Maya MacGuineas: Sustaining The Federal Budget
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Welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and thanks for joining us. We're going to have some fun. We're going to give some thoughts on the news. Of course, highlight the stupid, because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we're going to phone a friend. We're going to call the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya McGinnis. Nobody knows who she is, but everybody should know. She, I think, is the smartest person in Washington, D.C., about

understanding the federal budget, debt, deficit, what fixes things, what doesn't fix things. And she is just a fascinating individual. I connected with her when I came to Washington, D.C. and through some good references.

Had an incredible working relationship with her. And like I said, I think she is the smartest person. Just very objective on what works and what doesn't work. So if you're concerned about debt deficit, how Washington actually works, what gets funded, what doesn't, we're going to have a good conversation with Maya McGinnis. She's awesome. And she's a lot of fun too. But let's...

Let's start about a little riff on the news because I see President Biden out there and you know with the international crisis you want a president no matter what the party to be doing well. You do not want a flailing president, a weak president, a president who is weak in his communication. Unfortunately I think he's missing on a few different things. And this is just my take on it.

Putin has been long concerned with the breakup of the Soviet Union. He believes, he's written in the past, that over the last 100 plus years, the biggest, most devastating thing to happen on the face of the planet was the breakup of the Soviet Union. That's quite a perspective. When you think of all the disasters and all the things that happened, the Holocaust and all those things...

you look at what he thinks is the most devastating thing to the world, the breakup of the Soviet Union. That's his perspective. He has long said that he wants the Soviet Union to come back together. And if you look at these countries that are on the brink of, you know, right on the precipice, if you will, of being next door to Vladimir Putin,

then you start to see real quickly why he has such deep concern because they are going more and more Western. There is some critical analysis that says maybe the United States should not have been so adamant, particularly in November when the United States just passed November

stepped up its support of Ukraine in pursuing NATO admittance. That was basically signaling to Vladimir Putin, "Things are going to get worse for me, not better." And the consequence of that is, well, I'm trying to tell you really clearly, I don't want it to go that way. And that was really the beginning of his decision to go and invade Ukraine. Now,

There is going to be some rabid and important analysis of that. I think that's a good thing. I think there should be a discussion about that. Not everybody is going to qualify to become a NATO partner. But one of the biggest mistakes that Joe Biden, I think, also made along the way in his just not understanding what it takes to be a leader and a commander-in-chief is

It's for the President of the United States to continue to signal to Vladimir Putin what he will and will not do. It's as if he's negotiating against the United States and against himself time and time again. You don't tell an adversary what you're not going to do. And if you do that, why do you do that?

It just begs the question of what is Joe Biden actually trying to do? You know, when he first took office, Joe Biden made the same mistake that Barack Obama made. If you remember, Barack Obama, when he first came into office, took away the missile defense systems that were going to go into Poland. Why? What did he give for that? Nothing. Nothing.

And so when you give the approval and start moving forward with Nord Stream 2, something the Trump administration has put back on, remember, this is a way to flow energy from Russia into Germany, into transferring energy. And so why do you just take that off the table? Why don't you use that as a negotiating tool to be able to say, look, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to do this pipeline or not do this pipeline, but use it as a negotiating tool. It's that simple. But that did not happen. Now, the president has very recently made an announcement that they are finally, it took them weeks to come to this decision. It should have been a really easy one. And that is that they are going to stop doing energy products from Russia. Now, this should not have been a decision

a difficult decision in any way, shape or form. Again, the fundamental problem is what did he do when he first came into office? President Biden turned off the spigot that was allowing the U.S. energy producers to grow and expand and transport. Keystone Pipeline, Federal Lands, ANWR. These are all things, fracking. These are all things where we can expand our energy production. If you think about it,

What are they supposed to be doing in this country? The president stood before the nation in his State of the Union, and he talked about buy America, buy America, buy America. But he failed to recognize that buying American means also buying American energy products. It has been a total embarrassment that the president of the United States has been asking Saudi Arabia and others and Russia to continue to supply energy

America with energy when we have the ability to be self-sufficient, to be able to extract our own energy and be on the right path. Now, to hear Jen Psaki, the White House spokesperson, say it, well, you know, you know, we're going to go ahead and turn off this energy for Russia.

But why not also turn on American energy? We need to be in the position to go into Europe and be able to say, you don't need to kowtow to Russia. You don't need to play their little game. We can provide you product and we can ship you product better, safer, more secure, and a better quality product that is cleaner for the environment. That's what we should have been doing. But no. No.

Remember, though, Democrats are in a box with energy. They actually, and I have a lot of firsthand experience with this, they want higher energy prices because they believe that their new green agenda, their new green deal is going to work better economically if the price of gas is five, six, seven dollars a gallon. They also believe that if

Gas is $7 a gallon. You'll drive less, which is true, the true economics of that. But if you drive less, then that'll be cleaner and better for the environment. And for Pete Buttigieg to just unilaterally, in a very snotty way, say, well, don't drive cars, you know, just drive electric cars. That'll solve it. Average price of an electric car right now is like $56,000.

Friend Clay Travis, he tweeted out something I really liked and he basically said, yeah, that's like telling a homeless person, look, if you don't want to be homeless anymore, just buy a home. Well, it's so offensive and so demeaning and so arrogant of the way that this administration takes these types of issues. So turn off the Russian oil, but turn on U.S. energy production.

That's what you need to do. Pursue all of the above in terms of energy, including nuclear. Part of the reason that Germany got into the problem that they did is that they got rid of their nuclear. Now, nuclear can be dangerous, but these micro-nuclear facilities that they're developing, whoa, that's a good thing. That's good. We need new nuclear production in addition to all the other things that are going on in the world.

All of the above. Pursue them all. Be energy independent. Be self-sufficient. Create your own determination as to where you're going and get to the point where we can export it. That's where the United States should be. It's not where Biden's taking us. And he's doing it, kicking and screaming and does not like it. Totally counter to where the Democrats have been on this issue. And it's probably not going to change much along the way. They're doing it reluctantly because people are yelling and screaming.

But boy, I got to tell you, they had always planned to raise the price of energy. It was well on its way to rising way before Russia ever invaded Ukraine. But let's not fuel Russia's

I call it Russian blood oil. Let's not fund their fighting by buying exorbitantly high-priced oil. Let's produce our own and buy it from American producers. All right, now it's time to bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere.

All right. It kind of pains me to do this. He's somebody I know and I've had a good working relationship with. But I really think that Senator Lindsey Graham kind of stepped in it. I think it's pretty stupid to suggest this out loud. But to suggest that you're going to assassinate Vladimir Putin, I don't know that that was well-timed. You can be mad. You can be upset. You can be angry.

You can be a lot of things. But if you're going to assassinate somebody, you don't telegraph that you're going to assassinate somebody. And I don't know, what are you going to get out of it by going on national television and saying, yeah, we're going to assassinate Vladimir Putin. When you're a sitting United States Senator and you have a very powerful position, I just think it's stupid to go out and say that. You do not want to give him an excuse to proactively do something stupid to us.

And again, taking the responsible road, pushing back on Russia, doing a lot of things. I don't think that starts by assassinating the president of Russia. Let's pretend that he did die. There will always be a cloud. There will always be a thought that somehow Lindsey Graham and the United States was behind it, which may or may not be true.

But I just think it's pretty stupid to go out in the middle of this, what we're going. We used to, Hey, we're not going to send any troops. We're not going to do this, that, and the other. It is horrific. It is tragic. But I think it's kind of stupid to suggest out loud that we go out and just die, just assassinate him. That's not this, the way we solve all of our problems. So for that, sorry, Senator Graham. I think that's pretty stupid.

One other statistic I wanted to give you before we jump into our conversation with Maya McGinnis is if you spend $1 million a day, okay, try to understand how big is a trillion?

If you spend a million dollars a day, every single day, it would take you almost 3,000 years to get to 1 trillion. Okay? A million dollars a day, every day, 3,000 years to get to 1 trillion. We're $30 trillion in debt. That's how big that number is. So not only do we have to reach the balance where our...

Our income to the federal treasury is greater than our expenditures, but then we got to go off and pay off that debt. So we have a long, long ways to go. Don't tell me you're just going to reduce the deficit. That's a start. I don't think you can do, you can get to balance, you know, right overnight. But if you don't fix things...

Well, then you're just going to create a bigger and bigger hole. That's what Maya McGinnis is all about. That's why we're going to call her. So let's phone a friend. Let's call Maya McGinnis.

Hello. Hey, Maya. This is Jason Chaffetz. Thanks so much for joining me on my Jason in the House podcast. Jason, it's great to hear from you. How are you? Good, good, good. Thanks so much for joining me. I really do appreciate it. I'm so glad to chat with you because I remember when I first came to Washington, D.C., and I had these four pillars, fiscal discipline, limited government accountability, strong national defense. That's what I was going to do and what I wanted to get focused on. And so I

Um, I just wanted to go find the smartest people in each of those. And you're like the smartest person I know on the budget, the debt, all things evil in Washington, D.C., which is money. Well, thanks, Jason. I can tell you quite honestly, nothing makes me happier than when a member of Congress comes along and says, this is an issue I want to work on because this is an issue so many members face.

straight up ignore. And so I remember that well as well. And it was great working with you on this. And what's really sad, I think, is how many people come really committed to focusing on this issue and just how hard it turns out to be and how much we learn about how much how many obstacles there are and getting really good fiscal policy implemented. Well, this is the crazy thing. And, you know, part of it is this whole budget process is so screwed up. I mean,

If I recall right, it's only one time since the 1974 Budget Act has the appropriations process actually gone through regular order in the way it's supposed to. And so you end up... What's so frustrating is you get these continuing resolution or an omnibus, and it's like one vote, and it's one plus something trillion dollars, and it's a thousand plus pages, and it's so wrong. It's just...

It's so fundamentally wrong at its core, and it's so unfair. And both sides take out campaign ads and say, oh, look, this person's irresponsible. But the process is so screwed up.

Well, I mean, of course, if you look at the single most obvious starting point of governing, it's putting together your budget. That is the guide map. That is the strategy. That is the blueprint for the plan for the country. And what is remarkable, as you said, is that as long as we have had the modern budget process in place, we have almost never done it by the books, meaning we don't get our budgets done on time if we even get them done at all.

there's no accountability when we don't have a budget. We don't have a budget in place for this year. It's almost as though nobody notices and sort of, I think, where's the outrage? But people have become numb to the fact, of course, we've missed another president's budget or congressional budget, or we haven't passed a budget. And then even if we were to do the budget,

as we are supposed to, it still focuses on so many of the wrong things. It focuses on the smaller parts, the discretionary spending more than the bigger parts, which is our huge programs. It allows us to borrow too much. And so we just have a system that has become kind of a mockery of itself. And for any business owner or anybody who has a board of directors who thinks about what if you just decided, I'm not going to do a budget this year. It just wouldn't fly. And yet that's how we run our country.

No, there's no city, no county, no state that would get away with this. And all right. So run through, let's take a top level, scare us to death type of numbers because we're

You're right. Well, I think one of the bigger surprises when you start to dive into this is that mandatory programmatic spending is the overwhelming majority of it. No matter what Congress does, it continues on a formula. It just keeps going. And it's really only the discretionary part of the budget. But if you start to break down what should be discretionary and what should be mandatory, you kind of think, well, maybe we got those wrong. And I think also one of the secrets out there

is that so many people have figured out, hey, we'd rather not go back to Congress and have to have them vote on this every year, so let's take all these little programs and make them mandatory programmatic, and then they'll just be on a formula like, you know, Social Security or something, and

And then you've got hundreds of these programs just flowing through the system and nobody ever touches them. Nobody ever votes on them. But scare us a little bit. How bad is this mess? I think I feel like all I do is scare people when I talk about this. And it almost becomes this is part of what makes people numb. There is basically no news when it comes to the budget. So just to put some scary kinds of points out there, when it comes to our debt, we are at near record levels of debt.

It's the highest it has ever been compared to the size of the economy, other than just after World War II, when we had quite obviously just fought a world war, which runs up your debt. But this is a debt that's at near record levels because we just choose not to pay for things anymore. So that's terrible. That's scary. And there are so many reasons that the debt is dangerous that I'll talk more about as we keep going. But another scary thing is the fact that even if we don't do anything new, no new borrowing,

We have in place that we are going to borrow $13 trillion over the next decade. That's just the borrowing that's already been baked into the cake before you look at any other new legislation. So that's terrifying. Another thing is our biggest government trust funds, Medicare, Social Security, disability, all of them are structurally unsound.

And Medicare in just a few years, part A of it, and Social Security in just over a decade, those trust funds will be insolvent. And our members of Congress know this, and yet they have not taken action to pass changes that would head off insolvency. And you know this because you worked on these issues really, really hard. In fact, you've stood out quite a bit compared to a lot of colleagues in the

who don't work on them. There is nobody in Congress who should be going home at the end of each day, not having done something to fix social security and Medicare and make those programs solvent, who feels like they're doing their job. So those are just three of the basics, right? Our debt is as high, just about as high as it's ever been and headed towards there. Oh, another one.

Our interest payments, fastest growing part of the budget. So all of these things are huge red warning signals. And yet, because dealing with the budget in a responsible way is really hard, it means figuring out if you want to do something, how you're going to pay for it, or it means cutting spending.

And we can also talk more about this, but cutting spending is a lot harder than cutting taxes. But the real way you get smaller government is you cut government spending. And that's something that we haven't done in a very long time. We have to get our politicians to realizing that, realize that controlling spending is how you make the government smaller, if that's what you want to do. And borrowing for things that increases the debt, that actually grows the cost of government, the size of government because of all those interest payments.

Yeah, the numbers are really out of control. Anybody who's run a business, looked at numbers, but had any sense of financial discipline, it looks at this and says, where are the general accounting principles? Don't we do things by – I mean, it's such a different animal.

And I got to tell you, both sides are culpable here. OK, I'm not trying to say this is all because of Democrats. Republicans have done a lot of bad, bad things, too, to get us into this into this position. But, you know, when you hear a president like President Biden stand up and say, oh, well, you know, we're looking at a trillion plus dollars and it's all paid for. It's like.

We don't pay for anything right now in its totality. So I don't know how you can say, hey, we're going to increase spending. It's just so irresponsible. It's the wrong message. And this is why I hope people who listen to this podcast get a better sense of it, because the imperative is there. But I can tell you, having done literally hundreds of town hall meetings in the eight and a half years that I was in Congress, nobody asks about this.

And that's, I think, partly the reason why members of Congress don't act on it. They know the moment that they do it, they're going to get an ad run against them. Oh, you're going to blow your granny up. You're going to push her over the edge. And you're going to take away something that you are entitled to and

But it is so irresponsible to not deal with it. I mean, I think the best example of that is Social Security and Medicare. And every single year, those trustees who oversee those programs, every single year they put out an annual report and it says Social Security or Part A of Medicare.

heading towards insolency in this many years. And they counsel us to do something to make those changes. And yet anybody, and I'm sure you've experienced this, anybody who says the first thing about touching those programs gets huge attack ads by their opponents and the AARP, I might add. The AARP that does a lot to help seniors is actually really harming them by standing in the way of reforming these programs, which are the program's most important to their constituency.

And so again, and I know, I know how tough this issue is. My dad yells at me every time I talk about reforming Social Security. But the problem is, for a number of reasons, we haven't put enough money into Social Security to pay for the promises that we have.

promised to pay out. Something's going to have to give, we're going to have to make changes. Every year we wait makes that harder. And seniors shouldn't be so frightened because I don't know any politicians who's talking about changing benefits for people who are currently retired. We're talking about the future, but if you don't phase those in quickly, we won't have time for those changes to be made. And I do think a really important point you brought up about how this is bipartisan, the fault lies everywhere. Um,

I think there's so much fighting between the two political parties now. It makes it really hard for our government leaders to make any hard choices because anything you do that's responsible, paying for something or cutting a program, somebody else is going to attack you for. Instead of the widespread recognition that should exist, that these are the exact things that we do have to do. And so right now it's almost impossible.

I guess it's like thankless to be smart on the budget and responsible on it. Because like you said, nobody in the town hall meetings is clamoring for this. And that's because it's so difficult to directly connect the dangers of the debt to each of our daily lives. But...

Let's be very clear. The big debt that we have in this country is making us more vulnerable economically in terms of job security, in terms of our wages and in terms of national security. So it should be a top tier issue for every single person, even though when they come home at night, unless you're me, you probably don't talk about it at your at your dinner table. I do talk about it most nights, much to my my kids happiness. Yeah.

Yeah, I can only imagine. You wouldn't even want to have dinner with me because I've done that. You know what's interesting is – and I've actually gone to a few dinners, but they were there to talk about the budget. So, yeah, that was the whole draw. I warned you in advance. I'm sorry.

You're a budget wonk as much as I am. Yeah. I mean, I really wanted that piece of fish, but I did also really want to talk about the budget. So the thing you also hear in Washington, D.C. all the time, I mean, absent, say, a behemoth like Social Security, what you always hear is,

Oh, that's so small. It won't even make a dent. You know, that's like three hours worth of spending in D.C., you know. And so they just blow it off. And so I went out part of what I did. And I don't know if you remember this, Maya, but I tried to identify some of the most absurd, smallest budget items. And one of the ones that I found with actually Anthony Weiner, of all people, the Democrat from New York. Right.

And one of the biggest fiascos I saw was back in the World Wars, we had to come up with the material needed to buy or to build uniforms for

And so we took these, I think they're Angora goats, and they would come up and we needed more goats to make these uniforms. The problem is we haven't used this material for like decades. And I'm talking decade after decade. But the subsidy and the payment that we make to subsidize the growing of these and the production of these goats is,

continues on by the millions of dollars every year. And so we introduced, and I can't remember, but it was one of the biggest, like, I got more grief for this.

the chaffetz wiener bill or it was the wiener chaffetz bill yep and we tried to strike the spending for these angoran goats and you know what the moment we did so sure enough there is a constituency out there that stood up and said oh no that would be unfair and we had a member of congress mike conway

who is the, it was, I became, I think the chairman of the house ag committee said, look, we grow goats in our, in our part of Texas. We can't do that. I'm like, if we can't get rid of the goat subsidy, we're never going to solve this problem. Yeah. I mean, that is the problem, which is that people's talking points about how tough they're going to be on spending when they don't line up and they're, and they're out there saying, I can't give up my subsidy. I mean,

arguably Angora, Angora goat farmers should be able to survive on their own. Otherwise it's not a sensible, it's not a sensible business model, but you have a constituency for everything. And that constituency is so much stronger and louder than the opposite constituency, which is people who should be saying, I don't want to pay to subsidize Angora goats.

I can't even say this, but, you know, I don't want to be subsidizing this, but nobody is organized that way, which is why for every tiny program, nobody thinks they're going to notice. Some lobbyists is going to be able to stick that into a bill. And we don't have the kind of transparency other than when when you and Anthony Weiner go out and talk about that. It shines a light on these things. And that's why they stay and they live on.

basically forever. And we really do need that approach of, and I don't mean to say this is where all the money is, but we do need the approach of going through the budget with a fine tooth comb, just because it's trillions of dollars. It's no excuse to skimp out on oversight and seeing what programs make sense and

what are outdated, what aren't working. And keep in mind that if it's something we're doing, we are paying for it. We're either paying for it in our own taxes, our fellow citizen is paying for it in their taxes, or worst of all, our children are paying for it in their taxes because we borrowed to do it. And we have to be able to justify why every one of those spending items is actually worth it. And we don't go through that process of trying to do that at all.

No, this is why I was supportive of other things like a zero-based budget or moving to a two-year budget or doing something. I mean, the budget is so big. I think in Texas, they moved to a two-year budget. It wouldn't solve it into itself, but I figured, one Congress, one budget.

you're talking about trillions of dollars and and look when you don't go through regular order people may get confused what does that mean the way it's supposed to work after the president puts forward a budget congress is supposed to go out and do a budget that becomes the framework from which the 13 appropriations committees 13 right or maybe it's 12 12 or 13 appropriations committees uh

Then you put forward their bill and then you can go line by line and offer a striking amendment where the members of Congress all can vote on a specific line item. But little to none does that happen. The times that I've actually done it on the floor of the House, it all got washed away because, oh, they couldn't come to an agreement. So we're just going to do this omnibus. Yes or no. I mean, right. Or we're going to shut down the government.

And then everybody's going to get mad at you. And it's just so wrong. But the omnibus, I mean, it's just become – it's become the entire budgeting process is just pretense. Nobody even thinks it's going to work. Even the budget – I mean, this past year, the budget chairman from the House and the Senate didn't even bother to put forth actual real budgets. I don't know how you – Isn't that amazing? Yeah.

how do you keep your job as the chairman of the budget committee if you refuse to do a budget because it might be a little bit hard because you might have to say some things that are difficult which of course is the natural outgrowth of having a country that has put 30 trillion dollars in promises for the future on the books with no plan for how to pay for them so yes we might want our budget chairman to

to actually go through the exercise of putting budgets out of their committees or they shouldn't run those committees. I just, I feel, I mean, everybody listening to your podcast goes to work and has to do their job, right? And so when you have people in charge of the country's budget and year after year, we don't even bother to try to put one out for a vote,

That's not doing your job. And that's something that we should not tolerate because to get to all this deeper stuff we're talking about, which is what are our national priorities? That's the reflection of a country's values, by the way. And how are we going to pay for them? The core question of governing to get to those you need to start by having a budget. And if the person in charge says like, oh, no, not doing it.

That should be unacceptable to all voters. When I go out and tell people that, yeah, they don't even try to introduce a budget. Most people are just flabbergasted by that. But there's no shaming. There's no attention in the media. There's no big article about there's no countdown clock to say, hey, when are we going to have a budget?

You know, if you go to your state government or if you go to your county or your city, this is a big deal. This is the end-all, be-all. But, you know, the federal government can do what they can't, which is just issue notes or just, you know, print more money. And by the way, they don't even tell you how much money they're printing. And, I mean, it just becomes out of control. I do talk a lot about the interest issue.

Because when I had constituents that would stand up and say, well, we want better schools or we need more roads or we need this, that and the other. I would say, well, you know, the federal government is spending more than and I believe this number is correct. I have to check it. But it's more than a billion dollars a day just on the interest payment. And the interest rate is near zero. Now, it looks like it might be going up and that that's only going to exacerbate the problem.

Yeah. So it's really interesting. Interest is sort of the most compelling thing that connects to people about this issue. It's like 10 years ago, we did a poll because I want to confirm what I knew was obviously true, which was people care about deficits and debt because it's going to harm their children. And much to my surprise, people didn't care about it for that reason.

I was like, what people that's not why they worry about it. Turns out now that I have teenagers, I realize, aha, because they all had teenagers and they were tired of their teenagers that they didn't care about. But I really I was that result was quite surprising to me. I didn't know where that came from. But here's what they did care about. They cared about the interest on the debt. And you are right about that number.

And it's going to triple over the next 10 years. But even in the coming years, it's going to be that we spend more on interest payments than we do on all programs for children. Or at some point soon in the not too distant future, to me, we spend more on interest payments than we do on defense. That is no way to run a country. That turned out to be the things people think people are most worried about. But in particular, because a lot of our borrowing is.

comes from countries abroad. We borrow from China, we borrow from oil producing countries. We obviously know that having a dependency for borrowing on a country with whom you are not aligned geopolitically is very dangerous, very dangerous.

And yet that's one of the things that we are dependent on, that borrowing from abroad and those low interest rates. And that leaves us in a position where this is not just an economic risk to our country's strength. It is a foreign policy national security risk. And so those interest payments, which are going to continue to squeeze out the rest of the budget, are a real sign of the fiscal mismanagement and the unhappiness

unhealthy situation we are in. How is it going to work? Our own government, the Fed buying our own debt, the quantitative easing, those issues. What's happening now and what do you see happening in the future? So we really are an unknown territory, right? So we have the Fed has been in, we had two huge emergencies, COVID and before that, the great economic recession. And I should say at times like that,

It is the correct thing to do to borrow. You do need to borrow when your economy is going into free for all, not only to help people, but also to make sure the economy doesn't go into a like a cycle of downturn. And so that borrowing is very helpful. But when the economy is strong again, it's really important you stop the borrowing. And in the old days, you would try to run budget surpluses. We're really good at the borrowing. We're not so good at the stopping borrowing.

But the other tool, of course, is that the Fed has had more active measures to intervene and prop up the economy. But they also have continued. So right now we're still purchasing a lot of assets every month, though that is shrinking. And the real question, and obviously what's going on in Ukraine complicates all of this, is how the Fed is going to try to underperform.

to unload its pattern of borrowing and low interest rates. It has to, it has to because of inflation and what's going on there, but also how it's going to do it without destabilizing the economy. And the scariest part is we've gotten ourselves into this terrible corner where we have so much debt

That if you raise interest rates to slow inflation, which you need to do, that's also going to increase the payments on the existing debt we already have very quickly, very aggressively. That can harm the economy. So it's not very easy to do smart monetary policy when you have dumb fiscal policy. Hmm.

Yeah, that'll make you wake up in the morning and think, ooh, this is going to be a tough one. But gosh, we just have to have some leadership. And I think leadership requires, it necessitates people who wake up and say, look, I got to tell you some things that I've seen that I like to say, I didn't create this mess, but I am here to help clean it up.

And people, I think, mostly understood that. But of course, as soon as you put forward an idea, it's like, you mean that would be a little painful? I'm like, well, yeah, it's going to be a little bit painful, but we have to do it. And if we didn't have, if we had done this earlier, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is today. So.

It's 100% about leadership, and you have to govern the country that you are the president of, not the country you wanted to be the president of. And so, I mean, many presidents in recent years have inherited very difficult...

situations that are different than the ones they were thinking about when they ran for office. But that's what you have to respond to. And clearly, the debt and inflation is one that is not of the current. You know, it is from many, many years of irresponsible policies, of entitlements, of tax cuts, of extra COVID spending more than we needed. All of these things have contributed.

But the leaders right now have to step up. And by that, I don't just mean Democrats, even though they're in charge. I'm a political independent and that's how I see the world. All of our leaders need to step up and put forth solutions. And like you said, they'll get hit for them because they're hard. The other responsibility is on us, the voters, to start saying thank you to politicians who tell us the truth and make hard choices instead of punishing them for being responsible.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, I want to go back to something in there that I took a little different position or not a different position, but expanded the idea. I was okay with tax cuts.

But the failing was that they were not coupled with spending cuts. Right. And so I don't have any problem with the American people having more money in their pockets. But if you don't also cut spending, then you make the situation worse. You have to do both to actually have the economic benefit and the benefit to our debt. Right. Right.

It's not that you can't have tax cuts. It's exactly right. And if you're a big progressive, big spender, you could also have spending increases if you want. You have to couple them with how you would pay for them. And so when it comes to tax cuts and people talking about I'm cutting taxes because I want smaller government. Again, I said this before, but no, I'm cutting taxes. So I'm going to also cut spending, which will give me both smaller government and a tax cut.

That should be what a conservative point of view would be. But what we had, so the three years running up to COVID, put COVID aside because that was very complicated. In those three years, we cut taxes by $2.5 trillion.

But on top of that, we've raised spending. It's not that we didn't cut spending. We raised spending by another one point nine trillion dollars. That is a recipe for fiscal recklessness. And that is what we had. Yeah. It's not that you can't have it. You can have what you want. You just have to deal with the tradeoffs that go hand in hand with it.

See, this is the incomplete equation that I thought Republicans missed the beat on. And they had to have cut back some spending along the way in order to justify it. The economy would have zoomed even more. And you have to starve the beast if you truly want a conservative, smaller government. But that's not what happened.

You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Maima Guinness right after this.

I want people to understand what mandatory programmatic spending is versus the discretionary portion of the budget because you really have to understand that to understand what Congress does and does not do. Well, and it's a good question because I'm not a lawyer, and when I look at laws, my head explodes. I do not understand the language they're using.

And that is the same thing with the budget. It's literally, I believe, designed in a way to alienate people from understanding it. Just try like a crazy exercise of taking the president's budget and comparing that to a congressional budget. They are like apples and, you know, Mars. They're not even close to something that you could compare in any way. And so it's always good to go over the basics. And I'll throw in another one, too. The deficit is how much we borrow every year.

The debt is basically those accumulated annual deficits. So the deficit is, you know, a trillion a year, give or take. The debt is many, many, many trillion for many years of borrowing. So that's just one thing that I hear members of Congress getting wrong quite often. Yeah. In terms of the budget, you just pointed out one third of our budget is discretionary. That's the part

the part that goes through the appropriations process every year, Congress has to approve, or as you've pointed out, they usually fail to. So we do an omnibus or a CR or shut down the government because it's not funded.

And that discretionary portion, so it has to be approved every year to move forward and have that money dispensed on these priorities. It's about half defense and half other things like education, environment, energy policy, retraining, a lot of different things in there. So that's the discretionary portion. The two-thirds mandatory policy is

means you don't have to approve it. It means that if somebody qualifies for that spending, they will get it. And that includes things like social security. If you qualify, you'll get your benefits. There's no capped budgetary amount, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, pensions, farm subsidies, interest on the debt, all of those things. And the important thing to know about that is since it's not budgeted for, and it's basically an automatic pilot,

It's as though nobody notices. And every year it just keeps going with even less oversight than the discretionary, which doesn't get enough oversight either. And as a result, those programs tend to grow faster than the overall economy, which means they are kind of the driving force behind what's causing our big structural deficits as you look into the future, where our deficits are going to be growing over the coming decades at a massive rate.

Two topics I want to get your take on. The debt ceiling. It's always a problem for the party in power because they know they're going to raise it, but they don't want to have to have the vote. They don't want to be on the record saying, well, we raised the debt ceiling. And so there's a lot of trickery that goes along with it. I've kind of taken the position. I think it's good. I want everybody to be on the record. I want them to sit down and not be forced to actually deal with this issue.

Yeah. So the debt ceiling, a lot of people want to get rid of the debt ceiling because it has become overly weaponized where some people have said, I'm willing just to let the country default. And that can't be an option. We can't let the country default. That's like setting off a bomb in our own country against ourselves. Like it would

to cremate our economy. But I don't think you could possibly get rid of the debt ceiling without reforming it in a different way or using it the way it should be. And what I think of the debt ceiling is it's there. It's a reminder that our borrowing is growing faster than we have said we are allowed, we are going to allow ourselves to. And remember, the budget doesn't limit it. The debt ceiling is the only thing that does.

And I think while if you're about to hit the debt ceiling and you can't cut your borrowing quickly enough, which you almost never can because the laws that have put that borrowing in place have already been passed. Then I think when you increase the debt ceiling, you should also require some savings to the national debt at the same time.

And so what I mean is the past couple debt ceiling increases, they came up with deals where they increased the debt ceiling and they passed some legislation that also increased the debt by even more. And that's what greased the wheels. Like only in Washington is that a bargain that people should sign on to. But what it should be is like, OK, we will increase the debt ceiling because we cannot let ourselves default. Fuck.

But at the same time, we're going to put in place a fiscal commission or we are going to save $400 billion by doing X, Y and Z. Or we are going to put discretionary caps in and promise to fix Social Security within the next year. Like something that's actually an improvement instead of continuing the fiscal deterioration that we have.

And that hasn't happened decades ago. We used to do that. It was a warning and then people heeded the warning and they made changes. But now Congress hasn't made any improvements in a very long time. There's other ideas of reforming the debt ceiling. I know that Jody Arrington and Scott Peters in the House have a bipartisan bill that says, OK, if the debt ceiling, if Congress can't

is going to hit the debt ceiling and they haven't passed the budget, the president can lift it as long as he puts forth a plan that would improve the debt over the next decade. So there's some kinds of ideas like that, which I think also hold promise. But it has to be that you actually use the moments like the debt ceiling or related things to push you to do the right thing. Congress is very good at doing the wrong thing on its own. We need some budget mechanisms that help them do the right thing. Yeah.

Yeah, Congress is notorious for doing the wrong thing. No doubt about that. It comes very naturally. Yes, it does. I was just going to say that's that Will Rogers line that says, well, the opposite of progress is Congress. And I think it's so true. It just makes me laugh. Well –

But there's still it's also to put some of it on us. We got to start voting for people who promise to do the right thing and make hard choices. Life is not about free lunches. We all know it's not true. We know you can't borrow your way to prosperity. So we either need to cut our spending or raise our revenues or from where I sit, when I look at these numbers, quite honestly, we're going to have to do both. But

But we need people who will level with us and tell us the truth instead of like stirring us up and getting us all angry at the other side and then promising things that could never happen. Right, right, right. All right. Last one I want to ask you about before we get to some really touchy questions. What do you think of the balanced budget, like a balanced budget amendment? You know, the thing about a balanced budget amendment is it's very catchy. The problem with fiscal policy is like it's

It's not really good sloganeering. It doesn't go in bumper stickers. The right thing to do is our debt that's growing faster than our economy right now, we want to put that debt on a downward path relative to the economy.

Now, I know that's a crummy bumper sticker that balance the budget or balance budget amendment is a much better. It's relatable. Yes. The problem is twofold. One, the people who have pushed it often are unwilling to say how they balance the budget. So my my point would be don't trust someone calling for a balanced budget amendment unless they also couple it with a plan to balance the budget.

And two, and this is distressing to all of us, I think, but we are so far out of the realm of being able to balance the budget. We are so far in the hole that if we tried to in a reasonable amount of time, it would tank our economy, put us back in recession.

You would have to like really slash a lot of programs like Social Security and Medicare immediately. And that's that doesn't make sense. That's the wrong thing to do. So I think it's now too aggressive because we're in big trouble. But I do like the idea of taking every way to strengthen the restrictions. But I think what we're shooting for has to be more responsible. Like maybe we can balance the budget over two decades. Unfortunately, we can't do it next year. Well, and I think if you were on a trajectory to.

to get it moving in the right direction, that that would be a qualifier to say, hey, we're moving in the right direction. You can't add to it. You have to, you know, it'd be a real set of parameters that could do that. But I've always...

I'd do that. If you promise improvement every year and build that in, now that makes sense. And a lot of Republicans have said, oh, we wouldn't want to do that because it'll just give the Democrats an excuse to raise taxes. And my response to that has been, well, that's actually kind of a good thing. I think if people actually had to pay the taxes that they were actually spending in their government –

There would be a revolt saying, I can't afford that much money. And that is the whole point, right? That if we had to actually pay for the government that we got, we would never do that. We would find alternatives. We...

We have this tool on our website called Is It Worth It? which breaks out every major government program into per-person costs or per-household costs or per-taxpayer costs. You can look at it any way. So the problem is that people can't relate to the cost. We have a tool called Is It Worth It? where you can look at the cost of any government program and figure out...

And it says how much it would cost per person or per household. And you can decide whether it's worth it. And there's no right or wrong answer. Some people think it is. Some people think it's not. But by actually seeing the cost per in dollar terms, we could better think about whether something's worth it.

But the real issue is that when we deficit spend for everything, it feels free. So everybody's going to say it's worth it. And the government is going to continue to grow. So fiscal conservatives who are worried about excess spending should not want to allow deficit spending. They should want tax cuts, tax increases, excuse me, to be linked to those spending programs, because that's when people will really say, oh, wait a second, it's actually not worth it. Yeah, yeah, that's...

There's that saying, I heard George Will say it several times, which is nobody ever pays to wash a rental car. Oh my God, my husband once did.

I am not even kidding you. We were on vacation and he said he was going to wash the rental car. Me and my kids were like, what is... That's the craziest thing I've ever seen. So other than my husband, exactly right. The fiscally irresponsible one in the family, obviously. Yes. But...

You know the point. I mean, until you feel some ownership, you just don't take care of it the way that you do otherwise. All right. So tell us the website because that is a cool tool. And tell us real quickly some of the other programs that you have within that, like Fix Us and that sort of thing.

Yeah. So CRFB.org, C-R-F-B.org, Committee Responsible Federal Budget. It's such a mouthful of a name. But we have some really cool tools on there. There's budgeting for the future. There's a bunch of interactive tools. And you've seen some of them, but there's ways that you can actually make your own Social Security reform plan or something called the debt fixer that allows you to figure out how you would bring the debt down or quizzes and

test to see how much you know about the budget and how you would allocate our priorities. Like, do you know that we spend $6 per senior on every $1 we spend on children? A lot of kind of stuff that takes you through tools that educate people on that, that I think is really useful. And then we do have a bunch of programs where we're looking at

The impending insolvency of these trust fund programs, because I think that's one of the biggest problems that's out there. We have a really wonderful health care program that's looking at how to save costs for the government and consumers. And then fix us is something that's new where we have come to believe we're not going to be able to fix the debt if the country is so, so caught up in our own polarized fighting and dysfunction, because we're

The more we're fighting with each other, the less we're willing to do the hard things that make our country strong. And so Fix Us is looking at the political and economic and cultural divisions in our country and how we got here. I mean, everybody knows it doesn't feel united right now. How we got to this point and what we're going to have to do to get back to a

to a point where we're willing to compromise and not assume that someone who we disagree with is bad and work together, even when we don't get exactly what we want, but to make our economy and our country strong. Because I'm, as many people are, incredibly worried that we are so busy fighting with each other, we are missing the real threats that are facing us right now.

Yeah. I mean, the airways right now get all consumed with, you know, should a four-year-old wear a mask or not? And we're missing some of these really big issues that have to be there. Maya, this is why you are not only one of the smartest, brightest minds on these issues, but we love your passion. That's the thing is the passion behind this. And so I'm so glad that you're working on this. And

If you ever run into a member of Congress, House or Senate, and you say, who do you work with on these fiscal issues? And they say, Maya McGinnis. You think, all right, that's a pretty smart person because she is the best in town. And I really, really do appreciate it. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more right after this.

Now, I don't care how many budgets you've tried to fix. We need to get to know Maya a little bit better. So I'm going to ask you some rapid questions and we're going to learn a little bit about you, if that's okay. Okay. Interesting. Let's see. First concert you attended. Sean Cassidy.

See, no one's known who that was, but he was quite the hard-to-meet-the-probe. Yeah, do you want to sing a little? Yeah. Well, I can't sing. I can't sing. Well, I can't sing either, but I did know, and he was a hardy boy, for those of you that are old enough to remember. That's right!

Oh, yeah. Good stuff. Good looking man. I can understand why you'd go to that concert. Thank you. Thanks for understanding my first crush. Yep. Okay. So I was going to ask you first celebrity crush, but if you went to Sean Cassidy, a concert, that's probably one in the same. It was. It was. So we were also the other night at a dinner party at my house talking about the Fonz. Just good old, good, good old fashioned, like hard to believe.

the hard throbs, the Fonz and his cool leather jacket. And I once actually got to meet the Fonz many years later. I thought that was pretty cool. I'm feeling like about 150 right now. We got to see something that makes me feel younger instead of ancient. Well, you know what? You know what? My wife and I, with our two kids, at the time we only had, I think it was just two kids. We have three kids, but at the time I think we had two. So we were pretty young in the family. And it was in the Salt Lake City airport and we're standing there for a flight and

And then I look right over and there is Henry Winkler just standing there. He's got kind of a trench coat on. And I think, I'm like, Julie, there is some coolness right there. And he turns and he looks at our family and he just kind of smiles like,

Yeah, I know you know who I am and I appreciate it. Like it was like this nonverbal back and forth that I just thought... Just like we all know. We didn't want to bug him. We didn't want to make a scene. We didn't... You know, nobody had mobile phones back then, so we weren't making a big deal. But he was so nice and just kind of acknowledging like, yeah, I know you...

But he was so cool. And both Julie and I, you know, grew up thinking, all right, now this guy's pretty cool. So Henry Winkler, two thumbs up. Seems like one of the nicer guys in Hollywood, too. Glad it didn't all affect him. All right. Favorite vegetable, Maya? Broccoli. I eat it every single day. Really? That's impressive. You know the budget and you're healthy? That's amazing. No, I know. I also eat cheeseburgers most days. But I can't cook.

I cannot cook. And the one thing that isn't disgusting that comes out of my kitchen is roasted broccoli. And so I've just taken to cooking it every night. We had it last night. We'll have it tonight. There's a lot of cheeseburgers. Don't be mistaken. Very good. No wonder that rental car needed a little washing. I understand. Most embarrassing moment in your life.

Oh, my gosh. There's so many. I can't. There's none of them that are even appropriate for radio. This is not radio. It's a podcast. That's why we want those are the ones we want, the ones that are not appropriate. So feel free.

No, I'm not going to tell you those. Those will be for when I come back. But just the first time I actually learned I was horrible at public speaking, which luckily I've had to overcome because of my job. But I stood up to give a wedding toast only to find out that I was one of those people who get like red and shaky and terrified at the notion of public speaking. And it went so badly that I actually had to sit down in the middle of it

And it was one of those things where every single person averted their eyes. No one would make eye contact for the rest of the night. This was one of my best friends, one of my best friends. And I think I literally ruined their wedding. And that's that's it's really not as embarrassing as most of the things that happen to me all the time. But it was pretty awful. So then I had to once I started doing this work and had to give a lot of speeches and do TV and stuff, I really had to work to overcome that fear.

Well, you're pretty smooth now, but maybe you're giving that toast. Yeah, I can tell it still bothers you. Sorry to give you the chills again. It was really bad. Yeah. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no? No. Good answer. So wrong. It is wrong, right? It's wrong. And I don't know how I raised a...

Right. I don't know how I've raised a son who thinks that's smart. We sometimes play the game at home. What are the most disgusting food combinations you could think of? Like pairing cheese and chocolate together. But I feel like pineapple and pizza would have won an award in the most disgusting food combination games. And then it's a thing.

It's a thing. We call it Hawaiian. We like Hawaii. So, you know. Yeah. We love Hawaiians. We love Hawaii. We love everything about it. But those two foods don't belong together. Exactly. Exactly. All right. This is why I'm wearing an eye here. Favorite childhood toy? Toy? Yeah. Like when you're growing up, little girl, what did you play with? A lot of stuff. Something called the lemon twister, which you would be like, oh my gosh, you could probably make it like a hot new exercise class.

I just started Orange Theory this week, so I don't even think of it. This week? A little late on those New Year's resolutions, are you? No, my resolution was for March. I'm a little early, thank you. So wait, what's the Lemon Twister?

The lemon twister was a little like rubber hose you put on one foot and then you swing it around with a plastic lemon at the edge. Oh, yeah. So it's like jump roping, but a different version. Yeah. And I just love that stuff. But I think about them. The questions are so fun because I think about that and I think it's just not as fun to be a kid anymore. I'd so much rather have been doing the lemon twister than than.

uh, social media, you know, it was just fun playing cops and robbers in my neighborhood was my favorite thing. Oh, I love that. And I, you know, I miss my stretch Armstrong. I wish I had not was one of my goals to, is to make my stretch arm Armstrong bleed. And I, it was really hard to pull off, but I finally stabbed him hard enough that it actually bled. And it was, you know, it's inside.

goo, like red clear. It was blood. It was awesome. Somebody had thought that through that like at some point Stretch Armstrong is going to break and they made it look like this jelly blood. And I thought that was so cool, but I miss having Stretch around and

Because I would just pull his arms as far as I could get them. And I was always amazed how stretchy Stretch Armstrong really was. They should bring that one back. That's a good toy. That's a good toy. You're so right. A bunch of retro toys could be good. That could be really one of the best. Yes, yes. I'm going to go see if you can find it on eBay. Last question. Best advice you ever got? Oh, best advice I ever got.

was to surround yourself at work by the smartest people you can find, because it's much, much better to be surrounded by people who are smarter than you. And then you're learning from then where you're the smartest person. And I have an incredible team at the committee for responsible federal budget, just brilliant colleagues. And so that has, that has come true. Um, and then the second thing is advice. I was just talking about with my daughter the other day related, but

it's not actually about achieving what you want, whether it's work-wise or anything-wise. It's kind of about the journey of getting there and feeling like you're making progress. So to me, being goal-oriented for the sake of moving towards things rather than needing to get anything specific has really helped me be satisfied all the time when I feel like we're making progress. And thank goodness, because on the debt,

usually the kind of progress we're making is we're just keeping things from being worse than they otherwise would have been. We're certainly not getting a sound fiscal situation, but the, but feeling like each thing you do has some impact I find really rewarding, but being surrounded by smart people. And then my favorite thing, like I said, it's just laughing, learning and laughing my two L's and,

And loving. Good friends, good people around you. So the three L's of learning, laughing, and loving. Those are the things that really make me happy. And the lemon twisters. Lemon twister. Four L's. Four L's. Yeah. And lemon twisters. Maya, that is great advice. And you know what? I think that was one of the best things I did is somehow, someway, I networked in my way to go talk to you and spend time with you. And thanks for joining me on this podcast because people...

People, I think, are genuinely concerned, but they're like, what's the solution? How do we do this? And it's not going to be easy. It's not an easy, you know, yes or no. It's it's there have to be tough decisions and national discussions about where we spend money and what our priorities are and and something I wish we would do. And that is.

And that voters would demand everybody do because we just keep ignoring. But I'm so glad that you're in that position and doing what you're doing. Maya McGinnis, thank you so much for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. Really great to be with you, Jason. Thank you.

All right. I cannot thank Maya enough. She is just a wonderful human being, fun, energetic, somebody who understands and is wicked smart with the numbers in the federal budget, has studied it for years, and I think one of the smartest, if not the smartest person on the federal budget we have. So let's all listen to what she has to say because she really is quite good with this and understanding it. And

looking for viable solutions. That's the other part. It's not just to be a critic. It's to, hey, all right, what are we going to do? How are we going to fix this? And that tool that she talked about is a viable one for doing that. So thank you again for listening. Please, if you could rate it, give us some stars. We'd appreciate that. You can go over to foxnewspodcast.com.

and find more podcasts. And we'll be back with more next week. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House. Hi, everybody. It's Brian Kilmeade. I want you to join me weekdays at 9 a.m. East as we break down the biggest stories of the day with some of the biggest newsmakers and, of course, what you think. Listen live or get the podcast now at briankilmeadeshow.com.