$12 trillion in debt and asked the bank for more. nobody would ever allow that to happen. >> the debt wouldn't be so profoundly horrible if it were all contained internally. but the problem is, other countries are picking up our debt. you've got china, $800 billion. and it's not particularly good. doesn't put us in a position of strength when we have to say, look, we owe you $800 billion, but by the way, will you mind helping us with iran and a nuclear power plant? we're sort of pathetic trying to sort of ask them for so many things. >> yeah. when you're in a creditor debtor situation, you want to be the creditor. you don't want to be the one who you owe. we owe $800 billion. that will go up a lot in the next five or ten years when we borrow another $10 trillion if we stay on the course we are. then it could be trillions of dollars we owe to the chinese. i do worry about that as an economist. >> pay go, what's that? >> basically the -- what we should have had was real budget reforms here. if we were going to raise the