Shows / The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Lucas and Luna dissect the machinery of public finance — how governments borrow, spend, and tax — without the political theater. Each episode examines a single fiscal lever: a stimulus check's ripple through consumer debt, the bond market's reaction to a budget deficit, or the real cost of infrastructure spending. Lucas traces the Treasury's cash flows with a fountain pen across an abstract budget breakdown, while Luna presses on the human outcomes: which households actually benefit from a…
Episodes
The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public SpendingWhy the Government Pays Twice for Its Own Office Space
When the federal government needs a new office building, it borrows money to build it, then pays rent to itself for decades. In this episode, Lucas and Luna…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government's Pension Math Hides Billions in Debt
In Episode 168 of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna dig into why public pension funds are so deep in the red — and why the official numbers don't…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Public Debt Becomes a Hidden Tax on Growth
When governments borrow, they don't just issue bonds — they change the incentives for everyone who lends, spends, and invests. This episode unpacks the…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Governments Dither on Big Projects
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the hidden costs of government indecision. Using the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline as a…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Pays More for Space Than Musk Does
When NASA spends billions on a rocket that SpaceX launches for a fraction of the cost, the gap isn't just about inefficiency—it's about mission…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the US Government Overpays for Electricity
The US federal government spends roughly $6 billion a year on electricity, yet it often pays far more than a private company would for the same power. In this…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Fights Over Petty Cash Hide Bigger Waste
Every year, federal agencies spend billions on small purchases—office supplies, travel, IT gadgets—that slip through the cracks because they fall below the…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the US Government Pays Twice for the Same Prescriptions
Why does the US government end up spending more on prescription drugs than it needs to? In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into a little-known quirk of…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government's Student Loan Cuts Higher Ed
The federal student loan program has quietly become the biggest source of higher education funding in the US, but a recent policy shift means borrowers face…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Bonds Pay Negative Interest
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the strange world of negative-yielding government bonds. They explain why investors would…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the US Government Lost Billions Buying Generic Drugs
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna dig into a startling figure: the federal government pays far more than necessary for generic…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Trillion Dollar Question Behind Public Pension Funds
Public pension funds across the US are sitting on a collective shortfall in the trillions, and the way they count their money makes it worse. In this episode…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Keeps Bailing Out Its Own Insurers
The federal government runs dozens of insurance programs that compete with private markets — flood, crop, pension, even terrorism. In this episode, Lucas and…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Federal Budget Process Is Broken
The federal budget process was designed for a different era, and it's showing. In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down how the U.S. budget cycle…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government's Flood Insurance Program Is Drowning in Debt
The National Flood Insurance Program is over $20 billion in debt, and its pricing model is decades out of date. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into how…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Government Pension Math Is So Confusing
State and local pension funds are a perennial worry, but the real story is the assumptions baked into their math. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into the…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government Decides Whether a Benefit Is Worth Its Cost
The federal government pours hundreds of billions into programs that may not work. But how does it know? In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Government Bonds Sometimes Pay Negative Interest
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the strange world of negative-yielding government debt. They explain why investors…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the IRS Loses Billions to Overworked Agents
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna dig into the IRS's chronic underfunding and its staggering cost: a tax gap that now tops $600…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Government Projects Always Cost More Than Estimated
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the enduring mystery of cost overruns in government projects. From the Sydney Opera House…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Government Bonds Can Pay You Negative Interest
In this episode, Lucas and Luna tackle a counterintuitive twist in public finance: why investors sometimes pay the government for the privilege of lending it…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Government IT Projects Keep Failing
In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into the alarming rate of failure in federal IT projects, from the Healthcare.gov launch disaster to the FBI's virtual…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Pays a Fortune for Ordinary Items
Every year, federal agencies buy mundane items like hammers, coffee makers, and office chairs at prices that would make any private-sector buyer wince. In this…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the US Government Spends Five Dollars on a Dollar's Worth of Parts
When the military buys a spare part, the price tag can be fifty times what any private buyer would pay. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into the…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Hidden Billions in Government Travel Spending
The federal government spends tens of billions of dollars on travel every year. It sounds like a rounding error in a multi-trillion-dollar budget, but a closer…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Federal Government Misses Billions in Improper Payments
Every year, the federal government makes hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments — overpayments, underpayments, and payments that never should…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why Government Grants Pay for Private Golf Course Renovations
The federal government runs hundreds of economic development programs, but some of the money ends up in surprising places. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the US Postal Service Loses Money on Every Package
The US Postal Service has lost money for 15 straight years, and the latest financial reports show the gap keeps widening. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Government's 600 Billion Dollar Tax Gap
Each year, the U.S. government fails to collect roughly $600 billion in taxes owed—a sum larger than the entire defense budget of many countries. In this…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Runs 90 Different Economic Development Programs
Each year, the U.S. government spends roughly $15 billion on 90 separate economic development programs scattered across 13 agencies. The Government…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government's Discount Rate Shapes Trillion-Dollar Decisions
The federal government uses a discount rate to evaluate the long-term costs and benefits of public projects. But a single percentage point change in that…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Pentagon Can't Pass an Audit After 30 Years
The Department of Defense has never passed a full financial audit, despite a legal mandate dating back to 1990. This episode drills into the $2–3 billion a…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Cost-Plus Contracts Inflate Government Spending by Billions
Episode 137 of The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo digs into the perverse incentives of cost-plus contracts, which give government contractors a guaranteed…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Billions Wasted on Empty Federal Office Space
The federal government spends over $2 billion each year on office space it doesn't use. With vacancy rates topping 30% at some agencies, why does the…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Trillion-Dollar Backlog of Government Building Repairs
The federal government owns over 300,000 buildings, but its maintenance backlog has ballooned to nearly 350 billion dollars. The Department of Defense alone…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Budget Baselines Hide Trillion-Dollar Spending Increases
Every year, the Congressional Budget Office produces baseline projections that assume automatic growth in federal programs. This makes any spending cut that…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The Hidden Trillion-Dollar Cost of Retirement Tax Breaks
Over one point five trillion dollars in tax revenue will be lost over the next decade due to retirement account tax breaks. Lucas and Luna break down how…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
The September Spending Frenzy That Wastes Billions
Every September, federal agencies go on a trillion-dollar shopping spree to exhaust their budgets before the fiscal year ends—a phenomenon known as 'use…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Pension Liabilities Create Hidden Debt
State pension funds are underfunded by roughly $1.4 trillion, and that shortfall isn't just a math problem for retirees. In this episode, Lucas and Luna…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Pays 50 Percent More for Construction Than Private Firms
The federal government spends over $200 billion annually on construction projects, but a 2025 Government Accountability Office report found that public…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government Spends 60 Billion a Year on Unused Software Licenses
Every year, federal agencies collectively spend an estimated $60 billion on software licenses that nobody uses. In this episode, Lucas and Luna unpack a 2025…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Federal Government Pays Twice for the Same Software
Episode 128 of The Fiscal Policy Podcast uncovers a staggering inefficiency: the federal government often pays twice for the same software licenses due to…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Auditors Miss Billions in Medicare Fraud
Every year, the U.S. government loses an estimated $60 billion to Medicare fraud — and most of it is never recovered. Lucas and Luna unpack one specific case…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Subsidies Create Billion-Dollar Drug Shortages
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna examine how government pricing policies and subsidy structures inadvertently cause chronic drug…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Subsidies Create Billion-Dollar Drug Shortages
This episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo examines how the U.S. government's own subsidy programs inadvertently cause chronic shortages of…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Spends Billions on Idle Land
The federal government is the largest landowner in America, holding nearly 640 million acres. But a 2025 Government Accountability Office report found that…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Government Sells Public Assets at a Loss
Episode 123 of The Fiscal Policy Podcast dives into why the U.S. government routinely sells public assets—like land, buildings, and loan portfolios—for pennies…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government Pays 40 Percent More for Prescription Drugs Than Medicare Should
Why does the federal government, the largest purchaser of prescription drugs in the United States, end up paying higher prices than many private insurers and…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government Borrows Eight Trillion Dollars a Year
Every year, the U.S. Treasury auctions off roughly eight trillion dollars in new debt. That's more than the entire GDP of Germany. But most people have no…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Grants Create Phantom Jobs
Lucas and Luna dig into a quietly explosive Government Accountability Office report from June 2026 that found 67 percent of jobs claimed from federal grant…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Loan Guarantees Create Billion-Dollar Losses
The U.S. government guarantees over $3 trillion in loans across student lending, small business lending, and export financing. When borrowers default…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Disaster Spending Creates Perpetual Rebuilding Cycles
When a hurricane floods a small town or wildfire destroys a community, the federal government typically pays to rebuild exactly what was there before. In this…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How the Government Pays Farmers Not to Farm
The US government pays billions every year to farmers not to grow crops — a policy called 'conservation set-asides' that dates back to the 1930s. In…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Grants Create Zombie Businesses
Governments around the world hand out hundreds of billions in grants each year. But a growing body of research shows these grants often keep unviable…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Accounting Rules Make a Trillion-Dollar Deficit Look Small
The federal budget deficit is officially projected at roughly $1.5 trillion for fiscal year 2026, but that number relies on accounting conventions that exclude…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
Why the Federal Government Still Mails Paper Checks
The federal government issued over 140 million paper checks last year, costing taxpayers more than a billion dollars in processing, printing, and postage…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Broadband Subsidies Created a Rural Digital Divide
The Federal Communications Commission has spent over $50 billion since 2010 on programs to bring broadband to rural America. Yet millions of Americans still…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Salary Caps Create Hidden Costs
Episode 112 of The Fiscal Policy Podcast explores a little-known budget paradox: when the federal government caps executive salaries at $200,000 — a limit tied…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How One Procurement Rule Adds 30 Percent to Every Government Contract
In this episode of The Fiscal Policy Podcast, Lucas and Luna dig into the obscure but costly Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act of 1936, which mandates minimum…
- The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending
How Government Land Banking Drives Up Housing Costs
Lucas and Luna explore how the federal government owns vast tracts of land in high-demand urban areas—and why it rarely sells. They focus on the Bureau of Land…