Ben Tomchik explains the US budget crisis (04-17-2025--Hour3)

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[00:00:29] 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 Tomchik. He is the Vice President and Deputy Chief of Staff for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The website is CRFB.org. And Ben, welcome to the show, sir. How are you?

[00:00:59] Hey, Pete. How are you doing? I'm good. I hope you're enjoying your travels around the state of North Carolina. I understand you've done a couple of appearances and so far, so good? 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. Because nothing gets the kids excited like talking about the federal budget, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:01:26] All right. So explain to me, because I've been kind of following what happens with the spending, and I'm a regular order kind of a guy. 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. Are they budgets or are they just resolutions at this point? I don't even know what to call it.

[00:01:53] Right. So you talk about being a regular order guy. I'm a passing a budget guy. I wish Congress would get back to passing a budget. And what I will tell you is right now what they're doing is they're basically using a budget resolution. And it's kind of a shell 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.

[00:02:18] So last Thursday, before Congress adjourned for their Easter recess, the Senate had passed a budget resolution. The House then passed what the Senate bill – or excuse me, the House then passed what 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 $5.8 trillion in additional deficits over the next decade. And that, to me, is incredibly concerning.

[00:02:48] It also has the potential to add around $7 trillion to the debt. Now, to put this in perspective for some of your listeners, Pete, historically when we've used this process, it's known as budget reconciliation. 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 to avoid doing budgets. Right. Absolutely.

[00:03:16] And to maybe pass some, you know, health care overhaul of one-sixth of the economy, maybe. 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? Oh, so 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?

[00:03:46] 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. So on the website, crfb.org, crfb.org, I will point out they've got a bunch of very –

[00:04:15] y'all have a bunch of very helpful tools. You've got the reconciliation resources, a whole bunch of links to analysis and blog posts and such. You have a reconciliation tracker. You've got the COVID money tracker I saw on that too. The Fix U.S. Project, which is an initiative to assess the root causes of political divisions.

[00:04:35] So is there a way that Congress breaks out of this mold that it has been in for – like I guess it's probably been, what, 10 or 15 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. Right. Well, the first thing I would say with Congress is if I had a member of Congress in front of me,

[00:05:05] the first thing I would say is I would ask them just stop digging. Right? We're in a $36 trillion 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 Bank.

[00:05:27] It basically is a list of resources where policymakers 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 second thing is pay for your priorities. And then 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.

[00:05:55] What are the – if you had that member of Congress in front of you, and I suspect you 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

[00:06:23] and the budget and the debt – the deficit and the debt are unsustainable. What are their excuses? 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,

[00:06:49] 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 raise awareness on the local level because that's one of the things as well. The other thing is – and you have to address it – is we live in highly polarized and partisan times.

[00:07:15] And if you look at some of the big drivers of our debt and deficit, 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. 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. Absolutely.

[00:07:43] But here's what I would say to that with the clicks. 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 where we are as a country,

[00:08:08] I don't know what will because, to me, that says a lot about what we're spending our money on and what we need to change. So how unsustainable is it? And can we grow our way out of the debt? 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.

[00:08:38] 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, expressed concern about our debt load. It's something that is not sustainable.

[00:09:04] Now, there are some who will say, well, hey, Ben, hey, Pete, 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 not sustainable. And we have to get this under control before it's too late. All right. So in 30 seconds, how do you fix it? Well, the first thing you do is, I think, number one, again, no new borrowing. You pay for your priorities.

[00:09:34] You know, the second thing you do is, and this is really up to our policymakers, is they've got to work together. First, you've got to get together and you've got to pass a budget. Okay? A budget is your nation's priorities, and we've got to get back to doing that. And, you know, and then, you know, the second thing they've got to do is we've 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 we doing about it? We know interest payments on the debt are high.

[00:10:03] 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. I would just suggest that maybe a jubilee. Let's just forgive everybody's debt. Let's just everybody on the planet start from zero again. Why not? Like, I feel like we're at the point of no return anyway. So why not give it a shot? Well, here's the thing.

[00:10:28] 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 the situation, then that starts to put that trust in us. That starts to make that trust look a little bit shaky. Yeah. So we can't do it.

[00:10:57] We have to do it by doing the hard choices. And you know 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 II. We've done hard things as a country. We can do that. We can do it again. Yeah, but that's hard. This is easier. All right. I'm just kidding. I mean, but it is true. Look, I appreciate the work that you guys do up there and your time today. His name is Ben Tomchick, and he is the Vice President and Deputy Chief of Staff for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It's CRFB.org.

[00:11:27] Ton of good resources over at that site. Safe travels to you, Ben. Thank you, sir. Hey, thanks, Pete. Have a great day. You too. 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.

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[00:12:39] All right, so as I mentioned, the CRFB.org has a ton of resources on the website about deficits, about 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 spent probably too much time on there this morning.

[00:13:02] Like, for example, they estimate that enacting the legislation that has been so far proposed, and you heard Ben Tomchik mention it, it would add $5.8 trillion to the deficit. All right? It would result in deficits that would be about 8.2% of GDP by 2034.

[00:13:29] 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 $3 trillion in about six years.

[00:14:00] It would rise $3.5 trillion in 2034. If you don't do this and you just keep the current law in place, you're only at $2.6 trillion. So it's a trillion more what the Senate has proposed.

[00:14:16] 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.

[00:14:36] Also, their president, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya McGinnis, 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. Process. Okay? And she said, this budget sets the stage for the largest deficit increase in history.

[00:15:06] She called it an absolute disgrace. The Senate took the House's 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.

[00:15:36] The Senate shrunk the House's 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 like that idea. Let's borrow more. But how about we cut your cuts? Let's eliminate your cuts by roughly 99.8%.

[00:16:02] The Senate required cuts that amount to $3 per household per year. That'll get you a cup of coffee. 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.

[00:16:27] 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 2010-2011 timeframe. That was us asking nicely.

[00:16:57] 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. Nobody wants to touch the entitlements. Third rail of politics and all that. And the left demonizes this over and over and over again.

[00:17:26] They just can't stop. They can't help themselves. They've been doing it for so long. 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,

[00:17:53] so this way they get to blame somebody else for the bankruptcy that we are obviously on the path to. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain? And Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big ol' reunion, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you, where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter.

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[00:19:18] the state Senate took the first of two votes to advance its proposed two-year, $66 billion budget yesterday. I went over the highlights of the spending plan. It's a two-year budget. Each year it's like $33 billion. And it's like $32.5 and then $33.5, I think. And this is normal. They do a two-year budget during their long session. They'll come back next year in the short session,

[00:19:46] 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 U.S. Congress could do something like that. That would be amazing. 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.

[00:20:15] I think they're going to do theirs 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.

[00:20:45] 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's – 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.

[00:21:09] 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, law enforcement, whatever. 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.

[00:21:36] 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 that pay raise percentage represents a total, you know, net paycheck that you come home with, right?

[00:22:01] 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.

[00:22:31] 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.

[00:22:58] 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 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.

[00:23:27] And you do that by not granting it 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 this, I went over the quotes the other day.

[00:23:56] The rainy day fund is like, it's offensive to them. Now they'll say, you know, oh, we should have, you know, some rainy day funds, sure. But we should totally use that fund right now to give teachers pay raises. That's not, that's not, that's one time money. Like they see that as proof though, that we, that we can collect more taxes from people. And then we can spend it on more programs and services and the like.

[00:24:24] 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.

[00:24:51] 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?

[00:25:19] That's the reason why people order themselves under a government. Giving them the power, the monopoly on force. 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 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.

[00:25:45] 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,

[00:26:13] 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, 26, 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.

[00:26:43] 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 is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:28:08] What's the deal with that? Glad you asked. That would be Republican Senator Bobby Hainig of Currituck 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.

[00:28:37] Republican Senator Bobby Hainig 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.

[00:29:07] 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 want to make sure that people can get on and off the ferries for free. I understand. But is that really what GovCo should be doing? Should they even be running the ferries at all? So Hainig voted against the budget. I don't know what that means.

[00:29:36] If Josh Stein vetoes the budget, maybe the House puts it back in and then Hainig 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 Wake County five additional assistant district attorneys.

[00:30:34] Okay. Out of a Republican majority. And while you could say, well, that's the Republicans fault. You could also argue that it's kind of the Democrats fault, too, because. If you can't figure out a way to get Republicans. To increase funding for district attorneys offices to throw more people in jail, right? To crack down on crime.

[00:31:00] If you can't figure out a way to convince Republicans to sign on to that. I kind of feel like that's 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, you know, 10 more assistant DAs or whatever.

[00:31:24] 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.

[00:31:51] 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.

[00:32:15] Also, I don't know if you'll use the school vouchers issue like Roy Cooper always did to veto and indicate 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. I don't know. We'll see.

[00:32:44] 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 $1,000 step increases that they get every year for like the first 15 years.

[00:33:11] There's 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.

[00:33:38] And so the starting pay would be set under this plan that got passed yesterday, approved yesterday by the Senate. $41,510 is the starting teacher pay. Zero experience. $41,510. That goes to $56,650. So almost $57,000 for those with 25 years or more of experience.

[00:34:04] Teachers would also get a $3,000 bonus over the two-year budget cycle. And the raises of 2.3% in year one, 3.3% 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.

[00:34:32] 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 a $118 million project. It's called Community Lifeline. But the activists are like, it's going to be Cop City. Like Atlanta.

[00:35:03] That drew all the protests. Yeah, from the activists. So, no, we want untrained law enforcement. Wait, what? CPCC is partnering with Mecklenburg County to build the facility at its Levine 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.

[00:35:32] 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 could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So, if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendarshow.com.

[00:35:59] Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.