David Friedberg Destroys the House Spending Bill: "Americans should be ashamed."

Republicans are working hard on the big beautiful bill. The Trump bill would extend the 2017 tax cuts and Jobs Act through 2034. That's kind of the big piece here is these tax cuts. And there's a budget campaign stuff like no taxes on tips or overtime things that Trump promised and the tax foundation. This is a nonprofit that analyzes tax policy estimates the tax cuts would reduce revenues by 4.1 trillion over 10 years, 400 billion a year. And the bill also aims to cut 1.5 trillion in spend over the next decade. Some Republicans think this is weak and are pushing for 2 trillion in cuts or more.

共和党人正在努力推动一项“大而美丽”的法案。该法案将把2017年的减税和就业法案延长至2034年。这其中的重点就是这些减税措施。此外，还有一些关于预算的内容，比如对小费和加班费免税的承诺，这是特朗普曾经承诺过的。一个名为税务基金会的非营利机构分析了这项税收政策，他们估计减税措施将在十年内导致收入减少4.1万亿美元，每年减少4000亿美元。该法案还计划在未来十年内削减1.5万亿美元的支出。不过，一些共和党人认为这还不够，正在推动削减2万亿或更多。

Freeberg, you actually, hey, I understand from our group chat, did a deep dive here. And you, I think, are responsible in many ways for bringing the issue of our national debt to the forefront, especially, particularly with this administration and DOGE, which we give you a lot of credit for. You being a single issue voter for this, are you worried about the budget now? We're 100 plus days into Trump. Do you think he's got any chance of cutting the deficit?

Freeberg，其实，我从我们的群聊中了解到，你在这个问题上做了深入研究。而且，我认为你在很多方面是将国家债务问题推到前台的关键人物，特别是在本届政府下，以及与DOGE有关的问题，这方面我们非常佩服你。作为一个关注单一议题的选民，你现在对预算感到担忧吗？我们已经进入特朗普执政的100多天了，你觉得他有机会减少赤字吗？

I'll talk about the House tax bill, which I think is to use your term, J.Kell, absolute discratia. I, Bill is a despotian. It is absolute discratia. If you're an American, you should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing that this is the bill that gets past, that we vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much further in debt, that we do not treat the situation as the fiscal emergency that it is. The bill ultimately yields no real change in the annual deficit.

我要谈谈众议院的税收法案，用你们的词来说，J.Kell，这简直是彻头彻尾的混乱。我认为，这个法案是专横的。这完全是混乱状态。作为一个美国人，你应该感到羞愧，因为你选出的官员提议通过这样的法案，会挥霍如此多的钱，让我们的债务进一步增加，却没有把这看作是一场财政紧急状况。这个法案最终并没有对年度赤字带来实质性的改变。

The annual deficit could climb to 2.5 trillion dollars being added to the federal debt load every single year going forward. In fact, if you look at the treasury yields, the 30-year is now kissing 5%. The United States has called 37 trillion dollars of debt. At 5%, we're paying close to $2 trillion a year, just in interest on our debt. As this debt gets refinanced, the interest rates are going up because the probability that the US will default on its debt payments, which is what you're buying when you buy US treasuries.

未来每年联邦赤字可能增加到2.5万亿美元，这意味着每年都会增加到国家债务中。实际上，如果你看看国债收益率，30年期的现在已经接近5%。美国已经累积了37万亿美元的债务。按5%的利率计算，我们每年仅在利息上就需要支付接近2万亿美元。随着这些债务的再融资，利率正在上升，因为大家对美国拖欠债务的可能性越来越担心，而购买美国国债实际上就是在承担这种风险。

You're getting the US government to pay you some number of dollars with interest over time. The market is now demanding that that interest rate be as high as 5%, because of this fiscal situation that the United States finds itself in. We are now burning an additional 2.5 trillion dollars a year, adding to our debt load. We are in a fiscal crisis and we're not willing to admit it.

你让美国政府支付给你一定金额的美元，并且会随着时间的推移支付利息。由于美国目前的财政状况，市场现在要求这个利率达到5%。我们每年新增2.5万亿美元的支出，使债务负担进一步加重。我们正处于财政危机中，但我们却不愿意承认这一点。

I've said this from day one, that doge can only do so much, and clearly that's the case where they're now talking about sub $300 billion a year and potential annual savings from doge action. At the end of the day, Congress needs to take action. This bill from Congress doesn't take much action. I will tell you that if you look across the board, all of these programs are still being proposed to be run at a cost that is well in excess of their pre-COVID levels.

从第一天起我就说过，狗狗币的作用是有限的，显然现在的情况是，他们谈论的每年只有不到3000亿美元的节省，可能是由于狗狗币的推动。最终，国会需要采取行动。这个国会的法案并没有采取多少行动。我可以告诉你，如果全面看这些项目，它们的运营成本仍然远远高于疫情前的水平。

I would set who guiding principles, if I was to be the benevolent dictator of the United States of America, my guiding principle number one would be that any program that we intend to continue to persist have its budget level cut to pre-COVID to 2019 levels. Second would be, and if we did that by the way, we would be in a much better fiscal situation. The second would be that we had no new programs in the moment.

如果我成为美国的仁慈独裁者，我会设定一些指导原则。我的第一条指导原则是：任何我们打算继续执行的项目，其预算水平都要削减到COVID-19疫情前，也就是2019年的水平。顺便说一下，如果我们这样做，我们的财政状况会好得多。第二条指导原则是：现在不要增加新的项目。

There's a whole bunch of new shits thrown into this bill, as well as increasing the cost in a few cuts here and there. I'll just highlight a couple that I think are worth noting. There's a cut in the SNAP program, which is the supplemental nutrition and assistance program. That's food stamps. I talked about this with Brook Rollins in the interview. I did a few weeks ago. You can watch it on YouTube. We talked a little bit about how this SNAP program has absolutely exploded in size from 60 billion a year in 2019 to 120 billion a year today.

这项法案中加入了很多新的内容，同时在一些地方也增加了成本。我会重点提几个我认为值得注意的地方。首先是对SNAP计划的削减，也就是补充营养援助计划，通常称为食品券。我几周前和布鲁克·罗林斯在采访中谈到了这个问题，可以在YouTube上观看。我们谈到了这个SNAP计划是如何从2019年的每年600亿美元激增到如今的每年1200亿美元的。

In this budget proposal, they're actually cutting it back by about 30 billion, so to 90 billion. It's still 50% higher than it was pre-COVID. There's a lot of stories we could go through on what happened during COVID that caused this thing to blow up the way it did, but political wrangling pulled money out of the government into people's pockets, and that is persisting today.

在这个预算提案中，他们实际上削减了大约300亿，所以降到了900亿。然而，这仍然比新冠疫情之前高出了50%。关于疫情期间发生的事情，还有很多故事可以说，这导致了局势的剧烈变化，但政治角力将资金从政府中抽出，流入了人们的口袋，而这种情况至今仍在持续。

I'm a big believer in cutting taxes. Obviously, I'm probably more libertarian than anyone else on the show or that we've ever had on the show. But at the end of the day, you can't just say, hey, let's cut taxes and spend more than we're making. It doesn't make sense. A lot of the stuff's going to be exploitable. The tips and overtime exclusions are a way to pander to people to get votes and now keeping your promises on those votes.

我非常相信减税的重要性。显然，我可能比节目中的其他人，或者我们节目以往请过的任何人都更倾向于自由主义。但最终，你不能只说“嘿，我们来减税吧”，然后花钱超过我们实际收入。这是没有道理的。很多问题可能会被利用。而那些关于小费和加班费的豁免政策只不过是迎合选民来获取选票的一种方式，现在还得兑现你对这些选票的承诺。

I think at the end of the day, the tips and overtime rule could invite a lot of gamesmanship and loopholes that will be created and people will wake up and be like, uh-oh. For example, if I'm an independent contractor, I will enter into a contract with someone that says, here's the service I'm providing you for 50 bucks. And then there's an optional tip you can give me at the end. And then I will pay taxes on that tip. And I can give you a hundred other examples that this will create inordinate number of crazy insane loopholes.

我认为，最终关于小费和加班的规定可能会引发很多投机取巧的行为和漏洞，人们可能会后知后觉地发现，情况不妙。比如说，如果我是一个独立承包商，我可以和某人签订合同，规定提供某项服务收取50美元，并在合同中允许对方在服务结束时选择性地给我小费。我将只需对此小费缴税。而这种规定还可能引发成百上千个类似的疯狂漏洞。

The interest on the debt at $1.9 trillion a year equates to 7% of GDP. That means seven cents of every dollar that moves in every transaction in this country is being used to pay down interest on money we overspent in the past. It has become an absolute crisis. I think that there's a few folks that should be shout out on this, which is Senator Paul and Senator Ron Johnson who both highlighted how ridiculously underimpressive the spending cuts are in this bill. I think we've got a lot of work to do.

债务每年产生的利息高达1.9万亿美元，相当于国内生产总值的7%。也就是说，这个国家每一笔交易中的每一美元，都有七美分用于支付我们过去超支的利息。这已经成为一个严重的危机。我想必须提到几位参议员，包括参议员保罗和罗恩·约翰逊，他们都指出这项法案中的支出削减是多么不足。我认为我们还有很多工作要做。

I'm deeply disappointed. I'm scared. And I hope that this all gets kind of fixed up and do you think that we should line item out all the new spending irrespective of what all new spending line itemed out that's rule one and rule two is all existing programs got to go back to pre-COVID levels. You do those two things. We're in a great place.

我感到非常失望，也很害怕。我希望这一切能够得到解决。你觉得我们是否应该详细列出所有新的开支呢？无论新开支是什么，都要逐项列出。这是第一条规则。第二条规则是，所有现有项目的支出都要回到疫情前的水平。如果做到这两点，我们的情况就会非常好。

Yeah. I'm just to put some numbers and some charts behind it. Here is the debt back to Clinton era Clinton added 392 billion in the years. It's barely noticeable on the chart 40 50 billion a year. Bush 5.4 trillion four years about 1.3 trillion a year Obama a trillion a year. And then we get to Trump 1.0 two trillion a year suddenly we decided we would double it by the same thing they added almost exactly the same amount to the right way to the right way to do the same.

好的，我来用中文翻译并表达意思： 是的，我只是想在这方面加上一些数字和图表。这是自克林顿时代以来的债务情况。克林顿在任的几年间增加了3920亿美元，这在图表上几乎看不出来，每年大概增加了400到500亿美元。然后是布什政府，四年里增加了5.4万亿美元，每年大约增加1.3万亿美元。接着是奥巴马，每年增加至1万亿美元。到了特朗普，每年增加了1.02万亿美元。突然间，我们似乎决定将这个数字翻倍，他们几乎以同样的方式增加了相同的数额到右侧。

Yeah, it's not total dollar amount. It's percent of GDP that you're adding. And you know right now at two and a half trillion dollars a year of deficit we're talking about a deficit to GDP of like 8 percent. Yes. 8 percent a year. This is like Argentina. This is like insane. The fact that we don't treat this like a fiscal emergency and everyone goes up and they tout oh we're going to make 60 billion in cuts and Medicaid. That's out of 820 billion dollars of annual spend.

是的，这不仅仅是总金额的问题，而是你增加的部分在GDP中的比例。现在每年有2.5万亿美元的赤字，这意味着赤字占GDP的比例大约是8％。对，一年8％。这就像是阿根廷一样，太疯狂了。令人惊讶的是，我们对待这个问题并没有像处理财政紧急情况一样，而是每个人都在宣称要削减600亿美元的支出，比如医疗补助计划（Medicaid），但这只是8200亿美元年支出的一小部分。

You know, oh we're making 30 billion in cuts and snap. That's still 50% higher spend in total than we were in 2019 a few years ago when we didn't have that much of a problem. This has become like such a reset of expectations and I worry again that we went into this I think in a very optimistic way thinking that this administration was going to treat things differently.

你知道，我们要削减300亿美元的支出，但即便如此，总支出仍比2019年高出50%。那时候我们的情况还没有那么糟糕。现在，这就好像是重新调整了大家的期望值，让我担心的是，一开始我们非常乐观，以为这届政府会用不同的方式来处理这些问题。

We had doge. We had alignment on the importance of the budget. That's in his highlight at it. And then it's kind of back to gamesmanship and DC. All these representatives from Congress show up and trying to get money for their constituents in a way that is not sustainable. We're not going to be able to keep this up and we're not really having the hard and tough conversations we need to be having.

我们有过狗狗币。我们在预算的重要性上达成了一致，这是他强调的亮点。但随后，又回到了华盛顿的政治游戏。所有这些国会议员都出现了，试图以一种不可持续的方式为选民争取资金。我们无法继续这样下去，而且我们并没有进行真正需要的艰难对话。

And every year everyone wants to get elected by keeping programs and keeping money flowing that their constituents elected them to do. And they want to add new programs so they can go on CNBC and say look at this cool new program I stood up. It's great. It's going to create the future of America. And meanwhile there's no future of America because we're burning two and a half trillion dollars a year.

每年，为了获得选票，每个人都想保留现有的项目并保持资金流动，就像他们的选民选他们来做的那样。而且，他们想要增加新的项目，以便可以在媒体上炫耀，比如上《CNBC》说：“看看我推出的这个很酷的新项目。它很棒，会为美国创造未来。”然而，与此同时，美国的未来却堪忧，因为我们每年烧掉两万五千亿美元。

It is like an existential crisis that no one's willing to stand up and highlight just how critical this emergency is. Two and a half trillion dollars of deficit spending on a 28 trillion dollar GDP. Tell me when in history that's actually worked out at the end of the day except when you're in a some war and you're going to end up taking over some country and getting all their resources.

这就像一场无人愿意站出来强调其重要性的生存危机。GDP为28万亿美元，而赤字开支却高达2.5万亿美元。请告诉我，在历史上何时这种情况能有好的结果，除非是在战争中最终占领一个国家并获取他们的资源。

And as you mentioned this actually has you know knock on effects with regards to things like de-dollarization. Why are you investing in the American dollar if you believe that's right. That's why treasure is going to. This is the debt. This is the debt debt spiral that we find ourselves in because what happens is people stop owning treasuries when they start to question whether or not 30 years from now the US government is going to meet its debt obligations. Even the smallest marginal question of that drives interest rates up 1 percent 2 percent suddenly your 30 your treasury yields at 6 percent 7 percent. And then your interest rates climb and then your deficit spending climbs and that's how it becomes a spiral.

正如你提到的，这实际上对去美元化等产生了连锁反应。如果你认为这样对，那么为什么还要投资于美元。这就是正在发生的情况：这是我们所处的债务螺旋。因为当人们开始怀疑未来30年美国政府能否履行其债务义务时，他们就会不再持有国债。即使是对此有最轻微的质疑，利率也会上升1%到2%。突然间，你的30年期国债收益率就会达到6%或7%。接着，利率开始上升，赤字支出也随之增加，这就是它如何成为一个螺旋的过程。

So now the debt goes up even more than it did the year before and then the next year it goes up even more per year than it did the year before. That's why it's called a debt debt spiral. One of the things I've heard in a lot of members of cabinet that I've met with over the last couple of months is we've got all these new sources of revenue. I had an interview with Doug Burgham. He talked about unlocking America's assets.

所以现在，债务增长比前一年更多，然后接下来的一年每年增长得比前一年还要多。这就是为什么这被称为债务螺旋。我这几个月和许多内阁成员会面时听到的一件事是，我们有了很多新的收入来源。我还采访了道格·博尔古姆，他谈到了如何释放美国的资产。

We've got this balance sheet with lots of assets. We're going to do land leases and all sorts of other things. We took we met with Latinx. He's going to sell the Trump gold card the immigration card. We met with Besson. He's got these ideas on how we're going to drive. Everyone's got great theory on how we're going to grow GDP and actually grow government revenue. But until those dollars start to flow in we have to get our fiscal house in order.

我们有一张含有大量资产的资产负债表。我们计划进行土地租赁和其他各种项目。我们与Latinx见了面，他将销售特朗普金卡和移民卡。我们还与Besson会面，他有关于我们如何推进工作的想法。每个人都对如何促进GDP增长和实际上增加政府收入有很好的理论。但是，在资金真正开始流入之前，我们必须先理顺我们的财政状况。

We have to cut spending. When those dollars start to flow in then you can start to spend but you can't spend ahead because otherwise the cost of the debt and the economics uncertainty is going to limit our ability to execute on the back end on that revenue generation. And I'm very worried about no one kind of paying enough attention to this. So I just you know I feel very passionate having seen this bill that we're just not on the right track. It's really it's really frustrating.

我们必须削减开支。当资金开始流入时，你可以开始花费，但不能预先超支，否则债务成本和经济不确定性会限制我们利用这些收入的能力。我非常担心没有人对此给予足够的关注。我只是...我看过这一账单后感到非常强烈，我们现在确实没有走在正确的轨道上。这真的很让人沮丧。