We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

I'm Emily Gisinski, Culture Editor here at the Federalist.

As always, you can email the show at radioatthefederalist.com, follow us on Twitter at FDRLST.

Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast as well.

Today, we're really excited to be joined once again by Vera Naked Rougie.

She's of the Mercatus Center.

She also has a syndicated column with creators and writes a lot over at National Review.

I wanted to preface the discussion just in the context of some of the bigger discussions

we've been having over the last couple of weeks.

Republicans are ready to leverage the debt ceiling in negotiations, and that's going

in some interesting directions.

You had the God, guns, and ghastos tweet from Jim Jordan that Christopher Bedford and I

talked about last week, exactly how there's a connection or there might be a connection

Republicans are making between the debt ceiling and your sort of tyranny by the administrative

state.

I'm looking forward to seeing all of that unfold.

But what we wanted to bring Vera Naked on to talk about is the basics of what the situation

does look like when it comes to the National's debt, when it comes to deficits, when it

comes to entitlement programs, and when it comes to entitlement spending.

I'm still of the mentality.

I'm very sympathetic to the argument made by people like JD Vance and even Donald Trump

that right now is not a good time to be prioritizing those cuts to programs like Social Security.

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