Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview

26:06It said 81 % of the incremental energy that was generated in the United States were backed by some form of tax credits. This is not to judge. It's just meant to say that financial actors go to where the incentives are. And if we change them and we take 81 % of this incremental energy offline and you can't get an ACCAST turbine, you know, for example, I'm going to announce on Monday we're building a one gigawatt data center that I'm funding in Arizona. I can't get an ACCAST turbine until 2032. I can get nuclear from the state of Arizona, but that's not broadly available everywhere. And so there's these practical investment decisions that the financial community wants to make to keep America at the forefront.

26:45But it's a little murkier today unless the Senate understands these nuances and helps us because if we can't make these investments then we're just not going to do it. I say, Concent General doesn't understand what you're talking about. Again, I said, I don't want to pull the rug out from under people. I understand investment because I is in business. But again, I want to move toward a more simple system. And again, it's insane what government, you know, all the green energy thing. It miss out case capital. Taylor was happening in Europe and Germany. So if they're artificially driving up the cost of power for what?

27:24Okay, I mean, it's a fantasy. It's a self -insisted wound. We spent some of the like five or six trillion dollars globally on climate change. Again, whether you believe it or not, we haven't been the needle. That's just five or six trillion dollars basically wasted. So again, I recognize fact we've waste a lot of money, we've incentivized people for certain type of power. The solution would be quit doing it long term and let the marketplace provide as much energy, cheap as possible. Again, protect the environment. I don't want pollution, but the whole climate change thing is... I care about electron surplus and having an infinite supply of electrons, which is effectively the threshold issue between us and whatever form of abundance we're going to find with robots, with going to Mars, with building AGI, the threshold issue is just, do we have enough energy to do it all?

28:16And if as long as we have that, we're going to win. And if we don't, China's going to win. Where it comes from, I really don't care. But the reality with nuclear is, we can't wait till 2035 for electrons to turn on. That's just a non -starter. So as much as we have to pay for the sins of the past, and the sins of the past as we turned all that stuff off, ideologically to your point because of some crying child, but now we have to play for the conditions on the ground. I have a different question, which is I want to go back to Dave's question on Doge, Senator, which is there was a $9 billion recision bill that went to the House and unfortunately it didn't make a lot of progress.

28:52What is the future of Doge as you see it? But first of all, he was beneficial for no other reason than it exposed how oblivious and ignorant Congress was of all this waste -fraud abuse. I mean, that has value right there. It should have embarrassed every member of Congress. All these departments has, that this kind of spending, this kind of crap was going on, and that they weren't doing oversight on it. They weren't taking a look at it. And, but, and I tried getting Elon's attention quite honestly about, you know, can give me somebody in Doge that I can work with so as soon as you identify the spending, we can connect it to an appropriation account, we can connect it to a mandatory spending account so we can actually codify it.

29:39He doesn't seem to have the time and quite honestly in a personal conversation, he said, we don't have to do that. Well, we do have to do that. And so, you know, we've been hammering Russ Vote, you know, send us a rescission package. You know, finally he bundles up $9 billion when I'm, I think the last time I looked at George's website, they were up to 165 things higher than that now. They kind of, they have fallen short of the goal, listen, I'm not criticizing for them that, for that at all. But the fact of the matter, it has to be codified. Just putting on a website is valuable, but we got to bank the savings.

30:12And so anything this mandatory has got to be done through reconciliation otherwise I've been done from recision. And you got to get the public support for this. I don't know why they haven't done it. So can you just explain that to us like what we see on the website. Is that not saved? It's there's a question that they've stopped contracts. They're no longer spending money that way. But the question is whether the president on his own can impound those funds. So they may not be spent, but they're just going to be sitting out there as, you know, unallocating, spending to be spent some time in the future.

30:50Unless you rescind them. And again, that's the beauty of recision reconciliation. We don't need Democrats to help us there. We can do that with simple majorities of both the House of the Senate. And again, it'll be pretty depressing. President Trump in his first administration sent up a 15 billion dollar decision package and it's voted down to the Senate to Republican senators voting against it. And my guess is they paid no political price for doing that. Any Republican that would vote against the decision package ought to pay a pretty huge political price in voting that thing down, it's going to take presidential leadership.

31:24He's got to be focusing on that. And I'm sorry, I don't think President Trump is doing all kinds of great things. He's not focused on reducing spending. it. From what he thought of, have you talked with his staff or him directly about it? Was this not as apparent to him and his staff as it is to you? I just think they are overwhelmed. I mean, you see all the activity and this just hasn't hit his radar yet. It's going to hit his radar here the next few weeks. So again, he liked the concept. The slogan of one beautiful bill. I don't think he was overly concerned or understanding what the details were.

32:02Yeah, I'm gonna force him to take a look at the details. Mm -hmm. I'm gonna force the discussion on spending. It feels like we're about to enter some form of like people conclave for you and your senate colleagues are gonna go into a room. There's either gonna be white smoke or black smoke. So can you walk us through like what is the mechanics now? Like what will it be like when you when Senator Thune brings you together? Are you all caucus or how does this work now for you? So we've been in finance, maybe we've been working on these things, but again, we're all it's all about scores, right? I've got to put you here these scores, right?

32:35But they're divorced from they're not tied anything. It's like, okay, I got a score of 65 Good, I mean it's good if you're golfing. It's awfully if you're bowling So you get all these scores are divorced from reality. So again, the the process is complete It's by large a charade. Okay, somebody else is gonna write this thing That's going to be shoved down people's throws. So what I intend to do is I intend to open it up and bring this to the line of the day. I've been doing this this January 1st, ready for giving three pre -pandemic levels, three options on pre -pandemic levels of spending. Next column, here's the process, aligned by line, deep dive, forensic audit.

33:17I love to take the Doge team right now and just bring them over. Let's focus on this. Let's spend months doing this. but we'll need time. We'll need a two -step process. You know, and then, you know, literally my last column just kind of put it all together with the big numbers and this is why you have to do it. But again, you were following the bait in the house. Did you ever hear 2 .2 trillion dollar average deficit being projected 20 trillion dollars, you know, 59 trillion dollars in debt? Nobody. It's just 1 .5 trillion. It's almost meaningless. It's a rounding error. So I'm going to force this to be that's why I'm on your show here today.

33:54That's why I'm going to be doing Jake's happen tomorrow Yeah, I'm the numbers to the four Senator is there a hard line that you'll have that if we don't get this deficit level to X because that's the focus That's the objective. That's the primary objective rather at this point in time in this republic That you'll say I'm a no vote and have you been that declarative about your position on this? I've been pretty upfront. You know, the first goal of this Republican budget reconciliation should be don't add to the deficit. Could that be the first goal? Beyond that, what I've always said is I want a commitment to return to a reasonable, pre -pandemic level spending and a process to achieve and maintain it.

34:40I'm reasonably open. Yeah, I recognize we have to get the votes. So I don't have a hard number, but what I've done is I've laid out these options, and right right now the hard number accepted by an expected by a lot of senators, enough to not pass this until we achieve it is $6 .5 trillion in spending in 2026. And I can walk through how you get to that point, but that's kind of the number. Right now we're expected to spend about $7 .3 trillion next year. So that implies about $808 trillion in deficit reduction rather than $1 .5 trillion that the House has in their meager house reconciliation bill.

35:21So it's a pretty big doubt that what scoring do you go off of? Is that the CBO scoring that you would use to make that estimate? Some of the conversation that we've heard is that the revenue effects of some of the new programs are not taken into account fully that there may be revenue coming in from tariffs or maybe revenue coming in from the sale of the Trump immigration card at five million a pop. and there's a limited effect of the tax cuts on GDP growth, etc. So there's a lot of arguments to be made to make the lines seem a little more blurry than perhaps the scoring might indicate. That's why I try to simplify things.

35:58Okay, I'm focusing on spending. We're in from 4 .4 to it'll be 7 .3 next year. Now let's bring it down to a reasonable pre -pandemic level of 6 .5. Spending, spending, spending. I voted for President Trump because I wanted him to defeat the deep state. You don't defeat the deep state by continuing to fund it, it binds levels. So the minutes are bringing revenue, nobody can protect that. Nobody knows exactly what the impact's going to be. So that starts mudding the water. So I folks on spending, I don't really want to fund the deep state. Okay, I would like to bring certainty to the economy. I'd like the trade wars to end so we can bring that level stability.

36:38I don't want to increase taxes. So again, my approach should be multiple steps. Border defense, bank the savings, take whatever good work the house did, bank that. Extend current tax law is often as complex it is just to extend that. Increase the debt ceiling for a year to put pressure on us to come back and do the work on the spending. And then we can bring up President Trump's taxes as well. I mean, I would keep this as simple as possible, get it passed and start doing the work. Value one approach. Do you think that there's any upside or legislative resolve to think about monetizing assets? So for example, Secretary Latinick has talked about the vast resources.

37:19Secretary Bergerma has talked about it as well. The vast resources that America has, whether it should consider thinking about monetizing some of those things, selling federal land, selling drilling rights, selling royalty rights. What do you think about that as an incremental way of softening the landing here? I would say the only reason I'm not in a full -sled panic is because people like Art Lathur do point out we have vast wealth. So our debt to GDP ratio is probably not the most relevant is relevant for inflation that type of thing, but debt to total assets is probably the more relevant. So we literally can't afford this level of debt, but you do have to compare it to income as well.

38:02and our ability to service the debt and the debt spiral. So again, this all ends up being a lot of different factors coming into what's going to make it possible for people to live. And again, inflation is probably the one metric that we need to avoid. And I think that's the thing that I'm most concerned about in terms of debt to Spain. I'm not concerned about America going bankrupt because we have this vast wealth. I'm concerned about us being insolvent in sparking massive inflation and just wiping out people's savings make it very impossible for them to live in a retire. What do you think is the future through these next 16 months of bills and the impact to your point?

38:44There's a lot of people that came together in a coalition to vote for accountability to defund and to starve the deep state. And if we continue to feed it, it seems like a traditional as default. We're going back to the way things work. Can you talk to us about that and what your thoughts are about then? Well, I'm highly concerned about just the conservative movement. I think Trump is a completely unique political figure. I think he definitely did drive turnout. He's expanded, you know, certainly our base, which by the way, it's one of the reasons I am sympathetic to what you're talking about in terms of the tax custody's proposed.

39:19I mean, we need to focus on the working men and women of this country. It's really the Trump coalition. But I'm concerned about how effective Democrats are. The coalition they have made up of the media, primarily social media companies, that type of thing. They're relentless just of letting all these undocumented people in this country who are voting. I mean, we're starting to see that type of fraud. That are, you know, they are trying to cheat. I think they do cheat in voting. I think we don't have a real feeling in terms of how the order of magnitude of their cheating. But a quick example of, we had that important Supreme Court race here.

39:58Elon Musk came in here and did some pretty innovative things. Spent a lot of money here. The liberal candidate got 78 % of Kamala Harris's vote. The conservative candidate got 62 % of Donald Trump's vote. Even though we were all out there seeing how important this is, if you don't want to see President Trump impeached by a Democrat controlled Congress or the next Congress, you got to get out, support President Trump. That didn't resonate. Again, 78 % of Democrats came out of 62 % Republicans. Do you think there's a risk that MAGA becomes a version of, you know, Tea Party 2 .0 where it starts with energy, but then there's just a gravitational pull of the establishment is just too strong for the rebels to fight up?

40:43No, I think the greatest danger Omega is this really tied toward one individual. Now, Tea Party movement was tied toward the vision of America. Freedom, debt and death, not more in our kids' future. I think that survived. I mean, they did a pretty good job of marginalizing Tea Party, but we're alive and well. We are the House Freedom Caucus. We're the people that are going to stop this until we've just been much better built in the Senate. So we're still alive and well. but in terms of voters, I mean, the Tea Party pretty well merged with the Republican Party. I'm not sure all the mega voters are just discussed by the whole process as I as I as I'm I and they're much more likely to sit on the couch unless their guy is on the ballot.

41:28Do you think that our model of representative democracy is broken and has the same sort of inevitable outcome that others have had in the past that ultimately people realized they can and vote themselves, all the money, and they do. And the system breaks. I mean, like, do, like if you were to go back and be a founding father, what would you have done differently here? And, or am I off on this? And I - No, I'm not sure you are off at all. No, I think we may have already passed that hinge point. That's my concern. I mean, people have said, are you optimistic? No, I'm a pessimist. I'm looking around.

42:03That is the death knell of a democracy or a Republican, a majority of voters realize, Hey, I can vote myself benefits. Don't worry about the debt and that's what we can print money. I know that. That's what brings down. I mean, this is what I've noticed is Democrats, Republicans, populists or elites, whatever side of the spectrum on whatever dimensional category you want to assess an individual or representative on. At the end of the day, they're just trying to use the government to deploy capital to their constituents as best they can. I mean, that's the mechanism of the electorate at this point.

42:40And just hearing your words resonates with me because I've made a number of visits to DC in the last couple of months since the inauguration. And there was a lot of proclaim about Doge and it's a new day in Washington and I felt a degree of optimism and hope that things were changing in DC. But every member of Congress I sat down with was a disappointing conversation that reflect the views that you just shared that they don't really understand what's going on and they don't really care. It's not a priority to solve the fiscal crisis that we're in and they're not willing to admit it It's like a stage four terminal patient not willing to admit that they're sick and they need to take some therapy The data that bats us up is I wrote this in my Wall Street Journal comment 1930 the federal government Spends about 3 .5 percent of our GDP 3 .5 state low governments were about 9 .1 that that was the foundation premise of America government close to government where it's more effective, more efficient, more accountable.

43:38Now we're spending close to 24%, the federal level stays for probably somewhere 12 to 15, haven't looked that recent. And as Lord Acton pointed out, you know, power corrupts. Yeah. Government is power. That's what I mean, that is really the definition of government is power. So it gets corrupted and it's been corrupted. And I don't know, you know, I see where past the point in a return. Why did I run again for a third term? I'm just discusses I am in this process, A, I couldn't turn my back on this country. I can't give up on it. I'm not overly optimistic. And again, it's not just the, as government grows your freedom receipts, as government grows, you get more and more people to pendant on it.

44:18Well, that's right. And they're not doing things productive. You don't have a vibrant economy. That's right. You know, it's just, it's, it's, it all, all in all, it's destructive of society. To the point about your numbers, Senator, And I've talked about this on our show where I've tried to estimate what percent of Americans gain their employment through government paycheck, servicing the government or a government contractor. And I think it's probably at 50 percent today. So 50 percent of Americans are either working for a public agency, a federal state or local, or working for the contractor of a government agency.

44:54And that's where you pass the tipping point where it's no longer possible to bring down the spending because at that point everyone in a representative democracy has every incentive to keep it up. Otherwise, they will individually lose, not just have something individually to gain. That's where I worry we're at. I guess the hardliners like yourself may be the last line of defense here, but that's where I was really curious to hear how far are you willing to take this in this particular reconciliation bill process that's about to hit your desk in the next couple of weeks. And who else is shoulder to shoulder with you with the same point of view in the Senate?

45:29Well, I think Rand Paul is pretty much a hard no regardless. Now, again, I don't think you could get a good enough bill where he vote, yes. My other allies, for sure, in the saying, are Mike Lee and Rick Stott. Each one of us has our own thoughts. You know, may accept something different than the others. I'm pretty well dug in, but I'm reasonable. You give me something that, like I say, commits to getting to a pre -candent global spending and a process to achieve and maintain it. I'll work with you. Now, one of the things I did, and we had it to my top of my ex -pagion, I think it's further on down now.

46:09But I put together a video about a minute 30, starting with President Trump, that stayed the union, saying he's going to balance the federal budget, and then the vice president and everybody on down some version of, we don't ever revenue problem, we have a spending problem. And at the very end of the video, I asked, so are we willing to fix it? Right now, it doesn't appear we are, but I intend to insist that we do. So I'm gonna dig my heels in. There's nothing the President Trump can do to pressure me. Other than start work with me, it now's the numbers. I'm texting the probably annoyed with me, best interest and rest of it all the time.

46:50So here's my viewpoint. What am I not getting right? So they know exactly what I'm thinking. They know exactly my concerns. They know exactly numbers. I had a nice lunch with Scott Besson in the Treasury Department. I gave him my charts and graphs, all that kind of stuff. He asked for the electronic version of those so he could distribute those to the Treasury Department. So none of this should come as any surprise to anybody. And again, the the the A side hold is I am going to force the numbers that we have to look at on the public because to this point we have discussed it and a number from your perspective if you had to create a hierarchy just in your messaging is the number we should take away is that we're about to tune the debt to 60 to 70 so call it 65 at the midpoint is that the number that we should be focused on is I first focus on spending.

47:45Okay. 89 .3 trillion again, that's again, that represents government, right? That's that represents that power that's been corrupted. That represents the just unprecedented other than World War II, increase in spending from 2019 to 58 to 60%. So if you if you can't deal with that in my column, I pointed out, you know, our four fathers, the greatest generation responsible leadership, you know, and at World War II spending about 11 .7%. Ramped it up to 41 % during the war. By 1948, they were down to 11 .4%. So it's entirely possible, but you need leadership. I need the President of the United States.

48:20By the way, I've been in the White House with him. I've shown him my trust in grass. He goes, I love this. I love this. The House thought I love this. Has this been presented? No, Ms. President, let's go to the House. Let's present this. He didn't do that. We need President Trump to embrace the reality that we are spending way too much money. He was elected to defeat the D state. You don't defeat it, spending it by his levels. He needs to see the detail. Again, I think, to be charitable, I think he's been so busy doing so many other wonderful things that I support. He hasn't focused on this. I'm going to force him to focus on this.

48:56This will be the moment, you think. And so when you speak with Bescent, does he think he can get the president there as well? I mean, I always think back to Bill Clinton with his balanced budget economic poster boards that he put up, right? The, like, here's the simple charts. Let me explain it to you. And every American could watch that on television and understand what he was talking about, nodded their head and Congress and the entire populace went along with it. Do we need that? Do we get that moment, do you think? Yeah, and again, I don't think the numbers are that complicated. Yeah, there's something about, you know, $22 trillion of additional deaths that's a spending, that's a rosy scenario.

49:32That's $2 .2 trillion per year. Obama, he has about 900 billion dollars in your deficit. Trump before the pandemic is about 800 billion. Biden's up to almost $1 .9 billion dollars average deficit. Clearly, unsustainable. We got to get back to a reasonable level. And by the way, if we do, I think the bond markets would rejoice. We wouldn't be looking at a ramping up of interest costs. We can talk about debt to wealth as opposed to debt to GDP because we've got that monkey up for back. You said something interesting. I just want to come back to which is you said, when the government absorbs all the dollars in the system, there's fewer and fewer dollars left for private industry.

50:14Just to build on this, one of the things that I brought up at the beginning of this year, I said, the most important thing that you need is tail insurance. The tail risk needs to get managed at the beginning of this year. And there's a very important market that is a gauge of that towards private industry, which is called credit default, which is what is the risk of private industry not being able to pay back their obligations. And unfortunately through the course of this year we've seen the cost of that insurance ramp, but at the beginning of liberation day, there was some relief there because people saw a path out of this.

50:50and unfortunately, we're back to almost near highs. And it is the market signaling that first we'll go private industry. And then the second, we'll be the repricing of the risk for the US government. And I think that if people can really understand that that's the cascade, to your point, that first card has unfortunately been turned over. Now, we haven't seen the implications on Main Street of that, but that's what we need to avoid. We need to get these markets to understand the bigger picture, but we need to show them something. We also have to focus on economic growth through the private sector.

51:25Not fueled by government deaths is spending. I mean, I don't know what percent of our actual growth came from two trillion dollar year deficits. I think it's a pretty good chunk. So have we really had real private sector growth? I think we have, but not as much as I think the headline numbers because so much of it has been fueled by the government. By the way, that's also true in terms of revenue. of Newcombe in front of the government? I mean, it is true that we beat the CBO estimates. That's because of trillions of dollars of deaths in spending starting the pandemic years followed through with a bite.

51:57Prior to the pandemic, we really weren't matching even the CBO's downgrade of revenue coming in after the TCGA. We weren't hitting it, but then he had COVID hit and again, trillions of dollars of deaths in spending that also boosted revenue. So again, all these people saying, you know, we're going to, you know, that tax increase is going to be dynamically scored and what's going to pay for itself. Listen, I'm all for dynamic scoring, but let's, let's be realistic and again, I'll point out the CBO projection I'm dealing with $22 trillion, that assumes we go from 17 .1 to 18 percent of GDP in terms of revenue.

52:35So, you know, if If we don't cancel the tax increase, and there's a dynamic story effect, it just means we don't hit 18 .1, and that number's still lower. Talk to us about the setup for 2026, and maybe if you want your thoughts about where the country goes into 2028, one of the things that Dave talks about a lot is moments that galvanize some form of popular socialism. This idea, as he said very articulately, I can just vote myself for the money. So who is gonna just give me the most money? Can you just walk us through some political forecasting for us? That's why I'm not an optimist. But, you know, I've heard people rationalize this, and I mean important people rationalize.

53:18Just go along with this. Get us to pat, I mean, this is what we have to win the majority, maintain the majority in the House in 2027, right? What good is the majority if you literally don't solve the problems that you're aware of? You want to go? Oh, oh, oh, so So when we have them joining 2020 -27, then we're going to actually spend the spending curve down. That's going to return to pre -pandemic level spending. I don't buy it. This is our one opportunity. And right now we're blowing it. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't blow it. But again, that is the reality. Listen, I don't discount the fact that we may lose the house, we may lose the Senate.

53:58But I would say we do that because we're not solving these problems. what are you looking at is unserious. You know, our base is going to go, why did we elect you guys? You didn't take the bull by the horns. You just saw this problem. You're really no better than Democrats. I think we have to be concerned about that. If this reconciliation bill gets done, Senator, in the next couple of weeks, what bill would you hope to see next to get to that North Star of fiscal responsibility? Is there a recession bill that you'd be looking for, do we need to actually have a sit down and talk about building a budget?

54:33What's the right next step here in creating a North Star that creates stability for the Republic? And it's developing a process that will achieve and maintain a pre -pandemic level spending, just a lower spending level. It is, I've come from manufacturing base, right? You can't have a good product without a good process, and we've just never had that process. So the only one I can think of is what Doge has demonstrated does work in terms of getting the public supporting us in terms of limiting just awful spending. So you got to expose it. You got to go line by line. Again, there are thousands of lines, just top lines in the federal budget, hundreds, thousands of lines under each one of those as well.

55:15So you have to do the work. And again, I would love to take that Doge team, you know, those G -S -S with all their AI and get their computer skills and get 100, 200 forensic auditors and just go through this line by line. And again, my proposal was having this budget review panel, senators, house members, members of the administration, OMB, then you basically set up the process just like you're in a business. Now, here's your budget review sheet. This is then you bring the department heads, their financial gurus in front of this budget review panel, just by you spending. But again, I would be comparing it to outlays under Clinton plus step outlays under Obama plus step outlays under Trump plus step Go through every line go first of all.

56:00Why are you spending more than even Trump? Why are you spending more than Obama or Clinton? Plus why are you spending any money at all on this? But you have to go through the work you so you need the time. I've been proposing this now for months Nobody's put in the the effort. Oh, and he said we don't have enough time and I realized they're they're busy, the house said, no, you know, we've been working on this for a year. We're satisfied with our numbers. We're going to have the time. The Senate really sent it. We should be the only one that's been fully behind what I'm trying to do here. But I can't, we can't do it alone.

56:32I mean, I can't do it. I don't have the budget expertise. So it literally is. It's getting the commitment of the president that he, he is determined to not keep funding the deep state of buying levels, return to a reasonable pre -pandemic level, level spending and then get his OMB fully behind this effort. This has got to be the biggest effort on budget ever. And then step by thing up show it works and then hopefully maintain it over the years. I can't think very well. We've tried all this other stuff and never worked. Well, look, I hope you find a path towards that goal, Senator. I think it's a critical time and speaking as an American, appreciate your resiliency in the face of what I'm sure is a lot of political pressure and tension right now in trying to make sure that the right thing is done here for the long term of American prosperity.

57:23So thank you for your service. Thank you for the work you do. We appreciate it. I appreciate you, Shamianna. I will say one thing that is different about me than others. I'd rather go home. That's a significant difference. When you'd rather, I'd rather return to my private sector life, then keep serving here in this total dysfunction. That is what, again, I can't be pressure by personal Trump. I can't. I mean, he's not going to flip me just by the force of his argument or any kind of political pressure. There's no pressure he can apply to me. He's really sitting out with me, looking at the numbers, ignows them, working forward and a reasonable plan forward.

58:03That's the only way he's going to get my support. Well, I hope that there are others that get into the same mindset as you. I have always found it off -putting that folks choose to be politicians as a career rather than rotating in and out of doing this as a service and Then going back into the private sector where I think that a lot of the misalignments and conditioning can Be avoided. So yeah, appreciate that mindset and thank you. Thank you senator for your candor Transparency. Thank you. I mean, my conclusion today is similar to how I finished the pod yesterday, which is concern that the bond market is not going to take this well.

58:45I do think that that puts a lot of pressure on America. And I think it's going to put pressure on private industry. And what will happen as a result is not necessarily that we go bankrupt or whatever, but there is no clear dividing line between public and private industry. And I don't think that that's a great outcome. Not to mention the value of everyone's assets to go to zero. They go to zero Like but but as the senator made the point a dollar in 2019 is worth 80 cents today because of the inflation we've experienced from the rampant spending since covid and If that continues, which is the steady state that we've now assumed is we're now assuming to continue emergency spending as if it's the kind of standard, then that same level of decline in value of a dollar or decline in value of any American asset will continue and it will only accelerate.

59:38And I think the worry is that in 10 years, you know, a dollar is worth 30 cents. Yeah. And that makes it harder for everyone to prosper in America, the ability to buy a home, the ability to have greater wealth, the ability to improve your conditions and your livelihoods are significantly diminished. That's the biggest consequence that we've seen many times over the last couple of centuries as countries have gone through the same cycle that the American Republic now finds itself in. This is kind of one of those last stands of the alamo, if you will, because the arithmetic gets to the point that it becomes unstoppable.

1:00:14This train is gone. So anyway, I thought it was great to have some time with the senator to talk about it today. Again, when we have these conversations, Chimath obviously were not fully endorsing all the views and points of view, it's good to hear from people, it's good to understand their point of view, let them speak and have the conversation. There are things that will agree with, things that we don't agree with, but I think on the fiscal condition of the United States, I've been pretty clear, pretty vocal on my point of view on this. And on this particular point, I think the senator is a very important voice.

1:00:43I think it's really important for America to let private citizens have agency and do the things that they think they should be doing. And I think that if you move to a place where we become physically crippled and reliant on the government, that's a horrible outcome. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, I'm glad we did this. I know it was a push to get it done on a Saturday, but I thought it was a really worthwhile to give the senators a visit. I already made love to net twice this morning, some from all the boxes of Benchup. But what did you do after those six minutes? Did you have played with the kids?

1:01:19Played with the kids for an hour? Yeah. So I've done everything I do to walk the dogs. Good. All right, bro. Oh, I love you.