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we continue our conversation on the debt limit and federal spending. we have the former white house budget director during the trump administration. what is your mission. guest: we try to keep the agenda focused on the america first issues we were working on the last administration. we try to keep it focused on improving us in keeping us together as a nation, security, big tech reform, voter validation and that's what we do. we are having a lot of progress around the country. host: america renewing.com is where people can find it. we've been talking about the state of negotiations and hearing about possible emerging deal. what is your take on where we are? guest: i am absolutely amazed at

how bad the parameters of the deal are that are emerging. last night and yesterday, it's basically almost worse than a clean debt limit. if you had said to the democrats , i have to have some deal and it has to have the word caps in it and i will give it to you to come back and give it what you want, this is what it was. two years of caps, the same games between sense and nondefense having caps so if you want to go up on defense, you have to ratchet up nondefense. they don't even get rid of the irs expansion. they remove a portion of it and then they spread around to other agencies that is supposed to trying to -- supposed to be trying to cut the same time. $5 trillion in spending cuts, doing a third of what's necessary to get to a balanced

budget using this opportunity and attornment is way, this does none of that. host: speaker mccarthy and his team are leading the negotiations and i take it you're not impressed with what they've done. guest: i'm amazed at how incompetent they have been. they have never been in a stronger place. they have passed a bill that this town in the country did not think was possible to cap their team together, they had 75/25 polling at their backs, they had the democrats in a situation where they had said you did not negotiate for months and yet up against a deadline that is not a real deadline. they just completely caved. the parameters of where they are headed not only does not do what they said they would, this will not cut spending year-over-year. they will increase defense and veterans affairs and everything else will be a freeze. when you increase veterans by that amount of money and i think they should, you're not going to

get to the cuts that are necessary to even be minimally less than last year. host: was this a function of getting too close to this debt ceiling x date deadline? guest: there has been an unwillingness on the negotiators on the house side part to understand that crisis is manufactured. if you buy into the notion of default, actual default which it is not, default is not paying the treasuries principal and interest. that was never a consideration. they bought into that and as a result, they felt they needed a deal in the next week and as a result, they got deal happy. is it completely done as of this moment? probably not, but they are still deal happy and until they stop that, they will have to come up with a very bad bill.

host: two credit rating agencies today that said they could downgrade the u.s. government aaa debt rating in case of default and morningstar placed the u.s. debt with u.s. implications of a negative even if there is a deal that comes together. fitch said wednesday that it's watching the u.s. debt for brinksmanship. are these folks being swayed by the manufactured crisis? guest: i think they are being swayed to the extent that you have policy officials in the treasury department that are not being clear that joe biden and the treasury department can ensure that every moment that default is not an option. when we talk about timely payment of every government grant and contract, that is different than default. that is where the definition and the debate has been and as a

result, i think they are being swayed and i think they are somewhat politicized. they know what's going on and to the extent they have an opportunity to lean on the scales from the financial community, they are doing it. host: currently at the center for renewing america, the budget director at the white house in the trump administration. what was your view of the debt ceiling when you were budget director at omb before that. guest: there was always an opportunity to talk about the fiscal health of the nation. when you're in the executive branch, you're dealing with a minority into an opportunity for the other side to roll back your entire agenda. i have always believed debt limits are mission-critical to be able to hit the red button from a warning perspective on where we are fiscally. this is an opportunity to do that.

we were putting budget together in the trump administration, more cuts than any president in history and they would send it to the hill and the hill would ignore it paul ryan would know -- would ignore it and we are in a position now because of that. host: the washington post is focusing on crafting the gop debt ceiling playbook. is that a fair description? how much roll have you had within the conference? guest: we are in the position not because of what i've done but because of what the members of congress, the house conservatives have done. they are the ones in the arena. our center puts out good ideas. we try to inform and explain when we think there is a bad deal on the table but the members are making this happen and they've been showing tremendous statesmanship between january and now. they are in a position with his

massive leverage. unfortunately, that leverage is being squandered by the leadership they have been in coalition government with until now. host: is it time to change that leadership? if a deal comes together in the white house and republicans make some sort of deal, is it time to change republican leadership? guest: that's the conversation for the house conservatives. kevin mccarthy and patrick mchenry are going against the coalition government they agreed to. this is in direct conflict to the power-sharing agreement that put them in office. as a result of that, you so great unity in april and what they were able to pass. this is throwing that completely in the trash if they go forward. their plan is to rely on democrats in the house of representatives when they don't need anyone. that's not what the american people were getting when they put house republicans in office. host: callers are waiting for

you already, this is going to the bottom of the hour. this is luanne out of arlington, texas, up first line for democrats, go ahead. caller: good morning. how are you doing? i just wanted to say -- my question is, why do we even have a debt ceiling? other countries don't even have a ceiling. i noticed your organization has in god we trust and i kind of feel that's a little scary being the fact we have a separation of church and state and we shouldn't have that. anyhow, i will end with a quote here -- you goodman once said -- history repeats itself, first as a tragedy and this is a farce.

thank you for your time. guest: thank you and i am not -- i want to say we believe we need to regain a consensus in the country that we are a christian nation and that we have religious liberty for all faiths and we were founded as a nation on the basis of the judeo-christian worldview and if you don't have that, you have a whole society that completely disintegrates. i think you see that across the country. going back to your first question with regard to the debt limit, the debt limit is a balanced budget requirement. we have balanced budget requirement across the states and they are something that is very normal. the people talk about we need a balanced budget requirement at the federal level. i would love one but we have one. it's called the debt limit and it's an opportunity to have a conversation about whether you are balancing your books. it's just so problematic at this point that our debt is so much

and so much spending occurs on the front end that we get to this point where there is so much momentum to raise the debt limit on each and every one of these agents. that doesn't mean we should get rid of it. host: merced, california, rebecca, independent, you are next. caller: good morning, everyone. i'm just wondering if a decision can be made to they have the right to revisit this in december and we will try again? just a question i'm not even sure if they have to make a decision on june 1. anyway i will take your answer offline. thank you. host: this is a crisis moment. guest: june 1 is not a real deadline. there will still be the same ability to pay interest and principal on the debt. what i mean by that is revenues

are coming into the treasury. those revenues are more than enough to pay that. the issue they have is that the revenues are not enough to pay the federal government spending on the rate of the obligations made. you have the question of timely payments that the department of health and human services. this is a fake deadline they have bought into but one of the reasons i'm so concerned about the parameters of what's being discussed, is because it's almost forced and a clean debt limit. they are going to say these are the spending levels we are going to put into place. once washington, d.c. has the consensus about where the appropriations is it's not going to be lower than the caps. it's such a way that in some respect worse than a clean debt limit because a clean debt limit would not have done that.

host: where are these caps that are being discussed? this is what we are hearing the difference between the caps and what is in the republicans bill. how big a difference, can we quantify that in dollars to help people understand the difference? guest: not yet but just in terms of what the house put together. the house put together a five trillion dollar bill. going back to pre-covid levels, locking in the lower level and if you cap defense harmless you would have a 20% cut. you're going to get substantial savings from that and then blowing that out by 1% every single year that's where they got the savings of what they did in the house. fast forward to now, you get two years that you are increasing defense at a higher rate than

they did in the house and you are locking in freeze level for nondefense because the democrats are not agreeing to go lower certainly not to pre-covid levels. they're going to come nowhere near the types of savings they had in the house. host: big paul minnesota, alex, go ahead. caller: i think i wanted tamika quick comparison. i would say what we have right now with overspending and the growth of our federal government is like a cancer. i think it will be $50 trillion of debt and it means we will be at like what is that? certified debt it's three times our defense budget which is just a lot. right now we take the medicine the country needs to solve this we have a lot of people talking

about the debt limit and how difficult it is to let us cut the cancer. the spending we can't sustain and watching congressional hearings you can see large parts of the bureaucracy right now, just don't listen to congress. they don't listen to requests for information and it needs to be reigned in. congress needs to listen to the willingness of the people. thank you very much. host: one of the things you said in your comments, i don't think it's actually that hard. guest: we are not asking to tackle social security, medicare. we are asking them to go back to pre-covid levels on discretionary spending which funds all the agencies. those agencies are increasingly

weaponized against the american people themselves. 77-year-old navy veteran for building ponds on his ranch to fight wildfires. the environmental protection agency, the american people think they can send their tax dollars is putting navy veterans in jail because they didn't have quite the same interpretation as some federal bureaucrat here in d.c. that's a debate i want to have. i don't think that's a cut to the epa and yet that's the type of thing that will do that. we will be able to get a handle on our finances. host: on taking our medicine, democrats will ask the questions and have, what is it only time to take our medicine when a democrat is in the white house? what would you say to them? guest: i would say that's not

the case. we are willing to have these cuts when we were in office in well they just rejected them. they had power, they had agenda and they wanted to use the debt limit to rollback the tax cuts, they wanted to rollback our regulatory ambitions. so we were in a position where we had to recognize what's critical to keep the economy going. but they come to us and said he was the debt limit increase and we want 10 years of spending caps and $4 trillion in spending debt which we have in our budget we would have said great, let's do it. host: about 10 minutes left with russ vought taking your calls as usual. for republicans, democrats and independents. go ahead. caller: good morning, c-span. i have a question.

it's regarding not just the united states debt but the global debt when you look at a lot of the countries in europe and around the world, it's like everybody has a huge amount of debt. maybe all these countries, including the united states, are planning on default and at the same time. and certainly baselining everyone's, just re-baselining the world economy. it just seems like no one is really worried about the debt. guest: i would say i have a different hypothesis and that is that the political clout even the economic class don't think critically about the policy situation. no one in the last two years has really -- the last two years is

when we went back to highs on inflation. if you would have talk to officials they would have said will never have high inflation again. the economic fundamentals came home and what did we experience? the issue you are raising is we have kind of a policy community that never thinks we are going to have consequences to the bad decisions they are making and as a result they never get off the gravy train. we are trying to deal with this now, to get them off the gravy train. host: linda in michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. first, i want to say i want to object what you said about the worldwide inflation. in case you didn't notice, sir, we have a worldwide deadly pandemic.

the united states had more deaths and more cases and more spread than any country in the entire year world. the whole world has looked at it and they can't understand why the richest country in the world handled it in the worst way. the january 6 -- should be a red flag right there. host: let me jump in because you bring up a couple things. guest: with regard to the pandemic if your thesis is right, we would have had a big economic stop which we did and then we would have had this massive growth which we were having. it's called a reshape recovery. joe biden comes into office and passes another who trillion dollars that is not necessary. and we have seen types of inflation that doesn't -- it

wasn't just me warning. this covid relief that's not needed at that point of where we were in the recovery is going to cause inflation and that's what occurred. i understand the frustration with regard to the pandemic. i felt the same way. it's one of the reasons why i'm such a huge critic of the center for disease control. and also these agencies that have complete the -- were completely ineffective in a pandemic. i saw their ineffectiveness. they had to admit that they had to reorganize themselves. you have an argument that the agencies that are largely independent, unfortunately, this country we have to get the more independent. we have to have more policy control of these individuals. those individuals like that are not there for 40 years as stars of agencies that you have no ability to reign them in.

we want to use the pursestrings to be able to get control of these agencies that have been so ineffective. host: explain what your job was if you are budget director of the white house and they pandemic hits, how did your job change during the pandemic? review on fighting the pandemic from what your role was. guest: the budget, the regs and the government execution. so my job was to help the different agencies if a decision was made to help execute the decision. i'd have to deal with the decision that was made by policy officials and then you have the bureaucracy of cdc come back to you and have it rewritten. so over and over you would have these types of issues. and i'd also tried to get the

funding for what we were doing. we needed a lot of money at fema to be able to have flexible amounts to use if there was something in washington. we needed to have flexibility to meet the crisis. my role was execution and it wasn't by favorite role. in terms of on the covid portion i would rather cut spending but from a standpoint of the pandemic, i saw up close and personal the degree to which these agencies had minds and likes of their own and it was difficult to get a handle on and particularly so in a crisis like we were applicants. host: operation warp speed? guest: that was an initive. in terms of it wasn't our

brainchild. host: our guest is with us for about five more minutes, taking your calls as usual. this is patty, juneau, florida. republican, good morning. caller: i have a question. what if all of congress spent more of their salaries than they earned? what would happen? i believe they would have to file for bankruptcy. my question is why would our congress do that to the american people? why are they going to let, why don't they make rules or spend the money dependent on how much money is coming in? guest: no one is arguing that we not pay our bills, the argument

is timely payment of our bills. if you're going to allow a child that gets a credit card for the first time and creates an enormous number of charges on that credit card are you ever going to have a conversation where you take it away or put rules in place to make sure that if you are going to pay it off on their behalf they are not going to the next day go up and wreck up charges again? that is what this debate is about. the issue about default is let's not have the scare tactic. let's focus on what default is and what it's not. it is about u.s. treasuries paying it off and paying the interest. then you have the timely payments of other government obligations. there are still revenues coming in that of value to pay social security, medicare, and the defense needs. this is common when you are dealing with countries about

when you pay your bills. you triage your payments all over the place. you're really trying to tell me we can have a conversation about the timely payment of tony fauci's grant to the wuhan institute? i believe the american people would say that doesn't have to be paid on time so we can have a little more time to get a paradigm shifting $5 trillion debt package to allow us to turn the corner and save our country to be able to protect the american people and go forward into the future. host: do you care to weigh in on what the 14th amendment says? guest: it's a made up argument. the 14th amendment says for any authorized debt authorized by law validity cannot be questions. a debt limit is not that authorization of law. if you have new debt you do not

have debt that is authorized by law. i view this whole thing as a fig leaf that has been constructed to ignore the constitution and the law itself. i view this similarly as calls to print a platinum coin. you are increasing the money supply essentially saying let's print new money. the solutions are often the same. they just come in different packaging here in washington, d.c. host: just a couple more calls. willey in the buckeye state. that morning. caller: mi on yet? host: yes, sir. caller: my suggestion is let it default. you guys keep playing around, putting people in hostage situations and you know the outcome. number one, you can't trust these guys because you have

kushner who came away with $2 billion. also, were not questioning the validity of some of these congresspeople. george santos was arrested, somebody paid his bail. host: will he says let it default. guest: no one wants that. the argument that we are going to have that happen has implications. we are here to see what is default and what it's not. it is not the position that i support to suggest we are not going to pay what has been a hallmark of our country and our economy to have treasuries that are always paid in full. what i'm suggesting is we failed in our country as the political class because we get scared off by crises. there's a lot of reasons for that. there is the advent of modern

communication and media. we have to get out of this business of creating these faults crises by focusing on real problems, preventing actual default and using the time we have to come up with a solution and a package that will actually turn the corner for the country. host: just wanted to get your thoughts on it, just before 9:00 a.m. as we start here reporting about the potential deal coming together a senator from utah saying i will use every procedural tool to impede a debt ceiling deal that doesn't contain the budgetary reforms. i fear things are moving in that direction, that proposal for not face the united states senate. guest: it's a warning shot to the negotiators that if you are, if you move away from coalition

style government and open way from house conservatives and move towards house democrats the team is going to help you pass this bill? you should expect trans warfare next week and i think mike lee is putting them on notice of that. host: one or two more calls. caller: sir, so much of what you say and you talk about our abstract economic principles, a lot of it because of for my head let me ask you one simple question am i going to get my social security check in june? just yes or no and i will take your answer off the air. guest: yes. it's entirely a decision for joe biden. there is more than enough revenue coming in even if house republicans took a hard over the next week the patient -- to pay for your social security check. host: mark, good morning.

caller: good morning. i just want to ask a quick question and hopefully get some clarity here. i've been working in tele-sector budgeting for like 10 years. i'm hearing a lot of in the weeds talk about how we are going to balance i just want to hear straight up from your guest where are the targeted cuts going to come from? we are talking about 1.5 trillion is the deficit figure. so, we are talking about epa, arresting subdued for ponds let's hear straight up. guest: the bureaucracies themselves are the ones that make the decisions on putting someone in jail for building

ponds on their land. it is the bureaucracies themselves that is pushing critical race theory and culturally responsive learning at the department. it is the bureaucracy itself that the department of housing and urban health is pushing the uprooting of single-family neighborhoods across the country because they want to have big apartment buildings around metro stations. it is the bureaucracy itself pushing or in aid, massive foreign aid so we have the funding of not just statues but lgbt activists and pride events. we have to have a lot of bureaucracy cut and eliminated at the department of education. the department of health and human services that has been weaponized as we've seen with the nih. not just putting money towards cancer but putting money towards

what caused the pandemic. i have listed all of these cuts in the fall and we've been very clear about where these reforms should be. that gets you a third of the way to a balanced budget. the other two thirds is dealing with the social safety net and turning it back into an actual net instead of a hammett. host: the former white house budget director for renewing america, america renewing