America can still borrow today—but what happens the minute the bond market blinks? That’s the knot we pull on in Episode 12 of Gross Domestic Problem, where we are joined by Rep. Blake Moore of Utah's first district. He’s one of the few elected officials willing to say the quiet part out loud: we’re already borrowing to cover the whole appropriations budget, and the clock on complacency is loud.
Moore isn’t a doom-poster. He’s a builder. Which is why this conversation hits different. We follow the money—appropriations, demographics, inflation, and the debt-to-GDP spiral—and then ask the only question that matters: what would it take to bend the curve without breaking the country?
The stakes, in Moore’s own words:
“America can still borrow today, but the minute our Treasury market weakens, we’re in a full-blown fiscal crisis… we’re already borrowing to cover the entire appropriations budget, and that’s not sustainable.”
He traces the anatomy of our problem with the clarity of someone who sits in the room where it happens:
-
Deficits by design: Interest costs and mandatory programs now crowd out everything else—leaving Congress to borrow for the day-to-day.
-
Inflation as the first punch: Households feel the debt through prices first—then through weaker growth, fewer choices, and higher risk premia.
- Demography bites: Retirements surged post-2008; beneficiaries rose while the worker base shrank. The math didn’t suddenly change. We did.
But this isn’t an obituary. Moore’s case for a solvable crisis rests on three levers:
-
Growth that’s real, not sugar-high. Keep tax policy globally competitive, drive investment here, and measure success by debt-to-GDP—not partisan talking points.
-
Spending discipline that isn’t performative. “If we don’t get serious about lowering spending while also driving pro-growth policies,” he says, “we don’t stand a chance.”
-
A fiscal commission with teeth. Not another whitepaper graveyard—an up-or-down vote on reforms that actually touch the drivers (think eligibility, indexing, and program design), timed for maximum political courage.
“The first thing that everyday Americans feel from our debt is inflation… exploding deficits driven by retirements and overspending have been fueling higher costs for families.”
We press him on the hard parts: When do tax cuts become dogma instead of strategy? What if growth underperforms the forecast? Where does immigration, AI-driven productivity, and workforce renewal actually move the needle? Moore’s answer isn’t a slogan; it’s a scoreboard: if growth isn’t sustainably above ~2.6–3% and deficits aren’t narrowing year-over-year, we’re not winning.
“If we don’t get serious about lowering spending while also driving pro-growth policies, we don’t stand a chance of getting ahead of our debt-to-GDP problem.”
This episode is for founders deciding whether to bet on America, for state leaders building around federal volatility, and for anyone allergic to magical thinking. We don’t promise painless fixes. We do promise a map.
🎧 Listen now: Investing in America or Mortgaging Its Future? Featuring Rep. Blake Moore.
Then subscribe at grossdomesticproblem.com and share with someone who thinks “doing nothing” is a plan. The bill always comes due; the question is whether we choose the menu.