and joining now on book tv is, steve moore. his most recent book is gov zilla how the relentless growth of government is devouring our economy and our freedom. mr. moore, has government ever not? hi peter, good to be with you. love c-span. thanks for having. the book really through the whole history from the of our country and there's a lot graphs and charts in this that show we have had kind of a relentless growth of government but there have been periods. it's a good question, actually. have there been periods government has retrenched? and the answer is. yes. so, for example for the first 50

to 100 years of our country, there really wasn't much growth of government. if government, you know, the federal government basically provided the postal service, built the roads, it provided the national and had a court system. but we didn't have all the, you know, social programs. and there was no education department or energy department back then. and and then, of course, the big. i think there were two or three things that happened in the united states that the big increase in government one was the adoption, the income tax. because remember, for the first hundred years of this country, the the constitution actually prohibited an income tax. and then we passed a believe it was the 16th amendment. but don't quote me on that i think was the 16th amendment back in around 1913 that enabled an income tax. well that provided this new revenue for the government. and yes what they did they started spending it. so you had a big burst of government at that period. and then, of course, you had the new deal era where government got involved in all sorts of new

social and things like that that had never really existed before. and then you had the the great society programs of the 1960s where we again expanded, the size and scope of government and then it just keeps going up and up. but there was a period where government actually fell back. and so, for example, the civil war, when you know, you got a massive increase in government during the civil war, then spending came way down after the civil war, after world war two, when the government almost half of the gdp to defeat the nazis and the japanese. then government spending went from like 48% of our gdp down to back, down to like less 20% of gdp. that's a big that's a big reduction. and then in the reagan era, we saw some cuts in spending, but nothing like what we're seeing today. incidentally, during the twice 21, we were at the height of the

covid crisis for the first time in our country's history even more so than world war two, the government became almost half of our economy because so much of the business was shut down. so you mentioned reagan, who was a hero for many on the right, like rand paul. the introduction to your new book. yeah and he wrote, when i first came to washington in the year 1980 for the entire federal budget was the less than $1 trillion. and it was reagan who introduced the first trillion dollar budget. yeah i was working for reagan at that time. we weren't very proud of that, you know, and but it is i tell story because now here we are 30 some years later. later it's not 1 trillion. now it's 6 trillion. i mean, it's just amazing much we've seen government grow in areas that i think our founding fathers one of the ideas i'd like to install in this book is that our founders really have the idea of a very limited federal government.

now over time obviously that has expanded but there's something the enumerated powers in our constitution which basically say, you know, if powers are explicitly to the federal government, by the way, we're having a big fight about this, you know, on issues like guns and abortion and things like that, you know, where you divide the line between where the states have the rights and where the federal government has oversight of these things. but i believe that we would i believe in a federalist system that let the states do it. this this the idea of states being of democracy. if you have 50 states exploring, do we deal with welfare, how do we deal with health care? do we deal with our schools? how do we provide good transportation? the states do learn from each other. i think that's an ingenious system. i like to talk in the book about what i the forgotten ninth and 10th amendments and the ninth and 10th amendments. a lot of kids don't even know what that is but basically what those two amendments say is that

rights and power is explicitly given to the federal government reside with the states and the people the states and the people. and i love that. i'm i'm of libertarian. i don't like the government. so that was the idea behind our constitution. i think we've really moved away from that. well, thomas paine said, that government is a necessary evil, right. do you agree? i do. i do. and i think too many people think that government is is a is a positive good. and i'm look, i'm not calling for anarchy or anything like that. i do believe you need a strong defense. i believe we need good transportation. i, i believe in a safety net, a rich country. we don't want to go hungry or homeless in this. we don't want people to be living deprivation. we have a lot of work to do to on that score. but i also think that, you know, for example, if we're going to give somebody money, then they should have to do something in return for, you know. so i like what bill and gingrich did back in the when we had the

work where, you know, we're going to provide you with the funding but you actually have to either be working for work or in a job or training and. we've moved away from that right now. and i think that's been a big mistake. it's of the reasons a lot of businesses can't get workers. we're paying people money for in welfare benefits, but we're not expecting them to do something in return for that. what's the difference? the importance of government debt, government deficits? so i guess i get asked that question the time. so the deficit is the amount of the excess of the spending over the of revenue. so think of it as your your personal finance. if you make $2,000 in in a month and then you spend 20 $500 that month, you have a $500 deficit. right your your and that's we've been running is these annual deficits now what is the debt the national is the accumulation over time all those deficits and so we are now depending on how

you measure it. there's a lot of different ways you can our debt but it. 20 to $30 trillion of debt and again going back to 1980 485 at that time the debt was less than to show you. now we're up to 20 trillion. 20 or 25 or 30 trillion. so i'm sorry. i just worried that the story is not going to end happily. i think we have get our government spending under control. how do we do that? good question. well, let's go back to be enforcing the constitution let's move a lot of these powers back to the states and the people. i think we need to have some spending caps. i think i do believe in a balanced budget requirement, which i think most would like to see. and so a lot of it is just so the american people have to be educated about what our government is doing. that's why i'm such a fan of c-span because you do that every day, you educate and you provide

both sides of the story. but you allow people to make up their own minds about what's happening with our government. i'm a big fan of washington journal. i do that show maybe once every six weeks, but i watch it a lot. and listen to it on the radio because it it's educational. americans need to know what's happening with their government. so when government bonds are sold, where do they go? so that's a good one, too. so i've got to check. this is. i've been talking a lot about this because of the situation we're in right now. so in the last three years, two and a half years or so since covid hit, we've borrowed somewhere in the neighborhood of three or $4 trillion just in the last 30 months. and mr.. where did we borrow that from? okay, so i'm getting that. okay. okay. so we spent the $3 trillion more than we brought in. so then how does the government get the money to spend the money if it doesn't have the revenue? well, that's your point. if it goes issues treasury

bonds, it issues that it goes into. people buy the bonds. the government gets the money and then spends it. so then the question, of course, is this is tricky part. who buys the bonds. well, traditionally it's been americans who buy the bonds. in other words. so, for example during world war two, we had the war debt and people would buy, you know, it was patriotic. you would buy the number you'd buy the war bonds you know as your way of contributing to the war efforts. and that's been the case where throughout most of history the american citizens bought the so we kind of owed it to ourselves. but what's happened lately is two things. first of all, foreign governments are buying lot of our debt. and guess which country is buying the most of it? china. so that makes me a little nervous because i don't want to be indebted to our. but the other thing going on is the federal reserve board is buying the debt now. that's interesting. is it because that means is one arm of the government is spending the money, another arm of the government is issuing

debt and another of the government is buying lots. now, there's one other part of this chain where this the federal where does federal reserve board get the money to buy the bonds? well, they print it. they print it. and what that policy is is called that's called kind of nationalizing your debt. and what worries me is that that cycle that i just described, that's what's countries, argentina and venezuela and bolivia and, you know, and zimbabwe. do you know, there's a i don't have my wallet right. but, you know, $1,000,000,000,000 zimbabwe currency know, you think, oh, my god, i must be rich. this is trillion dollars. it's worth about $0.36, you know, so you depreciate the value of your currency. and that makes me nervous. and incidentally, i felt there's one other step in this chain when the federal government is buying all the debt, it's issuing more money, it's printing more money.

what happens to the value of the dollar when? the when the fed all that money, it goes down. and that's one of the reasons we have this inflation right now. we're spending borrowing way too much money from your book gov zilla. quote we will borrow trillions of dollars and pray that the continue to buy up our bonds. what okay. and i apologize the ignorance of this question. but do the chinese own a stake in the american government? so they you know, it's a tricky question. some people would say, well because they. what's the old saying? you know, if if you lower the $500, you're big trouble. you know, if you all the bank $5 million, the banks are in trouble. right. so there is to some. why are the chinese buying our bonds? well, because they they they have confidence that americans

will repay those bonds. they think that they're the best. but the saying the american dollar is that we the least rotten apple in the car. so the dollar is actually strong right now relative to all these other currencies, the euro and, you know, the peso, the other the because people do have confidence in america that we repay our debts. and i do, too. but at some point, when the debt gets so then that causes real hardship and means, by the way, that the next generation a lot of those taxes they're going to be paying peter are going to go to the chinese because they're going to be paying taxes to repay the debt that we've issued. so that's why i use this term fiscal child abuse in budget. and by that i mean, you know, you and i and all the people in this in this conference, we're all maybe in our 30, 40, 50, 60. our government is borrowing, borrowing or who's going to pay off that debt? our children and our grandchildren. so it's like call it fiscal child abuse. steve, in the previous answer, you mentioned the federal

reserve for about two days in 2020, your phone was blowing up because your name was floated. it was more than two days, by the way. was it more like two months? yeah. your name was floated. yes. potential. well, i was nominated by the president. president trump? i had worked for trump as a senior economic adviser during the campaign and had worked him in an unofficial capacity. he was the president and he you know, the quick story on this is he called me and he asked me to do the on the federal reserve board and, you know, i had never actually really thought it before. and i you know you don't say no to the president when he and then i had to go, oh, what does a former governor do? i mean, i knew what the federal reserve board does, but i wasn't really sure, you know, responsibilities of all the governors. but what happened was, as soon as was really nominated, all of a sudden all these and i didn't even know at the time when the president asked me to do this, that i would have to go through senate confirmation. and my advice to people is if president ever asks you to do a job, you have to go through

senate confirmation, say no, because you're put under the microscope and all of a sudden, i mean, literally, these reporters were calling girls dated in college. you know, did he ever, you know, mistreat you and, you know, look, i'm no say i have skeletons closet, you know, and if i did a lot of them so i finally just. one quick story about that, though, is i called the president a few times, said, mr. president, you know, this going well, you know, and i don't want to embarrass you. so i, i, i, you know, think i should probably resign, you know, step aside. and he was the one who kept saying, you know, and this is something i've known about donald trump. he's a fighter he said, no, i want you to keep going. you know, it's like you're boxer and you're getting forward. get back in the ring, you know, and then finally, when it became clear i didn't have the votes in the senate, we finally withdrew but it was a it was a painful experience because, you know every day is like, oh, what what did i say back in 1987 or something that, you know,

offended someone. and so, you know, it was it was a it was experience that i, i think it's like i said that it confirmation if you want attack my ideas. yeah i you know that's perfectly but to dig up all this dirt on me and like that i mean that's the ugliness of our current political system and as i said, i'm not a saint. i've done things, you know, that i'm not proud of, said things i'm not proud of, but i'm surprised by the way, peter, if this kind of toxic nature goes on that people are to want to do these positions, know in government and i know a lot of people are ralph mollified, just say i'm not i'm not going to go through that. back to gov zilla. california is textbook example of financial mismanagement. california, though, has a big budget surplus. yeah. you know where they got it from, sam? what happened was during covid, the federal government gave all this money to california.

and, you know, look, don't like that when the federal government gives money to states because think about it this way. the only way that the united states government can give money to california is by the money from the other 49 states. right. so it's just a glitzy game, you know. well, we'll give this money, you know, so i don't want the states, you know, federal to do that. but california really in i think really terrible shape. what's happened in san francisco angeles the the problems homelessness the problems with poverty the problems with the schools people are leaving. calif one out. this is one of the themes of the book. you know blue states like california grew up in the chicago area. illinois is losing a lot of this. caterpillar just left illinois, which is one of its iconic companies. boeing just lost illinois. elon musk is really famous now. he left california. you're seeing a lot of people just moving away from these high tax, high regulation.

and i think they better get their house in order because and by the way, you know where they're going. a lot of them are going to two states, texas, florida, two states that have no income tax. steve moore, as you've sidetrack me a little bit here is elon musk, a of yours or she's somebody who's good for the country, in your view. boy, a complicated question because he's really changed his political philosophy over the last 20 years. when when started with all these companies, like a solar power company and tesla and space x, he was getting all this government money. we called him the $5 billion man because i don't think there was money. whose companies got more money than elon musk yet. but i do i do like fact that he has kind of woken up to the dangers of wokeism that he is now like this show doesn't have any. for example, he wants to he's an

advocate of free speech and i have to you know, you have rights, you have the right to say what you want to say. i have the right to say what i want to say. this idea that i don't like. what's peter you're saying? so i'm going to shut your voice down. i don't think that's you know, we're pretty rare in this country among all the countries in the world that we have the bill of rights, which are really to sacred, you know, the right of assembly, right of religion, the right of free speech, you know, the right to bear arms, the right the right of a fair trial, all of these things are really in history, not very prevalent. so i admire that about elon musk at the end of godzilla. you have some reforms that you suggest to maybe get off this hamster. yes. and there are a lot of them are thought experiments, but if you want to ask me about it. i do. i do. yeah. term limits for congress. i've always liked vermont. i, i believe that we should not a permanent political class and i don't know what the term all

that should be. i would go for something maybe two terms in the senate that would be 12 years in the senate. yeah, maybe four or five or six terms in the house, maybe ten, 12 years in the house, and then you get back to it. and that was really the way the country what the reason in my opinion term limits were not never in the constitution is because nobody ever thought you'd have this permanent political. and if you go back to the early years of our country, i mean, george washington is the perfect example. there was no two term limit and he could have served. you know, he was the most popular president in history, could have served until his death. he could have. but he said, no, we don't want a ruling. we don't want tomorrow. and, you know i think that was one of the great things about george vi, is that it's for someone else to rule. so i'd be a big advocate of that. and having more of a citizen legislature with people from, farmers and businessmen and teachers and nurses people who know about america really making a lot of these decisions right now, it's lawyers and lobbyists who run washington. steve moore, you also suggest a federal spending.

yes, but at some point, aren't we in so deep? well, a small spending limit is that would be important. i mean, spending work when they're put in place in other countries and in states so i think it would work. but you're right. i mean we've dug ourselves in a pretty deep dish ditch. but peter, don't you think maybe we should stop digging? you know, that's my warning in this book. let's at least stop digging the ditch deeper. and this alone, we're going you know, joe biden's been bragging about, oh, we're only going to run $1,000,000,000,000 deficit this year. well, when you and i got started in this business. could you ever imagine trillion dollar deficits now that's heralded as some kind, a progress? oh, by the way, do you know how many zeros there in a trillion? peter, i just don't know. that would be a billion as 12, 12 zeros. thank you. i'm glad to learn that. no, a lot of people know. that's the problem, though,

isn't it? most people you can't write that. you get people watching. so we can't tell that of a million, 10 million, 100 billion. i mean, numbers are so large, we've become anesthetized. so, yeah, we're we're immune to these. exactly. aren't we. in other words, if i told you the government wasted $200,000 on a program, you said that's outrageous $200,000. that's more money than i make or something like that. but if i said it's $20 billion, you know, okay, you know, you can't even comprehend it. two more recommends options before we let go. privatize assets, but do that privatize federal assets. what does that mean? this is an important one. you we the federal government owns, a huge amount of the land in this country. i forgetting exactly but west of mississippi it's over 50% of the land area is owned by the

government. the government has not a very been a very good custodian. now, look, i'm not talking about our national parks. i'm not talking about our national treasures. i'm not talking about privatizing this smithsonian or, you know, yosemite or yellowstone. but there's home huge amounts of layered that could be the government could get by selling it. by the way, one of the ways that the united states raised revenue for the first hundred years of our country before we had an income tax. you know what? one of the major revenue raisers, land sales for, the federal government sold land and that the revenue it collected to do its purposes. so this is in perfect tradition with our country but it's not just land there's buildings there is huge amounts of energy resources that we have in this country. i mean, we're a very richly endowed country with energy, minerals and those kinds of things. we estimate that there's about

$50 trillion of assets, a buried treasure under our land. why don't we? why don't we at least land and have people a fee to get at those resources? and then we use that money to reduce our debt? i think that would be a great thing to do and back to gov zilla and your recommendations you no federal dollars 2 million no what federal. 2 million? yeah this is something the great late the late great walter williams who know you had him on his show. he was a very famous economist and black economist who was just became icon. and he and i came up with this idea of like, let's just say that nobody who makes over $1,000,000 or no company that makes over $1,000,000 gets any federal money. well, think of how much money we could save. and but i get most of the people listening so to say, yeah, let's not like right now there's a bill before congress that's probably to pass and probably going to be signed into law though i'm fighting against it

and calling it the china bill and this is a that's going to give all this money to intel and our chip makers and it's just corporate. it's like, why why should the federal government be giving money? they'll tell intel if they want to build new chips you know and we obviously why to be number one in technology but you know we are number one in technology. we're not you know, you look at our great companies like google and apple and amazon on and on and on. microsoft, those companies didn't do it by getting government money. they came up with great ideas. they innovated and silicon is a great example of how just free enterprise system can work. i like this idea of the government giving this money to industries because i think a lot of it will be wasted by steve moore. his most recent book is called give zillow o the relentless growth of government is devouring our economy and our freedom. thanks for being on book. thank you peter. good to be

hello, everyone. my name is morgan and i'm an event manager at politics and prose and i'd like to welcome you all to pmp live. soon i will draw up a link in the chat for where you can purchase a copy of -- the strange career of a troublesome