In conversation with Dean Phillips

1. 0:00 – 1:25

   Bestie intros!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      Congressman, how should we refer to you today?

   2. DPDean Phillips0:04

      Well, I, I prefer Dean but, you know-

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:06

      Let's go with Dean.

   4. DPDean Phillips0:07

      ... I guess that's ...

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:07

      Let's go with Dean.

   6. DSDavid Sacks0:08

      Let's go with that, Mr. Phillips.

   7. DPDean Phillips0:09

      And just, I'm, I'm asking people to be keen on Dean, so I might as well run with it.

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:12

      Ooh.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:12

      There you go.

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:13

       Oh, keen on Dean. Well, you know what? I'm a big supporter of the Dean machine already.

   11. DPDean Phillips0:16

       Oh, you know about the Dean machine?

   12. DSDavid Sacks0:18

       With this gelato, I'm, I'm all up on the Dean machine.

   13. DPDean Phillips0:20

       I love it. By the way-

   14. DSDavid Sacks0:20

       Let's go.

   15. DPDean Phillips0:21

       ... I bought an old International Harvester metro van for Talenti when we did activations like South by Southwest and ...

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:26

       I used to own one of those, by the way. Yeah.

   17. DPDean Phillips0:28

       No, c- you did?

   18. JCJason Calacanis0:29

       I, yeah, I bought it for my ranch. It's a great-

   19. DPDean Phillips0:30

       Come on.

   20. JCJason Calacanis0:31

       Yeah.

   21. DPDean Phillips0:31

       I love that baby. So I bought one for Talenti and I saw how people just immediately were attracted to it and fell in love with it, and I thought, hey, when I ran for Congress, I'm gonna do the same thing.

   22. DSDavid Sacks0:40

       (clears throat)

   23. DPDean Phillips0:41

       So I created the government repair truck.

   24. JCJason Calacanis0:43

       Are you driving around in this International Harvester?

   25. DPDean Phillips0:45

       Of course.

   26. JCJason Calacanis0:46

       You're kidding.

   27. DPDean Phillips0:47

       Yeah.

   28. JCJason Calacanis0:47

       (laughs) That's awesome.

   29. DPDean Phillips0:47

       I'll show you, yeah, I'll send you a picture of it. It's cool. It's, uh-

   30. JCJason Calacanis0:49

       Awesome.
2. 1:25 – 13:11

   Democratic Presidential Candidate Dean Phillips shares his business background

   1. NANarrator1:25

   2. DSDavid Sacks1:25

      Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the All-In Podcast. With us again today, The Dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya, the Rain Man David Sachs, and The Sultan of Science, David Friedberg. We are going to continue our conversation series with presidential candidates today. Our fourth presidential candidate is on the program. Dean Phillips represents Minnesota's third district, and he's about 25 years younger than Trump and Biden at 54 years old. Dean, before getting into politics, I understand you were the CEO of your family's, uh, spirits business and you ran Talenti Gelato. Oh, that pistachio flavor, amazing. So welcome to the All-In Podcast. Meet the other besties. And maybe you could just start out by telling us why you are running for president.

   3. DPDean Phillips2:16

      Yeah, well, I'll tell you, after being in the vodka business and the ice cream business and actually the coffee business, I think I understand at least what Americans want, so that's a good start. Uh, well, I'll tell you a little about my background and why I'm here. I lost my dad in the Vietnam War, uh, when I was just six months old. Uh, he had, grew up with no money in St. Paul, Minnesota. I earned an ROTC scholarship, uh, on behalf of the federal government, of course, uh, to pursue his education. Uh, went to Vietnam in 1968, just before I was born. I got to see the US land on the moon, and I think regularly about how he looked up two days before his helicopter crashed and he died. Looked up and saw Americans on the moon, and looked down and saw America at its worst. And literally, that experience, in no small way, is, uh, what brings me to this day. And, uh, I was six months old, uh, my mom was 24 and widowed, and we moved in with my great-grandparents for the first three years of my life, and I got lucky. When I was three, my mom married a wonderful, extraordinary man who adopted me, Eddie Phillips, brought me into a family of great blessings. My grandmother became Dear Abby and my aunt Ann Landers, so I grew up in a family of a lot of advice. And, um, I've lived on both sides of advantage, and I recognize it. I remember the day I turned, uh, 26, uh, and I counted the days, uh, that my father had lived, my birth father, and I remember the day after, um, I had lived as many days as him, uh, my life changed forever, and I, I became inspired, uh, joined our family business after college, uh, ended up running our, our beverage business. We created Belvedere Vodka, which we sold to LVMH, and then got into the ice cream business, and did the same thing-

   4. JCJason Calacanis3:52

      Wait, you guys created Belvedere?

   5. DPDean Phillips3:53

      Yeah. We, my father and I-

   6. JCJason Calacanis3:54

      Oh, cool.

   7. DPDean Phillips3:54

      ... and our partner, Steve Gill, went on a trip to Poland in 1993 hoping to sell them Phillips Schnapps, which we made in Minnesota. We thought Eastern Europe was ready for peppermint and peach schnapps.

   8. JCJason Calacanis4:06

      (laughs) Yeah.

   9. DPDean Phillips4:06

      And, and we, we were touring distilleries and we see, both in, in duty free in the airport and in the distilleries, the most beautiful packaging we'd ever seen in the spirits business. Now, mind you, this is when Absolut and Stoli were like the pinnacle of luxury.

   10. JCJason Calacanis4:20

       Right.

   11. DPDean Phillips4:21

       They're $15, you know, average now.

   12. JCJason Calacanis4:23

       Yeah. Bottom of the glass.

   13. DPDean Phillips4:23

       And my father immediately, yeah, sat at a restaurant that night. He t- literally, this is a literal napkin story. He, on a napkin, created a little matrix, and said, "If Stoli and Absolut are $15 and they're the most premium in a fast-growing category, why shouldn't there be a $25 vodka, and why should this not be it?"

   14. DSDavid Sacks4:42

       Hmm.

   15. DPDean Phillips4:42

       So we negotiated with the Polish government. Our partner, Tad Dorda from Poland helped us, and we first obtained the distribution rights, and then when Poland privatized their, uh, spirits industry, uh, we acquired the distillery and the IP, and the rest was history. And, you know, cork finish, beautiful bottle, uh, we sold it. Uh, we talked about the lowest common denominator, the pens we used to write the orders, the way we carried it, uh, made all the difference in the world. And then we used that same template in ice cream, because what, what we found is in every categ- ev- every, uh, consumer product category in which there are two main competitors, Coke and Pepsi, Stoli and Absolut, Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs, they tend to fight to the bottom. Lower pricing, um, you know, frankly, um, demeaning consumers. And there's always an opportunity to introduce something a little bit more premium, a little bit more special, that's still an affordable luxury. And Belvedere, by the way, was built by Jay-Z. I can tell you that story if you wanna hear it. It's an extraordinary one.

   16. JCJason Calacanis5:38

       Yeah, yeah, tell that story, too.

   17. DPDean Phillips5:39

       Yeah.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:39

       Yeah.

   19. DPDean Phillips5:40

       So, so-

   20. JCJason Calacanis5:41

       So far, you're our k- you're our kind of candidate. We're liking this.

   21. DSDavid Sacks5:43

       Exactly. Yeah, you just got a lot of votes apparently. (laughs)

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:46

       (laughs)

   23. JCJason Calacanis5:46

       (laughs)

   24. DSDavid Sacks5:46

       We're all looking at you like, "Who is this guy?"

   25. JCJason Calacanis5:47

       This is awesome. Yeah.

   26. DSDavid Sacks5:48

       Keep going with it.

   27. DPDean Phillips5:48

       So when people ask me about my platform, I'll say, I'll tell them I'll be a storyteller about vodka.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:52

       I'm ready to start popping bottles over here.

   29. JCJason Calacanis5:54

       Yeah. (laughs)

   30. DPDean Phillips5:54

       (laughs)
3. 13:11 – 29:10

   Dean's time in Congress: witnessing legal corruption, thoughts on Biden's mental state, advantages of not being a career politician

   1. DPDean Phillips13:11

   2. JCJason Calacanis13:11

      Before we jump into the future about why you're running and what you, what you see for the country, talk about the years that you spent in Congress. What did you observe there? What, what is it like day to day and, and what do you think is working and what isn't working?

   3. DPDean Phillips13:27

      Uh, I ho- I wish we had three hours. I get there, Chamath, I get there the first week of 2019 and, like all of you that come from organizational and enterprise experience, I assumed that Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy would have a, have a strategy to introduce the new members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, you know, get to know each other, do a ropes course, you know, and build some trust or something. And my goodness, it was just the opposite, guys. We were put on separate buses, going to different events. And I realized right away that they had a systemic segregation strategy on day one. And you know what-

   4. JCJason Calacanis14:02

      You mean the two parties.

   5. DPDean Phillips14:02

      ... I mean this sincerely. The two parties. This is th-

   6. JCJason Calacanis14:04

      Right.

   7. DPDean Phillips14:04

      ... I'll tell you what I've learned, and I'll, we can talk more about this, the only people that wanna protect the status quo of the duopoly and the political industrial complex that just surrounds it all, are the two parties. And it is destructive, and I will get into that. But I recognized right away, all of my colleagues, that the leadership in both, uh, uh, Democratic and Republican side, they wanted to keep us separate, they did not want to give us education and information, uh, and they wanted to keep us so busy that we could not become threats to their power structure. You c- you can imagine, members of Congress tend to be pretty ambitious people and ultimately, they were smart to do that because, uh, they made members of Congress, they do to this day, raise, raise money all week long. 10,000 hours per week is what Senators and House members spend raising money. I've got a bill, actually, that would preclude it from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM 'cause it's such an unmitigated joke and disaster. The fact that in the United States that a PAC representing a special interest or corporation can hand a $5,000 check to a member of Congress at a steak house on Wednesday evening, and then that member serves on a committee in which that business or special interest has business in front of the next day, is the most unbelievable form of legal corruption you could possibly imagine. So that's one. Needless to say, I resolved right after that first week of orientation that I would do it differently. Uh, I befriended my Republican colleagues, uh, my wife Annalise and I started having bipartisan dinners at her house. I joined the Problem Solvers Caucus, I hope you guys know about it, it's the most important small caucus in Congress, we're now 32 Democrats and 32 Republicans committed to doing what we're supposed to do, get to know each other, talk policy and try to make a difference. Now we're the workhorses, not the show horses, so you don't know most of our names, including me. Uh, but we were the ones invited to the White House, uh, uh, in s- in like week three of our service, I was one of four Democrats, there were four Republicans that, uh, President Trump invited to the Situation Room to make a proposition to get us through the shutdown, which I can talk about that bizarre hour of my life as well. Um, and that's how I resolved to do it. Now I'm ranked, depending on the, the survey, uh, number one, number two, number 10, uh, most bipartisan members of the entire, uh, US Congress and including governors. Uh, and, and I vote relatively progressive. It's not about just the votes, it's about the ethos, it's about, uh, Republican sponsored bills, uh, that have come from me and it's about me sponsoring Republican led bills, uh, and that's what makes me a little bit different than I think just about every member of Congress. Not to mention, I think I'm the only one that's willing to torpedo a, a career so that the country isn't torpedoed by this nonsense and dysfunction. Um, there's a lot more to talk about but the, it all starts-

   8. JCJason Calacanis16:49

      Yeah.

   9. DPDean Phillips16:49

      ... with a systematic segregation and a focus-

   10. JCJason Calacanis16:52

       Let's start th-

   11. DPDean Phillips16:52

       ... on fighting each other instead of fighting for each other. I can talk about it all day long.

   12. JCJason Calacanis16:56

       Let's start there, Dean. What, give us the assessment of what's happening in the White House right now.

   13. DPDean Phillips17:01

       Yeah.

   14. JCJason Calacanis17:01

       Before we talk about your candidacy. Just like, what, what's going on?

   15. DPDean Phillips17:05

       Yeah. Well f- l- let me just say I respect President Biden. I, he's a man I've had in my house, uh, for an event, he's a man with whom I've flown on Air Force One twice, he did a beautiful video for my daughter, he called my mother, um, I think he did a fine job. I think he was the only man that could've defeated Donald Trump in 2020. And I have to say, I think it's fair to say too, uh, he's probably the only Democrat who could and will lose to Donald Trump in 2024. He's a human being, uh, he's now in his 80s, uh, he is clearly, um, on the decline. He's not incompetent. I believe he's surrounded himself by competent, able, principled people and I believe the White House is running, uh, as a team, as most do. Uh, but do I think that he will be in a position to continue leading this country in the future? I do not. I think I'm joined by about 75% in the count- of the country in saying that. I also believe the policies that we pass, for the most part, are investments for the future in infrastructure, the CHIPS Act I think is a very important bill, which by the way has national security implications as you guys know.... uh, the Inflation Reduction Act, a, a bizarre name for a bill that's really a, a energy and climate bill, I think is, is pretty good legislation. And I think he reconstituted our allies around the world that had been frayed to a point of great danger, uh, during the Trump administration. So I salute the past, but this is really an election about the future, it's about a generational change, it's about creating, you know, really a new American century, uh, that will be powered by systems, structures, people, technologies that I'm just afraid that President Biden and former President Trump can't even comprehend, let alone create thoughtful policy to both nurture and also manage. And I think that's where we're at. And, uh, I wanna... I think we have wars overseas that I think in no small part are caused by a generation that is so focused on techniques and tools of the past that they can't even dare look to building peace for the future. That's-

   16. DSDavid Sacks19:02

       So that's a-

   17. DPDean Phillips19:02

       ... I think why we have the Middle East still going, that's why Ukraine, you know, the, the vice president has some ownership in some of these issues that I'm afraid, um, have to be exposed and they're the truth, and I'm happy to talk about them. But most of all, I'll wrap it with this, affordability, uh, in the United States of America is absolutely, uh, the most challenging issue facing Americans. They don't believe that their government is listening, they don't believe the president understands, they don't believe Congress is able to do anything about it because we're so dysfunctional. Uh, and that's another mission that I'm on right now, to end this nonsense. I am gonna build a team of rivals, I will have a White House, uh, and a cabinet comprised, uh, of both Democrats and Republicans, the most able leaders imaginable who have run multi-billion dollar organizations in some cases, understand customer service. We'll employ zero-based budgeting to the extent we can. We will employ a world-class consulting firm to look at every single government program, system, structure, uh, and, um, and personnel-

   18. DSDavid Sacks19:59

       Okay.

   19. DPDean Phillips20:00

       ... to identify ways to save money. These are things that this president, and frankly no president who doesn't have business experience, nonprofit leadership experience, and government experience could possibly imagine, because they're so stuck in their siloed ways of thinking. He's been there for 50 years, uh, and it's time for change. I was two, three years old when he became a senator.

   20. DSDavid Sacks20:20

       So let's get specific on the issues and, and go into foreign policy, which is David Saxe's, I think number one issue this election.

   21. DPDean Phillips20:27

       Of course.

   22. DSDavid Sacks20:27

       But first, just to be clear on Biden, do you believe he's in cognitive decline? Do the Democrats privately believe he's in cognitive decline? And to what extent do you think he'd make it through the next presidency? Or do you think this is sort of a Ronald Reagan situation where he might look back on it and he's got some early onset of some cognitive decline? What, what do you personally think and what do Democrats think?

   23. DPDean Phillips20:49

       I don't want to impress upon anybody or give you the sense that I think he has a form of dementia or Alzheimer's or significant cognitive decline. Um, but anybody who pays attention can see the change. And I'm, I'm not, I'm not... You know, people are saying that I'm causing his problems, I could risk his, you know, re-election. You know, I'm not the guy that has him losing to Trump nationally down in five of six battleground states, the lowest approval ratings in, uh, presidential history almost. Uh, and I'm certainly not the guy, uh, that has shown his, you know, his decline. That's on video, that's on audio. You see it, it's natural. He's a human being for goodness sakes. All I'm doing you guys is saying the quiet part out loud. The only one. Y- you asked the question, i- "Do others talk about this?" The question is, is anybody not talking about this?

   24. DSDavid Sacks21:39

       (laughs)

   25. DPDean Phillips21:39

       Of course they are, you guys.

   26. DSDavid Sacks21:41

       They've really created an opportunity for you, because like you said, everyone's talking about this...

   27. DPDean Phillips21:45

       Of course.

   28. DSDavid Sacks21:46

       ... but no one's willing to say it.

   29. DPDean Phillips21:47

       Of course.

   30. DSDavid Sacks21:47

       What, what has been the blowback in the Democratic Party from your declaring?
4. 29:10 – 56:08

   Foreign Policy: Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Hamas, China/US de-escalation, how he'd handle TikTok, immigration, border security

   1. DSDavid Sacks29:10

      Sachs. You said you wanted hard questions. Welcome to the pod, Sachs, foreign policy, let's go.

   2. DPDean Phillips29:13

      I, I love nothing more.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya29:14

      (laughs)

   4. DPDean Phillips29:14

      Let's bring it.

   5. DSDavid Sacks29:15

      Before we came on, you emailed us and said, "Hard questions, let's go."

   6. DPDean Phillips29:17

      Please.

   7. DSDavid Sacks29:18

      Meet David Sachs.

   8. DPDean Phillips29:19

      Hey, David.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya29:21

      D- Dean, you said a minute ago that one of the reasons why the world's on fire is because of the Biden administration's handling of foreign policy has kinda led us to this point. I think there was a really good example of this a week ago. There was a new report out by a former UN assistant secretary-general named Michael Van Der Selenberg who worked at the UN for 34 years. He did a detailed study and reconstruction of what happened in, uh, March of 2022, so the month after war. And what he concluded is there was a bonafide deal on the table between Russia and Ukraine where Putin was willing to pull back and leave, and leave the territorial integrity of Ukraine intact if Ukraine would agree not to become part of NATO. And this is something that's been discussed. Um, there have been many reports of this.... over the last several months. Ukrainian Pravda had a story about that, but now there's yet another confirmation that such a deal was available and yet Boris Johnson and Joe Biden said, "No, we wanna pressure Putin, not, uh, work out a peace deal with him." And so thanks to Western intervention, that deal never happened. Now we're 20 months later and the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed. It's been a fiasco. The casualties have been absolutely massive-

   10. DPDean Phillips30:40

       Horrifying.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:40

       ... horrifying. You saw there was this article on Time Magazine, this new profile of Zelenskyy, where his own aides and advisors say that he's delusional. He can't accept that, that they're losing the war. They furthermore say that even if the US provides more weapons, more aid, they don't have enough men, don't have enough soldiers to use them, things are going that badly. I think there's now a fear that Ukraine could collapse in the next year, even if we provide more aid. So I guess, you know, I know that early on in the war you supported Biden's policy.

   12. DPDean Phillips31:07

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:08

       I'm wondering, have events on the ground now changed your view at all? How do you feel about it today? Do you think it was a mistake not to try and work out a peace deal in those early months of the war? And if you were president, what would you try and do differently now to try and end this thing?

   14. DPDean Phillips31:24

       Well, first of all, I think we have to back up to 2014 to talk about this, David. Um, you know, first of all, I, I, I've seen that reporting. I, I do not have confirmation of the validity of that. Uh, and in, and, and if I did, I could talk about it more directly. But if that's the truth, uh, I would first ask, did that include Crimea? And secondly, it is not the, this... it's not a United States decision about whether or not Ukraine should agree to a peace deal. It is, uh, Ukraine's decision, plain and simple. But I, I do wanna turn back the clock a little bit because I think this all kind of plays together.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:56

       Yeah. By, by the way-

   16. DPDean Phillips31:57

       Yeah.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:57

       ... it didn't, it didn't include Crimea.

   18. DPDean Phillips31:58

       Yeah.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:58

       But Zelenskyy was willing to go for that deal, and it was the West who intervened and said, "No, we want you to pressure Putin and fight."

   20. DPDean Phillips32:04

       And David, like I said, you know, I, I never speak to... un- unless I can verify that myself, and I've not seen that intelligence in the SCIF. I've not, uh, seen that presented to me. Uh, if... and by the way, there are some times where I don't know... um, most times none of us know everything. Uh, if that is the case, I would absolutely answer this question differently. But based on what I do know, uh, I wanna turn back the clock to 2014. You know, this is where foreign policy matters. You know, President Obama was a great orator, I think a, a inspirational leader. You know, he came to the US presidency with only organizing, state legislative, and a couple or few years of Senate experience, uh, as a very young man, and Joe Biden was his vice president. And when Vladimir Putin took Crimea, uh, easily, you know, that set the tone for what's going on right now. And we have not done a very good job of prevention. That's true in healthcare. That is true in poverty. That is true in our foreign policy, which is, by the way, maybe what happens when you spend 83 billion a year on f- on, uh, diplomacy and 850 billion a year on bombs and missiles. Not to mention, go back to Eisenhower and the military-industrial complex, David, and you well know this, it does, it controls a lot of our policy because those who are making great profit find ways to influence those who open the piggy banks. I think the Crimea, uh, moment in 2014, the writing was on the wall. That was Putin's test. "If I take an inch, well, maybe they'll give me a mile." And what happened during the Biden presidency, of course, he took the mile. Uh, I think it has implications now though, David and all of you, you know, if we do not do our best to support Ukraine in defending, I think it doesn't just send a message to Putin, a post-Putin Russia, which is gonna be a failed nation with a brain drain and something we should talk about. But it also sends a message to Iran, North Korea, and even China when... I wanna talk about that too because I think, uh, we have a much brighter future with them than most people portray, uh, as it relates to Taiwan. And that's the sad truth, is we get ourselves into these situations that then layer up the consequences by withdrawing. And Afghanistan was another example of that. So to answer your question, had there been a peace deal at that point, that simply would have... and the deal would have been, "We'll give you your territory back in return for not, uh, entering NATO," who in their right mind would say that was a bad deal? Who in their right mind, especially-

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:29

       Boris Johnson. (laughs)

   22. DPDean Phillips34:30

       Well, well, a- and by the way-

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:32

       I mean, it's a lot clearer now.

   24. DPDean Phillips34:32

       ... that's what you get when you get people like...

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:34

       Yeah.

   26. DPDean Phillips34:34

       Well, I'm gonna make this case, as you guys know, for comprehensive new generation of leaders all around the world, in our country and in others, that are sick of this nonsense, sick of the bloodshed, sick of enriching enterprise at the expense of human beings. It happens here, it happens in Ukraine and Russia, and it's happening in the Middle East, plain and simple.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:53

       Sachs, anything else on foreign policy you wanna go to?

   28. DPDean Phillips34:57

       Acting out now would be, I think, a shameful, horrible mistake. The one thing I would argue right now, David, is those who are most likely going to be subject to Putin's terror, the countries in Europe, should be carrying a much bigger, bigger part of this load. You know, we have 750 bases and installations around the world in 80 countries. We are the most dominant presence in world history of any government, and we spend more on our military than the next, I think, 11 nations combined, for gosh sakes. You know, uh, a- and, and if anyone thinks that a kinetic risk to the United States is the most likely harm that will be done us, not cyber or not social or not biological, I think you're out of your mind. Uh, those are the risks that I think are most threatening that I think this president does not quite understand, and we have to recomprise and recommit to diplomacy and defending ourselves against the most important literal risks, including nuclear weapons that can be carried in a backpack and detonated in New York or Tel Aviv or anywhere in the world. And if we don't start-

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya36:00

       But, sir-

   30. DPDean Phillips36:00

       ... changing how we do things, we're not going to be ready, and we are just sitting still in dysfunction.
5. 56:08 – 1:19:30

   US fiscal situation, healthcare, defense spending, restoring cross-party common ground

   1. DPDean Phillips56:08

   2. DSDavid Sacks56:08

      Freeburg and I are, uh, I b- I think Freeburg, you know, moved me to his position on this, number one issue for this election, Freeburg, correct me if I'm wrong for you, is still our out of control spending.

   3. DPDean Phillips56:19

      Oh, it's awful.

   4. DSDavid Sacks56:19

      Freeburg, maybe you could tee this up with the-

   5. JCJason Calacanis56:21

      Yeah, I mean, I, I've said this in the past, I think the US is facing a fiscal emergency in the sense that arithmetic starts to play out, that the cost of debt spirals. We can't accomplish any of the other stuff we're talking about unless we can figure this out. We have $33 trillion of debt today, the Treasury estimates it's gonna grow to 47 trillion by 2033, just 10 years away.

   6. DPDean Phillips56:42

      Yep.

   7. JCJason Calacanis56:42

      $1.5 trillion in deficit this year, a trillion in debt interest expense alone this year, and a third of our debt is coming up to be refinanced soon.

   8. DPDean Phillips56:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JCJason Calacanis56:50

      It's gonna get refinanced at 4.5% interest rate instead of the 2%, 2.5% it's sitting at today. So the interest re- it will swell, the deficit will swell, the debt will swell, and we're already taxing 18% of GDP as federal revenue, which a lot of economists have shown you can only get to 20%, at which point the economy starts to shrink. There's, yeah, I think, pretty good research on this. Some would argue differently, but I think that's kind of a, a natural limit. So the only kind of response is what's wrong with spending? Like why, why do, why do we have this spending problem? I guess the question for you is, what is causing structurally the spending problem? A lot of people have said that this is late stage empire, the failure of democracy because everyone votes-

   10. DPDean Phillips57:33

       Yeah.

   11. JCJason Calacanis57:33

       ... for themselves all the money eventually. Or is it a politically oriented problem where folks don't want to address the biggest line items, they don't want to hold programs to account? And what is the answer here?

   12. DPDean Phillips57:46

       So to answer your question directly, the, you asked what the cause is, it's incompetency and perverse incentives, period. There is no political... There used to be a political reward for conservatives who were focused on fiscal responsibility 'cause they would win elections over tax and spenders. But that party is long gone, long gone. There's no reward, that's why Trump added $7 trillion to the deficit, and that's why Biden will-

   13. JCJason Calacanis58:10

       Yep.

   14. DPDean Phillips58:10

       ... probably add, you know, add about that much as well. So, uh, by the way, I, I think I'm one of the only Democrats who has bo- has been named by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, uh, one of their fiscal heroes, as a Democrat, and also, um, I'm a Hamilt- Hamilto- um, I'm sorry, Hamilton Jefferson Award winner by the US Chamber of Commerce. And I'm also a pro-worker. I, I... This notion that you can't be, by the way, pro-business and pro-worker, that they're somehow mutually exclusive, uh, that's BS. They're, they're mutually mandatory. But back to your question, $33 trillion in debt. By the way, our economy can accommodate more, that's the sad truth. The issue is our debt service, and nobody's talking about the fact that it is gonna go from mid $400 billion a year to, to your point, Dave, with the higher interest rates, probably approaching $1 trillion, maybe $840-

   15. JCJason Calacanis58:54

       No, it's already over a tril-

   16. DPDean Phillips58:55

       Well-

   17. JCJason Calacanis58:55

       Is it a trillion one today? It's gonna be $1,000,000,000,500-

   18. DPDean Phillips58:56

       Well, see, I, I-

   19. JCJason Calacanis58:57

       ... by, you know, yeah.

   20. DSDavid Sacks58:58

       Yeah.

   21. DPDean Phillips58:58

       ... I don't, I, I-

   22. JCJason Calacanis58:58

       Yeah.

   23. DPDean Phillips58:59

       ... I would argue that maybe I, I, we could have a little argument about if it's there quite yet. But none the-

   24. DSDavid Sacks59:04

       Right.

   25. DPDean Phillips59:04

       Either way, let's call it, let's call it a trillion.

   26. JCJason Calacanis59:07

       Call it a trillion.

   27. DPDean Phillips59:07

       That mean- that means literally, that means literally we are spending way more for the past than we are investing in the future, that means we have literally no dollars left for any discretionary spending. Every bit of it is now consumed by Social Security, Medicare, and our military. And, and we're... And on top of that, we've got people sleeping in, s- on the streets in every single town and city in America, we have kids going to school hungry, we have one of the most, uh, to me failing public school systems in the entire developed world, we have a healthcare system that is not healthcare, it's sick care, a fee for service model that should be capitated, and, and our outcomes are mid-pack.

   28. JCJason Calacanis59:47

       Yeah.

   29. DPDean Phillips59:47

       And we have a $2 trillion deficit. And by the way, no childcare, no pre-K education. My g- I can go on down the list. It's nonsensical. And-

   30. DSDavid Sacks59:55

       Well, let's-

Episode duration: 1:56:18