being overrun with conspiracy theories whether the big lie of election fraud or q-anon and i'm not saying everybody going to college is the answer but i we do have to get back to the framework and then that was related so the lack of civic education. and after several decades and then to be on the brink of a civilwa war. >> will bench is the author. thank you for your time here on booktv. >> thank you for having me back.

g>> joining us now is steve moore the most recent book. so has government ever not grown. >> good to be with you. take you for having me. it goes from the history from the bombing of the country and we have had that relentless growth but it is a good question in periods where government has retrenched in the answer is f yes. w

so for the first 5100 years there wasn't much growth of government. we provided the postal service and provided national defense but not with all the social programs or the energy department. and then of course there were two or three things with the big increase of government one was the adoption of the income tax. and the constitution prohibited and income tax i believe it's a 16th amendment but don't quote me on that. and that enabled income tax. so yes they did and then of course you have the new deal

were government got involved in new social programs that never really existed before. and any of the great society programs expanding the size and scope of government that there were periods where government fell back. for example after the civil warer with the massive increase of government and after world war ii when the government spent half of the gdp to defeat the nazis and the japanese then government spending went from 48 percent that is a big reduction seeing some cuts in spending but nothing like we see today.

and from 2020 at the height of the covid crisis even more so than world ware ii the government became almost half of our economy because so much of the business was shut down. >> you mentioned ronald reagan who was a hero for many on the right when paul does the introduction to your new book and wrote when i first came to washington in 1984 thebu entire federal budget was less than $1 trillion reagan introduce theas first 1 trillion-dollar budget. >> i was working for reagan at the time. we were not very proud of that. i tell that story because now we are 30 some years later now it 6 trillion. it is amazing how much we have seen government grow and in some areas that what i wrote the founder's had the idea

very limited government we have the enumerated powers at at the powers are explicitly given to the government and when you divide the line were the states and the federal government? but i do believe in a federalist system what the sstates do it being laboratories of democracy how do we deal with welfare or healthcare or schools or provide good transportation and they learn from each other and it is an ingenious system i like this thought in the book the forgotten ninth and tenth amendments. the basically with those two

amendment say and those that are explicitly given to the federal government reside with the states and the people. so that was the idea behind the constitution. jill biden: government is a necessary evil. do you agree quick. >> i do. too many people think government is a positive good. i'm not calling for anarchy but you do need a strong defense and actually i believe in a safety net. we are a rich country we don't want people to go hungry or homeless or to live in deprivation. we have a lot of work to do but i also think if we give somebody money they should get on —- give something in return

so i like back in the nineties we will provide you with the funding to be in work or training and we moved away from that i think it's a mistake. >> it's why the businesses cannot get workers we pay money for welfare benefits. jill biden: what's the importance of government debt quick. >> i get asked that question all the time. but the deficit is the amount of the excess of the spending so think of your personal finance if you make $2000 a month but thenmo you spend $2500 a month you have a 500-dollarnu deficit. now what is the debt? that is the accumulation

overtime of all the deficits. so depending on how you measure it at least 20 or $30 trillion. so again going back to 1984 or 85 at that time the debt was less than 2 trillion so i'm sorry i am worried the story will not and happily. i think we have to get our government spending under control. jill biden: how do we do that? >> then let's go back to enforcing the constitution. move the powers back to the states and to the people. we needel to have some spending caps. i do believe in the balanced-budget requirement i think most would like to see. american people have to be educated. that's why i am such a fan of

c-span that you allow people to make up their own minds so i am updating fan of "washington journal" i watch it a lot and listen to it on radio. jill biden: when government bonds are sold where do they go quick. >> that is aso good one. so i have been talking a lot about this because the situation we are in right now. so in the last three years or two and half years since covid hit we buried in the neighborhood of three or $4 trillion. jill biden: where do we borrow that from. >> i'm getting that we spent $3 trillion more than we brought in so how does the government get the money? if it doesn't have the revenue so that's the point so it

issues treasury bonds and goes into debt people get the government gets money than they spend it so who buys the bond so traditionally it has been americans who buy the bonds like during world war ii we had the war debt and it wasou patriotic and you by the war behind contributing to the war effort and then that is the case throughout moster of history so we oh it to ourselves what has happened lately is two things so foreign government is buying our debt in china buys it that makes you never settlement be indebted to the enemy but the federal reserve board is buying the debt and that is interesting because that means one arm of the government is spending the money another is

issuing debt and the other is buying the bond so now there's another part of the chain where does the federal reserve board get the money? they print it that's called nationalizing your dad and what worries me that cycle that i just described that's how argentina and venezuela and mexico and zimbabwe do.rr is not on my wall right now but there is a $1 trillion in bob way currency but it's worth about 36 cents so we do appreciate the value of your currency and that makes me nervous now there is another step in the chain when the federal government buys the debt issues more money so then

what happens to the value of the dollar when the fed prints the money? it goes down and that's one of the reasons we have inflation. jill biden: from your book "you can borrow trillions of dollars and hope the chinese continue to buy of the bonds. i apologize for the ignorance of the question but do the chinese on a great stake in american government? >> it is a tricky question so if you are the bank $500 you are in big trouble if you know the bank $5 million the bank is in trouble so why are the chinese buying the bonds

because they will repay them in a think the saying about the american dollar so the dollar is strong relative to all the other currencies like the peso in the euro because people do have confidence in america people will repay their debt and i do to benefit get so big then that causes real hardship and it means the next generation the taxes they are paying will go to the chinese because they will pay taxes to repay the debt that we have issued that's why use the term fiscal child abuse and by that i mean you and i in i this room will then who pays our debt? our children and grandchildren.

jill biden: a previous ansi mention the federal reserve so for two days in 2020 your phone was blowing up because your name. >> it was more like two months. >> your name was floated. >> i was nominated as senior economic advisor during the campaign and i worked as the unofficial capacity while he was president he called me and asked me to be in the federal reserve board. i never thought of that before you don't say no to the presidents of than i had to say what does the federal reserve governor does it wasn't sure of the responsibilities of all of the governors but as soon as i was nominated all of a sudden, i did not even know at the time that i would have to go through senate confirmation. my advice is if you have to go

through senate confirmation, say no. you are put under theit microscope. literally the reporters were calling did he ever mistreat you and i am no saint i have skeletons in my closet and they found a lot of them so but just one quick story is i call the president a few times and said this is not going well. i don't want to embarrass you i think i should step aside he said no. keep going. you are a boxer and you're being told get back in the ring and then finally it became clear we finally withdrew but it was a painful experience because every day what did i say in 1987 so it

was an experience. i said that about the confirmation if you want to attack my ideas that's fine and that's from the current political system. i have done or said things i'm not proud of that so if this toxic nature goes on and then people don't want to do these positions. i know people who are well-qualified and say i will not go through that. jill biden: bacteria book california is a textbook example of financial mismanagement we thought they had a big budget surplus. >> do you know where they got

it? from uncle samam because of during covid the government the money to california. i don't like that when the federal government gives money to states. the only way the united states can give money to california is to take it from the other 49 states. 's what are the states of the federal government to do that. happening in sanan francisco or los angeles the problems with homelessness and people leaving california this is a theme of the book. blue states like california i grew up in the chicago area. illinois is leaving caterpillar just left which is one of the iconic companies. elon musk he left california. you are seeing aaw lot of people

they better get their house in order and byat the way you know they are going? to texas and florida. to states with no income tax. jill biden: you sidetracked me a little bit but elon musk is he a hero order is somebody good for the country? >> that's a complicated question because he has really changed his political philosophy. when he started with all the companies like the solar powered company and tesla and space x he was getting all the money and we called him the 5 million-dollar man because nobody's companies get more than his. but he has woken up to the dangers of focus on and for example he is an advocate of

free speech and i am two. but i don't like what you are saying peter so i will censor that. it is pretty rare in this country because we do have the bill of rights which are sacred. the right of assembly, religion, free speech, bear arms, fair trial, all of these things in history so i admire that about elon musk. jill biden: at the end of your book you have some reform you suggest to get us off the hamster wheel. >> a lot our thought experiments. jill biden: term limits? >> .

>> i firmly believe we should not have that permit political class i don't know may be two terms is 12 years maybe four or five or six terms in the house and then you get back to it. this isot the way the country was originally i don't think they were term limits when the constitution because nobody thought that george washington is a perfect example. there was note two-term limit. he was the most popular president in history he could've served until his death but he said no. we don't b want to ruling class or a monarch. so i would be the bigger advocate. when people know about america who make these decisions right now it's lawyers and lobbyists. jill biden: you also suggest

federal spending. >> that at some point are we so deep. >> that would be important. >> spending limitations work in put in place so that would work but don't you think that we should stop digging? we have a pretty good ditch. please stop digging it deeper and this year alone joe biden has been bragging we have a trillion dollar deficit this year when we got started can you even imagine? do you know how many zeros there are in 1 trillion? host: nine? >> no. twelve.

but that is the problem. i cannot are you cannot 10 million or 100 billion. the numbers are so large. host: severe immune to the numbers? >> exactly if i told you the government wasted $200,000 on a program that is outrageous that's my many then i make but if i said $20 billion okay. you cannot comprehend it. host: two more recommendations. so privatized federal assets. >> the government owns a huge amount of land in the country. only 50 percent of the land

owner but they have not i'm not talking about national treasures are to buy back the smithsonian or he's yosemite or yellowstone but there are huge amounts of land and then from selling it so the one way they raise revenueue for the first 100 years do you know what the major revenue reason was the landgrab because they sold the internet as the revenue collected. that's imperfect tradition with the company don't want —- with the country. with energy resources we are richly endowed country with energy and minerals and we

estimate there is $50 trillion uof assets when we reach the land and have people pay a fee to pay the resources i think that would be a great thing to do. host: back to your recommendations. >> this is what the late great walter williams i know you had him on your show a famous economist and those who became an icon coming up with the idea so let's just say nobody who makes over $1 million or company get any federal money so think of how much money they could save. right now there is a bill before congress that will probably pass they call it the

china bill that will give all this money to intel but it just goes to welfare so why should they give money to intel if they want to buy new chips we want to be number one in technology that we are. look at greatn companies like google and apple and amazon and microsoft. they did not do that by getting government money they came up at great ideas and they innovated and silicon valley is that i don't like this idea of the government giving all this money to the industry be as a lot is wasted. host: the most recent book, steve moore thank you for being on booktv. >> good to be with you again.