date. and stop this foolishness of getting falling into their trap with a number. neil: so you i m curious because you talk about foolishness. republicans have made the same charge of democrats in this spending blitzkrieg here, that have locked you in this position of joining a infrastructure bill with a much bigger noninfrastructure bill. you guys have put yourself in this predicament. what do you say to that? well, you know, noninfrastructure there s nothing being done here that is not infrastructure. just because it s not roads and bridges and water and sewer doesn t mean it s not infrastructure. neil: wait, wait. child care credits on community college or expanded medicare have to do with a whole lot to do with getting mothers, heads of households that happen to be
programs that initiatives state that they never stop. what do you think of that? well, i think that s absolutely true. i appreciate jim clyburn and i appreciate his candor, frankly but that s what i fear. people say that 3.5 trillion, it s more than that. the tax and spend bill. it doesn t include programs that start later like the medicare program for dental as an example. doesn t start for several years. it will continue indefinitely. or other programs that start and stop, but as you say, will be almost impossible not to continue once people start getting the benefits, the experience has been in our country that you continue to get them. it s those mandatory spending programs, entitlement programs that are causing us the fiscal crisis that we re in. so yeah, it is that s a problem with the 3.5. it s like 5 trillion when you look at it that way. we can t afford it when we have $33 trillion in debt.
look at the polling data. most americans blame the democrats. i m not saying that s a reason for us to do anything or not do anything with the debt limit. we should not default, never have defaulted. i don t think it s true that republicans are feeling pressure. it was more frankly the democrats were feeling pressure and now we re going to figure out a way forward. it may not be as long as the time period the democrats wanted but it will be for a period of time to get us beyond this immediate crisis, get us to next year and the opportunity for us to get this economy back on track. let s not do the big tax and spending bill, which would have the opposite effect. neil: looks like that will happen though. well, we might get something but i don t think it s going to be close to the 3.5 or the 5 that we talked about a moment ago. looks like something might happen. i hope it doesn t. it s a terrible time for the economy. we spend money in march of this year on the same programs. you know