BONUS EPISODE | The Death of the Dollar | The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

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Welcome to today's edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Suxton Show podcast.

Buck, I wanted to talk about this because we mentioned it yesterday.

The Senate has passed a $95.3 billion payment, your tax dollars going to fund the border

and protect the border of Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel.

22, I believe, is the number Republican senators supported this bill.

It's now moving on to the House.

Yesterday I was reading, and I just want to ask you, I want all of you to think about

this as a broad idea.

We are now $35 trillion roughly in debt.

When the Tea Party started and became an issue, we were at $10 trillion in debt.

So we're averaging adding about a trillion dollars a year to our national debt.

I saw a report from the Congressional Budget Office, I was reading about it yesterday,

that we are on pace to have a $54 trillion federal deficit a decade from now.

My son is 16 years old.

He's a sophomore in high school, and he's just starting to study economics.

We were having this conversation recently.

The dollar is the default currency for the world.

What happens if suddenly our foreign adversaries, who own trillions of dollars in American debt,

what happens, Buck, if one day they just decide they're not going to buy the debt that we

are constantly issuing out there?

What you're talking about is the death of the dollars, the global reserve currency,

and the end of American dominance in all respects, including our quality of life that we have

gotten very used to in this country, where we can be these massive consumers and get

deeply indebted, and it doesn't really affect things for us.

Part of the problem is, yes, we complain the economy is not as good now as it should be,

but you've spent some time in countries, I'm sure, where you see what real economic

deprivation looks like or real economic reversal looks like, and it is a shocking thing.

It is a devastating thing to that nation.

I think that, unfortunately, right now, we don't have a system that will allow this to turn around.

We don't have people who are willing to make decisions today that take the future into

account. This is a function of math.

Isn't it interesting?

There are so many people who are much more concerned about climate, it seems, than about

the debt these days.

One of them is a real thing that is not a real problem, meaning climate is changing,

it is always changing.

Yes, of course it changes.

There's no real threat to humanity and to us whatsoever.

The other thing is a mathematical certainty that the debt burden will become so heavy

that it will crowd out other spending, and it will change the lives of the American people

in future generations in ways that we would really hate to see.

That can, of course, lead to social unrest, civil unrest, all kinds of other problems as well.

I can sit here and talk about it, and we can talk about where the debt was in the Tea Party

era in 2010 versus where it is now.

I think it was, what was it, $10 trillion?

Yes, we've added $25 trillion in debt since the Tea Party.

So we talk about this, and look, one way that Trump hit Ron DeSantis right away, and it

was effective, was Ron wanted to cut entitlements.

Even among Republicans, this is some real talk, even among Republicans, you want to

win, say you won't touch entitlement spending.

You say you won't touch the retirement age.

As long as that continues, we're just going to keep...

For me, I don't want to be overly fatalistic about it, but maybe that's what I'm being.

Until people feel pain, they won't change.

And the problem with this is once you start to feel the pain, then the change is really...

Too late.

Too late.

Yeah.

It's all too late.

And this is where we are.

Think about that.

Trump has said, I won't touch your Social Security.

I won't touch your Medicare.

I won't touch entitlement spending.

I won't touch the retirement age.

And that's a Republican from outside the establishment.

And anyone who would run against him in this primary or anyone who going forward is running

as a Republican, they know they'll lose if they say they want to touch any of those things.

And you bring that up now, people always say, Clay, I've paid into this my whole life.

Social Security is fixable and that's doable.

You do a little bit of means testing for rich people and you raise the retirement age a

couple of years.

You figure out when you do that.

You get out the actuarial table.

It's not the end of the world.

Medicare is a big problem because people say, oh, I've been paying into it.

The average person, the average person takes out twice in Medicare spending what they pay

and do over the course of their lifetime.

And a vast majority of that spending comes in the last six months of life.

Yeah.

So we have to fix these things somehow.

But no one, you know, you say you want to fix it.

You're a bad person.

You say you want to change it.

You know, you and I are getting older.

We know at some point we're going to want Medicare too.

I want it to be there and I want it to be a functioning program for people.

But I don't know, man, we sit here, we talk about it.

Look at this foreign spending we're doing.

Why are we giving any country all this money?

That's why it ties in.

Why are we giving any of these countries?

And notice, is there anyone who has been more vocally in support of Israel, well, period,

but also since October 7th than we have been on this show?

I don't think so.

Even yesterday, I tell people, there's a little, what do you mean you're talking?

Israel is a wealthy country.

Why are we giving Israel $16 billion?

Why do we give it $3 billion every year?

And it's not just Israel.

Why are we giving $60 billion to Ukraine?

Why do we have the foreign aid budget that we have in total?

What are we actually getting for this?

I agree completely.

And I think it, look, if you want to give to charity, because let's be honest, that's

basically what we're doing here.

Then most of you, if you run, ran your household, you wouldn't go in debt to donate to charity.

In fact, your husband or wife, if you sat down at the table and you said, hey, for part

of our budget this year, I want to give $5,000 in charity on the credit card.

Every single one of you out there would look at your spouse like they were absolutely insane.

If you wouldn't do in your household what the United States government is doing for

our entire household, and Buck, I don't see this as Democrat.

I don't see this as Republican.

I don't see this as independent.

To me, anyone voting to give $100 billion, rounding up from $95 or $96 billion, to foreign

countries, when we are $35 trillion in debt, I think your analogy with global warming is

a really good one.

One of the biggest issues in life, this is me giving you a little bit of a TED talk,

is most people fear things which in reality are not threats to them.

And you spend a lot of time being fearful of things that are never going to be an issue

in your life.

You and I are in our 40s.

I've got three kids, 16, 13, and 9.

I'm building a beach house.

I've said before, I ain't worried about the rising oceans, all right?

Maybe it's going to be an issue for my beach house.

If so, I was wrong.

I'll deal with it.

I am insanely worried about the fact that at some point in my kids' lives, maybe even

some point in my life, we're going to be $100 trillion in debt.

And if you don't think that our adversaries out there are not planning on bankrupting

this country, everybody wants to talk about, oh, there's a new threat from Russia.

Oh, there's a new threat from China today.

The big looming asteroid that is aimed right for America, that is in danger of obliterating

this country, is we're going to have $55 trillion in debt a decade from now, and then

just the interest on our national debt is going to become soon the biggest single expenditure

that this country has.

Well, there's a long history.

There's a long history of this, of fiat currency.

You can go back and even look at the usage of paper currency in China over a thousand

years ago.

I mean, once they start printing it in paper, and once the money has no intrinsic value,

it's not backed by anything, what happens?

Inflation happens.

And inflation, we all know what that does, particularly to those who don't hold assets.

And then this is the problem we're in right now.

The political mechanism to check it, even in a republic like ours, right, even in a

system where the people who are suffering from the inflation, who are suffering from

these decisions, are the ones who are supposed to be able to make it right, no one can win

and get the power they need to solve the problem, because the person who says, keep eating those

treats, they won't make you fat, keep eating a whole chocolate cake every night, there's

no problem with it, that person wins, because they're appealing to the immediate, and they're

appealing to the sense that I get mine, I'm not worried about what comes down the line.

That is what, it is bipartisan in this country, it is the truth, and you're not even really

hearing any, you know, we're hopefully going to elect a president who's obviously far better

than Joe Biden.

Donald Trump's not going to touch the debt.

Anyone take bets on that one?

Not going to touch the debt.

He's going to spend a lot.

Donald Trump spent $6 trillion last year in office, everybody.

I know it was COVID.

I know, oh, we can't blame Trump for anything.

Look, I love the guy, I'm hoping he's going to be president, but if we're talking about

the debt, you know, this is the situation, folks.

I don't know, man, we are a bummer on Valentine's Day.

I think it ties in so much with the failure that we have from our elected officials.

We are $35 trillion in debt, and they are telling us it's anti-American if we won't

take out $100 billion in additional debt and send it to foreign countries to protect their

own border while our border is wide open.

And this, to a large extent, in the Senate, is bipartisan.

And I just look at it and I say, no one would run their family finances like the United

States government does.

And just think about it.

Donating to charity is a fabulous thing to do.

If you were donating $5,000 to charity on your credit card that you didn't have, and

you were going to have to pay interest on that donation, none of you would do it.

And if you had a spouse that suggested it, you would tell them that they're crazy.

You certainly wouldn't say it's un-American.

Your analogy is actually people are saying, hey, let's do something really nice for some

other family.

Let's do something really nice for some other family because it's going on someone else's

credit card.

And that's what people don't realize.

It's actually our credit card.

It's the credit, the faith and credit of the American people.

And we're all in it together on the dollar.

It's not even a partisan thing.

I don't want the dollar to collapse for any of us because then it collapses for all of

us.

And also to then argue that if I'm opposed to that, I'm not an American, that it's

un-American to be opposed to spending $100 billion on somebody else's border.

If we had a budget surplus, that's a conversation we could have.

We don't have a budget surplus.

In fact, I'm concerned that all of this is going to blow up one day.

We're going to try to sell debt and there ain't going to be a buyer.

And what happens then?

Look out.

I mean, look out in a big way.