Podcast: The debt problem was actually scarier in the 90s. Here’s how they solved it.

I was still just a kid as the US headed into the 1992 US Presidential election, but I remember the excitement around my home town as Ross Perot entered the race as an independent candidate.

Perot was from Dallas, where I grew up. And he was one of the first tech billionaires, long before the dot-com boom.

Like Elon today, Perot knew that America was heading down a dangerous fiscal path. At the time, the US government was spending about 28% of its annual tax revenue just to pay interest on the national debt.

It wasn’t because the debt was so vast. Actually back then it was just a fraction of today’s debt.

The real problem was that sky-high interest rates from the 1980s (15%+) had pushed the government’s borrowing costs and annual interest bill to the moon.

So Ross Perot decided to run for President under a promise to fix the deficit.

Few people understood anything about the deficit back then. So Perot used his vast fortune to buy TV time where he would explain the problem in hour-long presentations. I remember  learning things from him that I’d never even heard about before– Treasury markets, bond yields, government accounting, mandatory spending, and more.

Perot single-handedly dragged America’s deficit issue to the front page and started a national conversation; so even though Bill Clinton ultimately won the election, Perot succeeded in making deficit reduction a top priority.

It was interesting times politically. Clinton was rocked by scandals, impeached, and deeply hated by the other party… quite similar to the situation today. They didn’t have social media back then, but ‘talk radio’ pundits raged 24/7 with the same ferocity of today’s Twitter mob.

Yet even with such conflict and division, Congress and the White House managed to work it out. And over the next decade, interest costs fell from 28% of tax revenue down to 18%. And by the end of the 1990s the government was posting strong budget surpluses.

How did they do it? It wasn’t rocket science or black magic. They simply took a common sense approach to spending– they held spending increases to minimal levels, all while tax revenue soared thanks to a tech-fueled economic bonanza.

Over the ten-year period between 1991 and 2000, government expenditures only rose by 35%. Adjusted for inflation that’s just 5.5% over the entire decade.

Meanwhile tax revenue nearly doubled over the same period. Poof. Problem solved. And America stormed into the 21st century with a record budget surplus, and its interest costs and national debt under control.

Could this happen today? Maybe. There are a lot of similarities. The US government currently pays roughly 22% of tax revenue just to cover the annual interest bill on the national debt, and this amount is growing rapidly. Not to mention, interest costs plus mandatory entitlements (like Social Security and Medicare) already consume 100% of tax revenue.

If they don’t solve this problem, America is going to be looking at a major fiscal crisis in the coming years.

Unfortunately few people in power seem to be taking this seriously. The White House is far more focused on tariffs and trade rather than the obvious problem– excessive spending. And when it comes to deficit reduction, their approach is to seize control of the Fed to push through interest rate cuts.

Congress, meanwhile, seems completely oblivious to the problem.

One of my major concerns is that American voters tend to oscillate from one side to another. So if the guys in power now don’t solve this problem now, voters could swing hard to the Left in 2028, quite possibly to a card-carrying socialist.

There are certainly a lot of socialists emerging in American politics. And they all see deficits as a “revenue problem” and believe that higher taxes will fix every challenge.

Well, we did the math in today’s podcast: “taxing the rich” won’t make a dent in the deficit problem. Neither will wealth taxes, or any of the other idiotic proposals that socialists come up with.

The only way to fix this is to cut spending… and to spend the money much more responsibly.

Fingers crossed that they see the light. And soon. But I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet on major fiscal reform… which is why it’s so critical to have a Plan B.

Listen in to today’s podcast, in which we cover:

• The 70% tax rate fantasy – Even taxing every dollar over $10 million at 70% doesn’t cover a single year’s interest on the debt.
• Why huge new taxes barely move the needle – A wealth tax might grab $200–250B upfront, then $60–100B/year. Yet the debt is growing by trillions annually.
• Behavior matters – People restructure income, delay gains, and move capital. The socialists’ ‘wealth tax’ projections will never match reality.
• Their entire philosophy is to treat the private sector like an ATM while refusing to cut a cent of waste.
• The problem with the socialists who want to “seize the means of production” is that they’ve never produced anything!
• The spending problem – The top 2% already paid ~$1 trillion in taxes in 2021 (28% effective rate on $3.5T income).
• Since July 4th, the US has added nearly $800 billion to the debt— about $500B of it brand-new spending.
• The real “third side” of the coin – It’s not just a revenue problem or a spending problem—it’s decades of baked-in waste, fraud, and mismanagement in federal budgets.
• Zero-base budgeting: A common-sense approach where agencies start at zero and justify every dollar… something almost no one in Washington is willing to consider.
• Bond market reality check – The Fed can nudge short-term rates, but long-term rates are set by the bond market—
• This means that political control of the Fed may not deliver the rate cuts they expect.
• Socialist footholds in major cities – from NYC to Chicago to Seattle, socialists  are winning local races and pushing radical tax-and-spend agendas.

The bottom line:

Confiscating more from the productive economy doesn’t fix the problem; it fuels it. The only real solution starts with cutting waste and ending the government’s addiction to spending.

Until that happens, individuals need their own Plan B—whether it’s hedging against inflation with real assets, diversifying internationally, or building networks with like-minded people who see what’s coming.

That’s exactly why we built our Total Access community. Over the years, it’s become more than just an exclusive group—it’s sparked friendships, partnerships, and a global network of people who are prepared, connected, and two steps ahead. After 15+ years in this business, it’s the thing I’m most proud of.

Listen to the full breakdown here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDaLYkmgW4

And you can access the podcast transcript here.