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When your colleague, Secretary Yullen, was before this committee, she told me that federal debt, which was then about 105% of GDP, she said, quote, that's not a number that I think is fiscally irresponsible.

She also went on to say, quote, if interest rates are zero, we could substantially have a higher debt burden.

And in the formula and the following question, she alluded to Japan and the fact that it could be about double of where we are now, meaning about $60 trillion of debt if you use her math.

So do you agree with Secretary Yellen that having a national debt of over 100% of GDP is fiscally responsible, given that interest rates can change and that historically low interest

rates can always be expected?

I guess I would say it this way.

We're not on a sustainable path, and we haven't been for some time.

And that means that simply that that's growing faster than the economy, by definition,

that is unsustainable.

There will become a point. It will be a point

at which it becomes a problem of servicing the debt. We're not at that point. We're not close to that

point. But we will need to get back where revenues and spending are better aligned. We don't

need to pay the debt down. We just need to have the economy growing as fast or faster than the economy over a long period of time. We must do that. I wouldn't say any particular level. There is no level that I can point to where there's a lot of science behind it being a problem. But we know that the path is not sustainable. It's interesting that you allude to growth being part of the solution.

I want to talk about regulation for a minute, particularly since the Biden administration

delayed oil and gas lease sales again this week due to environmental protests.

So if we pursued policies to increase American energy production by approving more leases and building more pipelines to transfer that energy and cut down on regulatory barriers to make it easier for folks to produce energy and produce anything, wouldn't that make a real impact on energy prices and inflation in general without us needing to use the Fed to slow the economy with monetary policy to deal with inflation?

These questions of the whole set of questions around energy are really questions for elected people. We don't have a mandate there. Obviously, the more supply there is, the price of something

can go down. But these are tradeoffs that you really have to weigh as elected officials.

I'll narrow it just for a minute. Do you believe that the vast amount of regulation is an

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