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4:48Now PlayingThe Trump administration has made some changes to the program that allows private citizens to make contributions to pay down our $36 TRILLION national debt. The administration has apparently added options to allow citizens to send “gifts” using Venmo and PayPal. The program has actually existed for nearly 30 years, and during that time it hasn’t made a dent in the program, but the Trump administration seems to think that modernizing the payment system will get the cash flow started. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Hey folks, if you've got an extra $36 trillion lying around that, you don't need good news, you can now take your $36.65 trillion and simply Venmo it to the federal government. And boom, we've paid off our national debt. Because according to a new report from NPR, they uncovered this. The Trump administration has now opened up Venmo and PayPal payments so that average everyday citizens can send gifts of money to the federal government that will be used to pay off again, the $36.65 trillion national debt. Now, for the record, this program is not new. In fact, it didn't even start under Trump. It didn't even start under a Republican back in 1996. Uh, the federal government under Bill Clinton actually opened up to, uh, start receiving gifts of money from average citizens to help pay down the national debt. So this program has been going on for 29 years.
It's just that the Trump administration has now modernized it, and you don't have to send in a check anymore. You can hop on Venmo or PayPal and immediately get that money to the federal government without having to wait on the US mail to deliver your check. So they want that money, they want it now, they want it fast. They've added Venmo and PayPal. And for the record, in the 29 years that this program has been in existence, the federal government has only brought in $67 million. I say only that's a lot of money. I mean, for everybody watching this, that's a life changing amount of money. But when you're $36.65 trillion in debt, 67 million really isn't gonna do anything. But I don't know, maybe people were waiting for Venmo and PayPal. Maybe Donald Trump has stumbled upon the greatest idea ever in the history of ideas. Or maybe this is a way for the Trump administration to take your money and go spend it on things that are not in fact the national debt, uh, don't necessarily know, but wouldn't surprise me. But here's the thing, like not only is this just stupid, like on its face, the fact that this has existed for 29 years is dumb, like very, very dumb. But what's even dumber, and of course, a little more cruel is putting it on you, right? You listening to me talk right now, you are not responsible for the national debt, okay? You are not the one that spent that money, the federal government did. And it's not that they spent 60 or, you know, 36 million what, or trillion,
Whatever. They didn't spend 36 trillion to make your life better, okay? If they had done that, that would be a reasonable justifiable expense. We've spent $36 trillion creating chaos around the planet, killing civilians, destroying landscapes, absolutely changing the way the earth looks with missiles and tanks and bombs. That's where that $36 trillion went. It didn't go to people on Medicaid, it didn't go to people on food stamps. It didn't go to Medicare, it didn't go to Social Security. It went to help destroy lives all over the world, and it continues to go there every single day. So it is not on you. You should not have to Venmo the federal government money because they have spent unwisely for decades and decades and decades. That's what me off about this story. The audacity of these people who go into office and vote for these horrible budgets, approve these, you know, world changing attacks that we launch. Those are the people that ought to be losing their paychecks to pay down this national debt. You wanna vote for this? You wanna spend trillions of dollars on this crap? Then they, those elected officials are the ones who need to pay up, not the average US citizen.
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