Pete Buttigieg
speaker
1,193 appearances
7 recordings
6 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 10 May
Pete Buttigieg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 3.
Appearances
Now, look, as a good Democrat, I could point out that I would argue there's a difference in terms of what history empirically has shown us in terms of the return on investment you get when you raise debt to fix roads and bridges and other productive infrastructure.
versus if you blow up the debt in order to give massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country, because that has just never generated the growth that... I mean, the Laffer curve has collapsed empirically, and it just doesn't work that way, right?
So I could quibble over if you're going to do debt, what's the best thing to do with it?
And I would argue the best thing to do with it is education, healthcare, investing it, make sure kids don't get lead poisoned, investing it in ports and roads, and not...
investing it in tax cuts for extremely wealthy people who didn't need them and in some cases weren't really asking for it and were perfectly productive.
In fact, history would say more productive at times in history when they were paying more taxes in the US.
But leaving that partisan fight aside,
I do want to come back and agree with you again that where we are right now is not sustainable.
That contrary to what some on the left would say, there is such a thing as the debt.
It does matter.
And we need to make sure that what we're doing going forward is more consistent with some basic fiscal responsibility.
I literally did put out a plan, which I balanced every single spending back when I was running for president in 2020, which feels like another lifetime.
Every single thing that I proposed spending on, I also proposed to pay for and explain what would have to happen tax wise in order to do it.
And again, that's just, those are the habits that I built as a mayor who had to do my budget in cash.
So look, it's not like it's a completely unsolvable problem.
There are measures that we got to take to reduce things like the cost of providing healthcare, which is one of the biggest sources of pressure on Medicare, Medicaid, you name it.
Not just getting people insured, but the actual underlying cost.
Same with pharmaceuticals.
And then there are things you got to do on the revenue side.
I'm sorry, but we can't just slash a trillion bucks from what the wealthiest people are paying again and again, and then call this a sustainable budget.
Showing 361–380 of 1,193 · page 19 of 60
← Previous
Next →