News Intelligence Analysis
Pat Robertson Said "Congress is Buying Votes With Your Money and My Money"
We Must Get People In Office Who Say We Care About the Nation Rather Than Special Interest Groups
Reported by Katherine Yurica
On May 21, 1985, I recorded an interview Pat Robertson did with his side-kick, Ben Kinchlow on his 700 Club television broadcast. At the time, during Ronald Reagan's administration, I was recording almost all of his shows as part of the research I was doing on a study to see whether his corporation, CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) was violating any tax laws. Because Robertson appears to be quite sincere in his attitude toward congressional spending, and because he preached that individuals and nations should get out of debt as a principle of Christian econmics, we doubt that Mr. Robertson's views on national debt have changed in the nineteen intervening years. Because the Bush administration and the Republican congress have run up the highest deficits in the history of the USA, the Yurica Report presents Pat Robertson's views as a living testimony of what Americans should do now: who they should vote for, and what Congress should do to reverse the dire affects of the federal deficit.
Robertson: "I hate to be gloomy and doom, but in all honesty [the country] isn't in great shape. The federal deficit is enormous. You see if you go into a recession (and a recession isn't the end of the world). It just means manufacturing output is down a bit, and so many people [are out of work]. The unemployment rate goes up to eight or nine percent instead of 7.2 or .3 percent. It's not a big thing statistically but it could mean another $100 billion dollars of federal deficit because you have to start paying unemployment claims. You get less taxes. All of a sudden what is a $200 billion dollar deficit becomes a $300 billion dollar deficit just like that. For every point of GNP loss, it's at least $17 billion. It could be as high as a $25 billion dollar difference, so they were forecasting a four percent GNP growth. They're actually getting a point seven. It's very critical and the fed knows it and they don't want to be charged with bringing on the Great Depression…. It isn't bad, but just do what we tell you and get out of debt and the great hidden economic story of our time may be the one that is not announced in the monthly statistics on inflation or unemployment.
"The real story of our times ladies and gentlemen is the ever growing amount of debt that keeps growing up."
McPheeter: "The federal government's debt, which was $600 billion just nine years ago, is now $1.8 trillion and could reach three trillion by the end of the decade. At their current rate, high federal deficits are going to eventually make the interest payments on the national debt the largest single part of the federal budget. Larger than either the Department of Human Health and Services or the Defense Department…."
Robertson: Ladies and Gentlemen, the best information we can get from the Federal Reserve and others, [the debt burden] stands world wide at somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 trillion, which is a number that …is beyond the reach of most understanding.
"So let's just take a look and see what the federal debt is going to mean in your life. Because it's very important to understand what our Congress is doing for us…Right now, our debt is $2 trillion. Now at a ten percent increase, and that's about what we're working on right at this moment, at ten percent [in seven years], the debt's going to go up to $4 trillion. [In fourteen years], total debt will amount to $8 trillion at the rate we're going now, out of ten percent compounding, that's not much, just ten percent every year, you add to it. But what is that going to mean to you?
"I did a few figures: right now, in a family of four, your share of the federal debt is $34,800. That's how much money you owe on Uncle Sam's debt. That's your share of it, you, your wife and two children. You say, my children aren't old enough to earn anything! Well, they'd better, because that's what they're going to have to pay off. You get to fourteen years, your share of it for a family of four is going to be $128,000….We're going to be bankrupt as a nation because there isn't that much productive earning assets, or there are not that much in this nation…it's just the way it's going. It's the way it's been going. It's going very rapidly and it's going to continue to do so, and at some point there is going to be an awful crash. There's going to be a repudiation of debt. There's going to be a wipe-out of social security. Many people who are figuring on getting social security are not going to get any social security. People who are anticipating Medicare, there's not going to be enough money to pay the bill. And you either have runaway inflation where you absolutely wipe out the middle class of the country or you're going to have a revolution because that's what this means."
Ben Kinchlow: "I mean, but when you say the average family owes $34, 800, now I don't owe no $34,000. How do I pay it?"
Robertson: "Yes you do. You're going to pay it out of your hide that's how. You're going to pay it. Either…your savings are going to get wasted away with inflation, so they'll take it out of your savings, whatever you got saved up all your life, they'll inflate away or they'll have to tax it out of you. One or the other, sooner or later, they've got to get it."
Kinchlow: "I see. I should have blown them turkeys up when I had the chance."
Robertson: "Naw, naw…this can reverse. The way it reverses is you quit running deficits. You can put a freeze on, but you've got to not only freeze, you've got to start cutting. And somebody with enough guts, intestinal fortitude has got to get into a position of responsibility to say, "We cannot buy votes any longer with Ben Kinchlow's money."
Kinchlow: "Amen."
Robertson: "I mean, that's what they're doing. They're buying votes with your money and my money and all our children and our grandchildren's money. That's what the people in Congress are doing. They're buying votes. And the pressure groups are saying, "Yes, sure take it away from them, but don't take ours." But it's costing all of us and the people who are going to hurt the most, the young urban professionals, the young people 25 to 40-they're the ones that are going to catch it in the neck because they're going to be the major producers who this thing is going to hit."
Kinchlow: "What are we to do? Just sit here and wring our hands and say 'woe is me'?"
Robertson: "No. What we do is--we gotta get people in office who say we care about the nation rather than caring about special interest groups. Every human being-[audience is applauding loudly].
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