to address the ballooning debt burden amid sharp political divisions.
• 13:15
  This is a warning shot across the U.S.
• 13:17
  government's bowel that it needs to write its fiscal ship.
• 13:22
  Sean Snaith, the economist at the University of Central Florida, told Fox Business.
• 13:39
  That's 100% right.
• 13:42
  100%, 1,000% correct.
• 13:47
  In May, Moody's ratings became the third of the three major ratings agencies to downgrade the U.S.
• 13:55
  credit rating from its highest tier, lowering it from triple A to double A1 on its 21 notch scale.
• 14:07
  The firm noted that the cost of interest payments on the debt is projected to rise from 9% of federal revenue to 30% of federal revenue by 2035.
• 14:21
  Folks, 2035 is coming up quick.
• 14:24
  We're moving from a 9% interest payment to 30%, and we're still not even touching this thing is ballooning out of control.
• 14:36
  It is a stinking ship.
• 14:39
  It's an airplane that's going down.
• 14:42
  We could use all kinds of metaphors, but the reality is it is out of control.
• 14:50
  So what does that mean for the American people?
• 14:55
  Uh right now, again, it's 39 trillion.
• 15:00
  And let's just do a little comparison.
• 15:02
  Personal consumer debt in the United States.
• 15:05
  That's our debt, individual.
• 15:07
  Individual people, personal consumer debt in the United States as of 2026, this year, is more than 18 trillion dollars.
• 15:22
  That is wild.
• 15:23
  This is out of control.
• 15:27
  Debt to income.
• 15:30
  Uh the national debt is 124% of GDP.
• 15:38
  That's our gross debt.
• 15:39
  124% of our gross domestic product.
• 15:45
  Uh personal consumer debt.
• 15:48
  That number varies, but 62% of adults live paycheck to paycheck now.
• 15:54
  62 more than half.
• 15:57
  Almost three quarters of all adults live paycheck to paycheck in America.
• 16:04
  There's an article that just came out a couple days ago, and I'll break that down as well.
• 16:10
  Uh so I'm going to do this little comparison between personal debt versus national debt.
• 16:15
  And I got to tell you, national debt has an indirect it, there is a correlation, but it's indirect, but there is a correlation enough so that we have got to get a grip on personal debt.
• 16:27
  If we don't, people will come to financial ruin.
• 16:31
  And as a nation, I don't mean to be an alarmist, but it could spiral our entire entire nation and economic standing into oblivion.
• 16:44
  I mean, it's that serious.
• 16:47
  So the politicians are playing this off like, oh, it's no big deal, and you hear President Trump, oh, our economy is better than it's ever been.
• 16:54
  Well, the economy is doing well.
• 16:55
  He's right on that, but what he's not mentioning is the debt.
• 16:58
  We've got to tackle the debt.
• 17:00
  Well, we're coming up on a break here.
• 17:01
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• 19:22
  We are currently 39 trillion with a T.
• 19:26
  39 trillion dollars in debt.
• 19:29
  We're racking up about uh it's somewhere in the ballpark of more than one billion dollars every single hour.
• 19:37
  Every hour.
• 19:37
  And so when you hear the politicians talk about, oh well, they they they throw away billions of dollars.
• 19:43
  Look at Minnesota.
• 19:45
  What was the, you know, the big controversy in Minnesota is that they uh they're supposedly well, it's somewhere in the ballpark of the claims are 19 billion dollars in Minnesota.
• 20:01
  However, other people, other people are claiming that it's somewhere in the ballpark of 250 million in fraudulent claims.
• 20:12
  I mean, those are radically different numbers.
• 20:15
  But let's take the higher number, the huge number, 19 billion dollars.
• 20:21
  When you compare that to the national debt, just for reference, that's 19, essentially 19 hours worth of debt.
• 20:29
  In 19 hours, the next 19 hours, three quarters of a day, the next 19 hours, the national government will rack up about 20 billion dollars, 20 billion plus in debt.
• 20:50
  So, you know, it's this big huge scandal.
• 20:54
  And, you know, and and I'm not saying it shouldn't be.
• 20:56
  It should be uh, you know, walls should be investigated for this.
• 21:01
  It's it's wrong.
• 21:02
  Uh fraud is always wrong.
• 21:06
  Uh it is costing Minnesota residents, uh, taxpayers money.
• 21:14
  It's a it's a massive fraud scandal.
• 21:17
  But the bigger picture, and nobody's talking about it, it's the national debt.
• 21:21
  I mean, this is a drop in the bucket, it's not even 19 hours worth of the national debt.
• 21:28
  You know, we're talking about years of fraud in Minnesota, and it's not even 19 hours worth of the amount of debt that we rack up in the federal government.
• 21:37
  So why don't we start talking about the federal government and all the fraud there?
• 21:42
  And you remember Doge.
• 21:44
  I mean, people absolutely flip their lids, and it's how dare you cut spending.
• 21:49
  Well, then other critics, and you know, to be fair, other critics were saying, well, what they're doing is just a drop in the bucket, and they're making it look like they're making it appear as though they're actually doing something to reduce the national debt when actually they're not.
• 22:04
  Uh, I kind of lean more towards that.
• 22:07
  I think it's good.
• 22:08
  I think we need to take a chainsaw to, you know, to kind of pick on Elon Musk.
• 22:14
  Remember when he had the doge chainsaw.
• 22:16
  Uh so bizarre.
• 22:18
  I mean, this whole this whole thing is just so bizarre, and anytime you get involved in politics, things just get really weird.
• 22:27
  But we need to take a hacksaw to the national debt.
• 22:33
  And let's face it, we're not.
• 22:37
  If we were, it wouldn't be growing at a rate of one billion dollars every single hour.
• 22:43
  More than a billion every single hour.
• 22:47
  Uh the all right.
• 22:49
  So here's President Trump's 2026 plans.
• 22:52
  Let's just talk about that.
• 22:53
  I'm not saying uh I agree or disagree.
• 22:56
  I'm just telling you what his plans are.
• 22:59
  So growth targets, number one, growth targets.
• 23:02
  The Council of Economic Advisors, the CEA, is projecting a 4% annual GDP growth through 2028.
• 23:11
  So the theory is that if the economy grows faster than the debt, the debt to GDP ratio, it will just shrink naturally.
• 23:22
  All right.
• 23:23
  And to be fair, it appears that that's happening in Florida.
• 23:29
  So if you kind of shrink that down to the state level, there whole premise is we grow the economy, we grow it really fast, we incentivize people to come, we lower taxes.
• 23:45
  That will turn the engine of the economy.
• 23:48
  And as that wheel spins, we pay down any debt, and in fact, we create these coffers where we actually have surplus.
• 23:58
  And I think it appears that it's being pretty effective.
• 24:04
  So, yeah, uh, theoretically, this could work, but you also have to be very, very fiscally responsible, which the U.S.
• 24:15
  government is not.
• 24:17
  The federal government is not.
• 24:20
  All right, President Trump also passed the one big beautiful bill.
• 24:24
  Uh that was enacted in July, July 4th of 2025.
• 24:28
  That focused on further tax cuts and deregulation.
• 24:33
  So the administration argues that that's going to stimulate revenue growth through a growing economy.
• 24:41
  But however, the congressional budget office, the CBO, warned in February, just February of this year, that it could actually increase the deficit by two trillion dollars over the next decade if revenue isn't replaced.
• 24:58
  Which is true.
• 24:59
  You can't cut taxes, and uh expect revenue to just kind of fall in place.
• 25:08
  You have to replace that revenue that you're getting from the taxes.
• 25:15
  So anytime you cut something, uh you cut on the revenue side, you have to replace that revenue somewhere.
• 25:24
  That money has to come from somewhere.
• 25:26
  So that's one of the arguments that the Democrats have.
• 25:29
  Uh, they really don't like tax cuts.
• 25:32
  They like tax increases because they say, well, you can't keep cutting, you have to replace that revenue.
• 25:39
  And the only way you can get revenue is by increasing taxes.
• 25:42
  Look at New York.
• 25:43
  New York is a case in point.
• 25:45
  They want to take that to an extreme to the point where it's pinch people, they've left the state, and now they're governor saying, oh, please come back to please come back to New York.
• 25:55
  We need to tax you.
• 25:56
  We need your tax money.
• 25:59
  So you see this delicate balance.
• 26:03
  All right, President Trump also touted tariff revenue.
• 26:07
  That was going to be like the holy grail.
• 26:10
  Uh, it was a major plan maybe major pillar of his plan, it was to use tariffs to pay down the debt.
• 26:16
  But in March, just last month, the Supreme Court ruled, and they recently limited some of that unilateral tariff authority, which really complicates this revenue stream.
• 26:31
  And then spending caps.
• 26:33
  President Trump is a big advocate of spending caps, and there are ongoing discussions regarding a 3% fiscal target to cap the deficit.
• 26:45
  Uh but achieving this while maintaining the current military and social security obligations is virtually an impossible challenge.
• 26:57
  Remember, I kept saying they will cut Social Security, they will eliminate it, which I'm all for.
• 27:04
  I uh but uh we've got to be really careful about this because we've got to find a way to incentivize people to fend essentially fend for themselves and plan for retirement because let's face it, the American people are not doing it.
• 27:24
  When we have almost three-quarters of the American people live in paycheck to paycheck.
• 27:30
  That's that's a problem.
• 27:32
  62% of all adults right now in America are living paycheck to paycheck, meaning they could not make it one month without a paycheck.
• 27:45
  62%.
• 27:48
  And if you can't make it without a paycheck for a month, the translation is let me translate this for you, you're not saving.
• 27:58
  You're not investing, or at least you're not doing it enough.
• 28:02
  If 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, you are not saving enough.
• 28:09
  And so to pull Social Security out from under people who are not saving, it can be catastrophic.
• 28:17
  So while I really really am a big advocate of eliminating Social Security, it's such a waste of money.
• 28:26
  It's like an anchor tied to the ankles of America.
• 28:32
  Uh, it needs to be eliminated.
• 28:37
  But the downside to that is that the government has done absolutely exactly zero planning to prepare the American people.
• 28:49
  Now, President Trump has done some pretty brilliant things, and I've talked about the uh, you know, the Trump accounts.
• 28:56
  I think they're absolutely brilliant.
• 28:59
  But again, it's up to the American people.
• 29:01
  It's up to the parents to contribute to their Trump accounts to their kids' Trump accounts.
• 29:08
  And it's only a small percentage of Americans that it doesn't affect adults.
• 29:14
  It gives no benefit for the adults.
• 29:16
  And so we've got to do something to figure out how to help the American people.
• 29:24
  And Social Security is not it.
• 29:25
  I'm telling you, Social Security will be going away.
• 29:29
  When you look at the debt, you see the direction, you see the trajectory, you see the uh the ballooning interest payments.
• 29:39
  Something's got to give.
• 29:41
  It absolutely has to.
• 29:43
  And that's where I'm going to talk about the uh the plans or different options.
• 29:49
  So this is from a website, taxproject.org.
• 29:52
  It's a really long article, but it is excellent.
• 29:54
  It's phenomenal.
• 29:56
  The title of the article, and this was just published about a year ago.
• 30:00
  A little less than a year ago.
• 30:02
  Ways out of debt.
• 30:03
  U.S.
• 30:04
  options for national debt.
• 30:08
  All right.
• 30:08
  Now keep in mind, this was a little over a year ago.
• 30:12
  At the time, the debt was 36.2 trillion.
• 30:16
  Now it's 39.
• 30:17
  So it just shows you how fast our debt's climbing.
• 30:20
  A lot of American people don't realize how quickly it's climbing.
• 30:23
  It is climbing at unprecedented rates.
• 30:27
  And it's going to keep picking up steam.
• 30:31
  So the current debt landscape.
• 30:34
  We have slow economic growth.
• 30:37
  Inflation and devaluation of the dollar.
• 30:42
  We have higher interest rates.
• 30:45
  A growing national debt means that the government must borrow more.
• 30:49
  Increasing demand for loanable funds.
• 30:53
  We have higher debt service crowd, which is crowding out other spending.
• 30:58
  Remember, I said we're going to increase just the payments on the interest from 9% to 30% in the next like eight years.
• 31:10
  That means that we're going to have less, the government's going to have less money to actually spend on projects because most of that money, a big part of that money that they get from taxes is going to be going only to pay off the interest of our debt.
• 31:26
  That means they're going to have less money for all their little pet projects, including Social Security.
• 31:32
  I have news for you.
• 31:50
  So in 2024, the U.S.
• 31:52
  spent 1.1 trillion on interest, nearly doubling from five years prior.
• 31:59
  Surpassing spending on national defense.
• 32:03
  This is just on the interest.
• 32:07
  This rapidly increasing debt service limits the government's flexibility to invest in crucial areas like infrastructure, education, research and development, and national security, which are vital for future prosperity.
• 32:24
  And then finally, there's the risk of a financial or a fiscal rather crisis.
• 32:31
  And that's what I was talking about.
• 32:32
  The downgrading of the United States standing, economic standing, that's a huge deal.
• 32:41
  And that means in the future, America's going to be in very, very big fiscal trouble.
• 32:47
  We already are, but it's it's going to be much, much worse in just a few short years.
• 32:53
  In my lifetime, I'm going to see it.
• 32:57
  So here are the ways out of debt.
• 33:00
  And I'll pick up after the break, but these are the ways to get us out of debt.
• 33:06
  These are the U.S.
• 33:07
  options.
• 33:08
  Number one at the top of the list, increase taxes.
• 33:13
  All right.
• 33:14
  Anyone feel like our taxes are high enough?
• 33:18
  I do.
• 33:19
  And I'm talking as a consumer, not as a politician, because politicians are like, no, raise them, raise them, raise them.
• 33:25
  Look at California, New York, New Jersey.
• 33:29
  Look at what they're doing to the people.
• 33:31
  Virginia now.
• 33:35
  So number one, increase taxes.
• 33:37
  Here's how it would work.
• 33:38
  You raise the income tax rate.
• 33:41
  You implement a value added tax.
• 33:44
  That's a VAT.
• 33:45
  That's a consumption tax levied at each stage of production and distribution.
• 33:49
  So essentially, you're you're double triple taxing people.
• 33:54
  You tax things on things, things that are sold, on things that are distributed, on and on and on.
• 34:00
  There are a lot of countries that use VATs.
• 34:03
  And a broad-based VAT tax in the United States could generate substantial revenue.
• 34:09
  However, think about what that would do to press us.
• 34:14
  I mean, you're going to feel that in your wallet, trust me.
• 34:19
  New payroll taxes.
• 34:21
  They're talking about doing new payroll taxes, expanding the base of earnings that are subject to Social Security taxes.
• 34:28
  We already pay 15%, by the way.
• 34:31
  For Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare.
• 34:36
  Eliminating or limiting tax deductions.
• 34:43
  Taking away tax breaks, such as itemized deductions or certain tax preference.
• 34:49
  That check that you get when you overpay your taxes, that's gone.
• 34:55
  And that means at the end of the year, come April 15th, virtually everybody will be paying taxes.
• 35:09
  And then finally, SIN taxes or carbon taxes.
• 35:13
  Taxes on goods like tobacco, alcohol, carbon emissions.
• 35:21
  This is all on the table.
• 35:23
  I'm not making these things up.
• 35:24
  This is these are all things that are in discussion right now with our federal government as they scramble to try to figure out how they're going to sneak more money out of the American people.
• 35:38
  It's crazy.
• 35:43
  Number two way that we reduce the debt.
• 35:45
  We lower spending.
• 35:46
  I'm all for that.
• 35:49
  Mandatory spending reform.
• 35:52
  Discretionary spending cuts.
• 35:54
  Improving efficiency and reducing waste.
• 36:01
  Because good luck.
• 36:05
  Look what happened with Doge.
• 36:07
  Look what happened to Tesla's being desecrated and swastikas being painted on them because Elon Musk was part of reducing spending in the federal government.
• 36:19
  He was called a Nazi, an oligarch.
• 36:26
  On and on it goes.
• 36:28
  People absolutely retaliated whenever the government attempted to actually cut things out of the budget.
• 36:36
  They're like, oh my goodness, like you're you're you're gonna cause the whole world to collapse.
• 36:41
  We can't cut spending.
• 36:44
  But at the same time, they don't want their taxes to go up.
• 36:46
  So it's man, this is so complex.
• 36:51
  All right, we're coming up on another break here.
• 36:54
  We'll finish talking about this and then we'll transition to personal debt.
• 36:58
  And talk about what we, the American people need to do because I promise you, the big government's not here to bail your butt out.
• 37:05
  That's just not gonna happen.
• 37:07
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• 37:12
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• 37:15
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• 37:17
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• 37:19
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• 37:22
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• 37:25
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• 37:26
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• 37:27
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• 37:29
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• 37:30
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• 37:33
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• 37:35
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• 37:39
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• 37:42
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• 37:46
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• 37:55
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• 38:42
  As America sits at 39 trillion dollars in debt.
• 38:50
  We have a deficit of 39 trillion with a T.
• 38:53
  39 trillion dollars.
• 38:55
  The government's scrambling to try to figure out how do we get rid of this?
• 39:00
  How do we how do we start paying that off?
• 39:02
  And they're uh they're coming up with some backdoor ways to basically screw the American people over and make it appear as though the government hasn't done that to us.
• 39:18
  And so we've got to look at ways to the these are proposed ways that are on the table to pay down the debt because our debt's ballooning at an absolute ridiculous rate.
• 39:32
  Uh we've got to get it down to a manageable level.
• 39:36
  Right now, it's kind of getting out of reach of being manageable.
• 39:42
  It's getting worse and worse all the time.
• 39:44
  It will reach a point where it's not manageable at all, where there's literally nothing that we can do.
• 39:51
  Um we've got to get this under control.
• 39:56
  So it would require some difficult.
• 40:00
  And politically challenging measures.
• 40:03
  So here are eight potential strategies.
• 40:06
  We already talked about the first few.
• 40:07
  Number one, increase taxes.
• 40:11
  And this would be we'd be hit from a number of directions.
• 40:15
  I feel like we already pay enough taxes.
• 40:18
  We pay taxes on utilities.
• 40:22
  We pay taxes on services.
• 40:24
  We pay taxes on things that we buy.
• 40:26
  We pay taxes on things that we sell.
• 40:30
  We have inheritance taxes in five states, Pennsylvania being one of them.
• 40:37
  We're taxed on our property that we buy, that we buy, that we own.
• 40:43
  The government says, no, you don't really own that.
• 40:47
  We're going to charge you a pretty big percentage of your total income every single year just for the privilege of owning your property.
• 40:59
  You don't pay your taxes on your property.
• 41:02
  Big government comes and they take it.
• 41:04
  They literally take your property that you bought and paid for.
• 41:08
  They take it away if you don't pay your taxes annually on property that you own.
• 41:13
  We're literally taxed on everything.
• 41:15
  There's a gas tax, there's a road tax, there's a federal tax.
• 41:20
  For those of you who drive truck, you know there's an ifta tax in addition to your taxes, all the taxes that you pay on diesel fuel, which is now averaging six dollars per gallon for vehicles that get in the neighborhood of six miles per gallon.
• 41:43
  You do the math.
• 41:44
  That's it literally just to put fuel in it, that's a dollar a mile.
• 41:51
  But that they don't stop there.
• 41:53
  You also pay an ifta tax, which is a federal tax.
• 41:57
  If you look on the side of a tractor trailer, you'll see an if the sticker that you have to renew every year.
• 42:04
  You pay an ifta tax, which is essentially a road tax that the federal government charges you in addition to all your fuel taxes, and on and on it goes.
• 42:15
  We're paying taxes on everything.
• 42:16
  So they are proposing to increase taxes pretty dramatically, by the way.
• 42:23
  If you think you're paying high taxes now, you just wait.
• 42:27
  Number two, lower spending.
• 42:30
  Well, the uh left-wing crazies are going to come and retaliate if they try to lower spending.
• 42:37
  We found that out at uh the beginning of President Trump's term.
• 42:41
  Number three, economic growth.
• 42:45
  You invest in productivity.
• 42:48
  You know, rather than cutting spending or raising taxes, uh this strategy focuses on growing the economy faster than the debt.
• 42:56
  This is what President Trump is proposing right now.
• 43:00
  This is what he's working on.
• 43:01
  That's why he's all about the economy.
• 43:04
  Grow the economy, drill, drill, drill, drill, baby drill, go, go, go.
• 43:08
  Economy, economy, economy.
• 43:10
  You're hearing President Trump boast about the economy.
• 43:15
  And the reason is it's not because he's ego driven, which he does have a pretty big ego.
• 43:24
  But that's not why he wants the American economy to be the best in the world.
• 43:30
  It's a very strategic move to help pay down the national debt.
• 43:35
  All right, so it's very important for us to grow the economy.
• 43:41
  If we're going to keep taxes at a manageable level.
• 43:46
  All right.
• 43:47
  Uh the next one, number four, inflation.
• 43:51
  This is the tricky backdoor thing that sleazy politicians are working on.
• 43:57
  And they would love for this to happen.
• 43:59
  So here's how it works.
• 44:00
  It involves allowing or actively encouraging a higher rate of inflation.
• 44:07
  Inflation erodes the real value of existing debt.
• 44:13
  Particularly fixed rate debt, because the government repays creditors with dollars that are worth less in real terms.
• 44:22
  So technically, we'll put it this way they'd be paying the 30, 39 trillion dollars.
• 44:31
  But our dollar is worth much, much less.
• 44:36
  So on a technicality, they're in essence only paying down, you know, for the value of the US dollar, they're paying off, like, let's say, I'm just making numbers up here, but like 28 trillion dollars.
• 44:51
  So they intentionally cause inflation, which hurts the American people, right?
• 44:58
  We're the ones who suffer.
• 45:00
  It's not the government who suffers, it's the American people.
• 45:04
  Your dollar goes much less.
• 45:07
  It doesn't go as far.
• 45:09
  Many consider this an indirect tax as it's a willful mean of devaluing the dollar and reducing the buying power of citizens' savings.
• 45:22
  You want to talk about dirty, plain dirty.
• 45:27
  However, this may be more palatable to politicians as they don't have to be blamed for raising taxes.
• 45:35
  See how this works.
• 45:39
  We're gonna hold the tax level where it's at.
• 45:42
  Inflation is really high right now.
• 45:44
  Have you guys heard this talk at all?
• 45:47
  Inflation's really high right now.
• 45:49
  So we're gonna hold the tax rate where it's at as a gift to the American people.
• 45:57
  Meanwhile, they're the ones who are intentionally causing inflation.
• 46:03
  Pretty interesting, isn't it?
• 46:07
  Um this is pretty complicated.
• 46:10
  I don't have time to really break down the nuts and the bolts of how this happens.
• 46:14
  I'm gonna link in the show notes to an article that does show the nuts and bolts of how this all is broken down, but it's crazy.
• 46:24
  Umflation acts like a stealth tax that diminishes the value of citizen savings, wages, fixed incomes, uh, uncertainty and instability, instability.
• 46:39
  These are some of the challenges.
• 46:41
  High and volatile inflation creates economic uncertainty.
• 46:45
  It discourages investment and long-term planning.
• 46:51
  Uh higher future borrowing costs, lenders demand higher interest rates to compensate for anticipated inflation, making future government borrowing more expensive.
• 47:06
  Yeah, it's it's just such a spiraling issue right now.
• 47:11
  All right, asset sales, the government sells real estate.
• 47:19
  Aren't they already doing that?
• 47:20
  President Trump came right out of the gate doing that.
• 47:24
  He's like, hey, we have all these federal buildings that doge uncovered.
• 47:28
  We have these federal buildings that the federal government owns, and they're sitting empty, and it's costing the government money to keep these buildings in operation.
• 47:37
  Let's just sell them.
• 47:40
  So they went through and they started selling land.
• 47:42
  Remember the federal land.
• 47:44
  They had these federal land deals that they were gonna sell to citizens, millions of acres of land that the federal government owns.
• 47:54
  Well, that was part of Trump's plan.
• 47:57
  You sell off some of this land in the thousands of buildings, and the revenue generated from selling the assets is actually pretty small.
• 48:07
  It's a small fraction of the total national debt, but it is one source of being able to do that.
• 48:14
  Uh, natural resource rights, selling drilling rights for oil, gas, mining rights on federal lands, that generates revenue.
• 48:24
  This is actually one that um uh Kevin O'Leary, I had to think of his name.
• 48:31
  Kevin O'Leary proposed this.
• 48:33
  He's like, yeah, let's go up to Alaska and drill, but use all of that money and just pump it right into the national debt.
• 48:43
  So that the oil companies are actually like I think the idea is the oil companies are directly contracted with the government, and so they're making a little bit of money off of it, but most of that, almost all of that revenue goes right in to pay off the national debt.
• 48:59
  Uh number six, modern monetary theory, MMT.
• 49:04
  That fundamentally redefines the role of government debt.
• 49:09
  Uh proponents argue that a sovereign government as the issuer of its own currency is not financially constrained in the same way that a household or a business is.
• 49:19
  It can print money to finance any spending that it deems necessary as long as there are available resources, labor, materials, things like that to employ.
• 49:32
  Money creation.
• 49:34
  This is an the government's already doing this.
• 49:39
  They just print money.
• 49:42
  Anytime they need money, they just print, print, print, print, print.
• 49:45
  They they pump tons of that printed money back into circulation.
• 49:50
  What that does is it drives up inflation.
• 49:54
  There is no such thing as unlimited money, but the government treats it as such, and when they do.
• 50:00
  That it causes inflation.
• 50:01
  But the government doesn't care.
• 50:03
  Why?
• 50:04
  Because inflation devalues the dollar.
• 50:08
  When the dollar is devalued, it goes back to we're technically paying off the debt, but we're doing it with cheap dollars.
• 50:17
  And uh, so we're ripping off the creditors.
• 50:20
  Well, then they catch wind of that, and what do they do?
• 50:23
  They increase the interest rates.
• 50:27
  It's a vicious cycle we're in.
• 50:30
  Uh number seven, default on the debt.
• 50:34
  Just stop paying it.
• 50:36
  What that would do is it would force us to restructure.
• 50:40
  Essentially, it's like uh filing for bankruptcy.
• 50:45
  We we would the government would default, they would stop paying, they refuse to pay its debt obligations, and that forces them to negotiate new terms with the creditors.
• 50:57
  This is what bankruptcy is, right?
• 51:01
  Companies, individuals that file for bankruptcy.
• 51:04
  It's just a restructuring and saying, well, we'll pay, we'll agree to pay a portion of the debt, and the rest will just be wiped out.
• 51:14
  It's better because it's better than nothing.
• 51:15
  That's the idea.
• 51:18
  And then the banks take the hit, and they milk that out of people elsewhere.
• 51:26
  All right, so this has its own major set of challenges.
• 51:31
  I hope we never get to that point.
• 51:33
  I hope that we never default on our debt.
• 51:36
  But it could happen.
• 51:38
  This is on the table.
• 51:40
  Number eight, nationalizing resource revenue.
• 51:43
  This is the one that Kevin O'Leary uh is really into.
• 51:47
  He suggests tapping into oil fields, like in Alaska, and you nationalize the revenue generated to pay down the national debt.
• 51:56
  Uh, there are a lot of challenges with that.
• 51:58
  So on and on it goes, but you get the idea.
• 52:01
  There are there's no easy answer.
• 52:03
  And at the end of the day, who's the one who pays for it?
• 52:08
  We do.
• 52:09
  Who's the one who feels the pay, the pain?
• 52:12
  We do.
• 52:14
  So here's what we need to do.
• 52:16
  All right, here's an article that just published March 30th.
• 52:20
  This is phenomenal.
• 52:22
  Feelings of financial instability persist across generations.
• 52:26
  Research shows that one in five surveyed consumers said that their top financial goal for this year was you ready for this, to cover their monthly bills.
• 52:39
  Their goal, their financial goal is to pay their bills.
• 52:45
  One in five Americans.
• 52:48
  Most people aren't asking how to get rich, they're asking how to stay steady.
• 52:54
  Said Jane Barrett or Barrett, chief advocacy officer at MX.
• 53:02
  She said, our research shows that for most households, most financial health starts with stability.
• 53:12
  So most people are not asking how to get rich, they're not even asking that anymore.
• 53:16
  They're just saying, how do how do I get stable?
• 53:19
  How do I pay my next bill?
• 53:22
  If that's where we are now, can you imagine in 10 years when our national debt breaches 50 trillion dollars?
• 53:32
  And the government's getting desperate, and they start raising taxes.
• 53:38
  Can you imagine?
• 53:39
  And the dollar's worth less.
• 54:07
  Optimism remained relatively high among respondents.
• 54:11
  Nearly three-quarters of consumers said that they felt optimistic about their financial goals, including, listen to this 80% of Gen Z, and 76% of millennials.
• 54:25
  That's awesome.
• 54:27
  Still, more than half reported that money was their primary source of stress, and 40% said they struggled to make ends meet.
• 54:35
  So it's the younger people, go figure.
• 54:38
  It's the younger people who are saying, yeah, we're actually uh pretty optimistic about our financial goals.
• 54:45
  We're optimistic about our future.
• 54:46
  80% of Gen Z, 76% of millennials.
• 54:51
  That's great news.
• 54:54
  Now, I hope that's not just a feeling.
• 54:56
  I hope they're actually investing and preparing for the future.
• 55:02
  We all have to prepare for the future.
• 55:06
  There's so much uncertainty in the world, and I don't mean to make you scared or make you feel like there's no hope.
• 55:11
  It's quite the opposite.
• 55:12
  It's to say that there's now is the time to get serious about budgeting.
• 55:17
  No matter what age you are, we've got to get serious about budgeting, and we've got to plan for the future.
• 55:24
  We cannot wait for the government, we can't rely on Social Security, we can't assume that our taxes are gonna stay the same.
• 55:32
  We just can't assume that.
• 55:39
  So the question is what are we gonna do about that?
• 55:42
  I'm very hopeful.
• 55:43
  I remain very confident, very hopeful that the American people were resilient, people will figure this out.
• 55:50
  Uh there's already a lot of pain.
• 55:52
  People are already figuring out that uh cars, which I gripe about a lot, that cars are a colossal waste of money, and so people are turning to the used car market.
• 56:03
  I love that.
• 56:03
  I think that's fantastic.
• 56:05
  That's a step in the right direction.
• 56:07
  So we're Americans, we're we're gonna figure this out, but uh, we've got to work on our own house, our own budget, get it in order, and I promise it makes life so much uh so much more stress-free, and it's fantastic.
• 56:24
  That, my friends, is the hidden lightness.
• 56:26
  You can find more out about my show and get all the latest podcasts if you go to the menu navigation bar at AmericaOutloud.news under our shows or schedule.
• 56:34
  There's a hidden lightness that shines inside of all of us.
• 56:37
  When there's so much darkness that envelops the world, remember that it doesn't take much light to expose that darkness and to ultimately inspire other people.
• 56:44
  Join me in being a light.