“It’s déjà vu once again,” Blaze News senior editor Daniel Horowitz tells Glenn. While Senate Republicans are planning on cutting a few hundred billion dollars in their next budget, they STILL passed a $340 billion budget blueprint. “Everyone hates inflation,” Horowitz argues, “except, they don’t want to actually reform or cut anything that’s driving it … What’s causing the current and future inflation are these programs!” Meanwhile, President Trump is asking for a balanced budget. “Now is the time,” Glenn says, for Trump to demand of Congress: “you HAVE to find these cuts!”
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Daniel Horowitz, how are you?
DANIEL: Doing all right but it is Daja vu once again.
GLENN: Is there any bright side to what is happening with the budget, first of all?
DANIEL: I guess they are planning to cut a few hundred billion so it is better than nothing. Although it should be pointed out that republicans are going to spend another 200 billion that I think we all say we want. The military, immigration enforcement, and then you know, $4.5 trillion to extend tax cuts and another $2 trillion to enact Trump's proposed tax cuts which we shouldn't count at pending but in the short term we have to print more to deal with the deficit. This is the overall problem that republicans get themselves into. When democrats are in problem we say it is terrible. But when republicans get in, we are not on the same page. They don't understand the mutual exclue sievety of their arguments. If this is literally Obamacare 2.5. They hated Obamacare but loved the aspects of it that made it expensive. Everyone hates inflation but they don't want to reform or cut anything that's driving it. Right now, we are at a point where we cannot achieve our parents standard of living. It is that bad. According to DLS we are spending, a family of four, about $15,000 more a year than pre-COVID. The average family got $11,000 in sim stimulus checks but they are paying $15,000 more every year. Over the next 10 years $89 trillion in spending and that assumes there isn't a recession, no wars, and no disasters.
GLENN: That's unsustainable. Here is what nobody is talking about. First of all, the spending will lead to more inflation. We have got to get the spending under control. We also have to cut the regulation. We have to cut taxes and make them better than any place else in the world. We have to get serious or we are at the doorstep of the funeral home. We are already there. We are walking towards the casket. You cannot keep funding our debt. No one wants our debt anymore. And so interest rates on the debt are already at a trillion dollars a year. If we don't change our course it will be $1.5, $2 trillion, and then it is an out of control debt spiral.
DANIEL: And people forget where we have record treasuries to offload on the market, the nuance is rolling over at higher rates. Precisely that time there is decreased and ends. Central banks are buying gold. The yields are moving in the opposite direction. I think republicans have a golden opportunity. Let's say no one cares about kids and grandkids even though they say they do. This is a now problem. I think republicans have failed to communicate and complete their sentences that what is causing the current and future inflation are these very programs. When they say I don't want to cause any pain to the district. The pain of the cost of the living is greater than the amount of subsidies they are getting in welfare. I will tell you this notion there is a free pot of trillions of waste, fraud, and abuse divorced from significantly revolving or cutting major programs, is simply not true. We are lying to ourselves. We are setting ourselves up for failure.
GLENN: Well that's the one hope that I have because, you know, I am seeing the cuts. We are not anywhere close to a trillion. We should be cutting about $2 trillion at bare minimum. And not over 10 years. Over this year. Or just not going to make it. The one thing that I do have hope for is that maybe we going to really start shutting down agencies which isn't going to cut $2 trillion but it will begin to make significant impacts toward a trillion and two trillion. We aren't going to find half a trillion. Things like USAID won't be found everywhere. I was disappointed with the statement from the Pentagon that we will not make cuts but reinvestment we have to make cuts in everything. There cannot be a sacred cow.
DANIEL: No, especially if you want to fulfill the president's comment to wall off social security and Medicare. You could do that. But then you really have to go aggressive on housing and transportation. And then obviously Medicaid and food stamps. Trump's message if I were him it would be we are going to get rid of the foreign labor, and the 4.5 billion Americans out of the labor force working age to come back and join the economy, and lower regs, lower taxes. Why we are going to ease up welfare. There is no shortcut to that message. The waste fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid is the third party gripping the mild man. We have to kid out the mild mild middleman. The notion you can have painless condoms in Gaza causing inflation. Those aren't it. That's a policy problem. Illegal immigration is a policy problem. That does have a physical cost. But that's not fundamentally where the money is. I think people are being dishonest and setting themselves up for failure. Hence when republicans come to craft the budget, we can't get them on board for $1.5 trillion in cuts over 10 years.
GLENN: Donald Trump says he wanted a balanced budget. This is so far away from that. I wish he would start pushing the political nuclear buttons on members of Congress. He has the clout and the nation's attention. He has the attention of the GOP. They know. The Mitch McConnell's of the world have now power. Now is the time to say Congress, I am going to explain to the American people that you can't find these cuts. You have to find these cuts. Now. He needs to be step up to the table and be the Donald Trump. This was the one black hole we saw in the first administration where he will start to implement this vision we are talking about. The cuts to the federal workforce reflect this sort of vision. What he needs to do is then connect the dots to legislative affairs and make it clear that this is the budget I want to come up beside it and then he has got to threaten primaries against those guys. What wind up happening is the opposite. He leads it to Congress. They are about to cut the things.
GLENN: The time to do it is now. Push Congress up against a wall. The minute she leaves in three years and 11 months, the minute he leaves, and if we lose to somebody who is not the same mindset, all this stuff is over. It is just reversed. The country cannot take these swings this far back and forth.
DANIEL: Part of where we are where we are is because republicans always said they had offsets. But when they are in power, they would backload the savings and frontload the increased spending whether it is tax cuts. And democrats come in, erase that with interest, and you are left with the bad and not the good. This is why you either have to front load the cuts or at least front load structural reforms or evolution to the state in a way that makes it harder for democrats to claw back. One Ic I had I would love to pitch is Trump doesn't want to dwell the debt setting. Congress has a low that we will increase the debt ceiling but the next time you need two 3rds of the state legislators to do it. That would bring the fight to the grassroots in the red states and finally make us make those decisions. Yes, democrats can come in and claw that back. Once you give that to the state it is a lot harder to do. We need enduring victories.
GLENN: I want to ask you about the regulations being cut. Are we cutting there deep and fast enough? Because Trump, I want success for America. And I believe in his plan. But it isn't going happen if we can't turn the economy back on. The economy we took a wrecking ball to it for the last four years. We were intentionally shooting it in the chest. We have got to make some bold moves. I want to take to you about regs and honestly, why are we just going for these tax cuts and they say, yeah, we will make these permanent. Why aren't we going for the 15/15/15 plan? More in just a second.
GLENN: Daniel, I don't know if you are following the cuts and regulations, et cetera, but have you seen any plan yet for de cuts in regulations?
DANIEL: Again, I think much like with the federal workforce, and the programs, a lot of this is the bigger more transformational change you will do is ultimately requiring Congress. I am thinking of things like, first of all, the entirety of the grand new deal but things like the 2005 energy act. Global warning needs to be excreted from the government. What republicans have done is this hybrid. Where, yes to drilling and oil and gas but at the same time we are going to indulge this global warming lie and subsidize the economy that crowds out real energy sources.
GLENN: Stu, give me the stat you gave me earlier.
STU: Since 2000, we have gone from 76.8% of energy from fossil fuel to 76.5%. We have improved 0.3%.
GLENN: Don't call that a scam.
DANIEL: But we crowded out you can imagine the hundreds of Billions of dollars of misallocated resource. Trump promised to get rid of the new green deal. Why isn't that in the budget reconciliation? A lot of republicans love it in their district. Electric vehicle plans or solar panel transmission lines. Nobody wants to sacrifice anything for a net good.
GLENN: We have seen 30 days of what I think has been miraculous. I have never seen a president move this fast. But we are new the point where the rubber has to neat road on significant changes. And Donald Trump knows this. He told me. I have a 100 days to get all of this working because if I don't the economy isn't going to turn around by the mid terms and that will kill us. The only way to do that is to make massive cuts. The inflation is just going to go higher and hire and massive regulations and taxes. I think the republicans think that it is a I don't know a smorgasbord where they can pick and choose. No, no, no. All of this is one meal. If you don't have one of them it won't work. Am I wrong?
DANIEL: I think that's a brilliant point. Republicans have done six rounds of tax cuts. Every time they come in they cut taxes but forget the other half. We are paying the piper. Back then we were like a young teenager and able to get away with it. Eat that $230 billion in annual interest on the debt. For the last 15 years before COVID we had pretty low inflation. That is over with. To me there is four legs to it. The regulatory action is spending taxes. And I think we feed need to wean them off foreign labor. Think about all these federal workers. A lot of agencies are going have computer techs that are cut. You try finding a job where every company only hires in India.
