>> washington journal continues.

host: you are no stranger to c-span viewers, author, columnist, presidential advisor, economic advisor to the trump campaign back in 2016. do you have any role in the campaigns this season? guest: i am working with president trump on the 2024 campaign. it's a long way to go. he has to get through this primary and the general, but it is the honor of my life to work with trump in 2016 and it's exciting, as you know, working on a campaign. we will be fulfilling that same role with a lot of other really top people, larry kudlow, who

chief economic advisor, and others. so he's got a great gang of economic advisors. i'd say this -- trump understands the economy very well. a very successful businessman so i always found that he has the sort of streetsmarts and we have the more academic views on the economy. >> you think he is talking about the economy enough on the campaign trail right now? is there space for him to talk about the economy? >> effect that he's facing four or five indictments and 500 years in prison, yeah. we put together a lot of documents just showing the case for are you better off than you were four years ago, and for the vast majority of americans, the answer to that question is no, not financially, with the high inflation, with the troubles we've had with the economy. we are not looking at then whenw

trump left office the mortgage interest rate was 2.9%, now it's over 7%. inflation rate was 1.5% when trump left office and at 9%, still closer to 4%. week think if you put side-by- side the biden economic record versus the trump economic record, that's his strong point. >> president biden over the labor day weekend has been talking about the economy for quite a bit. he was on a visit to pennsylvania. he was talking to the sheet- metal workers in pennsylvania. this is about a minute of what he had to say about the economy. >> 13,500,000 jobs just since you got me sworn in, in january 2020. 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, but you wouldn't know it from all the negative news you hear. what we are getting through is one of the greatest job creation periods in american history. for real. that's a fact.

you know it wasn't that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. in fact, the guy who held this job for me was just one of two presidents in history. here's an important point. two presidents who left office with fewer jobs in america than when he got elected to office. by the way, you know who the other one was? herbert hoover. isn't that kind of coincidental? look, we're turning things around because of you. when the last guy was here, you were shipping jobs to china. now we're bringing jobs home from china. when the last guy was here, your pensions were at risk. we helped save millions of pensions with your help. when the last guy was here he looked at the world from park avenue. i look at it from scranton, pennsylvania. i look at it from claymont, delaware. >> that was president biden on

monday. a very different economic picture that he paints than what you were just talking about. >> there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on there. we were really proud of what we accomplished during trump's administration with respect to the economy. people forgot, on the eve of covid, and covid really did change everything. we had the biggest booming economy evergrande if it hadn't been for covid, trump probably would've won one of the greatest landslide elections ever. we shut down the american economy. i think that was one of the greatest mistakes in american history, what happened during covid, both from an economic and civil liberties standpoint. we now know that lockdowns were a complete failure and let's just pray that we never lock down our economy again. when we locked down all of our

businesses, the government shutdown our businesses, so we a lost 15 million jobs. everybody remembers that. i remember that one day i'm going to work and the next day i'm not going to work because everything shut down. if you look at biden's record, look, 90% of those jobs that joe biden is talking about that he, quote, created are just jobs that opened up once covid was over. that's a bit of a distortion. i always say you may not like donald trump, and there are a lot of people i'm sure listening to the show who don't like donald trump, his antics, or sometimes he says offensive things. but you've got to love what he did for the country in terms of his economic policies. we have just one statistic that i know the president likes to use and i showed him this chart a couple weeks ago. under trump, the median family income in the united states, adjusted for inflation, grew by $6500 when he was president. that's a big, big increase. for biden in his first 2 1/2 years the average family has lost $4000 in income. that i would submit to you is why, when you look at the opinion polls, and they're all ready much the same, about 70%

of americans think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. >> you talked before on this program this year but you've also written about your deep concerns about a recession during the biden administration. do you still think today, looking at the economic picture today, that we are in for a recession sometime in the next 12 months? >> there's a famous thing about economists, that we predict did eight of the last two recessions. economists are always saying a recession is right around the corner and i want to set the record straight. remember at the end of 2022, a lot of economists, the majority of economists were saying we are going to have a recession this year. i was not one who said that a recession was inevitable. we are not in a recession right now. the economy actually has picked up a bit, thankfully. by the way, i don't root against the american economy. i want american workers to be as successful as possible. so there has been a pickup in the economy, and that's a good thing, and the job market

really is strong. if you're out there and now we have more job openings than we have people looking for jobs, so that's a good statistic. >> chose joe biden get credit for that? >> for 2 1/2 years. i would say that the problem for biden's and that there aren't enough jobs. there are right now. we need to get americans more skills so that they can fill those jobs. the problem is that when biden came in he spent about $6 trillion, and that was completely unnecessary, and i think was financially reckless. and as a result of that, what happened, people have to understand the story. he came in, spent $6 trillion on the green energy programs and welfare programs, et cetera, et cetera, that they allowed in the blue states. than what happened with all of that, with death and printing of money that caused the inflation rate to go from 1.5% to 9%. and as a result of that, what had to happen, john, was the federal reserve raised interest rates. i think it's been 10 or 11, i forget the exact number. that means we set a huge increase in interest rates and

the high inflation has meant that for 22 of the last 24 months, americans incomes are falling behind the rate of inflation. that's what gets back to that $4000 a year. in other words, the average american is $4000 a year poorer today than they were when trump left office. that's going to have to explain that. >> even for the last 30 or 34 minutes, phone number his usual. if you want to call in. working with the trump campaign in 2016, doing it again in 2024, senior economist at freedom works as well. folks are calling in and reminding what freedom works is. >> freedom works is a citizens activist group, conservative free-market orientation. we have 5 million members around the country, so very proud to work. also i'm a senior fellow with the heritage foundation.

so i wear many hats. >> the liberty bell? >> that's exactly right. we've got to get our nation's finances in order right now. i think all americans are concerned what's happening. did you see who watched the post story, frontpage, i think it was on sunday or monday but our national debt this year went up by another $2 trillion. we are supposed to be in an economic recovery right now and we are falling to trillion? you mentioned c-span scores, but i was saying when i first came to washington, i first did this show with my hero brian lamb, the national debt, the entire national debt for the first 220 years of the country was to trillion dollars, and now we're blowing to trillion dollars a year. i don't care if you are a

republican, democrat, independent, that is a catastrophe. >> in 2023, according to that washington post story, now expecting to be $2 trillion. the deficit from the past couple years, washington post.com is where that story was. let me start with jay in mississippi, republican line. good morning. >> how you doing today, mr. mullen? >> good morning. >> let me ask you a question. what are y'all going to do when donald trump gets back in office? are you going to get this economy started again? it's already in pretty bad shape . getting worse, we are borrowing money. you don't know whether to lvgo gold, silver or platinum. it's in a mess but i told john before i called him one time, just call him, 40,000, 47, and

-- >> 45 and 47. th if he is 47, what's the first thing you do on the economic front if he -- after he's sworn in? >> i think that's a good question. i think the first thing we would do would be to restore american energy superiority. and what is going on right now with our energy policy is catastrophic, in my opinion. when trump left office for the first time in any of our lifetimes, any person, no matter what your age is, whether you're over 100 years old, the first time in american history under trump we were energy independent and we actually became the dominant producer of oil and gas in the world. and biden came in, the first thing he did was killed pipelines. he's declared war on american energy. it is a catastrophe. the price of oil is now on the international markets, nearly $90 a barrel. that means i don't want to be the bearer of bad news but $90 a barrel oil means that we are going to soon be paying $4.50

to five dollars a gallon at the gas pump, and we should be producing oil everywhere we can. we should be dominance. i don't think that russia would've ever gone into ukraine if we hadn't knee capped america's energy superiority. we can get that back. no country in the world has more oil, gas and coal than the united states does, and we should be using it as both an economic tool, it also a national security tool. it puts our national security in jeopardy when we have to get our oil from companies like saudi arabia and venezuela, and russia, of course, is a major oil producer. opec, by the way, just announced they are cutting production by 1 million barrels a day. russia is cutting 300,000. that's one of the reasons the price of oil is going up. when trump was president we never even talked about opec

because the united states was producing so much. let's get back to being the dominant energy country in the world. >> how would a different energy policy have kept russia from , invading ukraine, if you could explain that? >> that's a good question. russia is a third world country. they don't have an economy, much to speak of. the major component of the russian economy is oil. that's how they get their money. so what i'm saying is if we continue to produce the amount of oil that we were under trump, by the way, i think it's this week, it's coming -- the last recent days, biden again f announced he's going to take millions of acres in alaska off the market, which is crazy. we have more oil up in alaska and russia has. so when we surrendered our oil and gas leadership, that's what happened. guess who filled that void, john. it was russia. s that sent the price of oil way up and that's what's funding, in my opinion, the military machine in ukraine.

we all want the freedom fighters in ukraine to win. one of the best ways we can do that is not keep sending them tens and tens of billions of dollars, but defund vladimir putin by producing more energy here at home. >> they had then of the issue you were talking about, biden administration drilling on millions of acres in alaska. this was back on tuesday. the administrator will cancel oil and gas leases in the art wildlife refuge. this policy keeps going back and forth. trump had actually opened up that area. by the way, a nwr -- i've actually been up there. it is a massive, massive amount of land and they're talking about a tiny amount of that land would be used for oil drilling and the idea that this is going to despoil the land up there, i just don't find that to be factually true. >> we'll take an independent organ, this is dan, democrat. good morning. >> i have a problem with knowing what people on here are telling the truth and what people are lying, so i would want the people who come on

here from now on to raise their right hand and just swear they are telling the truth. that's all i'd like. thank you very much. >> should we swear people in when they sit down on the washington journal? >> one of the reasons i love doing the show is because you have people from all different perspectives. i'm a big fan of the show and i love actually hearing from people every morning about their opinions, about what's going on in the country. i'll try to be as factual as possible this morning. >> to los angeles, this is david, good morning. you're on with steve moore. >> mr. moore, you've been wrong on just about every single issue that you brought up. let me get you with the one on the subject matter, x subject matter -- subject matter expert on. real estate. you said donald trump kept mortgage interest rates -- lowered mortgage interest rates. that is exactly the reason why we are experiencing a bubble right now. it created an artificial demand, artificially deflated home prices. this is almost identical to

what happened for the caused the housing crisis. that's number one. let me hit you with the next thing you talked about, oil production and gas prices. during trump's administration we were experiencing a pandemic. nobody was driving on the us freeway. half the country wasn't driving. of course we are going to have an abundance of gas. it's a ridiculous -- it's almost childish to think that you don't realize, the reason why we have an abundance of gas is because nobody is driving. >> let me let steve moore address those two things, mortgage interest rates and oil and gas prices during a pandemic. >> first of all let's do the mortgage rates. so the fact that the mortgage interest rate has gone up less than 3% to over 7% has had a catastrophic effect on housing markets. so for example, let's say you want to buy a median priced home in america today, which is roughly $450,000, give or take.

it's somewhere in that neighborhood. let's say you're a first-time homebuyer and you want to buy that house. because of the entire mortgage interest rates, you're going to pay, over the life of a 30 year mortgage, on a $450,000 home, over $150,000 more in interest payments, so what this doing is making housing unaffordable to americans. we want americans to be homeowners. i laughed the other day because joe biden says we are restoring the american dream. a big part of the american dream is being able to own your own home, and bidens policies of higher interest rates and higher inflation have really priced people out of that market and i think i'm worried about our housing market, by the way, right now. i do worry that we might see a crash because you're starting to see the home values decline. when mortgage interest rates go up it hurts both the homebuyer and home seller. both of them are hurt. on the energy thing, if you

look at 2019, before covid, because this gentleman, he's right. in covid hit nobody was on the road. i remember that. let's talk about even before it happened. the united states for the first time in history was producing more oil and gas than russia, than saudi arabia, than any other country in the world, and gas prices before covid were ' much lower than they are today. >> to patty in new york, line 4 republicans. good morning, you're on with steve moore. >> good morning. thank you for having me on, and it's great talking with you, mr. moore. it's also great to hear the positivity of the previous president, president trump, who i did vote for and will again. vote for again. because we need him back. he had this country and

promised us when he was doing a reality show and everything, what he was going to do for this country, and he did. but everybody tried to reverse him, in order to have a president of the united states that was doing good for the country and for the american people. >> do you have a question for mr. moore? >> it's not really just a question. i agree with everything that mr. moore is saying, and for what president trump, the day that we saw biden get sworn into office it was the worst day of our lives, reverse of everything that trump did. wa >> patty in new york, what do you want to pick up on from that? >> i would simply say that one of the things i admired about trump, and by the way, there is a good trump and a bad trump, and the good trump is fantastic when he's talking about how -- i don't like when he fumes

about the election being stolen and that kind of thing, but when he's talking about putting america first, and i think that's one of the things we're proudest of, we really did put america's interests first. i'll give you one example because i was listening to the news broadcast this morning on my way over here and there's a big discussion about ukraine. and i remember talking to trump about this and his position was, look, why don't we make sure that all these other countries in europe are providing the support for ukraine? why is it always on america's shoulders? these countries like germany, spain, italy and france, they're right next door to ukraine. we are an ocean away from them and yet we are paying 90% of the cost of helping out ukraine. now i'm for ukraine but i know what trump would say. the europeans have to help pay

for this. remember one of his big th successes was forcing europeans to pay their fair share for nato because no president ap before had made them do that. >> a story from the front page of today's wall street journal, and this is all the major papers today. secretary of state blinken paid a visit to ukraine, pledges $1 billion in new aid and there's also an aid package working its way through congress, happening. that could be happening now and will pick up speed when the house comes back. what do you think of these emergency funding bills that are working their way through congress? >> this is such an thinterestin issue because i've been in this game a long time. i came to washington when reagan was president and you may recall the reagan coalition was social, religious conservatives, economic conservatives, and then foreign- policy hawks who wanted to take on the soviet union. but today the republicans are much more divided on these issues like ukraine, than they

were before.. probably because look, i think -- here's my position. i'm not an expert on this. i'm a financial expert, not a foreign politics person. number one, the rest of the world has to step up. this idea that america has to pay for everything has got to stop. we are running a $2 trillion deficit. number two, why not come to some kind of a deal? the trump position is he can come in and he can stop the fighting, stop the deaths and fatalities, and come up with some kind of solution that everyone can live with. and i'd like to see biden doing that but i don't see him doing that. >> provo, utah, this is kenneth, independent. you're on with steve moore. >> i don't know if this information is correct or not but under president trump for years the country's that went up $8 trillion. $3 trillion of which is attributed to covid.

so during these four years the debt has been up by about $5 trillion. if you put that kind of cash in the country, i would then be surprised if everybody's income goes up by about $2000. so it's not a big deal that the income went up. it is in fact a big deal that in four years that went up by $5 trillion. of course we are assuming that because of covid we have additional $3 trillion debt. >> it's a good point and that period in early 2020, when everyone is trying to figure out how to deal with this pandemic that we haven't had in 100 years, i think a lot of bad decisions were made and this

gentleman is correct. we spent trillions and trillions of dollars because when we shut down the american economy, which again, was the worst decision ever made. never, never again should we lockdown our businesses. never again should we lockdown our schools, our churches. it was outrage and it didn't save any lives. so we spent way, way too much money on lockdowns and so the debt went way up. so i fault partly donald trump for that. although i will say this -- i was in meetings with donald my trump in march and april and may of 2020. there was no one who wanted to get the american economy reopen faster than donald trump did. there was a lot of resistance, and what happened, just so people know the story, is trump i think made a very smart decision. he said let's let the state decide what their policy will be. so what happened was, for the most part, the red states like florida and states like north carolina, and utah, and idaho, and those kinds of states, texas opened up their economies, and states like

california, new york, new jersey, kept their economies locked down. so florida, texas and arizona, states like that had a much better recovery. by the way, there was no difference in the death rates between the states that locked down their economies and didn't. the reason i mentioned that, this is important today becausen as you mentioned, you know we have another covid breakout right now and people are trying to figure out what to do. this is a much milder strain than the original strain but i'm hearing more talk of masks. i live in montgomery county, maryland. you guys have been covering this. they're requiring all the kids to wear masks in schools today, even though the evidence is crystal clear that masks have no effect on reducing the yo spread of the virus. we can't lockdown. i'm in favor of vaccines but we can't mandate those things, and we can never afford to shut down our economy again. >> when you say that you criticize trump for that, when you're talking about some of the deficits, the spending, do you tell them that? if there's a good and bad u

trump, how does he react? >> one thing about -- i have to say this because i just had dinner with the president about a week or two ago. he's in very amazing spirits. he's optimistic about the future. he's very, very appreciative of the people who support him during this outrageous -- all these outrageous indictments against him. never before have we seen the justice department's a politicized. but yes, one thing i respect about trump is that you could go into the oval office with him and i could say, mr. president, i think you're wrong on this policy, and we have a debate. sometimes he'd get angry at me. he doesn't like when people disagree with him. he couldn't fire me because i don't actually work for him. i was one of his advisors trump is very good. you can't be a successful businessman like he is and not know how to make decisions. that he make mostly right decisions? i think yes. did he make wrong decisions? i think yes. he just announced the other day's idea of a big tariff that

he wants to impose. he knows i don't agree with that. i'm a free-trade guy, but i respect the fact that i can go in and disagree with him, and he can be agreeable about that.y >> what is his tariff that he's proposing? what do you think it will do? >> i think i believe that free trade is good for the country. i believe that if you put a tariff on, there is a danger if we don't want to trigger another trade war, because free- trade makes everybody better. it lowers prices to people. one of the things i'm working on is how can we -- if we are going to do a tariff, which is basically everything comes and pays a 10% tax, i think trump is amenable to this. let's cut the taxes on american producers, on manufacturers, on construction projects or technology industries, so we can be number one, so we can put american companies in that competitive advantage. >> hutchinson, kansas, this is

scott. line for democrats, good morning. you're on with steve moore. >> good morning, gentlemen. thank you for taking my call. i really appreciate it and i appreciated the conversation. the gentleman from provo kind of touched on what i was going to mention on the economy. ov i talked to my congressman in a town hall before covid about massive tax cuts that were going to take place and what that was going to do to the national debt. he told me pretty clearly that those tax cuts are going to spur growth and it's going to be neutral to the national debt, which i didn't think would happen, and i was correct. the debt under the last resident was up. i think 20% of the total debt occurred during the last administration. i may be a little off of that number. but of course if i took a credit card out and pumped it up, i'd have a really good

year. the following year, when i have to pay off that credit card, not so much. i just think it's ironic that we don't talk about the debt when one party is in power, but talk about it all the time when they're not. >> this might help more, answering your question here. this from propublica, for our visual learners here, it shows a debt from the obama administration and trump administration. the size of the national debt going from a little over $10 trillion at the beginning of the obama administration, ending right around $20 trillion over the course of two years, and then starting of course at about $20 trillion during the trump administration, up to 28 over the course of four years. you can see were donald trump signed into law the tax cuts and jobs act at this point here, and you can see the

increasing the debt, and then the covid pandemic and that large jump toward the end e there. steve moore, now that we have that visual, go ahead. >> since i have been doing this for 35 years, it doesn't seem like it matters who's in office. the debt just keeps going up and up and up, although interestingly enough for my democratic friends out there, the only president in the last 50 years who reduced the debt was bill clinton, a democrat. i think bill clinton, when it came to economic fears, did a lot of great things for the country. we have a balanced budget. we actually did cut taxes but we also cut spending. we grew the economy and we need to get back to policies that do two things. number one, we have to restrain government spending.

i think everybody knows that it's out of control. and number two, we've got to grow the economy. i just did an analysis looking at, if we were to get back to 3% economic growth, which has been our post world war ii average, if we could get back to that growth rate, than all of those scary forecasts, stuff for the moon, our debt as gdp starts to go down because we need growth. we need people pay more taxes by being reductive, and more businesses. now on the trump record, i will simply say this. i helped write the tax bill. this tax bill reduced our corporate tax rate on our businesses so we can be competitive. before trump came into office we have the highest business tax rates in the world. that's a headstart program for all the countries we are competing with. we brought that rate down. we also did something that was really cool. we have something called if you have money stuck in germany, or china, or mexico, or the bahamas, and you bring that money back to the united states, we'll charge you a 10% tax but you have to invest in here. you know how much money we

brought back? $1 trillion. one of the reasons we have the big jobs boom. by far there's no comparison. joe biden came into office at a time when covid was essentiallyo over and spent $6 trillion at a time. usually when you are in a recovery from a national emergency, you actually start reducing your debt. the president has come in, covid has been over for two years and yet keeps going up and up. i think we have two get growth up and we have to have a more rational tax system that's understandable to people. >> 10 minutes left, we've got steve moore. line still full for you. we go to luis in fredericksburg, virginia, republican. good morning. >> i want to say that i disagree with a lot of what steve moore is saying and i

specifically want to disagree with free-trade argument and the fact that tariffs don't work. they do work. they brought in trillions of dollars from china, and i want to speak to the man from california who seems fake. we have a new development here in fredericksburg, right across the street from us, but the houses started at 350. this was in 2018, 350. they stayed that way until 2020. then all of the sudden, now they're 650, 750. so in three short years the houses have doubled in value across the street. the interest rates were low under president trump and the housing was low. it was cheaper. now all of a sudden it's skyhigh and the interest rates are high. so the man from california has

got it totally wrong, and please remember that the house of representatives, the controller of the purse, was in the hands of the democrats from 2019 to 2022. >> there's a lot there. let's talk about that trade issue that she mentioned, because she's a republican who sounds like she's more in favor of the tariff policy than i am. i just wanted to make one kind of clarification point. i do believe when it comes to china, i think china is an bo enemy of the united states, an adversary. they're a dangerous country, although they are slipping into recession. i don't know if you've seen the news on that, but for the first time in a long time, china's economy is in trouble. >> although there ambassador

wrote an op-ed in the washington post that everything is fine over there. >> we'll see about that. statistics don't -- you can't. just like russia during the cold war, you can't believe any of their statistics. we do know from what's going on in china that their economy slowed down a lot but i think the biggest issue for america over the next 20, 30, at 40 years is not climate change, it's whether the united states of america, this great country of ours, or china will be the world economic leader. and i sure hope, for a lot of reasons, that it's america that's the leader. so we've got to get serious about being competitive with china and we have to take them seriously because i believe they are a military threat, as well. that means a tariff on chinese goods i think might make some a sense. in other words i'm not in favor of putting tariffs on all the countries, but if you've got an enemy like china, then maybe a tariff on their goods and services might have some validity, especially if you use that money to cut our taxes. >> the caller brought up the house of representatives. what advice would you give speaker mccarthy headed into this month where there are

potential government shutdowns looming? what economic advice would you give on this shut down fight? >> i don't want to see this government shutdown. i don't think anybody does. this is going to be a tumultuous -- this is going to go on. so here's my own position. this is something that most americans would agree with. they had a debt deal. they never had this debt deal six months ago and it sets forward these caps on government spending because government spending is completely out of control. if i were kevin mccarthy i would say we have to stick to that. we have to stick to these ceilings on spending and debt. you mentioned earlier about ukraine funding. let's say they want several billion more dollars, the emergency fund. if you're going to spend $2 billion more on ukraine, spend

$2 billion less on something else. come on. the amount of fraud and waste in my budget right now, there is a $380 billion green energy slush fund. get rid of it. we can't afford to be spending money on windmills and things like this. we need to reduce our spending. instead of taking the $2 th billion and adding it to the debt, let's cut the green energy slush fund. we can get control against government spending and i've got to tell people, i've never seen so much waste, so much misspending. we know what happened with covid. it's still happening. there's plenty of things we can cut without affecting the essential services americans want. >> the slush fund you bring up, was that funding from the inflation reduction act? >> there's a political guy. $380 million. $380 billion, they're running at hedge fund out of the white house. i find this especially objectionable because it's all going to the democrat

president. is just a slush fund going to all the democrat companies. it's like a cash in, cash out corrupt system. st >> virginia, jerry, independent line. good morning, you're on with steve moore. >> we've got to get rid of subsidizing clean energy projects. what about all the billions and billions of dollars of subsidies all the oil companies got? how about getting rid of that? >> what subsidies? i don't know what subsidies you are talking about. the oil industry doesn't get subsidies. the oil industry pays more taxes than any other industry. the windmill industry, the solar industry pay no taxes. they get massive billions and billions of dollars of subsidies from the government. >> exxon paid zero taxes in a lot of years. >> know they don't. you should look at exxon's taxes. >> the reason we have inflation is that housing, and because of

the oil industry is overcharging people, the most oil and gas in the world. we are the number one producer. so why are we paying $3.50, four dollars for gas? w >> that's a good question. i think we just did a study on f this. if we just stuck with trump's pro drilling policies, we'd be producing 3 billion more barrels of oil a day. every day we'd be producing 3 million more barrels a day. the price of oil today, john, is $85 a barrel. that means because of biden's war on american energy, the united states economy is losing $250 million a day, and that's a huge loss to the american economy. think about how we can pay down our debt and pay for our essential services if we were getting that money here in the united states. how does