Thomas Massie Told Me Last Year the Big Beautiful Bill Would Bankrupt America.

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]We already see that sovereign wealth funds are more reluctant to invest in our debt because when you do, you're investing in the dollar and we're promising to pay you back 20 or 30 years from now in US dollars. And um what's happening is people don't ever think that the US government will default, but they do think that the US dollar will have much less value because they're just doing the math. They're seeing that we're going to have to monetize our own debt and decrease the value of our own currency in the process to manage to finance all of this excess spending. And we're seeing it already here. I told some of my constituents this weekend, we used to say that, oh, our poor grandkids, they'll be saddled with this debt. Well, I've since I've come to Congress, I've realized that's actually a distraction. It's a misdirection. We are saddled with this debt and we're paying for it in terms of lower currency value and higher interest rates.

[00:01:04]>> Manco 64, home of alternative economics and contrarian views. Well, I have the honor and the pleasure today to speak with Congressman Thomas Massie. He's the four uh he's the representative, excuse me, of the fourth district in Kentucky.

[00:01:22]Uh welcome to the channel, uh Congressman. Thank you, Mario.

[00:01:28]>> Uh, so we we're not used to interviewing politicians, just to let you know.

[00:01:33]You're only the third uh one. The first one was Ron Paul. Uh, the second one was an MP in the from the UK, former MP called Peter Lily, and he was one of the only five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act of 2008. and there's 650 MPs. And he said to me, whenever something is passed unanimously, you can bet it's no good. So, with that in mind, I wanted to ask you about the um big beautiful bill. And I watched one of your uh interviews uh re recent interviews with Theo Vaughn and you said that you warned uh back in 2020 uh about the CARES Act 2.2 trillion uh dollar uh act that it would create inflation and it would be catastrophic and and you were proven right. So could you go over uh the big beautiful bill uh and uh its repercussions going forward especially let's say 5 years from now. Yeah.

[00:02:44]Unfortunately I will be proven right on the big beautiful bill. Uh, one problem is I have an intervening election between when the chickens may come home to roost on the big beautiful bill and with people who may be upset at me because I didn't back it because this was one of President Trump's signature pieces of legislation. But this is one of those times when he's been misled by the powers that be here in Washington.

[00:03:10]The big beautiful bill does two things that are going to wreck our uh debt and our currency. It and it does them simultaneously.

[00:03:21]U the first is it increases spending. We have an amazing amount of debt right now 37.5 trillion and the deficit now is over a trillion dollars a year. Our interest is running a trillion dollars a year. We're getting close to the breaking point. And when you increase spending, that's the first thing the big beautiful bill does, and decrease taxes at the same time.

[00:03:48]What happens is you're going to have to take on more debt. We already see that sovereign wealth funds are more reluctant to invest in our debt because when you do, you're investing in the dollar and we're promising to pay you back 20 or 30 years from now in US dollars.

[00:04:08]And um what's happening is people don't ever think that the US government will default. But they do think that the US dollar will have much less value because they're just doing the math. They're seeing that we're going to have to monetize our own debt and decrease the value of our own currency in the process to manage to finance all of this excess spending. And we're seeing it already here. I told some of my constituents this weekend, we used to say that, oh, our poor grandkids, they'll be saddled with this debt. Well, I've since I've come to Congress, I've realized that's actually a distraction. It's a misdirection. We are saddled with this debt, and we're paying for it in terms of lower currency value and higher interest rates.

[00:04:56]>> Yeah. And uh you uh spoke about as well um recently how um the the debt is like racking up as well because the deficit spending is also uh increasing. So could could you tell us exactly what the deficit is going to the budget deficit that adds up to the debt is going to be doing the next few years and why uh it's such a a a a big problem that uh uh in 5 years time we don't know who's going to be in charge of Congress and what they're going to be doing. Uh they're not going to be following this uh big beautiful bill.

[00:05:37]>> Yeah. So re reconciliation the term itself u indicates what this procedure was intended to do which was to reconcile the budget and uh what Congress is doing is perverting the reconciliation process. Now the budget has a 10-year window. So what they've done with the big beautiful bill is they've cut taxes. Who doesn't like lower taxes? You know you get to take home more of your pay. and they've increased spending on the military and the border and um enforcement at the DOJ for instance, but that's only going to happen for the next three years. In order to show that the budget balances, they have to say that in four years they're going to quit the extra spending and they're going to end the extra tax breaks like the no tax on tips, the lower taxes on seniors, and the no tax on overtime. All of those wonderful provisions end in four years so that they can show that years four through 10 um work in a way to balance the budget and so that by the time you get to the 10th year from this year the budget will be balanced. Here's the problem, Mario.

[00:06:52]A lot of my colleagues don't plan to be here in four years when that moment happens. and those that do are going to act like they had nothing to do with setting up that discontinuity in the budget and they'll call it a fiscal cliff in 2012. There was the same thing happened. Uh there were going to be tax increases and spending decreases and they said, "Oh my gosh, this will wreck the economy." And so they called it a fiscal cliff. and they all ran around up here like chickens with their heads cut off and said, "We've got to re we've got to extend these tax cuts and we've got to extend this spending." And so that's how we got to 37.5 trillion and they'll they'll accelerate that such that 10 years from now, I'm going to predict we'll have an additional $30 trillion in debt. I know that sounds extraordinary, but what I've observed over the last four or five decades is that roughly every decade, our US debt doubles regardless of who's in the White House and who's in Congress.

[00:07:59]>> So, yeah, that old saying about about it being a unit party is is right. And uh the other thing is uh you you've uh invested in in your farm uh in Kentucky uh and uh you've you've built basically an offthegrid uh haven for yourself and your family. But you mentioned in your interview with Theo and I thought that was really good that uh Washington DC they borrow the money but they don't invest it wisely. They piss it away.

[00:08:32]>> Yes. Well, uh, I thought that was good.

[00:08:36]>> Well, I'm, you know, I'm on the two committees here in the US House of Representatives. I'm on the transportation committee and I'm the on the judiciary committee. In fact, today we'll have Cash Patel, who's the director of the FBI, testify in front of us because we have responsibility for oversight over the FBI and the DOJ and the court system and even the Bill of Rights here in the United States. And constitutional amendments come through the judiciary committee. But on the transportation committee, it could be argued that we're making investments.

[00:09:07]Adam Smith, who our founders uh modeled much of our country's basis on, said that the role of government was threefold. That it was responsible for instituting a system of justice, providing for national defense, and doing infrastructure for the country.

[00:09:28]So, I'm covering two of the committees that Adam Smith would probably approve of, which are the judiciary committee, that's the system of justice, and the transportation and infrastructure committee. If this deficit spending were done like you, a responsible household does deficit spending, for instance, borrowing in order, for instance, maybe you pave your driveway or maybe you uh buy a house and you and you have a mortgage. So debt isn't inherently bad if the thing that you are borrowing against will have value when the loan is paid off. So if we were investing in infrastructure, if we were improving our bridges and roads and locks and dams here in the United States by borrowing money, I could be persuaded that that might be beneficial, but that's not what we're doing.

[00:10:19]>> Yeah. So talking about money, I I want to move over to the Federal Reserve and and recently well beginning of the year uh you introduce a bill along I think it was Senator uh was it Senator Lee >> Mike Lee from Utah and it's a bill to uh Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act to end the Fed and also abolish the the board of governors and also the Federal Reserve banks uh which by the way are are private privately owned. But and I've got here a mug for my channel is an end the Fed mug and it's got uh Charles Lindberg and on the back I've got what he said about the Fed. I'm going to read it to you and the viewers. He said the uh this uh act or Federal Reserve Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the president Woodro Wilson signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill. So he he like you was a congressman from Minnesota. So uh yeah, could you tell us a little more about your the uh the bill that you introduced and about the Federal Reserve? What you think about the Federal Reserve?

[00:11:40]>> Well, he was prophetic. I mean the US dollar has lost 97% of its value since the Fed was created. Uh and they play they play central planner with our economy. Interest rates should be set by the market by the private market and we shouldn't have you know what's funny is they say that the Federal Reserve is independent of uh the executive branch and the legislative branch. Well, nothing could be further than from the truth. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury work hand in hand, like in lock step every minute of the day, arranging to finance our debt and things like that. And in fact, the people that run the Fed are oftentimes people who worked at Treasury or worked in the banking world. And it's a revolving door.

[00:12:32]Sometimes people go all the way through the door twice. They'll go from the Fed to the Treasury to private banking, back to the Fed and back to Treasury. So, it's not at all independent. And what they do is they contrive what they think our interest rates should be and and they help monetize our debt. They loan money to banks and then banks loan money to the United States Treasury. And it it almost would be better if we just printed the money without these intermediaries if we were going to devalue our dollar. And at least you would have somebody you could throttle at the election uh at the ballot box for devaluing the currency. But here it's all through a shell game that it happens. And so we need to end the Federal Reserve. What's interesting though, Mario, is their power is waning right now because they've played with the currency too much. I think it's funny that we blame China oftentimes here in the United States for manipulating their currency. While we do it every day, obviously, but what's happened is, as I said before, foreigners, foreign uh government wealth funds are more reluctant to finance our debt. And so the interest rates have gone up. Our president has urged the Federal Reserve to lower their interest rate that they loan to banks. The problem is their control lever to the interest rates and the economy in general is connected with a rubber band.

[00:14:05]It's not a tight linkage.

[00:14:07]And so that rubber band is stretched about as far as it can go. If they were to lower interest rates, let's say 3%, they could probably lower them half a percent or a percent and get and juice the economy a little bit. There would be a lot of mal effects. But let's say they tried to lower them 3%. That won't fly because people aren't going to pay 3% less for our debt. And we are one of the biggest markets or consumers of financial uh financing is the US government. And so I think the Federal Reserve has less and less influence even though the president wants to squeeze that lemon for all it's worth.

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[00:15:13]So they can't even try to break into it.

[00:15:16]And uh that's only one of the many features of Dirty Men's Safe. Um they provide three different sizes. And uh you can uh bury uh your gold coins, silver coins, bars, uh important documents, jewelry, and anything that's valuable for for you. Uh so yeah, Dirty Men safe is affordable, convenient, uh provides you peace of mind, confidentiality, and sustainability. So, if you want to find out more, there's a link uh below in the description. It will take you to a landing page and uh if you use that link, you get 10% off if you're uh to decide to to buy a Dirty Man safe and they ship it to uh Europe as well, not just uh the United States. Yeah, you spoke about the dollar and the fact that it's losing more and more value and foreigners are trying to find an alternative, especially bricks. They they've been buying a lot of gold and uh talking about gold. Um uh we're also seeing and we're speaking on the day uh congressman that the Fed is supposed to uh be cutting rates by 25 basis points.

[00:16:36]Some people speculate they might cut by more, but the last time they they cut aggressively, uh, September last year, the 10-year yield was at 3.6%.

[00:16:47]And right now, we're at four. So, that doesn't even guarantee that, uh, borrowing costs are going to go go down for the longer term Treasury paper. But uh yeah, talking about gold because the constitution uh says what money is that it should be gold and silver and that the congress has the power to to mint the coinage and the money. Uh somehow they they got the Federal Reserve Act through saying that they're going to coin the money even though they don't coin money. But uh you also uh introduced a a bill recently uh June 6th to audit US gold reserves because there's a lot of speculation out there whether uh the go how much gold there is at Fort Knox and other depositories.

[00:17:35]Even President Trump a few months ago he he mentioned that I think he was meeting the president of France and he said we don't even know if we have the gold. Uh, and Treasury Secretary Bessant said, "Oh, we audit it every year." But, uh, what's the story there?

[00:17:53]>> Well, I've heard the same thing about the Fed. The Fed claims to be audited, yet they oppose my bill to audit the Fed. Well, if they're already audited, why would they oppose the bill? The same thing goes for my audit of our gold reserves, why would anybody oppose it?

[00:18:10]This should be u, you know, a unanimous vote, I would think, uh, to to allow a an audit of the gold reserves. Um, you know, I think it's important. It's one of the campaign promises that President Trump made. It was very popular. Has a populist appeal. You the citizens don't want secrets kept from them. If the gold's there, let us know. If it's not, we need to know that as well. Um, and you know, Fort Knox is in Kentucky. I'm a representative from Kentucky. So, let's go in. Let's find out. Is it all there? There hasn't there hasn't been a real audit of it uh for decades.

[00:18:53]>> Yeah. And uh Goldfinger uh the story was that he tried to blow a nuclear weapon in uh Fort Knox so that the gold wouldn't get out and the price would go through the roof. But uh anyway, u talking about gold and uh I mean your uh living off the grid. It looks to me that you're ready for a currency collapse.

[00:19:20]>> Well, I'm prepared. I don't want it to happen.

[00:19:22]>> No. Yeah.

[00:19:23]>> Uh I prepared for it. U but you know, I've been living off the grid for 20 years. There's also kinks to work out of living off of the grid. And by the way, for your listeners, living off the grid means I'm connected to no public utilities, no water, no sewer, no electricity. I get my internet through Starlink. Thank you very much, Elon Musk. Uh, by the way, he has brought the internet to rural areas of America. I think he's doubled the land value in the in the United States of all the rural land that didn't have internet because it's almost like it's one of those parameters like inches of annual rainfall that attenuates the value of land and he has magically in just a number of years increased the bandwidth to everywhere frankly on the planet. Um but it's back to being off the grid.

[00:20:20]I've done it for 20 years. It it gives me some independence here when I come to Congress. Obviously, when I'm living here, I'm on the grid, unless I'm living in my camper, which I used to do, which has solar panels on it. Used to drive it to DC and stay in a camper. Um, and you know, I don't want I don't want the currency to collapse.

[00:20:44]Uh, but people really, I think, should be prepared for it. You should have some of your assets in gold or something of value like land. Uh in the United States, one popular store of wealth can be ammunition.

[00:21:01]>> Yeah. Uh talking about ammunition, I really like your uh 20 I think it was 2021 family Christmas card. That was a good one. Do you remember?

[00:21:10]>> Well, my actual my actual Christmas card was my family and I holding bluegrass instruments and just on a lark. We got out the guns and took a picture. I was never supposed to release that picture.

[00:21:22]>> Okay.

[00:21:22]>> But in a weak moment, u just a few weeks before Christmas, I did release that picture.

[00:21:28]>> Yeah.

[00:21:29]>> I had a a conundrum at that point. We hadn't sent out the actual Christmas cards where we were holding bluegrass instruments. And >> you know, even the uh the head of the Church of England got upset and issued a condemnation of my Christmas picture.

[00:21:46]And people, we were worried that when we sent out the actual Christmas card with the bluegrass instruments that people would think that we gave to a woke mob.

[00:21:54]>> Oh, I see.

[00:21:55]>> That's not in fact what happened.

[00:21:56]>> Yeah. I I wanted to touch upon something a little different here because I uh saw that you you're into raw milk and I like uh raw milk as well. U I've got uh coffee here, instant coffee with raw milk in it. Uh, in England it's uh it's illegal to for it to be sold in supermarkets, but you can still buy it uh in farms. And my golf club is near a farm that sells it. So I buy raw milk there every time I go play golf and raw raw butter. It's really great. Uh and uh I was looking into pasteurization uh in the UK. And if I don't hopefully you don't mind me sharing this here, but I found out that in 1946 uh Lord Rothschild successfully called for the compulsory pasteurization of milk in the UK, arguing that the government needed to provide a long-term program to meet the increasing demand for pasteurized milk to improve public health by reducing disease. So I I thought that was really interesting. the people that are uh very influential in in the money uh market uh seem to also be influential in the food.

[00:23:12]>> Well, that's always the case. Um there's a concentration of power uh in the meat market here in the United States.

[00:23:22]There's four meat processors that control 85% of the meat produced in the United States. So, I have a bill that makes it easier for small farms to get their meat processed and provide it directly to consumers. But on the raw milk topic, that's mostly regulated here in the United States on a state-by-state basis. Um, ostensibly, I own a share of a herd in Kentucky on a farm, and that's the legal loophole that I exploit to purchase my raw milk. And I've been drinking raw milk for probably 5 years, even though legislatively I've supported it for the entire 13 years that I've been in Congress. And it's it's wonderful. I mean, what happened, you know, there in that statement that you read, they were supposed to they said they were going to increase public health. The reality is when you pasteurize milk and even when you homogenize milk and when you put it in giant tanks all together and co-mingle it, you are reducing the nutritional value of the the milk that first came from the cow. And so I've seen a lot of positive health benefits to raw milk and raw butter, raw cottage cheese, raw yogurt, raw cheese, uh raw cream. All of those things are things that I've been consuming for about half a decade and I find them to be very nutritious and very beneficial.

[00:24:47]And I do have legislation here in Congress because the raw milk is legislated mostly at the state level. Uh what I did here in the federal government was to introduce a bill that says if it's legal in one state and it's legal in another state, we won't send federal agents onto your farm and confiscate your milk and pour it out and you know quarantine your cattle if you transfer it between those two states where it's legal. You see the problem is right now that's what the federal government reserves the right to do and they have done. They've sent federal sent federal agents in using this interstate commerce argument. But the interesting thing is there's no law on the books that bans interstate uh transportation of raw milk. They've just taken upon themselves in the courts and in the regulatory bureaucracy to say that they're going to regulate it. So I'm trying to undo that as well legislatively.

[00:25:47]I I know you're u limited for time. So I want to end here uh by uh saying that one thing I think that Congress does well is create acronyms. you know, their acts like the car's act is like corona virus whatever and uh it's funny they do they have an acronym for the big beautiful bill because I I think it should be just double B big big bill because below tripleB in in credit rating uh the the credit becomes junk.

[00:26:20]So maybe that's the next step.

[00:26:23]>> Well, it's I think it's a budget busting bill.

[00:26:27]>> Oh, that's a good one. a budget busting bill. Yeah, >> it's it's it's definitely big, but it's not beautiful. So, um you know, the president has tried to retroactively rename the bill because I think uh big is not necessarily a thing uh a term of endearment. You know, I've been a proponent of voting on separate subjects in separate bills instead of putting them all together. And frankly, it seemed like most Republicans were in favor of that, too. Let's get rid of these giant omnibus bills and let's vote on the things individually because they slip bad things in these big bills and they mix them with good things like a pay raise for uh the military or taking care of our veterans, but they'll slip the worst things into those bills. And if you could separate these bills, then you would know how your representative is actually voting. And um so I think it's a bad name. There's no acronym for it right now, but it's called the sometimes it's called the OBBBA, the one big beautiful bill act. It's a mouthful. Uh and it's not beautiful.

[00:27:40]>> Well, thank you very much, Congressman, for uh for your time and it was an honor and uh best of luck uh with your endeavors in Washington, DC.

[00:27:51]>> Thank you, Mario. We'll see you soon.

[00:27:53]>> See