Adam Smith spent his life arguing that the world's wealth is not fixed, that you can bake a bigger pie, and Jenny Beth Martin's point in this segment is that the same argument has to be won all over again right now, against people who talk about the economy as though every dollar in it is already spoken for.
Then she puts the number on the table. The debt is past 40 trillion dollars, and the part that alarms her most is that it is now larger than gross domestic product, which is everything the country produces in a year. Bring it down to a household: if you earn a hundred thousand dollars and you owe a hundred and fifty thousand, set the mortgage aside and the rest of that will crush you. She notes that worrying about exactly this day is why the Tea Party movement started seventeen and a half years ago, and the debt then was nowhere near where it is now.
Lawrence Reed does the arithmetic that follows from it. Washington is spending two trillion dollars more this year than it takes in. Of a federal budget of about seven trillion, roughly a trillion goes to nothing but interest on the debt, and that is scheduled to rise sharply and crowd out Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and defense. He draws the line most people never hear drawn, between productive debt, borrowing to build a road that serves two generations, and borrowing for current consumption, which is what we do now. His proposal is one Jenny Beth Martin says she has never heard before: a balanced budget amendment that permits debt only for capital projects that generate a return. And on top of all of it, Medicare for All is estimated at another four trillion dollars a year.
Tell your senators and your representative what you want done about federal spending. The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Watch the full episode at jennybethshow.com. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — Wealth is not fixed, and neither is what we can produce
00:13 — Forty trillion in debt, and it is bigger than what we produce
01:30 — You can grow out of it, if you stop adding to it
01:47 — Two trillion more than we take in, and a trillion just in interest
02:35 — What that crowds out: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense
02:46 — Why the Tea Party movement started seventeen and a half years ago
03:15 — If you make a hundred thousand and you owe a hundred and fifty
04:04 — Productive debt: a road that serves two generations
04:41 — The provision the Constitution should have carried
04:56 — A balanced budget amendment that allows capital projects
05:40 — Nobody proposes cutting a dollar for every dollar added
06:15 — Medicare for All at four trillion a year
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