Hello and welcome to Giving Ventures, a show to help you grow your giving and change the world for the better.

Our conversations with social entrepreneurs and generous philanthropists highlight innovative charitable efforts and smart ways to have more impact with your giving.

I'm your host, Peter Lipset, Vice President at Donors

Trust. This show is a production of Donors Trust, the oldest and largest donor advised fund

focused on serving conservative and libertarian donors of all capacities to simplify, protect,

and grow their giving. My colleagues and I talk with a lot of groups doing

great work. With Giving Ventures, we can share a bit of what we learn with you. I have a long

fence line with an empty property next to me. And over the last five years, the autumn olive plants

and the wild raspberries have just grown bigger and bigger. They're pouring over the fence. They're choking out the trees. And these noxious plants are technically all on the other side of the fence. And it isn't a problem I made. But every year that I don't do anything about it, it just gets more problematic for me and for my yard. And my wife and I'll go out there and we'll beat the

overhang back a bit. But despite hours of hard work, it seems like nothing has changed.

And I feel like this is an apt analogy for what we're going to talk about today in terms of

federal spending and the debt. I mean, on the one hand, it's this far away thing. We don't

really feel, but it's always there.

It's continuing to grow.

It's encroaching on the financial stability of our future and that of our kids.

And worse, it always feels like it's somebody else's problem.

And we didn't make it directly, but we're all going to get stuck with the consequences.

You know, our national debt now has surpassed $38 trillion,

which is just an obscene and crazy number.

And no president has overseen a surplus since President Clinton.

And that was, you know, just a brief and fleeting thing.

Couple that with the cliffs we're facing on Social Security,

...