Amy and Denver break down the ins and outs of how our federal budget works. What’s a deficit? Which political party has a better track record? What does our current proposed budget look like? And what are the deficit projections of Donald Trump’s economy? 05:25 What Is The Deficit? 09:00 Whose To Blame By The Numbers 23:00 The Fantasy Of D.O.G.E 31:45 A Republican On Government Programs 36:38 The Truth About Democrats v. The Deficit 40:19 Some Bipartisan Solutions *This episode was recorded on April 18, 2025, and aired on April 22, 2025. About Truth in the Barrel: Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America. Truth in the Barrel was born of Amy & Denver’s commitment to country, the Constitution, and a well-curated collection of the world’s finest bourbon. Join them weekly for deep dives into timely topics, interviews with recognizable guests, and a dose of call-in fun. Visit Our Website: www.TruthintheBarrel.com Subscribe to Truth in the Barrel: https://www.youtube.com/@TruthIntheBarrel Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0JQcSj5mwVyGDJ8DcXwlu9?si=5f2bd1d1b0c64e6f Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/truth-in-the-barrel/id1804092329 Instagram, BlueSky, Facebook, TikTok: @Trut
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of Truth in the Barrel and what is this episode about?
Hi everyone, welcome to Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Riggleman and it's budget time. You hear about this every year. And here are some of the things that you might hear throughout the years, okay? Things like, Democrats spend too much and that's why we have a national debt. Or we can balance the budget if we just get rid of fraud, waste and abuse.
Or my favorite, this is from Trump 1.0, quote, I'll fix the debt, lower your taxes, increase the military budget all at once. Spoiler alert, that's really impossible. But why can't we fix this budget? And what's that all about? That's what we're going to talk about today on Truth in the Barrel. But first... I hand it over to Denver to talk about what's more important, whiskey.
Whiskey. Truth always comes out of the barrel. Right, Amy? So again, I know it's been back-to-back days and a whole week for me of being sick. So as we go through all this, I apologize to Amy and to our listeners for my husky voice. So, 1910. Love it. From 1910. Pretty sweet, huh? Look at this. Beautiful.
And how does it taste, Denver? How does it taste?
Well, I'm going to pop it for the first time right here. Took off the label, right? So I'm going to pop it, the cork. Oh, that's a pop. That means it's bottled perfectly. And I'm going to pour it.
Oh, I hear that.
Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Yes, that's right. That's right. So, hey, so this is a, oh my God, the nose. Remember, you know, we've had this a while back, but I'm just smelling it. It's 93 proof. Just to let people know. So that's 46.5% ABV. Um,
Man, the nose, you know, a lot of people come up with the nose like, the nose is cherry with a hint of butterscotch, a little bit of leather and spaceship metal. Unbelievable. But this really just has a nose of beauty. So here's to old Forrester Whiskey in the 1910 Whiskey Rose Series. Beautiful. Cheers.
Let's start this thing. All right. Yeah. Oh, my God.
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Chapter 2: What is a federal budget deficit and how is it calculated?
Excellent. I'm ready, as you know. Right. You know what's going to be interesting about this, Amy? Your vast knowledge of the budget. It's going to be interesting with your knowledge of the budget and what I know now after being in Congress and going through the budget and the approach process.
This should be a fascinating conversation because I think you can give strokes where people are going to really understand it. And if I may, I want to scare the hell out of people if you let me do that during the show, Amy, just on really how it works.
We need to do that occasionally. But let's let's just take it back initially and just talk very basics, you know, because I get this question. What what is a deficit anyway? And there's really people have to understand there's there's two parts to even thinking about the federal budget. It's actually very simple. The first part is spending how much we spend.
How much does the federal government spend every year? That's called outlays. And for the past few years, we spent, Denver, right around 6 trillion per year. 6.1 trillion in 2023, for example. And then there's the other side, right? The other side is how much you bring in. We call it revenues, taxes. It's basically how much the federal government is taking in.
And for the last few years, we've taken in right around 4.4 trillion. And so the difference there, right, the difference between how much you take in and how much you spend is the deficit, right? All right. That's the deficit. In the last few years, our deficit has been right about 1.6 trillion. That's a lot. And we have to borrow money to make up that difference.
We do. I have a shocking number here. And I know that as people are listening to us, Amy, they better be listening to us on our podcasts. And on our YouTube, right? You know, as we're going forward on this, because I want to remind people, while Amy is talking these incredible numbers, you better be going on our podcast or our YouTube channel and downloading our socials.
And you better be knowing this. We're on true social too, because we're that brave. Anyway, it's not brave to be on social media, but people think so. I think true socialists. But it's funny, you talk about the deficit. You know, I was reading a bipartisan report today. Und ich weiß, dass Leute sagen, oh mein Gott, Denver Reads. Ich mache das, Amy, ich mache das.
Okay, als ich gesagt habe, dass ich Leute erschrecken werde, lass mich die Leute wirklich schnell erschrecken. Der initiale, nonpartisanen Blick, was sie dachten, dass der Defizit gleich da sein wird, Amy war fast direkt dran. Das ist das Wahnsinnige. Hörer, etwa 1,9 Trillionen. Also es geht auf. Also es geht auf. But what's amazing is that they are not counting.
They had, when the budget resolution, and I don't know if we want to go over the whole hierarchy of this beforehand, but when they submitted the budget, you know, and the budget is actually generated from the White House, and then it goes to, it's actually a budget process that starts with that actually specific asks based on mandatory funding and discretionary funding and all that.
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Chapter 3: How have past presidents influenced the federal deficit?
Sie werden Republikaner sagen, dass das Spenden-Defizit ungefähr gleich ist wie von Biden. Sie denken, das sei ein Wettbewerb, Amy. Ich will es nur noch einmal sagen. Sie werden sagen, dass es ungefähr gleich ist wie von Biden. I'm going to guess the CBO and nonpartisan groups are going to say it's higher than Biden by 30 to 40 percent.
I'm going to say the far left partisan reports are going to say it's higher from 60 to 70 percent. That's the first thing the American people are going to have to actually get their arms around. What we're really seeing, though, is this sort of irresponsible way of looking at the ledger. Amy, you just put it so perfectly right. It's the deficit every year.
is how much more or less we spend based on revenues. And now there's other things there too. And by the way, what's really interesting right now with the debt, and I just want to make sure everybody knows this, Amy, and we can go into how the budget process works. Right now, 100% us, taxpayers, own 100%
of the public debt is now of gdp is actually owned by us it's on us a hundred percent amy where do we go that's not counting intra-governmental spending that's just the public spending side so there's two parts to debt too and amy that's why i love this conversation with you is that is this sustainable Where do we go? But then how does it keep getting so high?
And that's where I want to go next after you're talking about, is it sustainable? Because I want to talk about why it's so pathetic and ridiculous.
Yeah, and we're going to get to that. But there was something you said that I want to just clarify a little bit. You were talking about what the Republicans are going to say and what others were going to say about the deficit. There are numbers out there. And they're real in terms of past numbers. Okay.
And there are quantifiable projections that we can see right now of the Senate Republican plan and the House Republican plan. And I took those numbers over 10 years, which is what most people look at. And I broke it down into one year because I think in one year terms. So the Senate Republican plan would add 580 billion people.
to the deficit, 580 billion, and the House Republican Plan would add 280 billion. Now, you talked about Biden's infrastructure bill and some of the other bills. President Biden and Democrats passed three major pieces of legislation that dealt with money. The American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
It is absolute truth to say that the three of those combined How much they cost us, the three of those combined are actually less than what either the House or the Senate Republican budget this year would cost us.
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Chapter 4: Which political party has a better track record on the deficit?
Unemployment insurance.
Unemployment insurance, that all goes out no matter what. Then there's this piece of the pie called discretionary spending. And that's the piece that everybody, that Congress has to appropriate. You were talking about appropriates earlier, that's what that means.
Sorry.
Every year. So Congress has to actually proactively pass a bill that says, yes, this money will go out. And that is split into two main sections. One is your military. About 50% of that is military. And the other half is the rest of the federal government. Okay, so TSA, EPA, Department of Energy, FAA, CIA, everything else is in the other section. So that is your discretionary spending.
And that is right now about 26% of our overall budget. Only 26%. And then the other 12% is interest. Interest on the debt.
Interest on the debt. You know, it's amazing, you know, you talk, I hope people understand, mandatory spending is something that's, it's very difficult to run on that. When you see people, why people are up in arms, right?
The Republicans were going after some of the mandatory spending lines, and this was the whole fantasy of Doge, right, on how to cut the discretionary portion of civilian agencies or DOD agencies, but also the mandatory portion of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Und das war das, was mich überrascht hat. Doge hatte nicht nur einen diskretionären oder mandatorischen Spenden-Mandat.
Sie hatten einen Mandat, nur damit zu gehen und keine Expertise zu haben, wie das Budget funktionieren würde oder was diese Flöten oder Kaskaden-Effekte aussehen würden. Das andere, was die Leute in der Budget-Prozesse verstehen müssen, ist, dass es von der White House entsteht. And it has to go through multiple processes, right?
The Senate and the House both have their own take on what their budget resolutions are going to be. And they actually have to come to some sort of, sometimes some sort of agreement. The Budget and the House actually do their own separate sort of budget lines. And I know people are like, what? But yeah, that's how our government works, right? In that way.
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Chapter 5: What are the recent deficit projections and what do nonpartisan reports say?
Well, you have your budget outline bill, but appropriations is all 535 offices getting lobbied, getting lobbied, Für Dinge wie die Verteidigungsbillen. Weißt du, dass Leute für die Verteidigungsbillen lobbyieren?
Ja. Und alles andere.
Die Dinge, die in deinem Distrikt passieren. Absolut, die machen sie. Aber schau, was sie lobbyieren für. Gemeinsames Projektfunding und kongressionell direktes Spenden. Und du denkst dir, dann, wenn das E-Marks sind, warum sagen sie nicht einfach E-Marks? Weißt du, warum? Die GOP hat die Namen verändert. Weil sie diejenigen sind, die gegen E-Marks rannten.
Schau, welche Distrikte am meisten von E-Marks profitieren. Wer möchte einen guess? Sie. Hallo. Their districts. Red districts. So, now in the approach process, you have different times to submit your appropriations. So for our office, we had a date with our own way of doing it, right? So lobbyists, the descent of the lobbyists, the lobbyist locusts descend on Congress.
And they go to every single office for their pet projects. Denver, how do they get in there? They go through your staff. That's great, but how do they get in there? Usually the staff is having dinners with people who want to actually get into your office. So the staff has pre-ordered relationships that they've had because they're professional staff and they've lived in the swamp for so long.
They already know who you need to go to to manipulate and get the right lobbyists in front of their boss. So the staff is also lobbying you. But they're lobbying you based on sort of a loose vision. But here's what's really weird, folks. Every single office has a different time to actually input their appropriations requests in different formats.
So why are you paying so much money to lobbyists from people and companies and everybody like that? Because they have to go into each office, wine and dine, go in with their specific format, the way that they ask for it, and their briefing schedules. This is what's happening during the approves process.
So I guess what I'm trying to tell people is that White House, the Senate and the House, reconciliation, right? Budget voted on, says here's the limits on mandatory and discretionary. Here's the left-right boundaries. Some of those left-right boundaries can actually be bounced one way or the other. Then you go into the approves process.
The approves committee or budget committee is sort of done a little bit. Approves takes over. They're very powerful.
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Chapter 6: What is the difference between mandatory and discretionary spending?
That equals actually about 500 billion if they continue a year in revenues. That is not going to cut it. That's not going to be enough to fix our deficit. And as we talked about previous, what that does to our economy makes it even worse in my mind.
Her story. Amy, have you ever been on Medicaid?
No, I have not.
I have. So, my daughter was born with Medicaid in 1997 when I was an ROTC at University of Virginia. Think about how I got through life, you know? Yeah. Military. ROTC, GI-Bill, Medicaid. Das sind literally alle Regierungsprogramme, die regierungspflichtig sind. Das bringt mich in einen seltsamen Ort. Als Republikaner, wie sage ich das? Es ist sehr schwierig.
Und Teil der Sache ist, ich war einer der acht und ich frage nicht, weil ich viele schlechte Vote hatte. But I was one of the eight to vote to keep pre-existing conditions. Why? You said something about senior citizens having medical care because my district had the most federally funded health centers in the whole Commonwealth of Virginia. Think about that, Amy. There's 11 districts.
I think we had 7 of the 17. Everybody voting Republican were actually leaning on the ACA to get healthcare. And the laws codifying pre-existing conditions. Happens all the time. I hope listeners are listening to this. The thing though is, do we have an inordinate amount of mandatory spending? Yes. How do we fix it?
So, as somebody who is burdened by about four layers of different taxes, which is absolutely debilitating, you know the taxes that hurt me the worst in the liquor business, not even the AI business. I mean, we'll have that talk another day on tech and stuff like that. In manufacturing, the worst taxes do not come from the federal government. They come from the state. State, okay. So...
I am a hawk when it comes to cutting taxes on specific types of industries in manufacturing. Which tariffs are not, by the way. Tariffs are awful.
But on the federal side, I don't think people realize how low the overall tax burden is federally compared to state taxes like in Virginia with property tax, receipts taxes, business personal property tax, personal property tax, profit transfer tax, state excise tax. I can keep going. That's the issue. Do payroll taxes suck on the federal side? Absolutely payroll taxes suck.
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Chapter 7: How does the budget process work in the U.S. government?
No, we can't tweak it for people who are like 60 years old. No, we can't do that because they're depending on that. But you know what we could do? Maybe if you're 15 or 20 years old, maybe we could tweak it way into the future so that people have, I don't know, 30 years to plan.
you know things like that can be done you know what the hell with your common sense amy i swear jesus christ what are we doing here you know i here's the thing too you know as as again wrapping up an incredible show i wish you were in office amy um and and you know i would almost rather set myself on fire than run again
But it's almost as if, when you're looking at how unserious and how irresponsible this administration is specifically today, and the fact that a center-right and center-left person can come to an agreement that cutting spending and increasing revenue have to happen with some kind of restructuring of mandatory programs for long-term outcomes based on smart decisions in a common sense way.
And restructuring of tax revenue. And restructuring of tax revenue. Absolutely. It can be done. We're America, for God's sakes. But it has to be smart people in the room and not people who believe aliens are in the Bible. And that's where I'm at with it. And I think as we're rolling into this year, here's what I would like our listeners to do. Go look at all the projections.
And here's what I really wanted to do. Look at the spending. from the beginning of the Obama years, even with the actual bailout in 2008, right, Amy? To today. Hell, go back further. Amy was right. You can go back and look at the percentage of deficit to debt for each president, which is absolutely mind-boggling, because it's there for listeners to look at and voters.
Und schau, was passiert und was die Projekte für die nächsten zwei Jahre sind. Und schau dir einfach den Mund an, was wir jetzt mit einer Administration, die gesagt hat, dass sie es kontrollieren werden, an den Defizitspenden schauen. Es ist eine Lüge. But we don't have smart people in government.
And I think as people look at the budget process, I absolutely want you to go to videos, look at how the budget process works, breaks it down, especially from the time it drops all the way to the appropriations portion of our budget timeline and the mandatory and deficit spending. Aber versuche, deine Ressourcen zu schauen und wo du deine Informationen bekommst.
Und verstehe, dass es Leute gibt, die sich um dich kümmern, wie Amy und ich. Wir sprechen nicht über seltsame Dinge wie Donald Trump und seinen goldenen Dome. Und wir können später über all das diskretionäre Spenden sprechen. Wir haben eine ernsthafte Diskussion. Aber wir werden darüber sprechen in der Zukunft.
Ja. Ja.
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