Clay Travis argued that excessive federal spending, rather than insufficient government revenue, is at the center of Washington’s budget problems, while pointing to the reduction in the federal workforce under President Donald Trump as an example of what can be accomplished by shrinking government.
During the Fox News segment, Travis pushed back on the idea that the federal government needs additional revenue to address its financial problems.
Instead, he said taxpayers are already sending too much of their money to Washington and that federal officials need to focus on controlling what the government spends.
“We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem,” Travis said.
Travis compared the federal budget to the decisions an ordinary family would have to make when expenses begin exceeding reasonable limits.
He argued that bringing in substantial income would not eliminate the need to examine spending habits.
“And so, as you’re talking to the congressman there, with all due respect, the budget has exploded, and it’s exploded because everybody in this arena and many of the people watching us right now are paying way more in taxes than we should be,” Travis said.
He continued by describing how a family earning several hundred thousand dollars per year might approach its finances if spending became a problem.
“And in a rational, you know, healthy environment where you’re a normal family, you would sit around, if you’re making several hundred thousand dollars a year, you would say, hey, maybe it’s what we’re spending more than what we’re actually bringing in,” Travis said.
For Travis, the issue comes down to how the government handles the money it already collects from taxpayers.
He argued that Americans should be able to keep more of their earnings instead of watching those dollars go toward government spending that he considers wasteful.
“The revenue is not the issue, and this is what gets me so fired up,” Travis said.
“And you’re right, money is fungible. We should get more of our actual money back into our pockets, as opposed to the government misspending it.”
Travis then shifted his attention to the size of the federal government, pointing to the Trump administration’s reduction of the federal workforce as an accomplishment he believes deserves more attention.
“One positive that I think President Trump actually should lean on more, Martha. We have the smallest federal government in 60 years right now,” Travis said.
He contrasted Trump’s record with promises that politicians have made for years about reducing the size of the federal government.
Travis argued that while presidents routinely campaign on making Washington smaller, Trump has followed through by reducing the federal workforce while overall employment has grown.
“Everybody, how many you’ve been in politics for a while, you’ve been in politics, I have. Every president says, we’re going to shrink the size of the federal government,” Travis said.
Travis said Trump has accomplished that reduction on a scale not seen in decades without preventing employment outside the federal government from expanding.
“Trump has actually done it on a level that has never occurred for 60 years, while actually growing overall employment,” Travis said.
For Travis, those two developments provide a political and economic argument that the administration should emphasize more frequently: Washington can reduce the size of its workforce while employment elsewhere continues to grow.
“I think that’s a heck of a story that should be leaned on a bit more,” Travis concluded.
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