>> washington journal continues. good morning. we are back with bipartisan policy center's senior vice president william discussing the debt limit on the debate over how to raise it and more on how the u.s. unmasked a 31 trillion-dollar debt. good morning. >> good morning. >> host: thank you for returning to washington journal. tell us more about the bipartisan policy center and the

work you are doing to educate people about debt and deficits. >> the bipartisan policy center was established about 15 years ago now by former majority leaders in the united states senate the late senator bob dole and howard baker on the republican side. senator george mitchell and tom daschle on the democratic side. as the name would imply there something called the bipartisan hipolicy center but we try to approach issues, major issues and find common ground because we do believe some of the most sustainable types of policy are those that are done in ais bipartisan way. a tough issues as it relates to theit number of areas energy, immigration but also on fiscal

policy issues we have developed a bit of a reputation for that organization that provides an independent assessment to this issue we are dealing with today where the government will exhaust all of its resources available. >> i know it shifts. what do you think the date is for reaching the debt ceiling and what are the factors that contribute? >> factors that impact us are the uncertainties associated in the economy, levels of revenue coming in and levels of expenditures going out. we pay the federal government pays monthly something like 80 million checks go out and some of those will vary, but the current estimate has been

sometimes between june and september was our estimate back earlier a couple of months ago. later maybe this week or early next week we will update our estimate as well i understand secretary of treasury yelling will also do her estimates. there's some indication that the revenues that came in when we pay our taxes april 15th and the revenues that came in were less than we and expected so maybe it has pushed the date. we will try to refine this but it is a difficult estimate to make because we have to take into consideration all these uncertainties and of course if we have issues we can't anticipate whether it's for may bewa a disaster or something of that nature those are the kind of things that will change that instrument rather dramatically.

>> we are talking from bill in the bipartisan policy center on the national debt i want to go ahead and givee the viewers and listeners the number to call in with any comments on the issue or any questions you may have. democrats (202)748-8000. 202-748-8001 if you are republican. 202-748-8002, independent's. so, bill, in addition to what you do at the center will also have a career on capitol hill. you are no stranger to this debate on the debt ceiling. how do you see it playing out over the coming weeks and months? >> it's a good question. i've been through and have seen this before this one is a little

bit scary from my perspective as opposed to the first time i dealt with the debt limit issue and essentially 1985 it was thought about in the situation where we were again almost we had the republican-controlled senate and democratic-controlled house. a little flip from where we are today and we were dealing with the issue of trying. we passed a budget resolution in the senate. the budget resolution passed by one vote and george w. bush was vice president at the time when he broke the tie but this is something republicans put together a budget and that budget was two if you can believe it was to reduce the deficit at that time just $200 million and we were to reduce it and long story short,

that particular budget went to the house and it included in the senate it was a very controversial budget resolution because it had a one-year freeze on social security and it reduced president reagan's defense request. what happened was it went to the house and the house quite frankly my boss at the time senator domenici and dole were basically undercut by president reagan who said they wouldn't support that so it came back and caused a lot of controversy for republicans who had stretched, put their necks on the line to look at trying to reduceli the deficit. that led to the next step which was there was a movement by senator redman in the senate and phil gramm who said we are going to come up now i guess it was

october of 1985. we are going to have to increase the statutory debt limit. that wasn't long ago. now we are at 35 and what senator graham and redman said is here we go again we are not going to vote to raise the debt limit which requires 60 votes at least in the senate unless they have a change in our fiscal policies that eventually resulted in the graham redman hollings which was kind of a precursor for lots of things that followed 1990, 1997, 2000 where we set caps on spending and of spending exceeded that cap there would be what we call the first time i ever heard the word i thought it was a texan bird i'd never heard of a cold

sequesters. we would cut spending below that. we could argue it was designed to get this in balanced budget again. we can argue i don't think that it wasn't as successful as people thought but it did set up a process to bring mechanisms in place that led to the 1990 agreements and then also more importantly 1997 further negotiations. but i'm getting at here is that required negotiations and i know and i respect the president having essentially worked with him when he was a senator and have to negotiate. i'm a little bit worried about this game right up to limit because they all had major economic impacts both not only domestically but globally if the federal government for the first time inn its history has default

on paying its bills that would be a real disaster. of the republicans and democrats iev believe. >> we will be talking about that more with you. before we get to the phone i want to quickly can you explain what is the difference between the debt and the deficit? >> we sometimes just assume people understand. the deficit is the annual difference between your spending and revenue so as an example, today we have a's deficit for the current fiscal year of about let's say a trillion dollars. if you go back to the beginning of the republic and add up all of the deficits offset by when we had surpluses, that would be

the cumulative so debt is the accumulation of deficits from the beginning of the republic today. >> and i'm showing on my computer it was taking away showing $31.7 trillion national debt. let's go to the phone lines. we have naomi from maryland on the democratic line. what is your question or comment? >> good morning and thank you for taking my call. my question is i've heard from the republican side that biden has done little to reduce the deficit and i've heard from the

democratic side that mr. trump who i'm not in favor of increased the deficit tremendously during his yearsofs president and that biden has reduced that deficit substantially despite the war in ukraine, despite covid and a tremendous number of things going on in the world which the united states has had to take part in. i believe that we need to support ukraine and needed to do anything that we can at this point democracy is under assault. it was under assault on january 6th. there is no disputing that. i have tremendous fears relating

toe. trump in particular regaing the white house. i don't see that happening. but should that occur, even if he should run i think we are goingma to have major problems regarding election denial again which was proven to the courts i don't know how many times, more than 60 i believe that there was no, there was no tampering. >> host: we are going to let bill respond to the points you made about the difference in spending. >> first let me say maybe this

is no surprise coming from somebody even though i work for republicans here in the senate for many years this is a bipartisan problem. we use to say the first law of economics is scarcity's are real. the first law of politics is to ignore the first law of economics. this increased debt and deficit that we have is the result of boths republican and democratic policies over the years. when you said that biden had reduced the deficit, he reduced the deficit. let's put it this way, the deficit came down from about three points. this is the annual deficit in 2020 it was about 3.1 and that was covid and all the other things that were going on at that time and yes the deficit

has gone from three down to about $1 trillion coming off covid. the problem here is that is the deficit, the annual deficit, it's not the debt. the total continues to grow in in fact the debt has grown under this administration but it's not just this administration. you have to go back. this has been going on for a long time and some of the programs that we have on the books today to be honest with you such as social security and medicare created many years ago and of the roosevelt administrationat with the johnsn administration even longer expansion of the food stamp program under the nixon administration those particularm programs are on the books and they are creating a draw on our spending and so this is a

combination i of a number of policies both democrats and republicans over the years. i think it's not just one administration that is responsible for the level of debt we have today. it is a culmination of many years of policies that we've established where we are unwilling to pay for and currently pay for our expenditures on an annual basis. >> host: i will pull up on the screen you mentioned there were nine keyoments of the national debt in certain things like t bush tax cuts, the iraq war, medicare part of the with prescription drug coverage that was added in 2006, the 2008 recession and under president obama the obama gop deals to extend the bush tax cuts which was wrapped up in the debt ceiling discussion in 2013 the

trump tax cuts of 2017 and bipartisan spending deals under trump. of course the coronavirus pandemic response. that was $5.3 trillion and the biden economic agenda is another 2.7 trillion. again that is from thebi "washington post." that's over the last 20 years or so key points that did address or extend the national debt. let's go back to the phone lines now. we have gary on the line in sterling virginia on the republican line. go ahead, gary. >> thankir you. could you ask elon musk to come on and ask him what he once

twittered to be, does he want it to be common sense or something else and then could you also ask brian lamb what i said to the evangelists when they asked him to make the antiabortion bank of the party and could you look up late february of 70 or 79 known as press release in the "washington post" on climate change? okay now to the debt limit, i would like to ask mcconnell because the three times and lost last time is when the moody's five-star rating was lost.

then i saw jim jordan and kevin mccarthy whether or not they are going to kindig the keystone pipeline by hand because kevin said 500,000 jobs were lost and jim jordan said 40 or 50,000 jobs were lost so they must be [inaudible] thank you for letting me share. >> guest: i can't comment on the latter comments about mr. jordan andd others but i wil say that as it relates to where we are today, i think it's clear that we haven't really had the senate weigh in and mr. mcconnell and mr. schumer have been through this exercise a numberer of times.

because the house passed its legislation it isn't clear that it's going anywhere in the senate and as i say, i believe the compromise is the way youie move forward. it's going to be pretty difficult here. and to your other point, yes this is dangerous for investors and the overall economies. it's dangerous for our standing inom the world as the reserve currency when there are other challenges out there from china and other places that want to take over the dollar as the reserve currency so, yes, i think this is something that will impact you as an individual investor and your savings and investments if we do not find a solution to this and find a solution pretty quickly.

>> host: next up is tracy on the democratic line. go ahead. >> thank you. i wanted to mention that i can remember when reagan came on the tv and said that we all need to tighten our belts because we had a debt and a deficit. i don't know why presidents don't just come on tv and tell us the truth. i can also remember when president bush gave back money, $300 to all the fuss. i was thinking why doesn't he just save that for a rainy day. i don't understand the mentality of not being fiscally responsible. >> guest: my response to that pois your right it behooves our

elected officials to be honest with the american public and be very transparent so let me be at least i'm not running for office. i don't have to talk to my constituents out there. but the discussion on spending if it was to be an honest discussion would not be focused on the 13% of federal spending that basically is what was in the house bill last week which is what we call the nondefense discretionary budget. what is really driving spending in this country unfortunately our the third rails of politics and let's be clear, social security, medicare, medicaid, healthcare, those are some ofar the fastest on the public debt the fastest growing components, so it's pretty difficult in fact as you know president biden and

i am disappointed in his position on this. those before the state of the union address and the republicans in the house into saying social security and medicare would off the table. let's be honest. if we do not make changes in those programs in the future that may result in if we don't make those changes the social security trust fund while exhaust in the year 2033 into the hospital insurance trust fund will exhaust in 2031. i believe my dates are correct and if that happens there will be reductions from what people thought they were going to get in social security and there will be reductions in medicare payments. if you're being honest with the american people in the spending side then you have to talk to them straight up about entitlements that we have that have been on the books and by the way these go back even

before trump and biden and obama as i say these major entitlement programs have been on the books for a long time and now we are seeing the consequences ofw the expenditures. i am one who believes in controlling spending and i think we should. there are areas which we can be better at it than we are but unless you're willing to tell the american people what is the real driverse of spending then let's take the otherin side of e equation let's not pass thisis a debt onto our future generations. let's talkre about another third rail of politics that maybe we should start paying for the benefits that we enjoy today. that's taxes. >> all right. difficult positions that you lay out for the elected officials. we did get a text message from robert in atlanta georgia. he writes what is the total debt

owed to the u.s. by other countries? do you know much about that? >> that is a good question. it's changed over time about 40% at one time of the debt held by the public what we are talking about here was owned by foreign investors in i had a friend that used to say the former director we are the best looking horse in the glue factory point being we have been a good place. we are secure in terms of paying our interest on our debt so yes that is an important question. china and japan and europe investors like our bills and invest but the issue that i raise here is that could change

pretty dramatically if we do not raise theim debt limit and pay those interests on the borrowings going forward so as i say i think today it's about 30 to 40% of the debt held by the public is owned by the foreign investors. >> let's go to martin in an annapolis maryland on the republican line what is your question or comment? >> a quick couple of comments related to the sources and uses and what can be done related to expanding exports of traditional carbon-based fuels, oil, natural gas, other derivatives and substantial productions that we have of this and also alternative energy and technologies helping withh

raising funds but also on the spending side for a clear view at extending social security age ages so those that enters. the workforce targeting 72 is probably an eligible for social security going out 30 years would say for those entering the workforce because when these wereen put in place in the 30s, eligibility was probably two to three years beyond mortality age which was 60 and 1934. eligibility was 63, 62. so would be interested to see what your comments are on this. >> first of all i can't comment on the first part of the question about the expansion of trade.

certainly i believe in free trading with the there's always that opportunity to increase our exports and should be as that would have a beneficial impact on the economy and would also therefore increase opportunities for income and raise revenues but in terms of its impact on the immediate problem of increasing the debt limit i don't think it would have much of an impact. to your other question and here we, go again on social security the bipartisan policy center has looked at this and we had a wemajor commission that focusedn it with former members of congress as well as the former trustees of the social securityy fund and we looked at this issue and think we would take the position that you took when the age was established at 65 and we went through an exercise in the 1980s where we were faced with the trust fund being depleted

and there was an effort made by at that particular time again senator dole, senator moynahan and others. we did modify the age of eligibility by pushing it out froman 65 to 67 retaining the early retirements to left 62. i quite frankly the work we put together agrees with you that we should be looking at adjusting at 677 as longevity and unfortunately the last couple of years longevity has declined not to increase due to the manufacturer being the opioid issuers that we have now but long story short here again i do think that there are ways you can extend social security and make it more available and at the same time without jeopardizing the benefits for those who want to work longer and receive social security.

it cannot be just on the agean adjustment though i think you have to modify the formula protecting those that lower income that receive social security as a major poverty reduction program for the elderly and i don't think we should continue to retain that there are ways to modify the programre and again one aspect f it that was the recommendation from the bipartisan policy center was both on the standing side of being the benefits but also we may have to seriously consider some form of an update in the payroll tax to make the program solvent over the longer period of time. next is sergio on the independent line. >> guest: >> caller: goodd morning.

couple of things. how did this 31 sextillion-dollar debt get started in the first place and also how can we be so independent like we used to be in the 70s what have you how can we correct that problem because i believe president biden is doing a hell of a job. he's doing a hell of a job, but the republicans have a problem with that holding our economy hostage. how can we work together like they used to?

>> guest: your questionn is one that haunts me daily. i would be in the capital for many years and it was a different environment thent we see today. obviously every polarized environment so i don't have any simple solutions to that. there are some thoughts i had a but i will hold of them to the side. let me just say in terms of how did we get here as i said this is a culmination of spending in excess of the receipts that we take in and revenues while it created the debt and required us to i go out and borrow the money and specifically in terms of the history of this up until 1917 whenever we went out to have a project when congress passed a bill to say build the panama

canal i don't know if that is a proper. example but at the same time in that bill it authorized the authority to borrow, to pay for it so the point being each time congress created a spending it created the authority to borrow to pay for that project. come 1917 world war and then particularly into world war ii that just was unsustainable in terms of the amount of expenditure needed to fight that war. we had to establish this debt limit so we didn't have to do it on every bill that came through and that established the debt limit as i said it's of the law and it gets adjusted and we are now at that point where we have to adjusted again and by the way looking at my numbers even when

we adjust this and the legislation the house passed last week was toio raise it 1.5r by march 31 of next year whatever comes first let's just be clear the level of debt that is on the books today what we've already made commitments to as i say entitlement program, spending programs if you believe the projections, we are still looking at the debt continuing to grow and in fact i would point out we didn't mention this earlier but it's a share of the economy and it used to be that it was closer to 30 or 40% and now it is well up into the hundreds. 100% of gdp is the debt today. if we go out if you take the house passed legislation last week even if it were to come to pass it would still be facing in

ten years the debt to gdp close to 100% of gdp. we really do have to make some fundamental changes in our spending and revenues policies going forward. otherwise we are simply passing on this debt to our children and grandchildren and their level of living standards will be less because of this burden that we are placing on them. we should take the burden on ourselves today and not pass it on to future generations. >> host: as a look at the u.s. debt it says total debt to gdp ratio is currently 134%. i want to ask you quickly. >> that's 134% is total debt. when i talk about the debt held by the public and not the intergovernmental debt that is the 100%.

>> host: do you think the debt limit should go away altogether? >> guest: i think there's one country in the world that has a similar kind of debt limit. i have mixed feelings about this. those, i understand the house position and where senator graham and redmond always were. it is a forcing mechanism to have us focus on this issue so i have mixed feelings about it i don't think it's accomplished what people thought and i don't think that it really achieved we wanted it to achieve and in brig some sensibility but at least it got this kind of discussion we are having today about the level of debt that's out there and

whatav it means, so i wish it wasn't as difficult as it is but it does t force conversations si guess i'm filibustering your question by not answering it. >> host: let's take another call. thomas in riverdale georgia on the democraticc line. what is your question or comment? thank you for taking myll call. i really enjoyed this program. one of my questions how come no president has ever tried to pay off debt and then also why can't we pay japan or china, pay off a few of our debtors just to keep from paying them interest all the time and another idea when the gas prices are low why can't we just increase the tax a

little bit or a short period of time to try to pay off the debt just increase the revenue? is there an advantage of having or staying in debt? >> guest: thanks. first there was a president who tried to pay off the debt completely in his name was andrew jackson. he was somewhat successful then we entered into the civil war. but paying off our investors overseas i'm not quite sure how thatot would work because if we pay them off and said we don't want you to purchase our treasuries then we would have to force an increase if you like and interest payments to encourage domestic investors can purchasese so i think that is a little bit difficult to say we just pay them

off and this is a global economy now. we are interactive all over the world. something that would be difficult to achieve. there are times and i do not disagree that there should be in times of war and a specific disasters maybe we should just say we have the tax to pay for that particular activity but long-term you need to look at the overall taxing and apply it in one of the uniform rather than a one-off basis. >> let's go to colorado now only

independent line. >> caller: the federal government is the biggest employernt in the united states and we never hear anything about how their retirement is running out of money so how that compared to social security. that's the question i have. i am a retiree so i am aware of the program. it was converted a couple of years ago into a system similar to what most people have in terms of retirement so i'm not

sure thatit it would be possible to convert everyone over to that particular type of program. i think i like your idea of social security but taking that caps off i think it's but you're right i think it should be reflecting the changes. thank you for your question. >> thank you soo much again. a bipartisan policy center.

whether you live here or here or out in the middle of nowhere you should have access to fast reliable internet. that's why we are looking for ways. >> supporting as aublic service along with the other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. several government officials who spoke at a chamber of commerce forum in washington, d.c. that focus on u.s. ukraine partnerships. they highlighted the need to assist with rebuilding efforts with the russian