In the News: The Debt Ceiling

N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you? N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you? J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good, in part listeners because we're doing another in the news episode. N. Rodgers: We are, I would like you to tell me why everybody is on fire about the debt ceiling and I don't mean the debt ceiling is, oh, we should get to that at some point, but apparently, we have hit whatever this debt ceiling thing is and it is causing major fracas in national politics. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. What Nia is referencing listeners is that the day we are recording this particular episode and usually Nia and I don't usually make too big of a deal about when we record particular episodes but, sometimes we deal with in the news episodes but the day we are recording, is the day after the Secretary of the Treasury. N. Rodgers: Janet Yellen. J. Aughenbaugh: Janet Yellen, basically told the United States Congress, the US public, and for that matter, the rest of the world that the United States had hit its debt ceiling, which begs the question, what is a debt ceiling? Well, it has nothing to do with the ceiling's inability. It has everything to do with the federal government's ability to continue to borrow money. Technically, the debt ceiling is this; it is a legal restriction on how much money the federal government can borrow to pay its bills. Seems to be pretty straightforward. N. Rodgers: Okay, so first of all, we start with the notion that there is never, and I mean, never a time when the federal government is not in debt. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. N. Rodgers: We've never not been in debt since the beginning it's what Hamilton was saying this is why we need a Treasury because we're in debt. We've been in debt since before we were a country. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: And we will be in debt after a comet hits the earth and destroys everything. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. N. Rodgers: The United States will still be in debt. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they will all be in a [inaudible]. N. Rodgers: It's not a matter of whether there's debt because part of what I know this is, wow, economists everywhere are about to begin to weep, but debt is actually an important way that the economy runs because debt involves interest and that's why people make money off of loaning other people money and there are reasons that you want to have some debt. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. N. Rodgers: But what the argument appears to be is we'd like to stop having debt now. That's what the Republican side seems to be saying. J. Aughenbaugh: Okay, so before we get to the current debt ceiling, if you will, crisis. N. Rodgers: Oh, I'm sorry. I leaped ahead. J. Aughenbaugh: Bonfire, etc. Nia you make a really good point and I tell this to my students with some regularity. The United States is a country that came into existence with significant debt. After we fought the Revolutionary War and this just blows my students' minds, we owed the country that we just defeated in the war a whole bunch of money. N. Rodgers: Right. Which is not unusual by the way, for the winning side to demand payment. We did that to Germany after World War I [inaudible] said. J. Aughenbaugh: No, Nia, flip it around. We won the Revolutionary War but we still owed money to the country that we just beat in the war. N. Rodgers: Oh, I see what you're saying you're right that's the opposite. Okay, my bad. It's not a good example forget World War I as an example, people never mind. J. Aughenbaugh: But, nevertheless, because the colonies were created with charters, which were contracts. Contractually. N. Rodgers: We had money. J. Aughenbaugh: Those who still owed Great Britain a whole bunch of money after the war. N. Rodgers: Here's what you can do as a nation. You can say, good luck trying to get it to come over here and see if you can take it. You can try that but then nobody else will make contracts with you because they'll be like that guy renege whenever he feels like it and that's not okay. That's what happens when you have third-world dictatorships where people are just like, "I'm not going to pay my bills." Well, but then we're not going to loan you any more money or we're not going to do business with you. We still needed to do business with Britain, even though we were independent of Britain as a nation. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: We still needed them to buy our stuff. We still needed to buy some of their stuff. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: That's how those things work. J. Aughenbaugh: Now, what's fascinating about the debt ceiling and there's only one other Western democracy in the world that has a debt ceiling. N. Rodgers: Oh, really the others just flagrantly borrowed however much they want. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They don't even worry about it. N. Rodgers: We don't have a top number. Who is the other one? J. Aughenbaugh: Denmark. N. Rodgers: How very dangerous? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, so when did it arise? Interestingly enough, it arose in the 19 teams, specifically 1917, because Congress was concerned that it was appropriating money to executive branch agencies and then the agencies were ignoring the lawmakers, members of Congress, specific restrictions or directions on how they could spend the money. N. Rodgers: I'm going to give you $350, but you have to spend it on office supplies and then the agency says, I spent $485 on beer and trend chips. J. Aughenbaugh: Transportation. N. Rodgers: The Congress was saying, but we just said you can't do. J. Aughenbaugh: What Congress decided to do was instead of providing oversight over the executive branch agencies. N. Rodgers: Because why would you want to do that? J. Aughenbaugh: They went ahead and did it and run. They went ahead and said, well, we'll set it overall debt limit and if the executive branch gets to that debt limit they can't borrow any more money, so then they're screwed so they will change their behavior. Won't they? N. Rodgers: That was the theory. J. Aughenbaugh: That was the theory. N. Rodgers: Probably some of that also was we don't want to get just so far into debt that it's crazy balls. I mean, at this point, how much are we in debt? Oh, how much do we owe Aughie? J. Aughenbaugh: Well, the current debt limit, the debt ceiling is $31.4 trillion. N. Rodgers: Sure. N. Rodgers: TR that million or billion. J. Aughenbaugh: Correct me if I'm wrong, Nia, in terms of zeros. N. Rodgers: It runs off the end of the check. The check has to be one of those really big checks like remember one of those reader's digest things are that can be [inaudible] yeah. Exactly. It's got to be one of those in order to fit all the zeros on it. J. Aughenbaugh: Why should we care about this? The debt ceiling is right. N. Rodgers: First of all, if the debt ceiling exists, currently in law it exists. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: That 31.4 trillion is what was in-law or what is in-law. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah and according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, we hit that limit on Thursday, January 19th. N. Rodgers: 2023. J. Aughenbaugh: 2023. Now, since 1917, according to the treasury department. The debt ceiling or the debt limit has been raised by the congress and the president over 70 times. N. Rodgers: Has it ever been lowered? J. Aughenbaugh: Typically, no. N. Rodgers: Okay. It only goes up. This is a one-way elevator. It only goes up. We're going to need more money. We're going to need more money. We're going to need more money. Never. We found some money in the loose change in the couch and we're going to lower that limit. That's interesting. It makes sense, because debt tends to breed debt. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Okay. Congress has basically two choices in regards to raising the debt limit or the debt ceiling. Either they can raise it a certain amount or they can raise it for a certain period of time, right? N. Rodgers: Okay. J. Aughenbaugh: In this particular case, the debt ceiling was last raised during the Trump administration and they picked a specific amount, okay? N. Rodgers: Okay. Which got us to here. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, you got to us to here. N. Rodgers: Okay. Now the argument is we need that to go up. That's what the White House is. The executive is saying. We we're going to need some more trillions. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and the newly elected Republican majority in the House, has basically said, to President Biden and the Democratic-controlled senate. Well, if you guys want to raise the debt ceiling, then you're going to have to give us something in exchange. What the House Republicans want in exchange is agreement to reduce government spending and they haven't specified where yet. But they want spending reductions. The Democrats, President Biden and the Democrats in the Senate have said, that's a non-starter. We're not going to negotiate. N. Rodgers: That seems like a tough stance to take. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, particularly because it then begs the question, what happens if the debt ceiling is not raised? N. Rodgers: That's what I was going to ask you next. If there's a stalemate, which I can't, apparently we are currently under a stalemate. What is Janet Yellen doing? Sorry, folks. This is the day after. You're going to hear this a few days late, but this is the day after we hit the debt ceiling, today when she goes to the office, what is she going to do about, well, you can't spend any more money. J. Aughenbaugh: According to Treasury Secretary Yellen, the Treasury Department can take, "Extraordinary measures to delay the impact of not raising the debt ceiling." Now, what this typically means is the Treasury Department can decide to not make payments that don't have to occur for months. For instance, if the federal government has to make contributions to federal government retirement plans, they can hold off on doing so until later in the year. Because many of those payments are for federal government workers who were going to retire next year or in five years or 10 years. N. Rodgers: Their future payments, so they can hold on that and theoretically make it up. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they can theoretically go ahead and make it up. N. Rodgers: But that's a dangerous game to play. J. Aughenbaugh: That is a dangerous game, because if all of a sudden a whole bunch of federal government workers decided to retire. N. Rodgers: Then suddenly those payments aren't 10 years down the road there 10 weeks down the road. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Right. N. Rodgers: Okay. J. Aughenbaugh: Or the federal government can hold off on going forward with like future contracts. N. Rodgers: We were going to build this building on this base and we had contracted this construction company to do that. We're going to put that off for six months. Everybody who was going to work in that building still has to stay in their trailers or whatever because we're not going to build that building yet? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: They can put off things like capital improvements and stuff like that? J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: There's only so long you could do that I imagined? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, in according to Yellen, these extraordinary measures will give Congress and the president until some point in the month of June. N. Rodgers: Some unknown date and time at which point it's all done. J. Aughenbaugh: At that point, then the federal government will have to institute shut down protocols in plants. Because at that point the federal government won't have enough money to actually like pay its current employees or to go ahead and send out Social Security checks, etc. N. Rodgers: She's giving a warning about six months in advance, roughly? J. Aughenbaugh: About five months. N. Rodgers: Five months in advance and saying, you guys need to figure this out. Or there will be catastrophic effects. Because we know when governments shut down. J. Aughenbaugh: It costs money. N. Rodgers: It costs a lot of money. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: You still have to pay those people their lapsed salary because you don't want them to quit and go work somewhere else. Also, there's some stuff in the federal government you can't shut down. For instance, the National Zoo. The National Zoo closes to visitors when there's a shutdown, but you still have to feed the animals because it turns out you can't just wait six weeks to feed an animal. You have to be humane and feed the animals as you go or catastrophic things happen. J. Aughenbaugh: You have to continue to employ and pay members of the military for national defense purposes. Need to have that have Border Patrol agents. N. Rodgers: All of your law enforcement military stuff still has to work and some of your basic like IT functions still have to work, because people need to be able to put in forms to the government and all that stuff even there's nobody to look at anyway. Shutdowns are a bad thing and we should try to avoid them when we can. J. Aughenbaugh: But it's not just bad for the government and this is where then economist's way in. Because if the federal government stopped spending money, it will have a huge negative ripple effect. It's like a tsunami. That happens after there's like an earthquake in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, right? N. Rodgers: Right. J. Aughenbaugh: The earthquake in the middle of the Pacific. N. Rodgers: Is bad enough. J. Aughenbaugh: Is bad enough. But it is the resulting tsunami that occurs. N. Rodgers: That murders people. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because what most economists are predicting is that if the government then shuts down at some point, say for instance May and June. All those government workers who will eventually get paid won't be getting paid then, which means they'll stop their economic activity, right? N. Rodgers: Right. They'll stop spending money, which is what you do when you're suspended from your job for whatever reason. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: The first thing you do is stop spending any money. Guess there are bills you absolutely have to cover, you have to cover your rent or mortgage. You have to cover your food, you have to cover your power. You stop spending any discretionary anything. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: That's the first thing that you do. J. Aughenbaugh: In the American economy, domestically is predicated on Americans spending trillions of dollars on discretionary spending. From Amazon purchases, the going out to bars and restaurants. N. Rodgers: I was going to say President Biden is going to call you personally and say, I'm going to need you to buy a cup of coffee today. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, don't be making that at home Rodgers I need you to go to wah-wah, okay? N. Rodgers: And buy three cups there. J. Aughenbaugh: Every single day. N. Rodgers: It will be helpful if you could pick up a candy bar or a sandwich while you're at it? J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right. Continue to put gas into your tank. Because we need you guys to do this. But it's not just the effect on the United States economy domestically. The United States economy has a huge importance for the international economy, Nia. N. Rodgers: Because Americans buy all kinds of stuff. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes N. Rodgers: Like from all over the world. J. Aughenbaugh: We are the consumer engine that drives the international economy. If the Americans stopped. N. Rodgers: Stopped buying stuff. J. Aughenbaugh: Then European markets, Asian markets, to a certain extent, African markets are all going to be like, Whoa, again, think about a tsunami. Hundreds of miles away some beach is going to get absolutely wiped out, because the United States federal government goes into a shutdown. N. Rodgers: Right. N. Rodgers: Debt ceiling for the longest time, that wasn't a thing. They just raised the debt ceiling and moved on and everybody grumbled about it. J. Aughenbaugh: But it's basically been, Nia, over the last 30 years where the Republican Party has used the raising of the debt ceiling as a negotiating ploy to get a handle on federal government spending. N. Rodgers: Because in their fundamentals, the two parties are really the one line that can be drawn between them, I think, relatively clearly, is that Republicans generally believe in small government, hands-off government. The least money spent by the government, the better. We want there to be this fiscal conservativeness about us, and moderate Democrats want bigger government. They want the government to take care of social issues that can be handled through finances, Social Security, for instance, or other things like that. Those two things come into opposition when you have one side that doesn't want to spend money, and the other side that does want to spend money, and they both believe that that's the answer to fixing Americans' lives. The government needs to get out of your way and give you more of your money so that you can do whatever you want, lower taxes, blah, blah, blah. The government needs to help people who can't help themselves or people who are struggling, What are we going to do, just let them lay down in the street? No, of course not. That's where the argument comes in. But apparently now, it's gotten a little sharper, like there's more name-calling. J. Aughenbaugh: Because in the past, Nia, at least initially the opposing forces, if you will, would say things publicly and then they would negotiate behind the scenes. We saw this for instance, during the Obama administration. Barack Obama wanted to raise the debt ceiling, the House was controlled once again by Republicans. But then eventually, Barack Obama agreed to some minimal reductions in domestic spending, which would allow the Republicans to go ahead and say, we extracted this. N. Rodgers: We have a victory. J. Aughenbaugh: For raising the debt ceiling, and the Democrats could go ahead and say, "We helped avert a government shutdown." Nia, I want to go back to our previous point really quickly. It's not just the effect on the economy. The United States federal government debt is considered probably the safest, most secure way to invest your money in the world. N. Rodgers: Like our treasury bonds and stuff like that? J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Because the way the federal government typically raises money to pay off its debt is through government instruments like treasury bonds and T-Bills, Treasury Bills, and investors like them because the US federal government has never defaulted. In our country's history, even though we've had so much debt, we've never defaulted on our debt. N. Rodgers: We've always paid the bill. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Now, as an investor, you don't get a huge return when you buy treasury bond. But you know if you catch it in, you're going to get your money plus whatever interest accrued, and that's secure. We've talked about this in previous podcast episodes. It's like the banking system. It's investing in the stock market. If investors have a lot of confidence, then a lot of money gets put into the system and gets circulated. But if they don't have confidence, then they're unwilling to go ahead and make deposits at banks. They're unwilling to go ahead and invest money in a new company with a new widget. N. Rodgers: They're not going to buy bonds if they think a government is not stable. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: No shade, Zimbabwe, but nobody is out here buying your T-Bills. That's a huge thing. J. Aughenbaugh: Think about the Greek government, their government bonds after the Great Recession of 2007-2009, Nia, were considered junk bonds. The only investors who would buy Greek government bonds wanted to write off the investments as losses on their taxes because they had no value. They had no value. N. Rodgers: Although if you waited, then they have value now. J. Aughenbaugh: That reliability and trust is why investors around the world, including other governments, will buy huge amounts of government treasuries because they know it is the safest investment. If you're the Chinese government and you want a sock away a whole bunch of money that you've made by producing a lot of cheap goods that the rest of the world has bought, you buy government treasury bonds, because you know it's a safe investment. N. Rodgers: That the US is good for it. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, because we never default. But when you have this debt ceiling crisis, all of a sudden investors are, whoa, wait a minute here. N. Rodgers: They're not as stable as we thought. Maybe we shouldn't be buying. J. Aughenbaugh: Or maybe we should cash in some of our bonds. N. Rodgers: To make sure that we get some of our money rather than none of our money. The nice thing about the US is that one of the things that we have, I know we're off the gold standard and blah, blah, blah, but we still have a lot of resources. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: We're not in a desperate situation of their walking away, but if we defaulted on a bond, if there were a bunch of investors who suddenly got defaulted on, they would walk away, and they would be right to do that. They're smart to do that. Because if we started defaulting, it would probably be one of those things where you couldn't stop, where it would be just cycle after cycle of default. J. Aughenbaugh: Because psychologically a lot of investors will go ahead and follow the leadership of those who have a greater volume of government treasury bonds. That's what happened during the Great Depression when you had to run on the banks, when you hear one bank could not repay its depositors. N. Rodgers: You run to your bank. J. Aughenbaugh: Then when it's two or three banks, then all of a sudden you're, hey, I need to get there. Now all of a sudden you have a crisis. Listeners, Nia and I, one of our favorite television shows of all time is The West Wing. The West Wing had an episode, and I actually looked this up, Nia. This was in 2005 where they had an episode that had a subplot about should the Bartlet administration negotiate raising the debt ceiling. N. Rodgers: I know this. One of the character says, "So this debt ceiling thing is routine or is it the end of the world?" The other one says? J. Aughenbaugh: Both. N. Rodgers: It is both routine and the end of the world. J. Aughenbaugh: The end of the world. Because it's happened so many times, like well over 70 times. But also if it actually did materialize where the debt ceiling was not raised, it would be the end of the financial world. I hate to engage in like verbally. N. Rodgers: It would be pretty awful worldwide. What would have to happen is that the entire world would have to reset on someone else's economy. Talk about nobody being strong enough for that to happen. That's the problem, is right now, China's economy is tanking because their demographics are a problem there. COVID issues were a problem. Germany is not nearly as strong as it once was. But I do think something that should be kept in mind, if I may, is even this argument causes stress in the markets. We need to stop having this argument because every time this comes up, the markets freak out. J. Aughenbaugh: There has to be some structural changes put into place here because the debt ceiling is not required by the US Constitution. N. Rodgers: We can fix this by just taking off the debt ceiling like every other country. J. Aughenbaugh: Country or come up with a different, if you will, a structural change in law so that this does not happen again, and it's happened in. N. Rodgers: Every three or four years, like it comes up. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it comes up. N. Rodgers: They do what I call kicking the can down the road. They'll raise it by two-and-a-half trillion dollars or whatever, and that'll get us through April of 2025. Then all of a sudden it won't be Janet Yellen because by then she will have quit, and gotten into retirement, but there'll be somebody else that will say, we're getting close to the debt ceiling. What do you guys want to do? J. Aughenbaugh: By 2025, Janet Yellen first of all, will go to some spa and decompress for like half a year. N. Rodgers: Which she should. J. Aughenbaugh: Then she'll go ahead, take some part-time teaching gig at some prestigious university where she can basically just go ahead and say, you guys think you got it rough? N. Rodgers: Let me tell you what being Treasury Secretary is like. J. Aughenbaugh: Before that I was chair of the Federal Reserve. Give me a break. N. Rodgers: You're not at all meals just in case. I have a question though, about the current problem with the GOP within its own party, is that there are the moderates and the conservatives. Then there are there Tea Party edge folk who are like no raising of the debt. We will not do this. It doesn't matter. If the government shuts down, that's a good thing. They have to get themselves together before they can negotiate. Am I reading that correctly? J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. The Speaker of the House, McCarthy doesn't have a large enough majority in the house to ignore the Tea Party wing that would have no problem with a government shutdown. N. Rodgers: As we saw by a 15-time vote to get the speakership. He does not have an argument-proof majority. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He cannot ignore them which means at some point in time, in any of his negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden. Behind closed doors, he will just have to go out and say, hey guys, unless you help me, I can't control my caucus. N. Rodgers: I can't get them on board unless you give me something to give them, and he gave them a piece of red meat for them. J. Aughenbaugh: Because if not. N. Rodgers: They can hold this up. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, 18-22 House Republicans who demonstrated during the vote on who would be the next speaker of the House. They are quite willing to shut down the House of Representatives until they got their way. Shutting down the government is not beyond their scope. N. Rodgers: Or beyond their will. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: They have a will to do that. They would be willing to do that as a group. By the same token, Biden has dug in. He's like, I'm not changing anything. Take it or leave it, suck it up and go away which I understand from a negotiation point, you start with the maximum and then you work your way backwards because if you say, I'll happily meet you in the middle, then other people will say, well then I want three-quarters. I get where he's coming from with that, but he's going to have to negotiate as well. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because the only way the Speaker of the House at some point might have some leverage with the, let's just call them the Tea Party wing is if politically, the poles turn on the house are Republicans. But again, that usually only happens once the government goes ahead and shuts down for three days, five days a week. N. Rodgers: When people can't go to the state park and they can't get a fishing license and they can't do whatever the things are that they're trying to do, or they can't pay their taxes like right now. J. Aughenbaugh: This is huge. Tax day is April 15th. The IRS has already told the entire largest state of the country, California, that because of all their rainstorms, they can have extensions. That means millions of Californians are going to wait to pay their taxes or submit their tax returns until possibly May, maybe June. N. Rodgers: If the IRS then says, oh, yeah, we'd be processing that except we're shut down? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: I mean, California is like the 10th largest economy in the world. J. Aughenbaugh: If it was its own country, it would be at least the seventh-largest. Some economists say the fifth largest. N. Rodgers: We cannot have California not economically working. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: I understand if you're a Republican conservative from Missouri, but you still need California. You just do. J. Aughenbaugh: Think about this too, Nia. I thought this was really interesting. Yellen basically went ahead and said, at some point in June. Now, for those of you who work throughout the year and you really don't take summer vacations, you're like, what's the big deal about June? For those of us who have kids, that's summer vacation time. But if you got millions of federal government workers who weren't working, they're not taking vacations. N. Rodgers: You have millions of federal workers who weren't working at places where other people would take vacations. Like it's a double whammy of, they're not going on vacation to Miami Beach, and guess what kids? You're not going on vacation to Yosemite because it'll be closed. J. Aughenbaugh: The cascading effects of this and the fact that it could happen in June, N. Rodgers: It's terrible. J. Aughenbaugh: It's terrible. N. Rodgers: The only way that would be worse is if it happened in December. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the week before Christmas. N. Rodgers: Really what we've arrived at is there will be negotiations. J. Aughenbaugh: There has to be. N. Rodgers: It's just that it's going to be a matter of who gives what and how much in order to get this ceiling. They're not going to be able to walk away. These people who say, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling. Yes, you are because we have to. J. Aughenbaugh: For the Democrats who are like, we're not going to go ahead and negotiate of spending cuts. N. Rodgers: Yes, you are. J. Aughenbaugh: I'm sorry. Because if you don't throw the speaker some sort of bone, he's not going to be able to reign in his caucus. He just can't. N. Rodgers: Pushing him against the wall two weeks after he becomes speaker, is only going to make your working relationship with him even more impossible than it already is. Hat's not helpful to anybody. What Aughie and I are pleading for, is civil discourse. We come back to this on a regular basis, if you all would just sit down and negotiate, honestly, here's what I can give, here's what I can't give. Because if I give this thing, then 20 of my members won't sign off and we won't get anywhere. You just going to have to do it. J. Aughenbaugh: Even the Democrats in the Senate and President Biden understand that if the Democrats want to retain control of the Senate in 2024, and have any hope of regaining control of the House, he can't put moderate Democrats out on an island, in regard to government spending. Because many of those moderate Democrats, actually do believe that some government spending can be reduced. But if you print them out on an island, and force them to go ahead and run on a negotiation that led to a government shutdown that drove the US economy into a recession, that's a non-starter. Yes. N. Rodgers: Right now, the economies of the world are precarious enough. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: We should probably not add more precarity to that situation. Right now it's balanced on literally a knife's edge, the governments of the world. Because coming out of COVID has been horrible for everybody. Financially, it's just a nightmare. Let's not make this more nightmarish by saying, by the way, the largest economy in the world just defaulted. J. Aughenbaugh: Moreover, Nia, you went ahead and mentioned this up in a few moments ago and we can close on this. I don't know how many listeners took note of the report late last week, early this week, where the Chinese death rate last year was higher than its birth rate. So much of the world's production of cheap, affordable goods, is predicated on China having a large working population. N. Rodgers: Their demographics are dropping like a stone. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and we knew this with Western European and Western developed democracies. The grain of those populations. If anything, if you take a look at what happened to Japan, who was the United States' biggest economic rival in the 1970s and '80s, and by the end of that millennium, Japan had fallen two or three spots, and is now struggling to go ahead and maintain any type of economic continuity. This is huge for the international economy. Nia, as you pointed out, we're at a point right now to where a lot of nations are just like, how are we going to recover from the pandemic? How are we going to go ahead and deal with the headwinds of some really large forces that heretofore they have not come up with any attempted solutions? Attempted, including ones that might fail. You can't have the world's largest economy because of its consumer appetites, that drives the rest of the world. You can't have it just go into a recession because the two political parties are unwilling to go ahead and say, can't we negotiate? N. Rodgers: Get yourselves together and fix it. That's what Aughie and I are demanding, get yourselves together and fix it. J. Aughenbaugh: Because many in the American public are not going to care who's at fault when middle of the June rolls around. N. Rodgers: Nobody can go on vacation. I'm just saying people will need their vacation in June and if you cut them off from their vacation, woe be unto you. That is not going to be good look for anybody. We're going to come back in June and revisit this if it's an issue. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Or if a deal gets done before June and I think and pray it does, we'll come back and we'll talk about it again. N. Rodgers: Cool. Thanks, Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.