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>> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. documenting america's story. on sunday book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more. >> homework can be hard. squatting in a diner for internetwork is even harder. that is why we are providing lower income students access to affordable internet so homework and just be homework. along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. >> joining us now on book tv is steve moore. relentless growth of government devouring our economy and our freedom. has government ever not grown?

>> good to be here with you. love c-span. thank you for having me. going through the whole history from the founding of our country. we have had kind of a relentless growth of government. this is a good question, actually. has there been periods where the government has entrenched? the answer is yes. was not much growth of y government in the first years. the federal government basically provided the postal service, built the roads, had the national defense.nt there was no education department or energy department back then. then, of course, i think there were two or three things that happened. one was the adoption of the income tax. remember for the first 100 years of this country, the constitution had actually

prohibited and income tax and then we passed i believe it was the 16th amendment, but don't quote me on that. back around 1913 that enabled dan incomero tax. that provided all of this new revenue for the government. guess what they did. they started funding it. and then, of course, you had the new deal era. getting evolved in all sorts of new social programs and things like that. hit never existed before. hidden then you have the great societyga programs of the 1960s where we again expanded the size and scope of government. but there were periods where government actually fell back. so, for example, after the civil war when you have a massive increase in the civil government during the civil war, then funding came way down. after world war ii when the government spent almost half of

the gdp to defeat the nazis and the japanese. then government spending went from like 48% of our gdp back down to less than 20%. that is a big reduction. and then in the reagan era we saw some cuts in spending. nothing like what we are seeing today, incidentally. during 2020 when we were at the height of the covid crisis, for the first time in our country's history, even more so than world war ii the government became half of our economy because so much was shut down. >> you mentioned ronald reagan who was a hero for many on the right.t. rand paul does the introductions to your new book the hero when i first came to washington the entire federal budget was less than $1 trillion. it was reagan who introduced the n first trillion dollar budget. >> i was working for reagan at that time. we were very proud of that.

i have held that story. now here we are 30 some years later. it is just amazing how much we have seen government girl. our founders have an idea of a very limited federal government. over time, obviously, that is expanded. there are enumerated powers. if these are explicitly given, guns and y abortion said things like that, where the states have the rights and the federal government has the oversight of these things. i do believe, i believe in a federal system that lets the states, the idea of states being laboratories of democracy. how do we deal with welfare, how

do we deal with healthcare, how do we deal with schools? the states do learn from each other. i think that that is an ingenious system. .... .... 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' so that was the idea behind our constitution i think we've moved away from that >> thomas paine said government is a necessary evil, do you agree?>> guest: i do. i think too many people think government is a i'positive goo . i'm not going for anarchy or anything like that. i do think we need a strong defense and good

transportation. i believe in a safety net, we're a rich country, we don't want people to go o homeless are hungry, we don't want people to live in degradation, a lot of work to do on that score but i think for example were going to give somebody money than they should have to do something in return for so i like what bill clinton and newt gingrich did in the 90s. we're going to provide you bu with the funding but you have to be looking for work or a job or training and we've moved away from right now and i think that's been a big mistake. that's a lot of the reason workers kick businesses can get workers, we are paying welfare benefits so we don't expect them to do anything in return . >> what's the difference in the importance of government debtand government government deficit . >> the deficit is the amount of the excess of the spending over the amount of revenue so

think of it as your personal finance. if you make $2000 in a month, and then you spend $2500, you have a $500 deficit. and that's what we've been running. what is the debt? the national debt is the human relation overtime of all those deficits so we are now depending on how you measure it there's a lot of ways you can measure our debt but at least $20-$30 trillion of debt. that's again going back to 1980, 45. at that time that was less than 2 trillion and nowwe're up to 20 trillion . so i'm sorry, i'm worried this story is not going to end happily. i think we have to get our government spending under control . >>. >> host: how do we do that?

>> guest: good question. let's go back to enforcing the constitution, roll these powers back to the states and people. i think we have to have spending caps. i believe ina balanced budget requirements , that's checking what most americans would like to be. a lot of it is just the american people have to be educated about what our government is doing. it's why i'm pressing that case on c-span because you do every day and you provide both sides of the story but allow people to make up their own minds about what happens with our government. i'm a big fan of washington journal. i listen to it on the radio because it's educational. americans need to know what's happening with their government. >> when government bonds are sold, where do they go? >> that's a good one to. i've been talking a lot about this because of the situation wherein right now. in the last three years, 2 and a half years are now or so since covid hit we've

borrowed someone on the neighborhood of your $4 trillion in the last 30. >> host: where did weborrow that from ? >> guest: we spent the 3 trillion more than we brought in so out of the government get the money ? how does it send it on down the revenue? at the point, issues treasury bonds and people buy bonds, then they spend it so then the question is this is the tricky part, who buys the bonds? traditionally it's been americans who buy the bonds. for example during world war ii it was patriotic, you would buy war bonds as your way of contributing g to the war effort and that's been the case where throughout most of history the american citizens bought the debt so we owed it to ourselves but h what happened lately is three

cothings. foreign governments are buying a lot of hard at and guesses find most, china.we don't want to be indebted to our enemies but the other oathing going on is the federal reserve board is buying the debt. that's interesting because what that means is one arm of the government is spending the money, another arm is issuing debt and another arm of the government is buying thebonds . there's one other part of f this chain. where does the federal reserve board get the money to buy the bonds? they print it and what that policy is, it's called nationalizing your debt and what worries me is that cycle that i just described, that's what countries like argentina and venezuela and mexico and zimbabwe do. i don't have it in my wallet right now but there's the

trillion dollar zimbabwe currency here. i thought my god it's trillions of dollars, it's worth about $.36 we depreciate the value of your currency and that makes me nervous. there's one other stuff step in this chain. when the federal buying all the debt it's issuing more money and what happens to the value of the dollar when the fed prints that money, it goes down and that's one of the reasons we have this inflation right now, we are borrowing way to much money. >>. >> host: from your book "govzilla" we borrow millions of dollars praying the chinese can buyouts are bonds . and i apologize for this question but do the chinese on a great stake in the americangovernment ?

>> guest: is a tricky question because some people will say what's the old saying? if you are the bank $500 you're in big trouble. if you are the bank $5 million the bank is introuble . so to some extent why are the chinese buying our bonds? because they haveconfidence americans will repay those bonds . the saying about the american dollar is we are the least rotten apples so the dollar is actually strong right now relative to these other currencies like the peso and others because people do have confidence in america that we will repay our debts and i do to at some point the debt gets so big and that causes real hardship and it means by the way the next generation a lot of the taxes they're going to be paying peter are going to be linked to the chinese because they repay

that we've issued so that's why i use this term sethis will challenge. by that i mean you and i this room in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s our government is buying more and who's going to pay off that west and mark are children. >> host: in a previous answer r you mentioned the federal reserve. for today's and 20/20 your phone was blowing up your name it was more like two days, two months. >> host: your name was loaded . >> i had worked for trump as a junior economic advisor during his campaign and worked for him in an unofficial capacity and quick story, he called me and asked would you like to be onthe federal reserve board and you know i never thought of it before . you don't say no to the president so then i had to go

to the governor do, i knew what the federal reserve board did but i wasn't sure of the responsibilities but what happened was as soon as i was nominated all of a sudden, i didn't even know the time when the president asked me to do this that i would have to go to senate confirmation and my advice to people was you have to go through senate confirmation, say no because you're under a microscope and all of a sudden these reporters were calling girls i dated in college and you know, i have no skeletons in my closet, they found a lot of them so i finally one quick story about that though is i call the president a few times and said mister president, this isn't going well. and i don't want to embarrass you so i said i think i should probably resign, step aside and he was the one who kept saying, no.

i want you to keep going. you're a boxer, it's like you're going to paul, get back in the ring. then finally when it became clear that i could withdraw but it was a painful experience because every day it's like what did i say back in 1987 or something that offended someone?d so it was an experience that i think ... i said about that confirmation if you want to attack my ideas, fine that's perfectly acceptable , dig up all the dirt on me. all that stuff is common in our current political system. i've done things i'm not proud of for said things i'm not proud of but i'm surprised the way peter this toxic nature that goes on that people want to view

these positions. i know a lot of people are well thought of saying i'm not going to go through that. >> back to "govzilla", california is a textbook example of financial mismanagement. california though as big budget surplus . >> you know where they got it ? from uncle sam. the federal government all this money to california and look, i don't like it when they give money to the states because think about it this way. the only way the government can give money to california is by taking the money from the other 49 states. it's just a game, will give this money so i don't want to state and federal government to do that but california is really i think in terrible shape. what happened in los angeles, the problems with homelessnessand poverty and

the schools, people are leaving california . it's one of the themes ofthe book . you have blue states like california, igrew up in chicago . a lot of them left illinois which is one of the iconic companies. boeing just left illinois. elon musk is pretty big, he left california. you're seeing people just moving away from these high relation states and they better get their house in order. we know where they're going, a lot of them are going to texas and florida,two states that have no income tax . >> steve moore, you've sidetracked me but is he a hero of yours orsomebody was good for the country ? >> that's: in question. he really changed his political philosophy over the last few years. when he started with all these companies like his solar power company and space

x, he was gettingall this government money . they called him the $5billion man . but these companies got more money than elon musk did but i do like the fact that he has woken up to the dangers of wokeism. for example he wants to, he's an advocate of free speech y and i am to. you have the right to say what you want to say. this idea that i don't like what you're saying because i'm going to shut your voice down . we're pretty rare in this country among all the countries in the world that we do have the bill of rights . the right of assembly, the right of free speech. the right to bear arms, the right to a fair trial. all these things are really in history, i admire that about him. >> at the end of "govzilla"

you have reforms you suggest could get us off this wheel of debt. >> a lot of memorable experience experiments . >> term limits. >> i've always liked term limits. i believe that we should not have a permanent political class. and i don't know what term limit should be, i would go something like two germs in the federal debt, maybe four, five or six terms in the house or 12 years in the house and then you get back to it. that was the way the country, in my opinion term limits were not in the constitution because we got the political ntclass and if you go back to the early years of our country george washington's an early example. there was no two term limits, he could have served what he said no, we don't want a monarch and i think that was

one of the great things about georgewashington . so i'd be a big advocate of that. more of the citizen legislature with people like farmers and businessmen and teachers and nurses, people who know about america really making a lot of the statistics, now it's mostly lawyers and lobbyists . >> you also suggest federal spending but at some point are we in so deep? any small federal spending limit will not help? >> guest: spending limits ' work when they're put inplace . i think it would work but you're right. we got ourselves in the ditch but peter, don't you think maybe we should stop digging? that's my warning. at least stop digging the ditch deeper and this year alone we're going to look, joe biden has been bragging about where only in$1

trillion deficit . when you and i got started could you even imagine that, but now that's heralded as some kind of a movement. >> you know how many zeros there are in? >> nine no, that would be 1 billion, it's 12 . >> glad to learn that. >> that's the problem though isn't it? most people, people watching this show can't know tends millions, 100 millions comedies numbers are so large . >> we are immune to these numbers. >> guest: in other words if i told you if the government wasted $200,000 on programs that's outrageous. $200,000, that's more money than i make. $20 billion, okay. enyou can't comprehend it.

>> two more recommendations before we go. privatize federal assets. privatize federal assets, what does that mean? >> this is an important one. the federal government owns a huge amount of the land. i'm forgetting exactly the west of the mississippi is over 50 percent of theland area is owned by government . the government has not made them. custodian. i'm not about our national abtreasures, i'm not talking about privatizing business onion or yosemite or yellowstone but there's huge amounts of land that could be , the government could get money by selling it. one of the ways the united states government raise revenue the first hundred years of our country is you know one of the major revenue raisers as land sales.

the government sold land and that was the revenuecollected . so this is in perfect tradition with ourcountry . but it's not just land, there's buildings, there's huge amounts of energy resources that we have in this country. there are we're a very rich now country. energy, minerals and those kinds of things. we estimate there's $50 trillion of assets buried treasure under our land. why don't we lease that lands and have people pay a fee to get at those resources and then we use that money to reduce our debt? that would be a great thing. >> host: back to "govzilla" and your recommendations. no federal dollars. >> guest: this is something the late great walter williams who i tell you was a very famous economist. once of the economists who

was just became an icon and he and i came up with this idea. let's say nobody makes over $1 million or no company that makes over$1 million gets any federal money something, the money we can make . i guess both ofthe people on the show would say yeah . right now there's a bill that will probably be passed and signed into law and they're calling it the china bill and this is the bill that's going to get all this money to intel and our chips makers k. its corporate welfare. why should the federal government be giving money to intel ? they want to build new checks and we obviously want to be number one in technology but we are number one in technology . you look at our great companies like google and apple and amazonand on and on, microsoft . they came up with great ideas and in silicon valley is a

great example of how just a free enterprise system can work. i don't like this idea of the government giving all this money to industriesbecause then it will be wasted . >> steve moore his most recent book is called "govzilla", although relentless world ofgovernment is devouring our economy and our freedom . >> good to be with you again. >> at 8 pm eastern massachusetts republican governor charlie baker shares his book resolve where he offers his though ohow to move past politics and get thingsdone . then at 10 pm eastern on "after words", beth trousdale look to the future of retirement and whether workg longer life better financial security in overtime she's interviewed by wellesley college economics professor courtney coyle. watch book tv every sunday on

c-span2 and find a full schedule on your programguide or watch oine anytime . >> every saturday american history tv documents america stories and on sunday tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding comes from these television companies and more . including mexico. >> mexico along with these television companies suppo c-span2 as a public service.