参议员罗恩·约翰逊

Ron Johnson (00:00:00): Power corrupts. Government is power, and it's been corrupted. Nobody knew in total how much we spend because we never even talk about it. The first goal of this Republican budget reconciliation should be don't add to the deficit. I voted for president Trump because I wanted him to defeat the deep state. Yep. You don't defeat the deep state by continuing to fund it, it binds levels. Our base is gonna go, what? Why did we elect you guys? You're really no better than Democrats. I don't think president Trump is not focused on reducing spending. This is our one opportunity. And right now, we're blowing it. And I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure we don't blow it. I can't be pressured by president Trump. He's willing to sit down with me, look at the numbers, acknowledge them, working forward in a reasonable plan forward. That's the only way he's gonna get my support. David Friedberg (00:00:47): So everyone has assumed that the house passage of the reconciliation bill is gonna go to the senate with some minor changes and then make its way to president Trump's desk for signing. But that may not be the case. There are several hardliners in the US senate who have made it very clear that the budget and the fiscal deficit problems that arise from this bill are insurmountable, and they're gonna take a very hard stance on voting no on this bill. Taking the lead on that point of view is senator Johnson from Wisconsin, who's gonna join us today for an emergency pod to talk about what's next with the senate review of the reconciliation bill, what his thoughts are, what's the future of the republic, and what's ahead. We're really excited for this emergency pod. Thank you for joining us. Alright, besties. I think Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:33): that was another epic discussion. People love the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crush your questions in minute. We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What'd you guys say? That was fun. That was great. David Friedberg (00:01:46): Senator, thanks for joining Chamathin, for this conversation this morning. Ron Johnson (00:01:52): Good morning, guys, and, thanks for having me on. David Friedberg (00:01:55): And just by way of background, senator, you were elected to the US Senate in 2010. You've had two reelections since then. More recently, we've taken notice, and I gave a shout out to you for your comments on the scaling of the deficit and The US federal debt. And as a Republican against the stated intention of getting this bill passed and through the Senate as is, and we'd love to kind of hear from you today about your points of view on the bill that was passed in the House this week, the reconciliation bill, and then take a step back and talk a little bit about the fiscal picture for The United States and where things are headed. So thanks for that, and thanks for joining us. Maybe we could just start a little bit with a very basic primer for our audience, something that we don't talk about very much on the show. Can you just tell us what a reconciliation bill is and how it's used so folks can understand a little bit about the process that the house just undertook and what's ahead? Ron Johnson (00:02:47): Sure. Let let me start. You talked about when I first ran for election in 02/2010. I just ran out of tea party. Never been involved in politics whatsoever, and didn't even decide to, run until the April, announced in May, started a campaign during the summer, did all those parades. My what I would shout during the parades was this is a fight for freedom. We're mortgaging our children's future. It's wrong. It's immoral. It has to stop. That that was my campaign theme in 02/2010. I I still view myself, more tea party than Republican party. We we have a of big spenders in the repub Republican party as well. And I ran, again, because of Obamacare, which I knew would not work, and it's not working. That's by the way, that's the problem with Medicaid right now is Obamacare is now called Medicaid expansion. But to answer your question, budget reconciliation was set up by the, in the Budget Act, I think it was 1974. It doesn't work in terms of controlling spending. By the way, nothing ever has. We'll get into that in terms of we've never had a process for actually controlling spending, but it allows us to pass a budget and then to reconcile the budget. You're able to and you can pass a budget. It's not a law, but you pass this budget, with just 50 votes, 51 votes, majority. And then you can reconcile to that budget, also avoiding the Senate filibuster. So that's the main component. What's weird about it is you pass this budget, but you can only through budget reconciliation address mandatory spending. You can't touch the discretionary spending accounts which is about 25% of our budget. That's that's one of the one of the ways the budget's gotten completely out of control is, you know, we put so many things into the mandatory category. You know, initially was entitlement, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but we have, I would say, deviously slid all kinds of discretionary spending into other mandatory that really exploded during COVID where I think other mandatory hit well over $2,000,000,000,000 Last fiscal year is about $1,300,000,000,000 This year will be over a trillion. So it went from $642,000,000,000 in 2019, other mandatory, again, not Social Security, Medicare, or even Medicaid, went from $6.42 to last year, 1.3. This year, it's gonna be over a trillion dollars and it's gonna keep, you know, pretty much at that level as far as the eye can see. So again, that's a trillion dollars of other non entitlement spending that we never looked at. Ron Johnson (00:05:18): And that's the whole point about mandatory spending, it's never looked at. So anyway, so we can address mandatory spending, not social security through this reconciliation process, change programs, do do whatever we want to do as long as it has a primarily budgetary impact, not changing policy. So, can change policy as long as it has a budgetary impact. I I know that's reasonably complex but it's an insane system and it doesn't work. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:46): What is the alternative? Ron Johnson (00:05:49): Well, right now we don't really have one. Again, let's just go through why we've never had a process to control spending. We don't have a balanced budget requirement like states do, and we have the capability of printing money, which we're doing, incurring this enormous debt. So we don't have a balanced budget requirement. I didn't realize this until just recently. The appropriation committees were literally set up because the authorized committees were big spenders. So they set up appropriation committees to control spending. That didn't work. The Budget Act didn't work. Simpson Bowles didn't work. The Budget Control Act didn't work. It it did restrain discretionary spending for a couple of years until we weaseled our way around it. So again, we've never had a process to control spending. And one of the things I've been arguing in some Wall Street Journal columns is let's use the example of Doge. I come with the private sector. We probably spent more time reviewing my line by line budget for my business. And I think other private sector businesses spend more time analyzing what they're gonna spend than Congress spends over the entire federal budget. So we've gotta develop a process. Doge has shown us how to do it. Go contract by contract, expose the grotesque waste, fraud, and abuse. But we gotta do that through thousands of lines through federal budget, but nobody's willing to do it. Nobody's willing to take the time to do the work to do it. They they're doing what they've always done. They accept most spending. They look at a couple programs. They try and tweak them, try and get a big score out of CBO so they can say, hey, we saved 1,500,000,000,000 and yet that's completely divorced from reality. It's good. 1,500,000,000,000.0 sounds like a lot. But over ten years, it's a hundred 50,000,000,000 against a 7,000 billion dollar a year budget that only six years ago was $400,000,004,000. And if I've got one complaint in terms of the process in the house, it's basically void of reality. Ron Johnson (00:07:46): We're not talking about the numbers we should be talking about, which is a ten year deficit projected by CBO of $22,000,000,000,000, averaging $2,200,000,000,000 a year. We were talking about, instead we focused all on 1,500,000,000,000.0, and then they're patting themselves on the back that they they didn't even achieve 1.5. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:05): I just said I just wanna make sure, senator, then that we're on the same page with respect to the math. If this bill passes as is, can the general public take the 33 or 34 odd trillion that we have in debt? Should we add 22 and say we'll be at 58,000,000,000,000 by 2035? Is that the right math or the wrong math? Ron Johnson (00:08:26): That understates it. Now they'll talk about dynamic scoring, and I believe in dynamic scoring as well. But in this case, if you take a look at the tax cuts that president Trump is proposing, that's not a they're not gonna generate growth. They're just gonna reduce the deficit. The CBO projection I'm looking at assumes we're gonna gain another $4,000,000,000,000 from increasing taxes. So again, we may not may not get that $4,000,000,000,000 but no matter what, the CBO projection right now that is adding another $22,000,000,000,000 to our debt, it certainly would add at least that. I I would argue it'd probably add another 3 or $4,000,000,000,000. So it's not gonna be 59,000,000,000,000. It's gonna be more like $6,263,000,000,000,000. David Friedberg (00:09:07): And the CBO scores assume the interest rate on the federal debt, I believe, is an average of 3.6%. And now we're seeing the thirty year trading above 5%, meaning that if we trade up to 5% for the cost of debt for the federal government, we're probably gonna add another 5,000,000,000,000 of incremental interest expense over the period, another half trillion a year on average over the next ten years. Ron Johnson (00:09:32): And I I I would agree the current CBO projection, that's what I'm talking about here, you know, going from 37 to $59,000,000,000,000 in debt is a rosy is, you know, the rosy scenario. That that's as good as we're gonna do. So we're we're simply we're simply this is not mean the moment in terms of what we have to do. David Friedberg (00:09:52): Senator, let me just ask, I I think, one point of clarification on your earlier comment, which I think would be important for the audience. What has been put under mandatory that should be discretionary? Ron Johnson (00:10:04): It covers the entire gamut of federal spending. Education, you know, welfare, food stamps, veterans benefits. Again, they've just transferred that into mandatory spending, so it's completely out of sight, out of mind, unaccountable. David Friedberg (00:10:20): When it sits in discretionary maybe just help folks understand. What does it mean if it sits in discretionary? Does that mean that then the administration under the president has the authority to spend up to that amount to administer the law, to administer the statutes, but doesn't necessarily have to and the mandatory demands that the capital goes out? Just help us understand for the audience what the difference is. Ron Johnson (00:10:41): Well, discretionary is actually supposedly passed each year through an appropriation process, which is completely broken. We don't pass individual appropriation bills. We generally, at best, which is awful, minibuses or omnibuses. Now these are these multi thousand page bills that get dropped on our desk, and we have to vote on them literally within twenty four to forty eight hours. Nobody reads them. Nobody knows what's in them. That process is pretty broken down. Right now, we are operating for this fiscal year under a continuing resolution, which tweaks a few things, but is basically spending at last year's levels on all those appropriated accounts. So again, that's about 25% of our budget, then 75% is in in the mandatory accounts, the the entitlements, and just other mandatory spending. David Friedberg (00:11:29): So the arithmetic indicates we're entering into a debt death spiral in The United States with the interest rates climbing, the deficit climbing, and we then need to spend more money to pay our interest on the existing debt. That increases the deficit. We need to borrow more. The debt spirals up. Interest rates climb, and this becomes an insurmountable hill to climb. As you have the conversation with members of the Republican Party, what's the point of view? What is the motivating factor for business as usual? Why is it so difficult to get folks to see the basic arithmetic in front of them? Ron Johnson (00:12:06): Well, let me give you an example from about three years ago. This was after COVID and, you know, bipartisan basis, run a massive spending spree in 2020, but then the Biden administration just continued that. So, you know, we were in, omnibus spending debate. And for the first time, even though the Republican Senate Conference, we have a resolution against earmarks. McConnell is, negotiating a an omnibus spending bill and all of a sudden, we're members are are sucking down earmarks. So, I asked my colleagues at that time. I said, hey, anybody know how much in total we spent last year in the federal government? Room was dead silent. I I went out to Washington Press Corps, asked the same question. Mean, hey, anybody know how much we spent last year? And one reports it was over a trillion dollars. No, that's just discretionary spending. The answer was something like $6,300,000,000,000 because we had gone from 4,400,000,000,000.0 in 2019 up to 6.5 and we've never looked back. Right. And the analogy I used to is no family, if they had an illness, borrowed $50,000 to pay medical bills. If they got well the next year, they wouldn't keep borrowing $50,000 to spend that level, but that's exactly what we've done. But the point of my story was nobody knew in total how much we spend because we never even talk about it. David Friedberg (00:13:23): Mhmm. Ron Johnson (00:13:24): Never even talked about it. So so that's out of sight out of mind. So it's completely out of control. I mean, I am the guys, you know, starting with my Wall Street Journal column, January 1 about returning to a pre pandemic, pre pandemic global spending. I mean, I've been hammering the Senate Republican Conference on a weekly basis and just, you know, Ed Naj, quite honestly. David Friedberg (00:13:44): But what's the pushback? What are they saying? Ron Johnson (00:13:45): They just throw, they throw in the towel. They go, well, it's too hard. I mean, that's unrealistic. You just can't do it. Even though I lay out, well, these are so let me just tell you, you know, how I laid out my pre pandemic levels of spending. This is during between Christmas and New Year's. I'm trying to figure out how can I communicate this? You know, how can I justify this? What kind of control can we put on things? So I I literally went back in history. I went back to Clinton in 1998, Obama in 02/2014, and Trump in 02/2019. And I exempted Social Security, Medicare, and interest. You know, spend what you need to spend. But all other actual outlays in those three years, I increase them by inflation and population. No reasonable control. Right? It's what we should have. We don't have a balanced budget amendment. At least we should have some reasonable control over outlays. Population growth inflation would make sense. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:33): Senator, if we take your math and say that we are headed to let's take the midpoint, 65,000,000,000,000 of debt by 2035. I think it's fair to say that the bond market will have a negative reaction to that. And what Dave just talked about, which is a 5% borrowing rate for America, could be on the low side. And that's the that's the spiral that he's talking about. On Friday, secretary Bessent tried to get in front of this, and his commentary was, we will grow our way out. Can you talk to us about what he means by that and what the boundary conditions need to be to grow our way out? Ron Johnson (00:15:17): First of all, by by my calculation, our average interest rate over the last fifty years on government debt is about 5.8%. So that that's fifty years, and we're we're down here about three somewhere around 3%. Though those are not exact calculations. Listen, that that is the hope of all of us. I mean, I will absolutely agree that the the number one component of a solution to our enormous debt and deficit problem is economic growth. We have to grow the economy. But here's the problem, is when the government is sucking out of the private sector, all, you know, we're the ones borrowing the money. So there's not a whole lot of money left for businesses in the private sector, not enough capital there. Now, you can print more money, but then that sparks inflation. And that, of course, erodes everybody's balance sheet. It also makes our debt less expensive as well. But because we're so in debt, that drives up the interest rates. And again, it ends up being a death and debt spiral. So nobody can predict this. But I mean, that's just the wishful thinking of people putting forward a policy, a one big beautiful bill that doesn't live up to its name, but actually exacerbates the problem. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:34): What are the tools then in your toolbox? So you get back in the next week or two, and you talk to your colleagues, and now it's on your desk. How do you start getting your arms around this? What do you do starting on Monday or next Monday? Ron Johnson (00:16:50): So I try to lay out the basic numbers. That's what I was talking about. You know, my pre pandemic global spending, Clinton, if you use that process, go from one point seven to 5,500,000,000,000.0. That's how you plus up their that spending. Obama would be 6.2. Trump's two thousand 19, six point five. So now now you've got a a baseline budget. You've always heard these Republican, members of congress running for office saying we're gonna go to zero based budget. They're not even willing to go to 5.5 to 6.5 level baseline of budget. So, again, what is the process that just might work? Doge has kinda shown it to us. You know, line by line, you have to scrutinize all this. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot time. And that's why I've always argued for a multiple approach here. Multiple step. Provide the border funding. I would just extend current tax law. I mean, yeah, I would have voted for that if we would have been smart enough to use current policy back then. We wouldn't be even having this conversation. Extend current tax law takes an automatic massive tax increase off the table, increase the debt ceiling enough for a year to keep pressure on the process to do the work, to go line by line, expose spending. I've got a belief. When you've gone from 400,000,004,000 to 7,000 billion dollars worth of spending, if you start scrutinizing that line by line, there would literally be hundreds of billions of dollars that the public wouldn't even know we're not spending. The only people who would know would be the grifters who are sucking down the pork. David Friedberg (00:18:19): Mhmm. So when you say the folks in the Republican Party that aren't willing to do the hard work, it's just so obvious how big of a crisis we are in, and everyone's kind of being blind to it. So I'm just trying to understand what is it that's keeping the blindfold on. Is it that there are donors, that there are constituents? I'll give you an example. A couple years ago, I went in for the Farm Bill review with the Senate Ag Committee twenty twelve, so a long time ago. And we started talking about one of the agencies in the USDA, and they have 10,000 employees, and said, you know, does why does this make sense in a digital age? And the answer was, it doesn't. It's like, well, why is the agency still running and employing all these people? Well, because the senators don't wanna lose the jobs in their state. Because that's 10,000 jobs split amongst roughly seven states, and it's really important to those seven states to keep those jobs. Is that the motivation that there's economic dollars flowing into the states that keeps the representatives and the senators from making the tough decisions? Is it that they're getting donor dollars? What's the real motivation here that's keeping everyone from tackling reality? Ron Johnson (00:19:24): Oh, again, as I pointed out, most don't even recognize the full reality. They don't they don't know the numbers. I've I've heard it said. I didn't hear McConnell say it, personally, but I've heard him say, show me a member of congress whoever lost the election because they spent too much money. So there's no public pressure not to spend. You know, people love tax cuts. People love the free money. You know, we collectively, as a society, are whistling by the graveyard. Nobody wants to say that this is unsustainable because, you know, to fix it is painful. I mean, you you you are gonna have to reduce spending. And then you're very open to the political accusations you know, coming in, we're trying to slash Medicaid for disabled children. Now we're trying to preserve it for disabled children, try and get the able-bodied, the childless working age adults back to work and on private sector healthcare. But again, that's a more difficult argument to make. So it's just the way that the process just plows on. We've never, as I said, there's never been a process to actually control spending. And so this is what we've always done. You come up to these deadlines, you put everything into one big bill, you give people, you know, things that you have to vote for. You don't wanna default on the debt. You don't wanna increase taxes. So, you know, those elements you bundle up with a bunch of crap and you twist people's arms to pay for it, having and keeping them basically ignorant because you never talk about the massive numbers, massive problem that we're really in. I mean, people kind of know it, but as long as the presses are reporting out, as long as the press isn't connecting the dots that the massive deficit spending is why you can't afford things, why your dollar you held in 2019 is only worth 80¢ versus the bucket should be. By the way, a dollar you held in 1998 is worth 51¢. Okay? So, we, again, we don't teach people. There's no, there's no public pressure in terms of reducing spending or reducing deficit. Ron Johnson (00:21:26): There's just virtually none. I mean, you know, from conservatives right now, I'm getting it all the time. Boy, make sure that you make no tax on tips permanent. Make sure you make no tax on overtime permanent. So, well, first of all, we probably shouldn't even be doing either of those. I I by the way, I'm all for no tax on cash tips. You know, we can't can't collect it anyway, so don't even try. Now I'm all for that. You've got to recognize these other tax cuts. They're not gonna grow the economy. They're not gonna focus on the one component that Besson's talking about that we have to grow our economy? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:56): I actually am very supportive of the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. The monetary cost of those things are relatively not that meaningful. And so it has a broad based positive impact with a lower cost is actually the reason why we should do it. The thing that I was sort of, like, puzzled by, when 50 people or 60 people are constructing something, you get this bill that comes out of the house, which has the things that the president asked for. But with all of these other Christmas tree ornaments hanging from it, and it's impossible to figure out what's actually going on. Ron Johnson (00:22:28): Well, I don't even think it's even fifty and sixty people constructing this. I mean, it's a much smaller group of people, and then you maybe have 50 or 60 chiming in on one issue or another. Let me push back on overtime with you, though. You know, I ran a plastics operation, continuous shift. If you're gonna have, you know, work 20 fourseven, you need four shifts. So part of the problem with no tax on overtime, first of all, it's no tax on some overtime. So it's gonna add to the regulatory burden. I wouldn't wanna be the accounting clerk to have them keep track of that, but, you know, I know with computers it's easier to do so. But in public service employee units, they will they refuse to go to four shifts because they like the overtime. They should be forced to go to four shifts because they burn out, pay them more. But from my standpoint, having run a continuous shift operation, I think there's enough incentive paying time and a half or double time on Sunday for people to work. Income is income. I don't wanna segregate. I I don't want to socially or economically engineer engineer through the tax code. And that's just part of that economic engineering through the tax code. I love the fact we're focusing on working men and women. Great. But I would rather simplify the tax code for them and and overall lower their tax burden. But again, lower the rates, broaden the base, but we're not doing that. We lowered the rates and we made it more complex. So, you know, we did not simplify the tax code in 2017. '1 of the reasons I actually wanted a two step process was to take time to simplify and rationalize our tax code. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:52): Can we talk about other things that didn't make it in that we thought were gonna get in there? Another way to generate revenue would have been to close the carried interest loophole. I don't know if you have any points of view on that. Ron Johnson (00:24:04): Well, I've I've talked to numerous people who benefit from carried interest. I always ask them, can you explain to me why that's not ordinary income? And they can't. It is ordinary income. Speaking to other ones that are pretty big into it, they do make a pretty powerful case that, you know, all these deals, all these structures, all these business arrangements are already structured that way. You can eliminate that break, and it's really not gonna raise any revenue. They make reasonably convincing case there too. So that's kinda where we're on that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:34): Which is sort of like at a at an impasse. Ron Johnson (00:24:37): Yeah. It's my guess is just not gonna happen. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:40): Right. Ron Johnson (00:24:41): And and kinda going the overtime, it's just not that big a revenue generator one way or the other. Might might make you feel good. Could could screw up the way deals are made. Is it really worth messing with? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:53): One of the things that Elon has been talking about recently is that we could be on the precipice of an energy deficit starting next year, where we need every form of power possible to be generating as many electrons as possible. And so solar, wind, coal, nat gas, nuclear. There was a bunch of provisions here that changed the tax incentives. What's your thoughts on all of those that may change the landscape of electron availability? Ron Johnson (00:25:26): Well, I think it's, insane that we've been shutting down coal fired electrical generation. We need a lot of it. I would really focus on nuclear myself. I think that is, you know, if you're concerned about climate change and, you know, I'm not, we'll adapt. But nuclear would be the thing we ought to be pushing. I I really don't want to subsidize energy production. I I don't want to subsidize anything. Again, I want a simple and rational tax story. So, my my approach would always be to simplify those things. Yeah, I don't want to pull the rug out from under people. I mean, if we've subsidized things and people made investment based on certain things, kinda respect that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:01): The comment that I made to my colleagues is FERC came out with a report. It 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 a nat gas turbine. You know, for example, I'm gonna announce on Monday we're building a one gigawatt data center that I'm funding in Arizona. I can't get a nat gas 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. 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 gonna do it. Ron Johnson (00:26:55): I say congress in general doesn't understand what you're talking about. Right. Again, I said, I don't wanna pull the rug out from a hundred people. I I understand investment because I was in business. But again, I I wanna move towards a more simple system. And and again, it's insane what government you know, all the green new energy thing. It it misallocates capital. Take a look at what's happening in Europe and Germany. So if they're artificially driving up the cost of power, for what? Okay. I mean, it's a fantasy. It's it's a self inflicted wound. It's we we spent something like 5 or $6,000,000,000,000 globally on climate change. Again, whether you believe it or not, we haven't bent the needle. That's just 5 or $6,000,000,000,000 basically wasted. So, again, I I recognize the 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 as much energy cheap as possible. Again, protecting the environment. I don't want pollution, but the whole climate change thing is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:57): 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 gonna find with robots, with going to Mars, with building AGI. The threshold issue is just do we have enough energy to do it all? And if as long as we have that, we're gonna win. And if we don't, China's gonna win. Where it comes from, I really don't care. But the reality with nuclear is, you know, we can't wait till 2035 for electrons to turn on. That's just a nonstarter. So as much as we have to pay for the sins of the past, and the sins of the past is we turned all that stuff off, idiotically, to your point, because of some, you know, crying child. But now we have to play for the conditions on the ground. I have a different question, which is I wanna go back to Dave's question on Doge, senator, which is there was a $9,000,000,000 rescission bill that went to the house, and unfortunately, it didn't make a lot of progress. What is the future of Doge as you see it? Ron Johnson (00:28:56): First of all, it it was beneficial for no other reason than it exposed how oblivious and ignorant congress was of all this waste, fraud, and abuse. Okay? I mean, that has value right there. It should have embarrassed every member of congress, all these department heads 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 and I I tried getting Elon's attention quite honestly about, you know, can give me somebody in Doge that I can work with so that 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. He he doesn't seem to have the time and quite honestly in in a personal conversation, he said, oh, we don't have to do that. Well, we do have to do that and so, you know, we've we've been hammering Russ Vogt. You know, send us a rescission package. You know, finally, he bundles up $9,000,000,000 when on, I think, the last time I looked at Doge's website, they were up to $1.65. Think it's higher than that now. They're they're kind of, they have fallen short of the goal. Listen, I and I'm I'm not criticizing for them that for that at all. But the fact of the matter is, it has to be codified. Just putting it on a website is valuable, but we gotta bank the savings. And so anything that's mandatory has gotta be done through reconciliation. Otherwise, gotta be done from rescission. You you gotta get the public support for this. I don't know why they haven't done it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:22): So can you just explain that to us? Like, what what we see on the website, is that not saved? Ron Johnson (00:30:31): It's there's a question. They've stopped contracts. They're 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 it's just going to be you know, sitting out there is you know, unallocated. Spending to be spent some time in the future. Unless you rescind them. And, again, that's the beauty of rescission reconciliation. We don't need Democrats to help us there. We can do that with simple majorities of both the House and the Senate. And, again, it'll be pretty depressing. President Trump in his first administration sent up a $15,000,000,000 rescission package and has voted down the senate. Two Republican senators voted against it. And, my guess is they paid no political price for doing that. Any Republican that voted would vote against the rescission package ought to pay a pretty huge political price in voting that thing down. It's it's gonna take presidential leadership. He's gotta be he's gotta be focusing on that. And and I'm sorry. I don't think president Trump he's doing all kinds of great things. He's not focused on reducing spending. From what David Friedberg (00:31:35): I that is? 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? Ron Johnson (00:31:43): I I just think they are overwhelmed. I mean, you see all all the activity, and this just hasn't hit his radar yet. It's gonna hit his radar here this next the next few weeks. Because so, again, he he liked the concept, the slogan of one beautiful bill. I don't think he was overly concerned or understanding what the details were. You know, I'm I'm gonna force him to take a look at the details. David Friedberg (00:32:05): Mhmm. Ron Johnson (00:32:06): I'm I'm gonna force the discussion on spending. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:09): It feels like we're about to enter some form of, like, people conclave where you and your senate colleagues are gonna go into a room. There's either gonna be white smoke or black smoke. So can you can you walk us through, like, what what is the mechanics now? Like, what will it be like when you when senator Thune brings you together, you all caucus, or how how does this work now for you? Ron Johnson (00:32:27): So so we've been in finance committee, we've been working on these things, but again, we're all it's all about scores. Right? I've gotta point this out. You hear these scores. Right? But they're divorced from they're not tied to anything. It's like, okay. I got a score of 65. Well, good. I mean, it's good if you're golfing, it's awful if you're bowling. So you get all these scores, they're divorced from reality. So again, the process is complete. It's by and large a charade. Somebody else is gonna write this thing, and it's gonna be shut down people's throats. So what I intend to do is I intend to open it up and bring this to the light of day. I've been doing this since January 1, writing about giving, you know, three pre pandemic levels, you know, three options on pre pandemic levels of spending. Next column, here's the process, a line by line, deep dive, forensic audit. You know, I'd 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, the big numbers, and that's why you have to do it. But again, you were following the debate in the house. Did you ever hear $2,200,000,000,000 average deficit being projected? $22,000,000,000,000? You know, $59,000,000,000,000 in debt? Nobody. It's just $1,500,000,000,000 Oh, like, that's a lot. I mean, it's it's it's it's almost meaningless. It's a rounding error. So I'm gonna force this debate. That's that's why I'm on your show here today. That's why I'm gonna be doing Jake Tapper tomorrow. David Friedberg (00:33:57): You know, I'm gonna Ron Johnson (00:33:57): bring the the numbers to the floor. David Friedberg (00:34:00): Senator, is there a 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? Ron Johnson (00:34:20): I've been pretty upfront. You know, the first goal of this Republican budget reconciliation should be don't add to the deficit. Because that'd all 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. I'm reasonably open. I recognize we have to get the votes. So I always say I don't have a hard number, but what I've done is I've laid out these options and right now, the hard number accepted by and expected by a lot of senators enough to not pass this until we achieve it is $6.5000000000000 dollars in spending in 2026. And I I can, you know, walk through how you get to that point but that's kind of the number. Right now, we're expected to spend about $73,000,000,000,000 next year. So that implies about $808,000,000,000,000 investment reduction rather than 1,500,000,000,000.0 that, the house has in their meager, house reconciliation bill. So it's a pretty big delta. David Friedberg (00:35:23): 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. There may be revenue coming in from the sale of the Trump immigration card at 5,000,000 a pop, and there's a limited effect of the tax cuts on GDP growth, etcetera. So there's a lot of arguments to be made to make the line seem a little more blurry than perhaps the scoring might indicate. Ron Johnson (00:35:56): That's why I try and simplify things. Okay? I'm focusing on spending. We went from 4.4 to it'll be 7.3 next year. Now let let's bring it down to a reasonable pre pandemic level, 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 the minute you start bringing revenue, nobody can project that. Nobody knows exactly what the impact's gonna be. So that starts, you know, muddying the waters. So, I focus on spending. I don't really want to fund the deep state. Okay, I I would like to bring certainty to the economy. I'd like the trade wars to end so we can bring that level of stability. I don't want to increase taxes. So again, my approach would be multiple step. Border defense, bank the savings, take whatever good work the house did, bank that, extend current tax law is often as complex as is. Just extend that, increase the debt ceiling for a year to put pressure on us to come back and do the work on 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 approach. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:07): Do you think that there's any upside or legislative resolve to think about monetizing assets? So for example, secretary Lutnick has talked about the vast resources, Secretary Bergman has talked about it as well. The vast resources that America has, whether it should you know, we should consider thinking about monetizing some of those things, selling federal lands, selling drilling rights, selling royalty rights. What do you think about that as an incremental way of softening the landing here? Ron Johnson (00:37:35): Well, I would say the only reason I'm not in a full fledged panic is because people like Art Laffer Laffer do point out we have vast wealth. I mean, so our debt, our debt to GDP ratio is probably not the most relevant, is relevant for inflation, that type of thing, but, you know, debt to total assets is probably the more relevant. So we literally, we can afford this level of debt, but do have to compare it to income as well and our ability to service the debt and the death 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 deaths of spending. I'm 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, making it very impossible for them to live and retire. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:37): What do you think is the future through these next sixteen months of bills and the impact? To your point, there'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 traditionalist default. We're going back to the way things work. Can you talk to us about that and what your thoughts are about that? Ron Johnson (00:39:03): 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 is one of the reasons I'm I am sympathetic to what you're talking about in terms of the tax cuts he's proposed. I mean, we need to focus on the working men and women of this country. This is really the 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. Their relentlessness 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 they are trying to cheat. I think they do cheat in voting. I think they we don't have a real feeling in terms of how, you know, the order of magnitude of their cheating. But a quick example of, you know, we have that important Supreme Court race here. Elon Musk came in here, did some pretty innovative things, spent a lot of money here. The liberal candidate got 78% of of Kamala Harris's vote. The conservative candidate got 62% of Donald Trump's vote. Even though, you know, we were all out there saying how important this is, if you don't wanna see president Trump impeached by a Democrat controlled congress in the next congress, you gotta get out and support president Trump. That didn't resonate. Again, 78% of, Democrats came out of 62% Republicans. David Friedberg (00:40:29): Do you think there's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:30): a risk that MAGA becomes a version of, you know, Tea Party two point o 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 off? Ron Johnson (00:40:42): No. I think the greatest danger at MAGA is it's really tied toward one individual. You know, Tea Party movement was tied toward the vision of America. Freedom, you know, debt and desolate, not mortgage our kids' future. I think that survived. I mean, they did a pretty good job of marginalizing the Tea Party, but, you know, we're we're alive and well. We're, you know, we are the the House Freedom Caucus. You know, we're we're the the people that are gonna stop this until we just get a much better bill in the Senate. So we're we're we're still alive and well, but in terms of voters, I mean, the Tea Party pretty well merged with Republican Party. I'm not sure all the mega the mega voters are just discussed by the whole process as I'm as am I. And they're much more likely to sit on the couch unless their guy is on the ballot. David Friedberg (00:41:28): Do 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 realize they can 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 in Ron Johnson (00:41:51): the way? I'm not no. I'm not sure you you are off at all. No, I think we may have already passed that hinge point. That's my concern. Mean, people ask me, are you optimistic? No, I'm a pessimist. I'm looking around. That is the death knell of a democracy or a Republican. A majority of the voters realize, hey, can vote myself benefits. Don't don't worry about the debt and deficit. We can print money. I know that that's what brings down David Friedberg (00:42:15): Everything. I mean, is this is what I've noticed is Democrats, Republicans, populists, or elitists, 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. And 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, 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 reflects 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 to take some therapy. Ron Johnson (00:43:18): Well, the the the data that backs us up is and I wrote this in my Wall Street Journal column. 1930, the federal government spent about 3.5% of our GDP. 3.5. State and local governments were about 9.1. That that was the foundational premise of America. Government close to government, where it's more effective, more efficient, more accountable. Now we're spending close to 24%, the federal level. States are probably somewhere 12 to 15. We haven't looked at 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. And so it gets corrupted and it's been corrupted. And I don't know where, you know, I see here we're past the point of no return. Why did I run again for a third term as discussed as 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 recedes. As government grows, you get more and more people dependent on it. David Friedberg (00:44:18): Well, that's right. Ron Johnson (00:44:19): That's the your they're not doing things productive. You don't have a vibrant economy. That's right. You know, it's just, it's a, it's, it all, all in all, it's destructive of society. David Friedberg (00:44:28): To the point about your numbers, senator, you know, 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% today. So 50% of Americans are either working for a public agency, federal, state, or local, or working for the contractor of a government agency. And 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 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. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:24): And who who else is shoulder to shoulder with you with the same point of view in the senate? Ron Johnson (00:45:29): I think grandpa is pretty much a hard no regardless. So, again, I don't think you could get a good enough bill where he'd vote yes. The my other allies, for sure, in this thing are Mike Lee and and Rick Scott. You know, 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 pandemic 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 pinned to my top of my X page, think it's further on down now, But I put together a video about a minute thirty starting with President Trump at the State of the Union saying he was gonna balance the federal budget and then the vice president and everybody on down some version of, we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. At the very end of the video, I I asked, so are we willing to fix it? You know, right now, doesn't appear we are, but I I intend to insist that we do. So I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna dig my heels in. There there's no there's nothing that president Trump can do to pressure me other than other than start work with me, did not acknowledge the numbers. You know, I'm I'm texting the probably annoyed with me, Besant and Hassett and Russell all the time saying, here here's 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. You know I I had good nice lunch with Scott Besson in in the treasury department. I gave him my charts and graphs and 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. Ron Johnson (00:47:14): And again, the ace I hold is I am going to force the numbers that we have to look at out in the public because to this point, we haven't discussed it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:26): And the 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? Ron Johnson (00:47:42): Is I first focus on focus on spending. David Friedberg (00:47:45): Okay. Ron Johnson (00:47:45): Give you $9,300,000,000,000 again, that's, again, that represents government, right? That represents that power that's been corrupted. That represents the just unprecedented other than World War II increase in spending from 2019 of 58 to 60%. So if if you if you can't deal with that in my column, pointed out, you know, our our forefathers, the greatest generation, responsible leadership, you know, entered World War two 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. By the way, I've been in the White House with him. I've I've shown him my charts and graphs. He goes, I love this. I love this. The house ought to love this. Have have they has this been presented? Said, no. Mister 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, you know, 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. David Friedberg (00:48:57): This will be the moment you think. And so when you speak with Besson, 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? Ron Johnson (00:49:23): Yeah. And again, I don't think the numbers are that complicated. Yeah. There's slight amount. You know, $22,000,000,000,000 of additional deficit spending, that's a rosy scenario. That's $2,200,000,000,000 per year. You know, Obama, his average he averaged about $900,000,000,000 a year deficit. Trump before the pandemic was about 800,000,000,000. You know, Biden's up to almost 2,000,000,000,000 it's $1,900,000,000,000 average deficit. Clearly unsustainable. We gotta get back to a reasonable level. And by the way, if we do, I think the bond margins were bond markets would rejoice. We wouldn't be looking at a ramping up of interest costs. You know, we can talk about, you know, debt to wealth as opposed to debt debt to GDP because we've got that monkey off our back. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:05): You said something interesting I just wanna 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. Just 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. And 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 will 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. Ron Johnson (00:51:21): And we also have to focus on economic growth through the private sector. David Friedberg (00:51:25): Right. Ron Johnson (00:51:25): That's fueled by government deficit spending. I mean, I don't know what percent of our actual growth came from $2,000,000,000,000 a year deficits. I think 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 coming from the government. I mean, it is true that we beat the CBO estimates. That's because of trillions of dollars of deficit spending starting the pandemic years followed through with Biden. Prior to the pandemic, we weren't we really weren't matching even the CBO's, you know, downgrade of revenue coming in after the TCGA. We weren't hitting it. But then you had COVID hit and again, trillions of dollars of deficit spending that also boosted revenue. So again, all these people saying, oh, we're gonna, you know, that that tax increase is gonna be dynamically scored and what's gonna pay for itself. Listen, I'm all for dynamic scoring but let's let's be realistic and and again, I'll point out the CBO projection I'm dealing with for $22,000,000,000,000 That assumes we go from 17. One to 18% of GDP in terms of revenue. So, you know, if if if we don't cancel the tax increase, and there's dynamic scoring effects, it just means we don't hit 18.1, and that number's still lower. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:47): Talk to us about the setup for 2026, and maybe if you want your thoughts about where the country goes into 2028. '1 of the things that Dave talks about a lot is moments that galvanize some form of populist socialism. This idea, as he said very articulately, I can just vote myself the money. So who is gonna just give me the most money? Can you just walk us through some political forecasting for us? Ron Johnson (00:53:10): That's why I'm not an optimist. But, you know, I've heard people rationalize this, and I mean, important people rationalize. You know, just just go along with this. Get us a pat I mean, this is what we have to do 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 know, what good Oh, oh, oh, so when we have the majority in 2027, then, then we're gonna actually spend the, you know, turn the spending curve down. That's when we're gonna return to pre pandemic level spending. I don't buy it. This is this is our one opportunity. And right now we're blowing it. And I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure we don't blow it. But again, that is the reality. Listen, I I'm not I don't discount the fact that we may lose the house. We may lose the senate. But I would say we do that because we're not solving these problems. We're gonna be looked at as unserious. You know, our our base is gonna go, what what why did we why did we elect you guys? You didn't take the bull by the horns. You didn't solve this problem. You're you're really no better than Democrats. I think we have to be concerned about that. David Friedberg (00:54:15): 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 rescission bill that you'd be looking for? Do we need to actually have a sit down and talk about building a budget? What's the right next step here in creating a north star that creates stability for the republic? Ron Johnson (00:54:39): Again, it's developing a process that will achieve and maintain a pre pandemic level spending, you know, just a lower spending level. It's a it's it is I come from manufacturing base. Right? You 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 eliminating just awful spending. So you gotta expose it. You gotta 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. So you have to do the work. And again, I would love to take that Doge team, you know, those geniuses with all their AI and their computer skills and get, you know, a 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 administration, OMB, then you you basically set up the process just like you do in a business. You know, 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 justify your spending. But again, I would be comparing it to outlays under Clinton plus stuff, outlays under Obama plus stuff, outlays under Trump plus stuff. Go through every line and go, first of all, why 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, so you need the time. I've been proposing this now for months. Nobody's put in the the effort. OMB said we don't have enough time, and I realized they're they're busy. The house said, oh, no. You know, we've been working on this for a year. We're satisfied with our numbers. We don't have the time. Ron Johnson (00:56:26): The senate really, senate leadership's 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. I mean, I can't do it. I don't have the budget expertise. So it really is. It's getting the commitment of the president that he is determined to not keep funding the deep state of buying levels, return to a reasonable pre pandemic level spending, and then get his OMB fully behind this effort. This has got to be the biggest effort on budget ever. And then set the thing up, show it works, and then hopefully maintain it over the years. I I I can't think of anything. We've tried all this other stuff. It never worked. David Friedberg (00:57:02): 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. So thank you for your service. Thank you for the work you do. We appreciate it. Ron Johnson (00:57:26): I appreciate you having me on. I will I will say one thing that is different about me than others, I'd rather go home. That's a significant difference. When when you'd rather I'd rather return to my private sector life than keep serving here in this total dysfunction. That that is that is what, again, I can't be pressured by president Trump. David Friedberg (00:57:48): I I can't. Ron Johnson (00:57:49): I mean, he's not gonna flip me just by the the force of his argument or or any kind of political pressure. There's there's just no pressure he can apply to me. He's willing to sit down with me, look at the numbers, acknowledge them, working forward in a reasonable plan forward. That's that's the only way he's gonna get my support. David Friedberg (00:58:06): Well, I hope that there are others that get into the same mindset as you. I've 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, I appreciate that mindset, and and thank you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:31): Thank you, senator, for your candor. Thanks for having me on. 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. I do think that that puts a lot of pressure on America, and I think it's gonna 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. David Friedberg (00:59:02): Not to mention the value of everyone's assets. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:05): They'll go to zero. David Friedberg (00:59:06): They go to zero. Well, I mean, look. Like but but as the the senator made the point, a dollar in 2019 is worth 80¢ 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, as 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. And I think the worry is that in ten years, you know, a dollar is worth 30¢. 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. This train is gone. So, anyway, I I thought it was great to have some time with the senator to talk about it today. Again, when when we have these conversations, Chamath, obviously, we're 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 we'll agree with, things that we don't agree with. But I think on the 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. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:43): I think it's really 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 fiscally crippled and reliant on the government, that's a horrible outcome. David Friedberg (01:01:00): 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, really worthwhile to give the senators a vase. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:11): I already made love to Nat twice this morning, so I'm from all the boxes have been checked. David Friedberg (01:01:15): But what did you do after those six minutes? Did you Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:17): have Played with the kids. Played with the kids for an hour. Yeah. Yeah. So I I've done everything. Need to walk the dogs. Good. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:01:24): Alright, bro. We'll talk to later. Love you.