'That's Not How Debt Works': OMB Director Clashes With Lauren Boebert Over The National Debt

 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

At a House Budget Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) spoke about the national debt with OMB Director Shalanda Young.

Their conversation was this:

Lauren Boebert: Thank you so much for being here today, first of all, what is the current national debt?

OMB Director Shalanda Young: The current debt is about 24 trillion. I have about 30 trillion dollars how much would each American citizen have to pay to cover that debt? That's not how debts work so we have not calculated that.

Lauren Boebert: To cover our current 30 trillion dollar debt, not 24 trillion 

OMB Director Shalanda Young replied: And I'm sorry I have 22.3 so I'll correct myself downward since we're using different numbers um again we don't calculate the debt by a person including my recovery.

Lauren Boebert: Excuse me, Director, the answer is 2,42,500 dollars per taxpayer in America. Now you may have been on track with some of these answers if your numbers were correct with the 30 trillion dollar debt that we actually are at right now. But I would have hoped that you would have the correct answers in your position to all of these questions as the President and this regime really should keep this debt at the forefront of our thinking in proposing a budget, but this budget that was created is proposed to spend another 5.8 trillion dollars this fiscal year and 73 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

And, sadly it's pretty apparent that you're more concerned with continuing to spend trillions of dollars of taxpayer money on liberal wishlists rather than doing anything substantive to rein in wasteful federal government spending. Now I've said multiple times the federal government does not have a revenue problem it has a spending problem now director Young, Biden likes to say, Show me your budget and I'll tell your values.

So, Let's see what democrats really value, the word "Military" appears 26 times in this budget but gender, it's used 43 times in your budget equity. Well, that's used 75 times and climate is used 187 times in this budget and Americans sure do understand. What democrat priorities are and their values?

They know the real cost of these woke policies. And so-called values are impacting them and the bill has come due for these bad democrat policies proposing to spend trillions of dollars. 

You should be embarrassed to be testifying today and trying to defend this 5.8 trillion dollar budget, now during the state of the union, Joe Biden said that his plan to fight inflation was for businesses to simply lower their costs not their wages director young.

Rep. Boebert then said I'm a small business owner and I can tell you that's not how it works in the real world. I understand that we use Washington DC math here but that's not how it works for real small business owners meat is up 13, milk is up 12, almost 12 percent electricity is up 9.

Now, As a restaurant owner how am I supposed to lower my costs if everything that I use is going up and I certainly wouldn't be able to pay employees higher wages so with this skyrocketing inflation that's taking place madam director can you please simply describe to me define to me what inflation is?

OMB Director Shalanda Young: Sure the cost of goods are more expensive it costs more for the same goods than it did uh last year the president is very aware of that that is why he is called on Congress to send him legislation. 

Note: You can see the complete interaction in the video shown here.