Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) published an op-ed that called for even more Pentagon spending to avoid a government shutdown. Glenn explains why the elderly senator is not just wrong but also completely out of touch with the current vision of America. Former investment banker Carol Roth joins to discuss the importance of a budget with massive cuts needed for America's future. Glenn and Carol also discuss being strategic with tariffs and DOGE cuts. Glenn takes calls from his audience on what they hope Trump discusses tonight in his speech to Congress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is Mitch McConnell advocating for more Pentagon spending?
Mitch McConnell wants more spending, not less. I got a message for Mitch. Also Carol Roth is here to talk about the economy. And what do you want to hear from President Trump in tonight's speech in front of Congress? We have some opinions on that all in today's podcast. Let me tell you about Jace Medical. First of all, Jace Medical would like to thank all the first responders.
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Chapter 2: What are the consequences of outdated military spending?
I just, I, I. We have to start here because this is the thing that is our biggest problem. And it is... I was going to say this, but I want to be very careful. It's old people. But it's old people that will not leave Congress or the Senate. It's not all old people. Donald Trump is an old guy. But he's not acting like it and he's not thinking like it.
Mitch McConnell is an old guy who has old think. If he can even think somebody in his office is thinking old. Let's put it that way. So he represents Kentucky. Obviously, Mitch McConnell wrote in The Washington Post. Every time Congress faces a government funding deadline, Washington reminds itself that shutdowns are worth avoiding. This is familiar in an all too frequent conversation.
He goes on to say, today we're closer than ever on making ignoble history on the front of budgets, tomorrow's challenges. And we owe it to our men in uniform and our taxpayers to be honest about the consequences. Consumer goods aren't the only things that have grown more expensive in recent years.
In times of high inflation, governance without updated appropriation means diminished Pentagon buying power, forcing the US military to equip itself for the next year's threat at this year's prices. Okay, he goes on and on and on about how the Pentagon just needs more money. We just have to spend more, more, more on more, more, more for the Pentagon. So I would like to respond with my own op-ed.
Chapter 3: How is the national debt impacting American security?
Dear Senator McConnell, All of those. Nine countries. And they're the big nine. And then us. And we still dwarf them. I don't know. You need more money? Why are you so worried about China if they don't have all this money? And yet here you are clamoring for more as if throwing cash at an outdated war machine is somehow or another going to secure our future.
The world has changed, Senator, and your priorities are stuck in the old time country time era. Flugzeugfahrer, diese fliegenden Behemoten, die Sie und den Pentagon so lieblich lieben, sind Reliquien des Vergangenen. In der nächsten echten Konflikt werden sie so nützlich wie Pferde in der Weltkrieg 1 nötig sein.
Sprechend davon, lassen Sie mich nur die Statistiken auf die Pferde geben, weil es die Flugzeugfahrer die nächste Zeit, die wir wirklich in die Krieg gehen, vermitteln wird. When Europe entered World War I, they had 25 million horses. By 1918, 15 million of them were dead. Why?
Because they were mowed down and slaughtered by machine guns and tanks that ran over them because they couldn't outrun them. That's the fate awaiting Mr. McConnell. Boy, I would love to start calling you Mr. and... Die 1950er-Jahre nannten sie Senator und wollten ihre Kriegspläne zurück. The future isn't in steel and jet fuel.
It's in artificial intelligence and unfortunately artificial super intelligence. Every dollar spent on yesterday's hardware today is a dollar wasted in three years when AGI upends everything we know about warfare.
Worse, with the Pentagon's track record, every dollar spent today will balloon into two or three dollars of inflation tomorrow, thanks to the House and the Senate's obscene spending spree. We're drowning in $34 trillion of national debt. That's 128% of GDP. A level unseen since World War II. A level unseen since World War II. Annual deficits are now $1.7 trillion. That's what they were in 23.
Interest payments alone are projected to go over $1 trillion this year or early next. I don't know about anybody else, but those numbers aren't sustainable. It's a fiscal time bomb. And yet you want to shovel more taxpayer money into the Pentagon that hasn't passed a single audit in its history? Six attempts since 2018. Six failures. Trillions of dollars unaccounted for.
Waste so rampant, it defies comprehension. I'm sorry, Senator, it's irresponsible. Bordering on criminal to suggest more spending when they can't even count the cash they have. When will you people in Washington wake up? The real threat isn't just from abroad, although those dangers are profound. It's from within. The call is coming from inside the House. In fact, it's not just the House.
It's also coming from the Senate, Senator. Your refusal to adapt is jeopardizing our security more than any foreign adversary could. I don't know, has anybody seen the drone shows that China does? You know, on their whatever, 4th of July, they seem to do it like 700 times a day or a week. I don't know why they do. But they have these drone shows.
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Chapter 4: What economic challenges does America currently face?
Imagine, those aren't fireworks or for a show, but weaponized drones. Each one really cheap, precise and networked by AI. A single network with AI, a single swarm could cripple our planes, ships, tanks and troops before we ever load a gun. Ukraine's drone wars have already shown the reality. $500 drones taking out $10 million tanks. Senator, that is the future that we're staring down right now.
And you're still polishing Cold War relics? Here's what I want the president to say today. Freeze every bloated project. And I'm talking specifically about the Pentagon. Redirect everything, every dime, every mind toward winning the AI, ASI race. You know how I feel about that. It scares the living bat crap out of me. But you know what's worse? Us not leading.
This is the only battlefield that matters now. We've got enough stockpiles of dusty old stuff to handle any foreseeable war in the next two to three years. We also have a president, if you people in Congress would understand what he's doing, fighting to end the conflicts, not start more of them.
I mean, I might have buried the lead here, Senator, but... Well, let's see if anyone else listens to the following stats... And they think maybe this op-ed was being written not for the American people. And probably not by you, but probably by somebody who hasn't lost their mind to dementia yet, who works in your office. Listen to these stats. Your state, Senator, Kentucky?
It's 45th in GDP per capita. It's 44th in employment. It's 42nd in high school diplomas. And yet it's 11th in defense-related contract spending. So, Senator, may I just ask you, who are you really concerned about? The safety of the American people? Or the people you funneled millions, if not billions of dollars to over the years. Haven't you done them enough favors?
What do you say you give it a rest? Because thanks but no thanks on spending more money with the Pentagon. Let me talk to you a little bit about the Berna Launcher. You've got to be prepared for really... Anything that could happen. Law enforcement statistics say 99% of all situations where force is required don't require lethal force. Now you've got to have a gun for that 1%.
But being prepared for the 99% is also really important. That's where the burner launcher comes in. Legal in all 50 states. No background checks or permit. No waiting periods. I own several of them. My family each has one. They're all over 18. Doesn't have any... Vielen Dank fürs Zuhören. Hallo Carol, wie geht es dir?
Yeah, my mind was blown.
Yeah, we're 40 days into this, around 40 days into this administration and you're looking at this and it's breathtaking at what has been done. Last month we had, I think, 1,800 encounters at the borders. A year ago, last February, it was 109,000 encounters. That's how much of an impact he's made on that.
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Chapter 5: How could Biden's spending affect future inflation?
Yes. So, you know, we've talked about before that the economic situation is not really what it was presented to be. You know, we heard under Biden and certainly during election season, what a wonderful economy we had, all of these really great statistics on employment and growth. Und es ist sehr klar geworden.
Nun, es war sehr klar für alle von uns, bevor wir darüber gesprochen haben, dass es etwas ist, das der Staatssekretär der Treasury, Scott Bassett, in einer Rede vor ein paar Wochen darüber gesprochen hat, ist, dass wirklich die ökonomische Foundation unglaublich fragil ist.
Und was wir von der Biden-Administration gemacht haben, was exzeptionell gefährlich war, ist, dass sie entschieden hat, dass sie über die Schwierigkeiten der Ökonomie spenden werden. So if you remember, I think it was back in 2022, we had those two down quarters of GDP, which is a technical recession, which for some reason, by the way, they said was not a recession.
I'm sure if Trump had two down quarters, they would say it was, but you know, it was, it was, it had a D in front of it, but it wasn't. And then, you know, we came out of it and then it was pretty clear that we were going to go into this double dip recession. And so what did they do? They decided to increase government spending. which is very inefficient spending.
And we've been running deficits as a percentage of GDP that are at wartime levels. We're talking 6% to 7% of GDP. The historical average is somewhere around 3% or 3.5%. So about double what you might see on average. When you have a good economy, you would actually expect that to be much lower because you're getting more receipts. And that's what happened. We had more receipts.
We were taking in almost $5 trillion. And they're spending even more. They're spending almost $7 trillion. So that was done to mask the weakness in the economy. Now that we don't have the ability to continue to kick up even more and more to show growth, The consumer continues to be tapped out from all the Biden-era policies.
And the fact that we have Doge, which is trying to cut down government spending. We're at a situation where things could get uglier before they get better. Or they could get uglier and they could take away the political will to make them better. And that's this delicate dance that we've been talking about, why we need this careful choreography.
The craziest thing that's happened over the past several days is that the Atlanta Fed, one of the branches of the Federal Reserve, that has a tool that predicts GDP for each quarter. They went in the last four weeks, okay, four weeks time, from predicting that we were going to have almost 4% GDP growth in the first quarter to now negative 3%. in the first quarter.
That is a seven percentage point difference in for weeks, which A, just goes to show what a joke any of this reporting and these tools and this data are. But I think also shows, hey, we've got somebody else at the helm here. So now we don't need to doctor these numbers in a way that seem a bit more friendly.
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Chapter 6: What role do central banks play in America's economy?
The Biden administration, while they spent a lot of money, they did it in ways to cover things up, etc., etc. But that big 2021, you know, $1.2 trillion bill and then the $836 billion for roads and bridges and broadband and then the $144 in the Inflation Reduction Act. It's well over a trillion dollars and it's my understanding that only 17% of that money has been spent.
So what happens if we don't stop the spending of just the stuff that is already on the books from Biden? Wouldn't that cause our inflation to go through the roof?
Yeah, it absolutely would cause our inflation to go through the roof because even with the cash in and cash out that we have, as we said, we're running these wartime level deficits. And by the way, we're financing those at high interest rates, not necessarily in the historical context, but in the context of the last 15 years.
and in a way that we have now made the interest expense on our debt, what we're paying for stuff we've already bought, exceed, the financing charges exceed what we're spending on defense. Niall Ferguson has a great sort of maxim, if you will, that basically, I'm paraphrasing here, but nations that spend more on interest spend versus debt don't remain great nations for very long.
That seems to be pretty obvious, something that everybody can wrap their heads around, that we don't want to be spending all of our money paying for stuff that we've quote unquote already bought. Und wir können sicherlich an diesen Ebenen das nicht ermöglichen.
Wenn wir das weiterhin tun, und das geht in eine andere Konversation, die wir vorher hatten, Glenn, zu, ist, dass die Zentralbanken weltweit, die früher unsere Freunde und in Unterstützung der USA waren, die Weltreserve-Kurse, früher nur Treasurys verkauften, das ist ein Teil der Dealung hier auf einer aufwändigen Basis.
Over the past, you know, 11 or so years, they have been net sellers of Treasuries. They've actually replaced that with gold on their balance sheet. So if we don't have central banks that will just buy Treasuries whenever, because that's part of the geopolitical deal, that means you have to find people who are, you know, are looking at the price. They're looking at the price of the Treasuries.
Und im Grunde genommen, an diesen Ebenen, obwohl sie ein bisschen weggegangen sind, und wir können darüber auch sprechen, aber sie sagen insgesamt, ja, wir werden das nicht tun. Wir brauchen einen Repreis hier. Und wenn du nicht genug hast,
Demand, you end up seeing our yields go higher and to the extent they add up too high, which we were dangerously close to a few weeks ago, that has come off now. But if you hit that, that could end up causing a debt spiral, it could end up causing So let me just explain this so the average person can understand what you just said. You are you're wanting to buy a new house.
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