Performative Budgets Real Debt: Steve Bannon Exposes GOP Budget Scam

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Back to Rob, first off, lay out the case. This is actually a proposal that’s out there. I think it’s from the Republican Study Committee. Is this the Republican Study Committee’s take on this, this 10 year budget to get to break even at 10 years?

ROB BLUEY: That’s right, Steve. The Republican Study Committee traditionally puts out their budget first, but now you can expect others to start releasing their budgets as well. Some individual members of Congress do that. Of course, the president in the White House will do that.

And I think the thing that’s key, as you and Joe were talking about previously on the show, is the uncontrollable spending that we’ve witnessed, particularly during four years of Joe Biden, but I mean, let’s not discount George W. Bush and Barack Obama and others who contributed to this problem. When George W. Bush left office, the national debt was about $10 trillion. Today, it is $38 trillion. I mean, so you can just imagine what’s happened in the course of those presidencies.

And the Republican Study Committee is vowing that they can get it balanced in a matter of 10 years. Now, that’s just making sure that there’s no deficit, no more money added to that debt.

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Now, how do we do that? Now, the president has came out and said he wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget, of which we love the military and love the president. We’re not fans of that. But let’s leave that aside. And the Republican Study Committee should be people should realize it’s a huge entity. It used to be kind of the center right. It’s not full MAGA because it’s got a lot of, I would say moderates in there, but it’s a kind of center right group.

But for years, they’ve been going through this exercise. And I think it’s a good bellwether to kind of get it as a baseline.

Just walk me through mechanics of how do you go roughly from, we got five, you know, Scott Bessent’s the, and we’re going to have Tax Network USA on here today to talk about that. Scott Bessent’s overseeing the IRS. And Scott’s got a mandate to squeeze every penny he can possibly get, but you have a $2 trillion deficit. It looks like you have a $5.5 trillion coming in, 7, 7.5 trillion going out. How do they propose to close that, sir?

ROB BLUEY: Well, and first to your point about the Republican Study Committee, I believe they have 189 members, and right now there are 218 House Republicans, so pretty much includes a vast majority of House Republicans.

And so by them putting their weight behind it, you would hope that that would signal that they’re serious about cutting government spending. But Steve, you and I both know, because President Trump tried to do this upon taking office last year, how difficult it is when you actually get into the process of eliminating government programs and reducing that deficit that you talked about.

And so what the Republican Study Committee is attempting to do here is to go through department by department and eliminate what areas that they think are duplicative, wasteful, try to find efficiencies throughout the government. Obviously, the president adding, you know, this $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon will be a hurdle that lawmakers in Congress will have to overcome.

But I think just like you and I are expected to balance our budget on a monthly basis, we should expect the same of our congressional representatives. And Republicans have for years, if not decades, promised that they were going to do this all the way going back to the Tea Party when this issue first surfaced and became such an explosive topic among conservatives in particular.

I think it’s really incumbent upon them to do so. And again, to go back to the point that Joe and you were making earlier, the spending that we saw during the Biden years contributed to the inflation crisis that the American people faced. Now, Scott Bessent and Donald Trump have done yeoman’s work to bring those levels down, the levels of inflation down. But think about how much more progress we can make and the economic juice we can give them this White House if we were able to also reduce government spending.

STEVE BANNON (HOST): But isn’t a charade because what we’re seeing out of Minneapolis, the federal part of that was all approved? The group they’ve got in this budget currently, I think it’s 350 million dollars.

So how can people take credibility from the House? And look, I’m calling the House now, I have been for six months, the Duma, because it’s just all performative.

How do they get around the fact that everything we’re seeing with the Somalians, and it’s worse than that. You know, we’re going to have David Hoke on here probably tomorrow when he releases his new report. The Somalian thing you see now, it’s actually 10x when you look at all the programs, and it’s in every state, particularly California and New York, which is worse.

This is the business model of the radical Democrats, right? They get the illegal aliens in here. They get these bogus legal immigration. Then they get them on welfare programs. They are stealing. And this is their, this is their Tammany Hall vote getting.

So how can people take seriously the Republican Study Committee, which I’m all for? I mean, my point is let’s do it in five years, not 10, because you’re going to have the economic growth, the GDP growth underneath it to actually make this thing doable.

But when Congress that we’ve had since 22 has approved budgets that have gone and led to the Somalian thing, and the Republicans looked the other way, you saw those fights. You see them on the floor in the middle of the night when they’re going through the appropriations. You got Eli Crane and people out there, you know, Andy Biggs, the budget hawks, the deficit hawks, arguing we’ve got to cut these programs, and the Republicans are worse than the Democrats, are just kicking the can down the road, sir.

ROB BLUEY: Steve, there’s so much I want to say there.

So first of all, one of the things that first got me into this fight was the move way back when in the 2000s, when people like Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint and others were rallying against earmarks, and we were able to successfully stop earmarks in Congress.

Now, earmarks as a grand scheme of things didn’t really make that much of a dent in the budget deficit. However, it was an important step because everybody talked about earmarks as the gateway drug to more spending. And if you got rid of earmarks, then maybe Republicans would start to make other changes to those welfare programs.

You’re absolutely correct. The fact that we’ve had millions of illegal aliens come into this country and now take benefits that should go to the American people is a huge problem and needs to be addressed.

But yes, even look at these recent budgets. And I go back to a conversation I had with Russ Vought, who was the director of OMB during President Trump’s first term, and is again. And he said oftentimes the problem lies exactly where you just placed it, Steve. It’s with Congress. They refuse to make the tough choices and the budget cuts.

And that has been a consistent theme going all the way back to when Republicans had control, even in President Trump’s first term. And so I hope that they could move at a pace where they balance the budget within five years. Maybe we should demand that they have an even aggressive timeline because it’s going to only help President Trump achieve what he wants and Scott Bessent have the economic growth that they think is possible.

STEVE BANNON (HOST): I’ll tell you, well, I’ll talk to you after the show. We’ll put some different assumptions in on economic growth, and Rob Bluey, Daily Signal and the World, and we will come up with a five year plan.

But here’s where they catch us every time, is when they want a defense budget increase, which is really the industrial policy of the United States. Let’s be blunt about it. It’s industrial policy of the United States.

So every time we want a defense department increase, we’ve got to accept some percentage social program increase. And the catch is you can’t go and really look at the social programs. That’s the Democrat slush fund of how they stay in business. If you choke that down and cut it off, they’re out of business. That’s their business model.

Their business, their little starter cash, is put up by the sources and those guys right in these NGOs. That’s to get the field troops out there. But the way they fund it, because they’re not going to fund all of it, is on taxpayer money. And those taxpayer monies are all through these social programs.

And when the Defense Department, when you want to increase defense budget, sacrosanct is the social, as you know, Rob. The social programs got to go up. But most importantly, they won’t let you get under the hood of the social programs.

What Minneapolis is showing is the business model of the Marxist, of the Red Green Alliance. It’s right there in living color.

In WarRoom Texas, one of the things we’re drilling down on, we don’t really even have a handle yet on what Texas, the state of Texas and the federal government. There’s one number out there is $4 billion of state and federal money have gone to build mosque, Islamic centers, school choice for the Islamic thing. That’s their business model.

If we can lance that boil, and I remember, because at Breitbart, as you know, Rob, we partner with you all the time. The years we fought for earmarks, and you’re right. Overall, it’s a small part, but it was a gateway drug to bigger spending.

Now they’ve gone back and they’re doing earmarks like crazy. So we have a big fight in front of us, Rob, but we’ll partner with you because right now the reason the legislators don’t take it seriously is that it’s still financeable.

At some point, in 2035, I think you look at the 10 year budget. It’s $2.5 trillion annually just for the interest payments. It’s over $2 trillion. So when this hits, it’s going to hit like a punch from Sonny Liston right up in your face and you’re not going to be able to recover from it.

Rob Bluey, your thoughts, sir.

ROB BLUEY: Yes. And I think the other important thing to point out is that when you have strong economic growth under a president like Donald Trump and a Treasury secretary like Scott Bessent, it’s perhaps not necessarily the most glaring thing that’s staring you in the face.

But with a Democrat in control who’s only going to pour gasoline on that fire and probably not have the type of economic growth for our country, yes, Steve, you’re absolutely correct that it is going to be a serious challenge that we will have to confront.

And who is it going to impact most, probably those young people who are entering the workforce and are staring at years to try to pay down this huge debt.

You know, to go back to an earlier point that you said, you know, what’s the old quote? Once you have a government program, it’s impossible to actually remove it or eliminate it. And that is true, as we saw with Obamacare and these subsidies, right?

I mean, the Democrats put that into place. It’s why for years, we as conservatives tried to repeal Obamacare and get it out of the government because we knew that this was going to be a situation where eventually the government would say, oh, we’ll take care of you, don’t worry, we’ll just put more subsidies on it.

And then you end up with a situation like we’re in now where nobody wants to give up their subsidies. And somebody’s going to have to be the bad guy. And too often that falls on the feet of the Republicans who, in some case, there’s too weak need to say no, and you have a situation where it goes on in perpetuity.

And so I understand they have a narrow margin in the House. It shrunk even more at the beginning of January, unfortunately. But there are some tough calls they need to make.

And by the way, Steve, they can start this month because let’s not forget that the government funding runs out on January 30th, and there’s an opportunity to make some cuts to the federal government right now, right here and now.