will: this is lap five right here. rachel: all right, 30 seconds. get on up here. get -- whoo! get up on the stage! 15 seconds to get up there. come on, rick. you won and you're going to get your trophy. will: there's your trophy. pete: it's fitting. go to church. will: super-charged. pete: he's the winner. well you can have fun too. [laughter] ♪ maria: good sunday morning, everyone. welcome to " sunday morning futures." i'm maria bartiromo. today, america for sale. sovereignty of the nation breached as a communist china surveillance balloon is able to travel across the country for a full week hovering over several military bases likely transmitting data back to the ccp as it traveled. before finally getting shot down by the pentagon on saturday. >> on wednesday z when i was briefed on the balloon, i

ordered the pentagon to shoot it down as soon as possible. they decided without doing any damage to anyone on the ground, they decided that the best time to do that was out over the water within our, within a 12-mile limit. they successfully took it down. maria: but at what cost? coming up, the new chairman of the house select committee on china, wisconsin congressman, former marine mike gallagher, also a member of the house armed services and intelligence committees on how much damage has been done in one week after the secretary of state anthony blinken initially suggests just canceling his trip was enough of a response from america. >> it's a violation of our sovereignty, it's a violation of international law. and it was very important that we, of course, take the actions we did to protect any sensitive information, to protect our

people and to make clear to china that, again, this is an unacceptable as well as irresponsible action. maria: then the surveillance balloon said to be large enough to hold three massive buses. what was it carrying? did it drop and scatter devices for unlimited data surveillance throughout america? former director of national intelligence john ratcliffe on the potential capabilities of in the so-called stratospheric balloon. was the damage already done? what data did the balloon collect, and were sensitive military secrets already sent back to the ccp live during the weeklong journey from alaska to south carolina? how vulnerable is america now, and how compromised is this president by communist china? the ranking member of the senate homeland security committee, member of the senate foreign affairs committee and kentucky senator rand paul on the threats to the homeland and the response to come to our number one

adversary. plus, picking hairs on spending cuts. the debate on defense spending as america's number one adversary picks up its provocations against taiwan and america. the chairman of the house ways and means committee, jason smith, on what china's bluster and bullying means for america's defense spending and the spending fight underway. it's all right here, right now on "sunday morning futures." ♪ ♪ maria: and we begin this sunday morning with america's sovereignty breached by communist china. this upcoming week the white house will brief the so-called gang of eight, the eight select lawmakers from the house and senate on the breach of sovereignty but communist china's stratospheric balloon, a large, white balloon able to fit three massive buses in it entered the united states air space on january 28th. detected and tracked by u.s. intelligence officials, it still was able to travel from alaska

to montana and hover above america's most important military installations. all the way to south carolina until the pentagon shot it down on saturday after more than a week traveling throughout the country. now questions are swirling on the damage already done. what did the balloon capture, was it sending data back live as it traveled back to communist china? did it drop and disburse surveillance products powered by solar energy to allow unlimited surveillance, and why did it take u.s. officials so long to shoot it down? was it a test for the ccp to the see if it can send something into america's air space undetected, and how much surveillance is communist china performing on america right now? joining me right now is the chairman of the newly-formed select committee on china, wisconsin representative, former marine spending two tours in iraq, mike gallagher. congressman, thank you so much for being here the morning. >> thanks for having me.

maria: your reaction to this balloon, first and foremost. >> well, letting a chinese surveillance balloon lazily drift over america is like seeing a robber on your front porch and inviting him in, showing him where you keep your safe, your guns, where your children sleep at night and politely asking him to leave. it makes no sense. it makes us look weak and flat footed on the world stage. furthermore, if these bloomberg reports are true that the biden administration deliberately tried to keep the american people in the dark so as to salvage secretary blinken's trip to beijing, that's unacceptable. allowing this to happen in order to superb a photo op with xi jinping who's committing general side, that's foreign policy malpractice. and let's assume that the balloon was mostly harmless or we neutralized it. do we think that this was, the timing was coincidental? it's far more likely that they deliberately timed this in order to send a message as blinken was preparing for his trip the, and

the message is look what we can to do to you and get away with. your corporations, your career politicians, they will come crawling back. so the message i have for the biden administration is don't fall for the chinese communist party charm offensive. it's a farce. it's a bedtime story they tell out of touch, global elites at davos. it's time to push back before it's too late, before something far more dangerous than a balloon is flying over american territory. maria: it's absolutely outrageous. i spoke with a former pilot of an f-22 over the weekend, and he said that when there was one situation that he was actually present for when a syrian ship went into turkey, the turkish officials shot it down 1.5 miles into the country, 7 second. 17 seconds. they had to be tracking this even as it entered america, correct? >> 100% correct. and if it was being tracked over the aleutian islands in alaska, we absolutely could have taken

it down without fear of debris or harm to civilians on the ground. and if we don't have the capability to neutralize it, corral it, collect it, look under the hood and exploit it, well, that's a capability we need to develop with a $850 billion defense budget because i suspect this isn't the last time we're going to the see a chinese probe. we need to kick pla-affiliated researchers off more than universities, we need to make sure that ccp affiliates can't buy land next to sensitive military bases in america, and we need to shut down what are effectively ccp police stations here on american soil. this is unacceptable. we need to defend american sovereignty. maria: and i know these are things that the you have been working on as chairman of the newly-formed china select committee. i want to talk about that, because it seems that you are on an uphill battle here with regard to corporate america. i mean, you have investment funds right now, as we speak, you've got the thrift fund which is the 401(k) for government employees investing in chinese

companies, you've got a ton of etf and index funds, you've also got pension funds investing in the very companies that are tied to the ccp if that may turn around and turn their armament and guns on america. your thoughts on what you can do and accomplish with this new committee. >> well, the message i have for corporate america or wall street who want to continue sort of business as usual with china is that we should not be in the business of funding communist genocide, and we certainly should not be in the business of funning our own destruction -- funding our own destruction by sending money to chinese military-affiliated companies. i understand this is complex. i understand that for over two decades we pursued china's global integration into the world economy, and it did not moderate their behavior. and i understand that this thing is not going to change on a dime, but there are sensible things we need to do to reclaim our economic independence. maria, imagine if we found ourselves in a kinetic

confrontation with china over taiwan and they cut off the export of advanced pharmaceutical ingredients as they threatened to do in the early stage of the pandemic in order to plunge us into a sea of coronavirus, was the phrase that they used. maria: yeah. >> would we be able to deter? this is about defending ousts from aggression. so -- ourselves from aggression. so we are going to have to find a way to onshore the production of key goods that we can't afford to depend on china for such as microelectronics, rare eithers -- earths, as well as unsure we are not unwittingly or wittingly funding our own destruction. maria: you also have america's premiere venture cap capital fund, she boy ya, arguably run by a chinese leader. your thoughts on sequoia. >> well, sequoia's incredibly concerning, and is we're obviously going to be looking into that. we're billing an investigative team right now -- building -- and there's some good work in past congresses that we're

hoping to build upon. but the bottom line is this: people don't understand the way in which the chinese communist party uses something called united front work to corrupt our domestic institutions. it's this combination of intelligence operations and influence operations and economic coercion that they use to buy off foreign elites and promote stories that help the communist party and eliminate stories that hurt the communist party. we need a massive strategy for countering united front work because it's not just sequoia, it's not just various asset managers,st the american universities, it's other educational institutions. across the board for too long we've let this soft form of corruption to go forward, and that's what we're going to have to tackle in this select committee on the chinese communist party. maria: well, you mentioned universities. anonymous chinese person donates almost $60 million to the university of pennsylvania and then penn is able to shut down the china initiative which was the very vehicle that the u.s. was using to announce a string

of indictments for those people who were involved in surveillance and stealing intellectual property. your thoughts on that. >> well, i think it reveals the broader problem here which is that too many american universities are desperate for ccp money. the trump administration started enforcing something called section 117 of the higher education act which requires disclosure of gifts in excess of $250,000, and what did they discover? $6.5 billion worth of previously undisclosed donations. and then when the biden administration came into office, suddenly those disclosures stopped. so either the chinese money pig got turned off -- spigot turned off, or they're simply not enforcing that section of the law. and when you dig into these individual gifts, invariably you find a connection to the united front work department or some ccp official tied to that money. it comes with strings attach thed. so we have to enforce the law. we have to eliminate confucius

institutes, and a lot of those amidst previous crackdowns simply renamed themselves to get away from the scrutiny. we have to protect our academic freedom and our students, particularly chinese students, from transnational are repression by the chinese communist party. maria: congressman, what are your thoughts, was this a trial balloon to see what capabilities america has as china starts coming up with its specific plan to go into taiwan? there has been open source reporting that china will invade taiwan within the coming 18 months. we've spoken in the past, and you've said that 2024 is a year you're looking at. why? >> 2024 the, i think, is really when the window of maximum danger picks up because of two reasons. one, there's an election in taiwan in january of 2024. i think when the dpp wins that election, xi jinping will conclude he cannot take taiwan via political warfare, so he'll have to consider actual kinetic warfare, and the other thing in

2024 is we'll have our own presidential election here in the united states. we're going to be politically distracted. perhaps a third variable playing into this is we have a lot of big defense bills that are coming due, and that's why only some of then -- some of the plans we've seen from the biden administration make no sense. they're trying to bottom out the united states navy right at the time when china is gearing up for warfare. so the reality is we don't know when and if xi is going to launch an invasion, but we have to move heaven and everett to arm taiwan -- heaven and earth to arm taiwan to the teeth because we don't want taiwan's future to become ukraine's present. maria: should we be responding to the ccp putting police stations throughout the world including new york city? >> we absolutely should. we should shut these things down. this isn't some crazy right-wing conspiracy theory. i mean, this is "the new york times" reported on these effectively ccp police stations -- maria: yeah. >> the fbi director has signaled his concerns, but my question is, what are we actually doing

about it? we are hoping on the select committee to really dig into this, because these are instruments for repressing people on our soil, surveilling citizens on our soil. it's a direct infringe ifment of our sovereignty. maria: totally extraordinary. congressman, thanks very much for your leadership. we'll be watching your very important work. thanks very much, mike gallagher in wisconsin. >> thank you. maria: thank you, sir. aiding and abetting the crimes of influence peddling, why is the university of delaware, a public institution the, preventing access to president biden's 1,850 boxes of records? former director of national intelligence john ratcliffe on communist china firm hi inside the gates of america from its infiltration of american universities to the brazen surveillance balloon that had to be shot down this weekend. is biden's entire national security team inept, or are they compromised? whose head needs to roll for allowing a chinese surveillance balloon to float freely throughout america for a week? back in a minute.

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>> when e joe biden went to penn, communist china paid millions of dollars to fund what he was doing. communist china, we also know, paid hunter biden and the biden family millions of dollars, and so there's a long history of communist china writing checks. the fact that university of delaware is trying to keep these documents secret, in fact, it's said it's not going to release any of them until two years after biden leaves public office, i think that's unacceptable. maria: and that was senator ted cruz with me last week on this program on the university of delaware refusing to release any of the is-- 1,850 boxes of documents from president biden as questions swirl over communist committee that's infiltration of american universities and biden's gross negligence in handling the nation's most sensitive secrets. this after we learned communist china donated some $60 million to the university of pennsylvania to create the penn biden center where classified

documents were also story stored. biden placed several penn leaders into key positions in his administration afterwards. former penn biden center director antony blinkenen was named secretary of state, amy gutmann is the ambassador to germany, and former chairman of the penn board david cohen is the ambassador to canada. the university of pennsylvania was also able to successfully lobby biden to shut down the so-called china initiative which was investigating surveillance rain intellectual property theft. joining me now with a look at the efforts to infiltrate america including the surveillance balloon the ccp sent, the former director of national intelligence, once the top spy in america, john ratcliffe. john, it's great to see you this morning. thank you so much for being here. i want to start off and get your take on this week and the spy balloon. how do you see things? >> well, good morning, maria. it's the pretty easy and pretty clear, it should be to all

americans. this past week, unfortunately, the people's republic of china executed an incredibly successful intelligence operation over the mainland of the united states and, conversely, the biden administration committed an unprecedented national security blunder of incalculable damage. and i say that the, maria, because we know, you know, the pact ifs are very clear -- facts are very clear that america's number one adversary, the people's republic of china, maneuvered a spy craft into u.s. air space a week ago, on saturday, january 28th, and it didn't leave u.s. air space until a week later, saturday, february 4th. and except for the time that it was over canada, it spent at least four days, at least 100 hours continuously over the continental united states in an intelligence operation, again, of incalculable damage,

violating u.s. sovereignty of our air space and our territorial borders. in an unprecedented way that i'm not aware has ever happened in our history, maria. and the biden administration let that happen. maria: i want to ask you about that, never happened in our history. but first, leapt it me get your take on, first, china lying about what it was. they said it was a civilian airship. we both have spoken about china a long time. there's no civilian airship that can collect data the, right? >> right. so military civil fusion laws mean that there is no civilian airship. this was a spy operation. it was deliberate, it was intentional, it was calculated to go over sensitive military sites, nuclear facilities and critical infrastructure. there was nothing accidental about this. it was a deliberate campaign and, unfortunately, as we just talked about, incredibly successful for the chinese communist party and the people's republic of china. maria: i want to get your take

on the response and also china's response and zero in on what you know about potential previous breaches. you've seen more intelligence than anybody other than the president. i'm talking with the former director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe, and we've got more in just a moment. stay with us. ♪ ♪ as someone living with type 2 diabetes, i want to keep it real and talk about some risks. with type 2 diabetes you have up to 4 times greater risk of stroke, heart attack, or death. even at your a1c goal, you're still at risk ...which if ignored could bring you here... ...may put you in one of those... ...or even worse. too much? that's the point. get real about your risks and do something about it. talk to your health care provider about ways to lower your risk of stroke, heart attack, or death. learn more at getrealaboutdiabetes.com

maria: welcome back. i am back with the former dni, john ratcliffe. john, the biden administration is trying to minimize this explosive situation in this past week, and the department of defense is claiming that there were three balloons, chinese spy balloons, that entered the united states' air space during the trump administration ask that they were not shot down and

they were not kiss closed. can you -- disclosed. can you please tell us the truth and if that's true. >> well, it's not true. i can refute it. former secretary of defense mark esper refuted it yesterday. former secretary of state and cia director mike pompeo has refuted it. but the american people can refute it for themselves. do you remember during the trump administration when photographers on the ground and commercial airline pilots were talking about a spy balloon over the united states that people could look up and see even with the naked eye and a media that hated donald trump wasn't reporting? i don't remember that either because it didn't happen. as i said to you earlier, this was unprecedented. we have never had a circumstance where an adversary has had spy craft over our country, our continental united states posing a threat for the better part of a week straight. and that's why i said to you before the, not only is it unprecedent canned, but the

damage from this is incalculable both from an intelligence standpoint and the possible payloads. you talked a little bit earlier about the different types of payloads that a stratospheric balloon could carry. those possibilities are limited only by your imagination. but what we do know is none of those are possible to be deployed against the united states if a separate fearic balloon isn't allowed to traipse across our countryside for four straight days, something that is never happened before. the other thing is the damage, it wasn't just 320 million americans that were watching this balloon, you know, paralyzed for a week, it was russia, it was iran, it was north korea, it was american adversaries who also were surprised that this type of thing could happen and are, frankly, thrilled at the possibilities of what they could do to deploy the same type of stratospheric, you know, balloon or quite over the continental

mainland and have this kind of slow, weak, frankly, terrible response by the biden administration. maria: i want to ask you what kind of capability if it has. but just to be clear, you're saying there were not three spy balloons from china that entered the united states' air space and traveled and was able to do what we've seen this week. >> i'm telling you that very clearly. listen, maria, it's -- every time something goes wrong in the biden administration, there's one of two responses. they either find a way to blame the trump administration, or they try and find a way to say the trump administration did it too, and that's what they're trying to the say here. this happened during the trump administration. it didn't. you would have heard about it before. maria: let me ask you about the capabilities of this balloon. what do you think they -- it was carrying, the payloads of different things? was it drones, satellites? what -- and was there an

opportunity to drop and scatter devices that could be powered by solar energy which would give you unlimited surveillance back to the ccp? >> so great question, maria. a lot of people have sort of minimized the balloon as an obsolete technology. you have to ask yourself why would the chinese then even send obsolete technology over the united states if it wasn't going to provide anything of value as the biden administration has tried to tell you. listen, the truth -- without getting into anything classifiec balloons because of recent technologies can be maneuverable, can loop around, can hover and do things that low earth orbit satellites can't do. we know from public reporting, without getting into anything classified, that china for at least six years has been successfully deploying payloads including drones from stratospheric balloons and what publicly is known is that the u.s. military and department of

defense has a number of projects out there involving stratospheric balloons and different types of possible payloads that could be deployed as you talking -- talked about, everything from cicada drones to very small electronic listening devices that could run on solar power and transmit data back intermitt by. i'm not saying they took place here, but none of those terrible scenarios would be possible if in the had been taken down as it should have been before it crossed into u.s. air space and remained there for the better part of a week. really an inexcusable, inexplicable national security blunder. maria: well, look, this is not the first time the national security team has met with their chinese counterparts a few times and they've been laughed at is and mocked. we had covid-19 which killed one million plus americans, and we continue to have no questions whatsoever asked of the ccp about the origins of covid-19,

not to mention all of the intellectual property theft and the impact to american companies. where is this going? >> well, you just, you just barely touched on a very long list of national security concerns and disasters by this national security team that president biden has in place. you didn't even touch on a manufactured national security crisis at our southern border or an unmitigated military disaster in afghanistan that they were the architects of or that their sternly-worded letters didn't stop vladimir putin from insaiding ukraine. that's before you get to the soft on china approach that has been there from day one, not confronting china over a million dead americans from covid that originated in china, hundreds of thousands of deaths from fentanyl that's coming from china and now we have a spy balloon that violates our sovereign air space for almost a

week straight. it does lead to the question about this national security team that you asked before, maria, and, you know, there's a long list of incompetence, but there's also a very fair we -- question about whether this national security team is compromised, and i don't think the americans have any confidence in them based on all the things i just mentioned and more. and i think we're stuck with president biden for the next two years, but he needs to make some changes to his national security team. they have failed the american people over and over again. maria: so somebody should be fired. >> he needs to make changes. maria: thank you so much. john ratcliffe, thank you, sir. >> you bet. maria: we'll be right back.

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maria: welcome back. well, communist china is responding this morning to the united states shooting down the massive stratospheric surveillance balloon which was able to travel across much of the country this week and hover above several u.s. military installations, some of which are home to u.s. intercontinental missile silos. the balloon said to be sending data back to the ccp in realtime the as it traveled, but the ccp's brazenness does the not stop there. now it is the claiming that it is now reserving the right to further reaction because of its so-called discontent with the u.s.' reaction to the surveillance balloon. joining me right now with the impact to america and what the u.s.' response should be to china's surveillance balloon is the ranking member of the senate

homeland security committee. he is a member of the senate foreign affairs committee, he is kentucky senator rand paul. senator, thanks very much for being here this morning. >> good morning. maria: first, a word on china's response. what could they do given the fact that they are reserving the right for further reaction? >> you know, i think it's appalling. if they want to let us know that it's an accident, don't you think they would want to apologize? the fact that they've already got their back up and they're resisting and talking about retaliation doesn't sound like much of an apology. if there is an innocent explanation for this -- and it doesn't seem that there is at this point, but if there were -- they could be apologizing. either way, the biden administration should have the chinese ambassador come in to speak to the secretary of state, and there should be a full examination of the question. with regard to what they should have done, you know, we need a commander in chief that's able to respond and a national defense that is able to respond within seconds to minutes of penetration of our air space. so this sort of long, drawn-out that we let this drift over the

ocean to alaska, across alaska, across canada and then when they finally decided to do something, it still took them four more days, this really is probing our defenses in a way even if there was no surveillance onboard. they've gotten a great deal of information as to how sluggish the biden administration is in their response. so if you decide to shoot it could be a week later, you probably could have made that decision a lot quicker when it was over a deserted part of either alaska or before it crossed the coast of alaska. this looks very, very weak in the ideas of our -- eyes of our enemy, and i think it was a huge mistake. but at this point moving forward, what they need to do is demand a full apology and explanation. if it was supposedly civilian, they should feed us all the data they took in and show us what the balloon was absorbing. and if they're not going to show us that, we tend not to trust that they're telling us the truth. maria: i don't understand why we are so weak toward our number one adversary. is it because joe biden is compromised with all of the tens of millions of dollars he's

taken in? how do you explain to congress, you know, you all have not had one hearing on the origins of covid-19. i mean, you have not had one hearing in the senate on the origins of covid-19. now you have some senators, mark warner and others, trying to, you know, investigate tiktok. you have been all over trying to get to the bottom of covid-19. but why do you see such a weak response from the congress and from this president? >> you know, it's perplexing. over 6 million people die and some say as many as 15 million people die died and we haven't had one hearing. if you tell democrats baby bottle plastic is causing cancer, they'd probably have 50 hearings. at least a million americans die and not one hearing. some of it is conflict of interest. we have many scientists in our country and around the world who are funded by our government but also funded by the chinese

government direct ily. some of this is not fully known because they're not disclosing this, but i asked dr. fauci in committee about this. he said it was none of my business and that a law protected these people. we know that 1800 scientists in the nih received $193 million. this is not chump change. this is a good deal of money. we need to know which companies are paying them, and they should not be on any committees approving. if they work for pfizer or moderna and get a couple hundred grand in royalties, they can't honestly sit on a committee approving these vaccines. i'm still trying very hard to get democrats to come onboard. once we can get one democrat to sign a document request, the nih, i think, will start to honor their commitment to the american people and release this information. maria: so it's all about money then. it's about the money people receive just the way wall street wants to keep investing in the chinese companies that are tied to the chinese military, because they're making money on it. >> it is about money, but it's interesting that i think there's

an in-between solution where we don't have, you know, an embargo and no trade with china. i'm not for that. but at the same time, i'm not for serving them any money. we still send research money over there. and what the house intelligence committee released in an unclassified report about a month ago was that our money is going to u.s. universities, and then it's going to military research in china. not even civilian research, but actual military research. the academy of military medical sciences in china gets money from u.s. universities. and fauci would say nothing to see here because there's an intermediary and he says, oh, because we subcontract it, it doesn't count. no, it doesn't count. we should not have taxpayer money funding military research in china. it's extraordinary that this still goes on. maria: it quite is extraordinary. senator, you are the ranking member on the homeland security committee. has our homeland been damaged by in this balloon? by this balloon? >> i think the biggest damage isn't so much -- and i haven't

seen the intelligence of what we think they've gathered, which is probably damaging. but i think more damaging than even any surveillance is assessing our response time. and like i say, there are since we've entered into the nuclear age, there are responses that have to occur within seconds to minutes. and the fact that this administration would dither for days over a balloon, i think gives pause to us about how well we're protected and whether or not they have the ability to make decisions that would have to be made in seconds or minutes. so i think by probing our defenses this way and showing a level of ineptitude that is, i guess, surprising, it isn't good, you know, as far as telegraphing this to the rest of the world. and the thing is if you were going to shoot it down finally when it reaches the atlantic ocean, why didn't they shoot it down when it crossed the coast of alaska? or even before it got into alaska. if they didn't see it coming, that's even worse. so we will have hearings on this and, you know, we're already in

talks with democrats. we should have bipartisan hearings on this. and i think, ultimately, we will. but, you know, if we can't detext a balloon, we're in a world of hurt as far as defending in the country. maria: real quick, senator, you have been raising your hand about debt and all of the reckless spending of this in the government for a long time. has anything changed in terms of your feelings on defense spending given these provocations from china as we approach this massive debt ceiling debate? >> no. i think the number one threat to our national security is our debt. we have a $31 trillion debt, and that doesn't include $850 billion we spend annually on the military. the curben on spending in the militarying has been going up dramatically. if you are serious about the deficit, you have to look at military, nonmilitary, and you have to look at everything that's on the budget including mandatory spending. if you don't, you'll never balance the budget. but i can tell you, we need to take spending back to before the

covid bailout, in 2019 before we started the trillion dollars of covid bailouts, if we went back to that level and froze spending for five years, you would actually balance the budget. no cuts, simply a freeze if we go back to pre-covid spending levels. there are ways to do it. the good news is divided government is the best time. when republicans control the place, they're sometimes as bad as the democrats. when democrats control the place, it's terrible. right now mixed government can, the debt ceiling only goes up with republicans doing it, and we are demanding significant spending reform. maria: well, we are talking about that in the next segment. senator, it is good to see you. rand paul joining us this morning in kentucky. quick break and then spending cuts apt a time america is defending and protecting the homeland. the debt ceiling debate around defense spending as china flexes its muscle with the chairman of the house ways and means committee. jason smith is here. ♪ ♪ health insurance commercial. take 1. cut! cut!

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maria: welcome back. well, a showdown on raising the debt ceiling looms this upcoming june after the u.s. breached the debt ceiling with its $31.5 trillion in debt. republicans are looking for a white house commitment on spending limits for the next fiscal year in exchange for an agreement to lift the debt ceiling again. the question is, where can the u.s. cut with entitlements and defense spending seemingly off the table? meanwhile, the interest owed on the national debt alone is over half a trillion dollars. that's expected to go much higher as the federal reserve continues to the raise interest rates to grapple inflation. joining me right now with more is the chairman of the house ways and means committee, congressman jason smith. congressman, thanks very much for being here. mr. chairman, it is wonderful to have you. how much does china's surveillance balloon change the conversation on spending cuts when it comes to the military? >> you know, our reckless

spending under joe biden, just think about it, in his first two years, record spending. he added more than $10 trillion of new spending to help reward environmentalist donors. and just various items. what we have to do is address this inflation crisis, the debt crisis, and now we have this spying crisis as we've seen. so we've got to get our economic house in order, and the first thing we have to do, joe biden, chuck schumer, they have to come to the table, they have to continue to negotiate with speaker mccarthy for the more than people. because this reckless spending is what's costing every american to pay more to put food on their table, clothes on their back and gasoline in their cars. that's why we have to address this. maria: congressman, how will you address it? speaker mccarthy has said he'd like to see spending levels go back to 2022 levels, but wouldn't that mean a $75 billion cut in defense spending? >> absolutely not. there's numerous ways to still

actually increase defense spending and decrease the nondefense discretionary. just think about this: we're talking about fiscal year '22 numbers being what was just over a month ago. our spending just a month ago, and every republican -- can almost every republican in the house of representatives, voted against that $1.7 trillion package. what speaker mccarthy's asking is to just go back to fiscal year '22 numbers. we can cut $100 billion of unobligated covid money. there is so much waste out there, maria, we don't have to look at defense. but you know what? we do need to look at everything though, because there could be some waste in defense. we need to make sure that the funding in defense is actually going towards our military and our soldiers. maria: well, they're talking about woke transgenderrism in the military. want to get your take on that when we come back. i am talking with the chairman of the house ways and means committee, congressman jason smith, this morning. we'll be right back with more.

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and when you leave search, duckduckgo helps keep companies from watching you as you brows. join tens of millions of people making the easy switch by downloading the app today. duckduckgo, privacy simplified. (upbeat music) maria: welcome back. i am back with the chairman of the house ways and means committee, congressman jason smith. congressman, i want to get your take on this balloon, on the new provocations from china and what that means for the house ways and means committee. are you going to be looking at our relationship with china? i also would like to know about tomorrow. you have your first hearing on the house ways and means committee. what is the priority in that hearing? >> you know, we're excited about our first hearing tomorrow. it's going to be in petersburg, west virginia, and it's the first hearing of the ways and means committee in the republican majority because we want to hear from everyday west virginians of what they are facing in the current economy

and how we can listen to their ideas, their solutions and come up with their priorities. instead of listening to the lobbyists and the folks in washington d.c. in regards to china, maria, we need to look at all of our trade agreement, our trade negotiations and is our agreements with them. they're clearly not a friend, they're not an ally, and we need to make sure that we help bring back our strategic supply chains to the united states, away from china. and if with we need to bring them to our allies, and the ways and means committee is going to be very aggressive towards that. maria: this is an issue we've been talking about a long time, why are we reclient on things that are used for the -- reliant on things used for farm suit y'all products that they threatened they would not send to america like prescription drugs, the underlying components made in china. >> when it comes to our defense, when it comes to our energy, when it comes to our food and

our medical, we have to make sure that we are secured in this country, and we are not reclient on countries like -- reliant on countries like china and russia. unfortunately, we are in a lot of cases and i don't know if it's because a lot of these large corporations have shed their american identity and become beholden to china. but in the ways and means committee, we're going to get down to the details and coour best to try to fix it. maria: congressman, this has been a really tough two years from covid-19 to the botched afghanistan withdrawal, to inflation at 40-year highs. to what do you attribute this terrible two years for america? >> it's very poor leadership. democrats controlled the white house, the house and the senate the last two years. you saw an inflation crisis, a border crisis, a spying crisis, an energy crisis. anything they touch or they push, it has created a crisis. thank goodness the american people delivered a house republican majority back in november. maria: and i'm wondering if

partly it's this compromised story that we will continue putting a spotlight on. congressman, thank you so much. mr. chairman, jason smith. that'll do it for us this morning on "sunday morning futures." we'll be back at 3 p.m. p.m. eastern here on fox news, and i'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning on fox business, 6-9 a.m. eastern on fox business. have a great sunday, everybody. ♪th yo ♪ but at the end of the day, you know you have a team behind you that can help you. not having to worry about the future makes it possible to make the present as best as it can be for everybody. >> woman: why did we choose safelite? >> vo: for us, driving around is the only way we can get our baby to sleep, so when our windshield cracked, we needed it fixed right.

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>> >> the old strategy, hunter biden lying low as media conservatives kept talking alaska the misdeeds and the rest of the press minimize the story. the new strategy first leaked to the washington post, hunter bind's lawyers sending out a bunch of blistering letters and media liberals suddenly interested on his going on the offensive. the president's son that remains under criminal investigation may not get a thing but he's fighting a pr war now. in sharp contrast to the low key white house approach. hunter's new lawyer quickly gave the letters to other news

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