The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Ukraine Military, Fentanyl Crisis, National Debt to Hit $31 Trillion| Sept. 12

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: The Justice Department wants to review the documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The Ukraine military makes some large strategic advances against Russia.  Authorities found 22 pounds of fentanyl during a drug bust in Forsyth County, North Carolina.  America’s debt clock is ticking faster and approaching $31 trillion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal's top news for September 12. Here are today's headlines. The Justice Department wants to review the documents seized from former president Donald Trump's Mara Lago estate in Florida. Trump's lawyers don't want the Justice Department to have access to review those documents. Last week, federal prosecutors asked federal judge Eileen Cannon to allow FBI agents to resume their work viewing the documents. Trump's lawyers argue in a filing on Monday that the Department of Justice should not be allowed to continue reviewing the documents. Keep in mind that some of these documents are classified. It remains unclear whether the DOJ will receive access to the documents, but it is clear that a third party, known as a special master, will be selected to review the documents in the coming days and weeks to be continued.

The Ukraine military made some large strategic advances against Russia over the weekend and today. The Ukrainian military says it has liberated about 20 settlements from the Russians. Russian forces have pulled all the way back to the northeastern border of Ukraine in some areas. Ukrainian forces have retaken 1,100 square miles of land, as today reports. This success for Ukraine's military comes 200 days after Russia, launched its invasion, and two weeks after Ukraine launched its counteroffensive. Now, the Ukrainian flag is flying once again over territory Russia had taken. Ukraine also says it has captured many Russian prisoners of war.

Ukraine is even running out of space to keep all the Russian POWs, a Ukraine presidential advisor, told the Associated Press. A spokesman for the Kremlin says Russia's special military operation, as they call the invasion will continue. Russia says troops will regroup and re-engage. But just because Russian troops have pulled back from parts of Ukraine does not mean the shelling has ended in these areas. The shelling has led to total blackouts in some regions of Ukraine. Authorities found 22 pounds of fentanyl during a drug bust in Forsyth County, North Carolina. That's the county that includes Winston-Salem. This is the largest drug bust in the county's history.

and that's enough fentanyl to kill 5 million people, according to reports from Fox News. The local sheriff's office places the street value of the drugs around $2.6 million. The fentanyl crisis remains a top concern for lawmakers. Many Republican members of Congress argue that President Biden needs to work harder to prevent drugs from being smuggled across the southern border. Today, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida issued a statement on the fentanyl crisis, saying Biden has not given the situation the attention it deserves. Rubio says the president and Congress should immediately restrict the illegal drug market, heighten legal penalties for selling

fentanyl, put greater pressure on Beijing to control fentanyl production at its source, and stop undermining border security. Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death in adults ages 18 to 45, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. America's debt clock is ticking and fastly approaching $31 trillion. This will be a new record for the country. At a Democratic National Committee reception last week, Biden had this to say about his work on the deficit per PBS news. Last year, our reduced deficit, $350 billion. You know how much this year not counting Medicaid changes?

$1,700 billion. So I don't want to hear it from Republicans about fiscal responsibility. David Ditch is a Heritage Foundation expert for the federal budget, and he joins us now. David, thank you so much for being here. I want to ask you to respond to the president's remarks. Has he reduced the deficit? Technically, the annual deficit has gone down to where it is now from where it was in 2020 and 2021. The question is who bears credit, or more importantly, who bears responsibility for why the

deficit was so high two years ago. We were facing a national crisis when COVID-19 hit. There were government lockdowns everywhere, and tens of millions of businesses were in jeopardy going out of business. Congress responded with a tremendous amount of stimulus spending. Some of it was well-intentioned but flawed. Some of it was a bad idea from the start. But the bottom line is we had record deficits.

Everyone understood that those deficits were going to come down because those programs would be temporary, and that turned out to be the case. And yet Biden is saying that he deserves the credit for the fact that all those COVID stimulus programs expired, even though that's the only reason why the deficits have gone down. And in fact, if you look at what has passed, what the Biden agenda has meant, time and again he has supported bills that increased the deficit from where it would be. If someone else had been president and had not supported this agenda, the deficits would be even lower than they are. $31 trillion, that's really hard to wrap your mind around. What exactly does this mean for America's future and what should the president be doing

in order to lower that deficit? Ultimately, this is one of the biggest problems when you're talking about federal finances. The numbers quickly swell beyond what the human mind can comprehend. But let's break this down. Just a couple of years ago, the federal debt was approaching a level of about $200,000 for every household in the country. Now it's approaching $240,000 for every household in the country. So in a lot of parts of the country, that's a 30-year mortgage of debt. that we've added. And unfortunately, we can expect that deficit to grow by one trillion

and one and a half trillion and two trillion dollars every single year moving forward. That's without any wars, without any recessions, without any pandemics. And if any of those hit, we'll then we're talking about three, four, five trillion dollar deficits, which is beyond unsustainable. Yeah, that was going to be my final question, is that sustainable? Where does this end? It ends with that federal spending and the interest payments on the debt, increasingly crowding out economic activity, crowding out the private sector, reducing our growth. And I'll just give one example.

Listeners who are of a certain age will remember a couple decades ago, everyone was talking about how Japan was going to conquer the world. No one has mentioned Japan as an economic threat to America for a long time for a good And part of it is Japan let their national debt get out of control and it has all the money that they have invested into just maintaining their debt. It's one of the reasons why their growth tapered off and now they are stagnant. And unfortunately, that's what America's future will be if we don't get this under control. David Ditch, Heritage Foundation, federal budget expert.

David, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Daily Signals. If you haven't gotten a chance before, be sure to check out our morning show right here in your podcast feed, where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Join us tomorrow morning for the Daily Signal interview edition. Doug Blair will be sitting down with Elbridge Colby to discuss the potential coming conflict

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