Like Saving Ten Cents on a Trip to the Moon

0:00Our next guest is author Thomas Woods, and you have to feel for this guy, his given name at baptism, Tiger Woods, and in the events of the last year, kind of, well, I don't know, he's had to go over to Tommy once. His new book is Rollback, Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse, Tommy Reed Tiger Woods. Tom, what's up? How you doing, Dennis? Thomas, break down the President's new budget before we talk about the book, which is rollback, repealing big government before the coming fiscal collapse. They have mastered the art of making the figures so big a layman like me cannot follow it. What do you make of the new budget rollout?

0:47Well, it's completely unserious. I mean, when the president talks about cutting or saving money, he means like saving ten cents off a trip to the moon. I mean, there's nothing of substance at all. It's just continuing as if we're not headed over a cliff. And the problem is, I know people get impatient when you say we're headed over a cliff. They think, well, we've had a high debt for a long time. The key thing is, and what this budget doesn't address at all, is that even if we have a robust recovery from our situation now, and even if interest rates stay low, the government itself is telling us that by 2020 we're going to be paying about a trillion dollars a year just in interest payments alone on the national debt.

1:36Nothing on the principal. The principal is never going to be paid. But a trillion dollars a year on nothing, basically on nothing, which I guess is not that different from how the government spends money normally, but a trillion dollars, so that's, but the other problem is the entitlement programs, which are also, we have no entitlement reform, no mention of that whatsoever in this proposal. Medicare and Social Security are underfunded by about a hundred and fourteen trillion dollars. The one consolation of that is that it makes the national debt seem not so bad. When I hear Harry Reid just come out, is it a bold face lie? And Mises' misunderstanding of the facts, when he says that Social Security is fully funded for 40 years, what possibly could he be looking at to say that? Or is he just a bold-faced liar?

2:23It pretty much is, because it's already in the red as of now. It's in the red sooner than expected because of the recession. It's already paying out more than it's taking in. He's referring to the fact that there's an alleged trust fund, but that is the most embarrassing accounting gimmick. If any private sector insurer tried to pass off this alleged trust fund, he would be in jail forever and we'd be throwing eggs at him. The trust fund, it's true, the trust fund is full of assets, but what are the assets? U.S. government bonds. So when the Social Security people go to cash them in, how do those get paid off? We get taxed again. The government taxed us for Social Security, blew the money on other things, and now the IOUs that it's sitting on entitle it to tax us a second time, and that's supposed to comfort us.

3:11It's an unbelievable scam. In fact, one of the actuaries of Social Security was on the Peter Schiff show not long ago, and Schiff said to him, you know what a Ponzi scheme is? And the guy said, yeah. And he said, what's the difference between a Ponzi scheme and Social Security? I'm not joking, Dennis. The guy sat there, and Schiff said, look, I'll give you the whole break to think it over. So, dare I say our current accounting techniques are Madoffian, so to speak. Yes, indeed. Madoff should be made Secretary of the Treasury. The new Alexander Hamilton. We're talking to Thomas Woods. He's got a book, Rollback, Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse. God, even after the year NPR has had, I see nothing about rolling them back at all. We're not even serious about this stuff.

3:58I want to ask you this. Take me inside a true believer's head like Barack Obama. Do you think, first off, he understands we're going over a cliff? Secondly, do you think he thinks that's a price worth paying to take care of the disenfranchised? And believe me, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Is there something more malevolent about his wanting that to happen? I can't believe that he doesn't know it's coming. In fact, Pete Peterson has talked to the finance ministers of all these West European countries, and they admit behind closed doors, of course we're in big trouble. We can't pay for the aging of the population, all the strain it's going to put on the system, but we're all going to be safely retired by the time that happens. And I think Obama's very much a kick the can down the road, let the next sucker pick up the pieces type of guy. And then secondly, the idea that maybe he's persisting in his current path and spending

5:20I get this all the time on talk radio. People say, they can't be this dumb. If they were just dumb, they would occasionally just fall ass backwards into the right thing. They would occasionally do the right thing. They always do the wrong. So it can't just be stupidity. Maybe they really want to hurt the country. I don't know. I can't get into the guy's head. I don't think he wants to hurt it. I think he wants to change it fundamentally. I think he wants this to be a place, much like Finland or Luxembourg or Liechtenstein. What he doesn't realize though is in a boutique market like that you might be able to sell some of these social justice things. But when you're the alpha dog, when you are literally the engine of commerce or about to become the second biggest engine of commerce on the planet earth, and you snuff the fires out in that train, it sets off a horrific chain of events for the

6:09and the entire planet at that point. Yeah, it's absolutely true and one of the zillions of arguments that I'm swatting down in rollback is precisely the Sweden example. Doesn't that just show that you can spend yourself into oblivion and everything turns out well? Well, the Swedes are actually running as fast as they can from that model right now. I mean, people are moving away in droves. The tax rates are starting to come down. The spending is starting to come down. They've admitted that this has slowed their growth and reduced their competitiveness. The only reason they've been able to hold up so long is that the free market made them so wealthy in the first place, and they were able to avoid war, and also because relatively speaking it's a pretty decent business climate, so they can still get the benefits of the free market. Listen, it's cloudy, it's murky, some of the rafters are caving in in the mine, I see one guy out there with a flashlight on our side that I can trust because he's equipped to

7:00deal with anything, he's smarter than Obama, smarter than all of them, I don't know what How come he voted for Medicare Part D and added $20 trillion onto the unfunded liabilities problem? I'm not satisfied with people who can give a pretty speech, you know, been there, done that. I want to know what your plan for the next 10 years is, because it's all been cut from year 9. you sent a chill up my spine, I was banking on him to have the answers. Do you see anybody who has the answers? No, I think the Pauls have. I mean, Rand has got a $500 billion cut proposal for the first year. Well, that's great. I want to know, what is your proposal for right now? I don't care what your proposal for nine years from now is.

7:48We can't control those people. What do you want to do right now? And even then, $500 billion is only one-third of the problem. Right. Well, you were down at CPAC and his old man won the straw ballot there. What do you make? I can hear you're fond of Rand, what do you make of Ronny? I like him too, and I love the complaint that, well, we can't take the straw poll seriously because he inspired all those people to come vote for him. Well, isn't that kind of the point of a poll? How come nobody bothered? Gingrich gets 5%, people can't be bothered to get off their rear ends to take 15 minutes to vote for the guy? That is what bodes ill for the Republicans.

9:25Law. There's some chance of that, whereas under Romney, I don't see it happening. Either we get somebody who's serious and isn't just some plastic man who looks like something out of central casting, or it's not worth doing. We might as well just keep fighting, keep the parties divided, and try and carve out some liberty for ourselves. Well, you know, folks, my favorite guests are John Lott, who I had an epiphany with after reading his book, More Guns, Less Crime, and I'm fascinated by Malcolm Gladwell. I like counterintuitive guys, and I think we've stumbled onto another one here, Thomas Woods, because I've come waiting in here with a few things I believe, and I just love... You see, I don't get freaked out when people tell me, that makes me want to go read more about the Paul boys, and I've got to start figuring this thing out, because this is serious time.

10:11I like guys who tweak my intellect and take some of my preconceptions and say, I'm not sure about that, Dennis, look at this. The book is rolled back, I will be reading it, repealing big government for the coming fiscal collapse, and thanks for agitating my melon today, Tommy, I dig it. Anytime, Dennis, thank you. Alright, good to talk to you, Thomas Woods.