The U.S. national debt constitutes a standing indictment of one of history’s most corrupt ruling classes.
By borrowing trillions of dollars and saddling posterity with the repayment obligation, our elected officials have covered themselves in disgrace.
Fortunately, a 13-year-old clip showcasing the colorful personality of former Republican congressman Billy Long, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, suggests that the president-elect has made curtailing the federal government’s spending habits a top priority.
Long, a veteran auctioneer, represented Missouri District 7 in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2023.
In a 2011 clip posted Wednesday to the social media platform X, the then-freshman congressman showed off his auctioneer’s skills.
“We are one of the few people that can actually keep up with the national debt,” Long said of his fellow auctioneers.
Then, the Missouri congressman conducted a funny-yet-sobering imaginary auction of the national debt.
WATCH: Billy Long, who Trump has just picked to lead the IRS, trolled Congress in 2011 by auctioning off the national debt. pic.twitter.com/nBubFFggd2
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2024
Is Billy Long the man to bring down the IRS?
Yes: 100% (4 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
Note that Long jokingly “sold” the national debt at $14 trillion.
According to the personal finance news-focused website The Balance, the national debt did indeed stand at $14.79 trillion at the end of the 2011 fiscal year’s fourth quarter. That total represented 101 percent of GDP, a debt-to-GDP ratio not seen since the World War II Era.
By 2023, those numbers had ballooned to $34 trillion and 122 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, according to the real-time U.S. Debt Clock, the national debt has exceeded $36.2 trillion as of Tuesday.
Of course, as IRS Commissioner, Long would have no direct influence over federal spending.
He would, however, have the power to bridle an agency that many Americans associate with confiscatory policies and tyrannical behavior.
Moreover, according to U.S. News & World Report, in 2023 five of America’s ten wealthiest counties by median household income qualified as suburbs of Washington, D.C. Those counties are Arlington, Howard, Fairfax, Falls Church and Loudoun.
The fact that physical proximity to the federal government helps enhance personal wealth should strike ordinary Americans as confiscatory tyranny.
Likewise, the national debt constitutes an even more effective tool for redistributing wealth upward.
In 1795, James Madison explained why warmongering elites love a national debt.
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few,” Madison wrote.
Trump, of course, has already tasked two of his most brilliant allies with reducing the size and scope of government. Through the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” X owner Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will tame the federal bureaucracy, thereby signaling the president-elect’s intent to return self-government to the people.
By placing Long in charge of the IRS, Trump has amplified that same message. In short, the president-elect is not messing around this time.
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