delegates, the state's first black speak for the 405 year, talks about his life, including spending almost eight years in prison. >> i had never been in trouble before. i had served my country. i was hoping i would get a little bit more grace, maybe gee latitude he probably could have gave me more time than he did. but i remember hearing my mother, when he said 10 year, you know, she couldn't believe it. that yelp of pain. it always stays with me. and it's always motivating. it always lets me know how fragile our freedom is and how perilous it is. if you make one wrong move sometimes it can be literally the end of your life as you know it. >> virm's democratic house speaker don scott, sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's "q&a." listen to "q&a" and all our podcasts on our free c-span now

app. continues. host: we are joined by maya macguineas from committee for a responsible federal budget. let's start with what is the organization and what position you take on the federal budget? guest: we have one of the worst acronyms ever, the committee for a responsible budget. i am a political independent. i have been with the office for 20 years. we have a board of directors focused on budget committees, the budget office, office of budget management. the main effort is fiscal responsibility. it's not balancing the budget,

small or big government. it's about borrowing money based on economics. during covid it makes sense to borrow. but when we are strong it does not make sense to borrow. we are neutral on the political alignment. we have diverse staff. host: how is your organization funded? guest: foundation and small donors. we get checks for 25, $50. we have small donors but mainly big foundations are where we get our funding. host: i want to put up on the screen, the findings of the cbo

who said the deficit will grow from 1.6 trillion in 2024 to 2.6 trillion. overall, your reaction to those numbers? guest: he will be testifying about this update in the budget they put out. this is the greatest document on the budget. is what i read to learn about the budget deficit. projections on how that, deficit , spending and revenue for the government. is impartial and a great way to

learn about the topic. the news index report is not good. there has been so much volatility in the economy. we have things to worry about on every fiscal metric. this year's deficit is lower-than-expected. last year congress passed the fiscal responsibility act. it is not going to fix the big problems of the budget. it saved over one trillion which is a great first start. there is a lot of bad news. we have deficits of over 20 trillion. they will be in record territory, the highest amount of borrowing per share of gdp that we haven't seen outside of an

emergency. it already costs more than we spend on children at the federal level. it will be larger than medicare, the second largest item in the budget. our debt is the highest it has ever been in for years. the bad news goes on throughout the report. i encourage people to read up at the summary is, we are in trouble. we are borrowing way too much. we are we from a national security level as well. how do we get politicians to take this seriously and make some of the hard choices about

how to borrow less and pay for the things that we choose to do in this country. host: starting at 10:00 a.m. over on c-span two we will have the testimony from the congressional budget office philip swigel. before the house budget committee. we will have live coverage beginning at 10:00 a.m. maia, explain the difference between debt and deficit. guest: dead is how much we borrow compared to how much we spend and normally, you are expected to borrow during bad times. but during the good times you want your budget deficits to

come down. the debt is the result of all of that borrowing over the years. every year that you borrow, it issues vehicles that we buy and our funds by and use that money to pay for revenues. you can look at the dead as the accumulation of all the deficits over the years. there is nothing wrong with debt. but what you don't want your debt relative to economy to go to quickly and are dead is going faster than our economy which is unsustainable.

almost were troubling is the fact that it is expected to keep going and we have no plans to bring her spending revenues back into alignment. there are times you really need to borrow. covid, it was a huge emergency. recession to cover for the weak economy. there are reasons you will want to borrow but reese's not to borrow his to do a big spending program but don't want to borrow for it. if they don't want to raise taxes but pay for spending it weakens our economy. we need that to be prepared for when we do need to borrow and

becomes a national security threat and it's unfair to the next generation that will be saddled with these debts. host: if you would like to join the conversation to talk about the u.s. debt you could do it by party for republicans (202) 748-8001, for democrats (202) 748-8000, for independents, or text at (202) 748-8003. just yesterday the inflation was reported to hold at 3.1%. can you explain the relationship between inflation and the effort to control debt? guest: it is very complicated. the reason why we have inflation. that is higher inflation than we were hoping for.

it is not yet at the 2% goal that the fed has for inflation to be at the right level. more needs to be done. to make sure that inflation comes down. when the government borrows too much and puts too much money into the economy and you have more demand than supply that leads to higher prices. we got hit with the trifecta. we had a response to covid, the american rescue plan which was too large and put too much money into the government. people had more money, the government had more money. that pushed up inflation. then there were two more factors . we had supply chain problems and that led to inflation and other

sectors of the economy. with the russian invasion of ukraine. that got to inflation levels we haven't seen for 14 years. that inflation has come down. but there is still a mismatch. supply-side problems are better, supply chains have improved but we have people with more money in their pockets and government demand for goods pushing the demand of. many times is the sign of an economy being strong but once it is too strong and inflation becomes anger. people demand for higher wages but that gives them more money that creates more demand they keeps inflation's going up.

one of the best way to control inflation is if wages don't go up at that creates hardship. fighting inflation is not a pleasant experience. everyone is seeing it at the grocery store and you feel the pain of inflation. host: in a recent setting, janet yellen gave her description of the path the federal government is on. [video clip] >> i believe we need to reduce deficits and stay on a fiscally sustainable path. thus far, in real terms the

interest burden has remained below historical norms in the president's budget substantial reduction would keep us like comfortable levels. but we need to work together to try to achieve those things. host: what do you think? guest: the secretary's concern about the debt trajectory. focus on those interest numbers i am struck by this number that we will spend more on interest payments then defense. she is correct that the president's budget last year put

out a plan that would reduce the deficit because of trillions in tax increases. i give credit for them to put out a plan to reduce the deficit you haven't heard the white house talk about it. he doesn't own the economy. the president can't be accountable for all of them but how much does the president talk about the issue and push to put it on the agenda? after a responsible budget heavy on the tax side increase. they did not talk about it again or bring together leaders of congress on how to fix the problem. instead one of the things we have heard from the president and president trump's promising things they will not do.

the president has said he will not touch social security and that is a big problem. if we don't make changes that will become insolvent in the decade. in the white house has said they will not raise taxes on anyone making less than 400,000. many republicans said they won't raise taxes at all but that does not align with the physical reality. these are not messages that anyone likes. but in order to fix the economy, this is a huge national security threat. if we are going to face these issues we will have to raise taxes and not just on millionaires.

we are going to have to cut spending more than we have and we will have to make changes to social security and medicare. as long as we have politicians promising not to do anything we are at all was with the truth and weakens our ability to have a real discussion. there is no one right way. we cannot go the way we are going and as the secretary talked about interests payments they are rising to record levels. that is only one of the warning lights from the cbo document. host: let's go to valerie in

saginaw, michigan. caller: good morning. listen. things get so complicated when it comes to the deficit, budget. mainly when democrat presidents are in. mainly to raise taxes. we are bigger, more populated. we can't budget like we did in the 70's. the population has increased. we have one president at a time. she is referring to trump as president trump. he has should not be given as much weight as you guys are giving him. we have a president named joe

biden. if the republicans would stop running interference, making things worse. they always want to mess with the poor and working-class. they never want to start at the top. yes, we need more taxes. we need to make medicare for all. it's not about no intelligence, no money. it's about trying to keep a certain amount of people down struggling. they don't like the middle class. host: you brought up a lot of topics there. what would you like to talk about? guest: it is an incredibly partisan time, worse than i've ever seen. i worry about it because i am a political independent and having

two camps, us or them makes it harder to govern. the minority problem is less cooperative in order to help win the next election. when they think about the political outlook rather then we need to fix these problems and cooperate to get things done. i agree we need to raise taxes because our situation is too bad to fix it on one side of the budget alone. if you look at the 10 year projections, spending is projecte

i agree revenues have to go up. i can't explain directly enough, social security has to be fixed. if we do nothing, there will be and across the board benefit cut of 23% for every single person. the billionaire who doesn't need the program and the person who depends on it for everything. so let's not let that be the fix. there are many ways to fix it. we have interactive tools on our website, you can look, how would you fix it? you can fix it with all taxes. it's more than just looking at the payroll tax cap that.

won't fix the whole program but that's part of what you could do. you could look at raising the retirement age or fix the way we calculate inflation or slow the growth of benefits for people who don't need them as much. when i do this, i find myself, no surprise, doing a combination of all of those to make sure the program is solvent. what we can't do is having president biden and former president trump as a caller pointed out both promised not to do anything. it is important that we address these problems. we should have a long time ago on social security. so we don't get to the moment where the trust funds can't pay the benefits we have promised. that's the worst policy, tell people they'll have pane fit but having no money to pay for it. we need to start quickly figuring out where those fixes in social security are and how we can phase them in so people understand. one final thing. every single politician i have talked to about, the one thunder and lightning they are adamant

about, they will not touch benefits for current retire yeses. this is not about opportunity retire yeses. i hear people trying to scare senior citizen, including sometimes the aarp that tries to scare them when the point is we need to protect people who are current retire yeses so that 10 years, when they're still retire yes, they don't have their benefits cut as well. if we do nothing, current retire yeses stand to have ben fut cuts. every politician i talked to said we will not affect, not make changes that affect current retire yeses but we have to talk about the program for younger people, workers and got to phase the changes. in. >> let's talk toray monday in florida, line for democrats. caller: hi hi, how are you doing? i want to let you know you're a breath of fresh air, maya. there's no politicalness. i just love that. because i am a person that was a businessman, i'm retired now. luckily i did well, retired at 45.

i understand business. and what you're saying almost everything makes sense. i do want to push back on a couple of things. but real quick, one thing when you're talk about the overall deficit of our, you know, debt of the country, one of the main reasons is in your -- and uh you probably won't equate is people's credit card debt. you make an example as a government to say we can just keep spend, instead of like passing a $1 trillion bill and waiting a couple of years like infrastructure, obviously we needed the relief plan first, then we could have waited a few extra years. you can't make those two large investments in the same couple of years. that's number one. we're setting a really bad precedent for younger people. the next thing i want to say real quick, inflation has not come down. i just want to make sure you guys all know. that's based off of last year. ok. that's 3.1%. we're not at 6% or 7% year over year but now you've got a

baseline that. baseline, now we go 3%, 3%, 3%, instead of over three year talk about a 25% increase, weir going to be at about 40. i want to make sure we're clear. it's not 6% or 7%, but that doesn't mean the 8% we already accumulated goes away. jerome powell, his 1970's treasury hit ain't working. you're trying to drive down, all you're doing shirting the american people. not cutting interest rates. people can't buy homes. forget about it. what've you're doing it isn't working. you're not patients' bill of righting down labor. there's so many jobs available out there that people getting jobs. you've got an influx of immigrants. none of that stuff is going to work. tell me what you think. host: all right. guest: there's a lot there, i hope i do it justice and get to all of it. starting with the point about investment and credit card debt.

i read a book "hamilton's blessing," a whole book about the national debt. other parls -- o'articles and books about it. one thing i thought about for the history of debt, our approach to debt at the federal level has changed. there was a cultural shift that came when securitization or credit cards became much more popular in the 1970's and 1980's. before that people saved for things. you didn't buy a refrigerator or car until you saved up enough money. saving was not just for retirement it had a lot of purposes. credit cards changed how that works, arguably for the good but in a way that could have been damaging. we don't take the need to save nearly as seriously as we do. many people are ill-prepared in terms of savings probably because there's also problems in terms of affordability, wages haven't grown at different parts

of the income spectrum, not that people can save sufficiently. savings isn't in the culture. i think that's contributed to people being more kind of lackadaisical about it with the federal government. they don't worry about the savings. the main point i'd make on that it makes sense to pay for your cop sumtion and it makes sense to think about borrowing for public investment or priefs investment. just like with businesses you invest when it's going to generate something at a higher return. the first problem sour federal budget slm all consumption. very roughly about 85% consumption. 15% investment. i think we should shift that and more of our money should go to investment. and two, we could then talk about, does it make sense to borrow for those investments, if we were paying -- pres. biden: good afternoon. i'm heading off to east