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The $40 Trillion National Debt: Jim Pfaff on The Dan Carroll Show | Aug 20, 2026

Published: August 20, 2026
Network: 700 WLW (Cincinnati)
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The number landed on the day of the interview: the national debt has topped $40 trillion. On the August 20, 2026 Thursday night edition of The Dan Carroll Show on 700 WLW, host Dan Carroll put the figure in front of Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff and asked what the reckoning on it is. Pfaff’s answer moved the blame off the presidency and onto Congress, walked back through the 1990s budget fight and forward to the one big beautiful bill, and then took on President Trump’s newly announced sanctions campaign against Iran and what the standoff will do to the November midterms.

Topics Covered

• $40 Trillion and No Appetite to Cut a Penny
• Congress, Not Presidents: Where the National Debt Comes From
• The One Big Beautiful Bill and the Cuts That Weren’t Made
• Iran Sanctions and a Graceful Way to Say We Won
• 26 House Districts, 11 Senate Districts
• Key Takeaways

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$40 Trillion and No Appetite to Cut a Penny

Carroll framed the national debt milestone the way most people experience it. Everyone knew the number was coming, he said, the way a family knows a death is coming — and it still hits differently when it is written down in front of you on a computer screen. His own read on Washington was blunt.

“It seems that there is absolutely zero appetite in DC to curb spending by even one penny. It’s got to stop. It’s just got to stop.”
— Dan Carroll, host, The Dan Carroll Show, 700 WLW

Pfaff agreed and named the mechanism. The bad outcome of a national debt this size is continuing inflation, because when there are not enough buyers for the debt, the Federal Reserve prints it — and everyone pays the price for that. That is a tax whether Congress calls it one or not.

He then reached for a number that puts the last quarter century in perspective. Around 2000, in two different annual reports, the Office of Management and Budget looked at a national debt of roughly $5 trillion and worried — actually wrung its hands — that the debt would be paid off by 2011 to 2013, because the government had 30-year bonds outstanding and wanted to know how it would handle the problem of having no debt left to manage.

“Then here we are 26 years later, and we’re at $40 trillion of debt.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Congress, Not Presidents: Where the National Debt Comes From

Pfaff’s central argument is that the country keeps assigning the national debt to the wrong branch. There is always some culpability for a presidential administration on spending, he said, but frankly not as much as people think — and that misdirection is one of the things that may turn voters off from going to the polls in November. The problem with $40 trillion of debt is not Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, and not anyone else people want to point to primarily. It is Congress.

His proof is the one period in living memory when the line bent. In the 1990s, Congress got spending in line and changed the tax structure — in some ways against the will of Bill Clinton, Pfaff said, though Clinton saw the political win and went with what Newt Gingrich was doing. The fault for the debt in that administration, in other words, actually did some good, because the institution responsible for spending used its power.

“Since then, the Republican Party have been entirely, almost treasonous, in their unwillingness to deal with this.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff speaks about this from inside the building. When he worked on Capitol Hill, he said, the constant fight was with the leadership of both parties — John Boehner and even Paul Ryan among them — because they did not want to do it. What holds it in place is a détente: Republicans tell Democrats that if they are allowed all the military spending they want, they will not go so hard after Democrat programs. That trade is decades old, and Pfaff’s point is that the muscle memory of it still remains no matter who holds the gavel.

Carroll pressed on why current majorities cannot simply read the history. Newt Gingrich forced the balanced budget on Bill Clinton, Clinton saw the writing on the wall and signed it, and today Clinton gets all the credit for a fiscal responsibility the country has not seen since. It seems like a simple thing to do, Carroll said, and there is plenty of blame to go around in both parties.

The One Big Beautiful Bill and the Cuts That Weren’t Made

The most recent test of that muscle memory, in Pfaff’s telling, was the one big beautiful bill. He gave it credit where he thought credit was due: it made some Medicaid cuts, and it did great on the taxes. The failure was on the spending side, and it was not a failure of arithmetic in the chamber.

“It is obscene that the one big beautiful bill didn’t make bigger cuts than it did.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Republicans had an opportunity to cut a whole lot of spending and refused to do it, Pfaff said, because all they needed was a few votes — and all they needed was the votes they already had. That is the shape of the national debt problem in one bill: not a math problem, a choice.

It is the same instinct Pfaff described at the top of the interview, when Carroll asked him about sitting in traffic on the GW Parkway in Washington. Government does a great many stupid little things, he said, and the one thing it cannot do well is the thing in front of it — in that case, timing the stoplights and clearing the merge onto 66 in rush hour.

“Government needs to do what government should do, and it does everything else but what it should do.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Iran Sanctions and a Graceful Way to Say We Won

The interview opened on President Trump’s post that morning announcing what he called the most crushing economic sanctions operation ever against Iran, with a warning that any country in cahoots with Iran would face the same consequences. Pfaff backed up before answering. He hates that the country keeps going into war, he said, but he has tried to be patient with the president’s goals, which he agrees with: he does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and many things about this have reset the Middle East and world diplomatic connections. One example he offered is Lloyd’s of London, which he said has made a great deal of money off what was never a large risk in the Strait of Hormuz and never minded Iran being a permanent threat there, because a permanent threat sends the rates way up. That is the kind of corporatism, in his account, that quietly benefits from a standoff — the same escalation ladder we covered in our analysis of Trump’s economic sanctions campaign against Iran.

Iran’s reach is real: connections to Venezuela, prior strong ties to Brazil, links to China and Russia. Pfaff said Iran has meddled far beyond its weight internationally. But he is not convinced more sanctions close the file, and he noted that when Trump takes on all these other countries, that is taking Iran on by proxy too. He also declined the exit that some prominent voices have taken.

He is not going down the path of Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, or to a degree Megyn Kelly, he said, and calling Donald Trump a traitor who let everyone down. Trump has not been perfect in either administration, but in Pfaff’s opinion it has been a far cry better than anything since Ronald Reagan in terms of reestablishing what America is. His worry is the absence of an ending. Iran has been run for 47-plus years by what he called an eschatologically crazy group of people who care about the destruction of their enemies and do not care much about economic pain, including their own people’s. A war of attrition against that leadership puts the United States in a worse and worse position. There is no uprising to fund, and no one is going to give money to the Kurds — whom Pfaff said he loves and considers fine people — because a Kurdish move would stir up the region.

“So maybe it is time just to figure out a graceful way to say we won and walk away.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

26 House Districts, 11 Senate Districts

Carroll returned to something the two of them discussed months ago: Iran’s effect on the November elections. Pfaff’s read is that the MAGA base is still largely galvanized, with some people peeling away but not in large numbers. The softness is elsewhere — among independents and in the Hispanic community, where there is concern about Republican and even Democrat seats on the Rio Grande in Texas and some thought that Hispanic turnout will either drop or break against Republicans. Some of that peel-off is important, he said. None of it is decisive if the work gets done.

“We’ve got to win in November, and Republicans are doing nothing to help themselves win when every advantage is on their side right now.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Conservative Caucus effort this year is a turnout operation aimed at 2024 voters who do not tend to vote in midterm elections, in districts the organization has targeted — 26 House districts and 11 Senate districts, to some degree or another, the same map we laid out in our breakdown of the 26 House and 11 Senate races. Pfaff also said the Caucus will set up a media booth in the center of the midterm GOP convention in Dallas and broadcast live from it. A convention can energize things, he said, but the energy is worthless unless somebody goes and works the opportunity zones afterward.

“If you really work hard, which Republicans suck at, if you work hard to get the vote out that you know you can get, then you need to do it.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He named Cliff Maloney and Scott Presler as people pushing that kind of ground work, and said the political events will go the way they go — Trump will do what he does on Iran, and it will have some effect — but the districts are won by the side that shows up. In the last minutes, Carroll asked how much trouble Eric Swalwell is in. A lot, Pfaff said, and it needs to be duplicated among other members of Congress: Alexander Vindman lost his race, and he and Adam Schiff conspired against Donald Trump in what Pfaff called probably a treasonous fashion. A reckoning with Swalwell has been needed, and in his view it is going to happen.

Key Takeaways

1. The national debt has topped $40 trillion – Pfaff’s mechanism for what comes next is continuing inflation: when buyers for the debt thin out, the Federal Reserve prints it, and everyone pays that as a tax no matter what.
2. Around 2000 the OMB worried the debt would be paid off – Two annual reports treated a roughly $5 trillion national debt as a problem that would end between 2011 and 2013. Twenty-six years later the number is $40 trillion.
3. Congress owns this, not the presidency – Pfaff said the fault is not primarily Obama, Biden, Trump, or Clinton. Congress cut spending and changed the tax structure in the 1990s under Newt Gingrich; since then the Republican Party has been, in his words, almost treasonous in its unwillingness to deal with it.
4. The military-for-programs détente is the machine – Republicans trade full military spending for leaving Democrat programs alone, a bargain Pfaff fought on Capitol Hill against leaders including John Boehner and Paul Ryan, and that muscle memory still remains.
5. The one big beautiful bill had the votes and didn’t use them – It made some Medicaid cuts and did great on taxes, but Republicans needed only a few votes they already had to cut far more spending and refused, leaving the national debt on its current path.
6. On Iran, find the exit; on November, do the work – With Iran’s army decimated and the region reset in America’s favor, Pfaff wants a graceful way to say we won and walk away — and a turnout push across 26 House districts and 11 Senate districts aimed at 2024 voters who skip midterms.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Aug 20, 2026 on 700 WLW’s The Dan Carroll Show.