ABOUT THIS EPISODE
David Walker joins Coach Pete to discuss Comeback America and fiscal responsibility. This August 2012 conversation explores debt, government spending, and his efforts to bring the economic debate to the public.
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Transcript
Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.
00:00 In this FinancialSafari.com interview from early August 2012, Coach Pete D’Arruda interviews former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. And welcome back into the Financial Safari. Of course, folks, each and every week we go across the nation and interview somebody who is making an impact on the local economy or the U.S. economy, or at least trying to get the word out. And this week is a fantastic week. We have former U.S. Comptroller General. His name is David M. Walker. You might have seen him on 60 Minutes before. Maybe you've seen him on TV. He is working very hard with a new initiative called Comeback America. And Mr. David Walker, welcome in. Great to be with you, Coach Pete.
00:46 Now, you go by Dave, correct? I do. Dave, let's talk about what's going on right now in the economy for folks, and what are you going to be doing here in the next couple months to get the word out? Well, we have a serious problem, Coach, as you know. I mean, we've got a slow economic recovery, high unemployment, even higher underemployment. And we need to make sure that we can get growth going so we can generate more jobs. But our financial condition, the financial condition of the United States, frankly, is in poor and deteriorating condition. So we need to make progress on both. And the Comeback America initiative, which I head, which is a nonpartisan, non-ideological organization, is going to conduct a national fiscal responsibility bus tour to swing states from September 7th, October 9th, to speak the truth, talk about the tough choices, and
01:31 actually engage Americans in places that matter on how we can solve this problem. And so far, the candidates aren't doing that. And it's important that they start doing it so that they can have a mandate for action once they're elected. You know, a lot of people go online, they see something called the debt clock, and they've got the big numbers, and I think it's over 15 million right now. And that scares people, David. But you have an even scarier proposition, don't you? Well, I do. Of course, the national debt clock was unveiled in 1989, and it was $2.7 trillion when it was unveiled in 1989. Now it's approaching $15.9 trillion. And that's a lot of money, you know, but it really understates our problem because it doesn't count unfunded Medicare, Social Security, pensions, retiree health care, and a range of
02:20 other liabilities and commitments and contingencies. So we're going to unveil the U.S. financial burden barometer. It's going to start at about $70 trillion, and it's going to be going up at about $10 million a minute because based upon official government documents that have been produced, that's how fast our federal financial sinkhole is growing. And so we need to recognize the reality of the problem's a lot bigger than the politicians claim. It's getting worse fast by doing nothing. But the good news is, if we can actually achieve some meaningful progress on social insurance reforms, health care reform, tax reform next year, unlike the federal debt clock, which won't come down a dime, the financial burden barometer can come down tens of trillions of dollars.
03:06 Well, Dave, I think a lot of people here just assume that they throw their arms in the air when they see that, even the $15 trillion. They say, there's nothing we can do about it. But you're saying there is something we can do about it. Well, absolutely. You also have to convert those numbers to something that you and I and other Americans can understand. The $15.9 trillion is about $50,000 a person. The $70 trillion is about $225,000 a person. And going up fast. But we can solve this problem. Look, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada had serious financial problems in the 90s. They came together, made tough choices. And now they're among the best in the world with regard to financial condition. If they can do it, we can do it. There's broad-based consensus that we need to reform our tax system.
03:53 We need to recapture control of the budget. We need to reform social insurance programs and reduce defense and other spending without compromising national security or increasing poverty. But we have to be able to put more pressure on these politicians to act. And we have to make the price of them doing nothing greater than the price of making tough choices that will help create a better future. And if you're just joining us, we're talking to former U.S. Comptroller General Dave Walker. Dave, you've got a bus tour coming up, and I wanted to talk about that. But people can go see this 10millionaminute.com, and they can watch the real debt, correct? That's correct. They can see the federal burden barometer and how it's going up $167,000 a second, $10 million a minute, $14.4 billion a day. That's a lot of money. I wish I could make money like that.
04:40 I wish you could make a small percentage of what we ultimately will save. Well, okay, so people can go to the website, check it out, see that clock. But you've got something even more proactive. You've organized a bus tour starting on September 7th. It will start in Manchester, New Hampshire. And you'll be ending October 9th probably with a big rally there in Washington, D.C., correct? That's correct. And we're going as far west as Nevada, as far south as Orlando. We're going to hit at least 16 states and at least 20 cities. We're going where it matters, on a subject that matters, when it matters. And believe it or not, Coach Pete, the only city that we're going to that doesn't have an MAIN street or Main Street is Washington, D.C. which serves to further reinforce how to out-of-touch reality are.
05:27 Now, they do have an MAIN E Street, the state of Main, but no MAIN street. Yeah, I think a lot of people just think that Washington's way out of touch. And I know back in 2008 when you resigned as the Comptroller General. Now, this may be a myth, David, but I think that the comment I heard was you couldn't sign checks that were going to bounce anymore. Well, first, it's important to understand that as the Comptroller General, I was the Auditor General. And I did not work for the executive branch, so I didn't work for the president. I worked for the Congress of the American people. And the reason that I resigned is I had accomplished two of the three objectives that I set out for myself when I became Comptroller General in 1998. And the third one, which is to try to make meaningful progress in putting our nation's finances in order, I ultimately came to believe that I needed to do some things that I couldn't do in that job.
06:15 I needed to put pressure on the Congress and the president to act, to hold them accountable if they fail to act. I needed to be able to talk about specific policy solutions. You couldn't do that as Comptroller General, and I'm doing it now. Yeah, it's very important that people just realize they can make a difference. They can put a little effort forth and stop this out-of-control train going down the tracks. David, my first car was a 1968 Volkswagen. And remember back in the day, the emergency brake was right there between the driver's seat and the passenger seat. I remember it well. I've had a Volkswagen myself in the past. Now, I never told my dad about this, but what we'd do back in the day when we were trying to have fun in high school is we'd get up a pretty good speed for a Volkswagen, maybe 50 miles an hour. That was pretty fast from Volkswagen. And we'd pull up the emergency brake real fast, and it would make the car stop real fast and sometimes go out of control a little bit.
07:04 But that was fun back in high school. Is there an emergency brake here in the financial world that we can pull as a society to stop this out-of-control train? Well, we have to recognize that spending is out of control, and we need to recapture control of the budget. Believe it or not, we haven't had a budget in three years. And even when we have a budget, only about 37 percent of the spending is controlled. The rest is we're writing a blank check for it. It's on autopilot. You can't run anything that way. And while mainly our problem is going to be the need to try to recapture control of spending, we're going to need additional revenues, too, because both political parties are responsible for where we are. Government's grown too big, promised too much, waited too long to restructure. But it's not too late. So we're going to need comprehensive tax reform that's going to make it simpler, fairer, more competitive, more equitable, and generate more revenues.
07:54 And the longer we wait, the bigger the changes are going to have to be, the less transition time, and the greater the chances of having a U.S. debt crisis, which we must avoid at all costs, because that would result in a global depression. And again, David Walker's site is 10 million, the number 10 million, a minute dot com, or we'll link to it, David, right from our website, financialsafari.com, with a full write-up there about the interview. People can listen to this interview if they didn't hear the whole thing, and they'll have a link right to your 10 million a minute dot com. But let me ask you, how did Congress, how did Washington get so out of touch with the American people here, and how did we get in this situation just to begin with? Well, we have something that the founders of our great nation didn't anticipate. It's called career politicians. Our politics are dominated today by people who may or may not have had a real job in the real world, but once they get elected, they want to keep it for life.
08:46 And they view their position in elective office as a job. Human beings don't want to lose their job. A lot of them don't think that people can handle the truth. You know, they don't want to make the tough choices because it might cause them not to get reelected. And so we have to deal with that. We also have a situation where the political parties, the duty of loyalty to a political party is trumping the duty of loyalty to country. So in addition to making policy and operational reforms, we need political reforms. We need redistricting reform. We need integrated open primaries. We need campaign finance reform. And we need 12- to 18-year term limits. That's going to take time to make those happen, and the last two are going to require constitutional amendments. But in the meantime, we have to be able to diffuse the ticking time bomb associated with our financial condition before it's too late.
09:35 Now let's talk about the book, Comeback America, Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility. How was that project? Well, I published that book in 2010, way ahead of the curve, before the Simpson-Bowles Commission, before the Domenici-Rivlin Commission, etc., laid out the problem and outlined a range of sensible solutions that ought to be able to get bipartisan support. Budget controls, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care, defense, tax reforms. And guess what? It's just as valid today, if not more so, than it was in 2010. It's made several national bestseller lists. If somebody's interested in getting it, I suggest they go to Amazon, buy the paperback version. It's cheaper, it's lighter, and it's more up-to-date. Whenever I have some free time and I'll lay out at a pool maybe for a couple hours, I love the paperback books because they're easier to lay on your back and read without them digging into your stomach.
10:27 Exactly. Exactly. His name is Dave Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, and if you want to see him in person, go to 10millionaminute.com and check out the bus schedule. The bus tour starts again September 7th, goes to October 9th. See if there's an area around you and come hear him speak, see the bus tour, or go to our site, financialsafari.com, and we'll have a full link and end this interview where you can listen to it over and over again and share it with your friends. Dave, thanks for your time today. Thanks, Coach Pete. Look forward to talking again. Thank you so much for listening to this interview on the Financial Safari. Remember, folks, if you have any questions about this interview or your financial situation, you can email the team from the Financial Safari at comments at financialsafari.com. Thank you.
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