that the u.s. has a higher debt capacity than our current debt level, nobody's going to argue with that. yes, we can't -- that's why the markets don't freak out as the deficit has gotten bigger. the problem with deficits, of course, is that you have to pay back the money. and it crowds out other priorities that we have rising debt. >> because there is interest. it's not free. >> yeah, it's not free. that said, we can't afford it. and it's not really about mmt. mmt as a theory is confused. the argument that the u.s. can afford to run deficits, especially if it's for investing in things that are going to have a future payoff, you know we can do that because we've been doing it for things that aren't even investments. we have now for the last two republican presidents had massive increases in the deficit