I remember when a billion dollars was a big deal.
As a child of the Cold War, I too was impressed when I heard that each B2 stealth bomber, first deployed in 1989, cost America almost $1 billion.
That’s a rounding error today.
In the recent deal to extend and increase the nation’s Debt Ceiling, the Republican negotiators increased our nation’s debt by $4 trillion. Not 4 billion, four TRILLION. A debt that already, before the deal, stood at more than $31 trillion.
Can you even comprehend that amount? Let me help you visual the number that you and I are all liable for.
Let’s stay with the pre-deal figure, and graciously round it down to 31 trillion dollars.
If you peeled off a $100 bill, non-stop, every second, it would take you 589,802 years just to count off the total amount. Not pay it back, just count it out. In 100-dollar bills. Allow me to repeat that. It would take a human being almost 600,000 years to physically count off the National Debt in “benjamins.” To quote the villain from one of my favorite movies: “Inconceivable!”
But seriously, the number may be incomprehensible, but you still need to know the truth, about the actual deal and what it means for you, your family, and our future.
The deal itself, to use the modern vernacular is “problematic.”
One of the key demands the more patriotic representatives on Capitol Hill had, was to block the gargantuan expansion of IRS the Democrats planned to fund to the tune of $80 billion for 87,000 new agents.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s great success? To claw back $10 billion from the proposed $80 billion. Are you impressed?
How do you think the tens of thousands of new agents be deployed? The mainstream legacy media still touts the story of President Nixon using the IRS to target his “enemies,” something which never actually happened.
But we know the Democrats actual use the Federal collection service as a political weapon, from slow-rolling not-for-profit applications from Tea Party organizations under Obama, to Biden’s tax police arriving at journalist Matt Taibbi’s home the day he was testifying to Congress about the Administration censoring Conservatives online. That act of intimidation won’t be the last, especially as a Presidential election starts to spin up.
And it’s the fact that we are entering the political season which makes the most important part of the “big deal” so bad. Inexplicably, the Republican negotiators decided to literally jettison any leverage over the Democrats and the White House until after 2024.
As part of the recently approved deal, there will be no Debt Ceiling debate next year, or even the year after. In the sweetest of sweetheart deals ever, Kevin McCarthy has agreed to the Debt Ceiling staying at its new record-breaking level for the next two years. As a result next year, Conservatives will have zero opportunity to tell the White House: “No, no more!”
This is not what pro-liberty and pro-America First voters backed when they demanded the Freedom Caucus 20 hold the line during the vote for the new Speaker earlier this year. That is why more than one Congressman is calling for McCarthy to be replaced already.
At the end of the day, the back and forth over the Debt Limit is all rather arbitrary. Janet Yelin’s May 31st deadline was totally artificial, and, as Stephen Moore explained on my show, nothing would actually have happened the day after, had a deal not been reached. But that’s not the point.
America is being run by people who are radicals, who have opened our borders, sabotaged our military, promoted transgenderism, protected criminals over victims, and used the FBI and DoJ to persecute Conservatives. The fact that the establishment GOP just gave them a free pass for the next two years, as we fight to put a Republican back in the White House. Clearly they do not understand the stakes, or are too isolated from what the average American has had to suffer under for the last 2 years.
At least 74 million Americans want to put America and Americans first. That reality isn’t – yet – reflected on Capitol Hill. It is up to us to make it so.
Sebastian Gorka Ph.D. is host of SALEM Radio’s AMERICA First and The Gorka Reality Check on NEWSMAX TV. A former Strategist to President Donald Trump, he is a member of the National Security Education Board of the Pentagon. His latest book is The War for America’s Soul. Follow him on his SubStack page and website.
