CBS News left viewers poorly informed on the nation’s economic state after featuring a professor who referred to the national debt as “savings."
On Monday, CBS Morning Plus had on Stephanie Kelton, a leftist Stony Brook University professor and former Democrat Senate Budget Committee chief economist, whom co-host Adriana Diaz described as a “certified, bona fide person.” Co-host Tony Dokoupil admitted that the national debt was a topic he had “never ever ever really understood.”
Unfortunately, Dokoupil’s knowledge of the national debt peaked immediately before Kelton began speaking. Kelton not only told their audience not to worry about the $35 trillion national debt, but even cast the debt in positive terms. Kelton referred to the debt as “savings” and yearly deficits as “surpluses” for Americans, all the while absurdly minimizing inflation during the Biden-Harris administration.
After comparing the national debt to a long CVS receipt, Kelton absurdly told Dokoupil and Diaz, “So, when we worry about the national debt, it's as if we're wringing our hands and saying, ‘My god, we have all of this savings. We've got all of this wealth. What are we going to do to grow out of it?’”
To Dokoupil’s credit, he mentioned the national debt’s importance and showed a graphic depicting the then-$35,810,000,000,000 burden on future generations of Americans before Kelton vomited out her points on air. The Biden-Harris administration presided over budget deficits of $2.8 trillion (2021), $1.4 trillion (2022), $1.7 trillion (2023)—and a projected deficit of $1.9 trillion in 2024 while signing onto massively expensive and wasteful pieces of legislation such as the outrageously misleadingly named “Inflation Reduction Act.”
During the interview, Diaz responded to Kelton’s bizarre arguments by asking the obvious: “Isn’t it bad to print money because a) we’re adding money into the economy, which is going to potentially drive up… have inflation impact; and b) Don't we need to cover ourselves when we spend money?”
In response, Kelton dismissed the very serious second question with, “No, so it doesn't work like a household budget,” and then solely focused on arguing that America’s deficits rarely caused inflation.
Charity demands that we assume Kelton is not lying but is merely incredibly stupid.
After acknowledging that there was a link between putting too much money into the economy and causing inflation, Kelton followed with an awful claim. “We haven't had inflation except for brief periods where there's been an oil shock in the 1970s, or a COVID shock. By and large, the government has run continuous deficits without inflation because the deficits haven't been excessive. They haven't gotten too big.”
It isn’t immediately clear whether Kelton would use COVID-19 to excuse all four years of Biden-Harris’s obscene deficits—which are certainly too big. At the same time, there has been massive inflation. During the Biden-Harris administration, Americans have suffered through an average of 5.2 percent monthly inflation, compared with only 1.9 percent monthly inflation under the Trump administration.
Moreover, there are serious consequences to treating the national debt as “savings” and dismissing it as a CVS receipt. The Heritage Foundation economist E.G. Antoni has noted that yearly interest payments on the national debt are on track to exceed $2 trillion by 2030 and have already massively exceeded total military spending.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477 and NBC News (212) 664-6192, and demand they report on the massive unsustainable spending of the U.S. Government and our growing national debt. Contact CBS News (212) 975-3247 and ask for them to feature experts who have an ounce of understanding of and concern for America’s financial state!
