Rep. Gino Bulso On The National Debt
House Representative Gino Bulso knew as a teenager that something didn’t sit right with him about the United States’ rising national debt. From writing a letter to then-President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s to now pushing for the Supreme Court to revisit a case about the powers of the Federal Government, Bulso is laser-focused on lowering the national debt.
About Rep. Gino Bulso
Gino Bulso, born December 25, 1961, is an attorney and Republican state legislator representing Tennessee’s 61st District. With 38 years of legal experience, he has handled over 150 cases and founded the Brentwood-based law firm Bulso PLC. His career has earned recognition from The Best Lawyers in America and Nashville Business Journal’s “Best of the Bar.”
Originally from Tampa, Florida, Bulso attended Tampa Bay Technical High and later pursued degrees in history and philosophy at Cornell College, followed by a law degree from Emory University. He and his wife, Kathy Bain, have five children and eight grandchildren, residing in Brentwood since 1995.
Elected to the Tennessee House in 2022, Bulso has focused on legislation related to state sovereignty and gender definitions in public school sports. He remains active in tennis, holding high rankings in his USTA division.
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Spencer 00:06
Representative, Gino Bulso, welcome to Signature Required.
Rep. Gino Bulso 00:09
Thank you. It's been your pleasure to be here,
Spencer 00:12
Carli, and I are really thrilled to have you. You are an attorney and a Republican member of the Tennessee State Legislature, representing Williamson County's 61st district in the House of Representatives. You were elected to that position in just 2022 running on your strong belief that the national debt is a grave threat to the US economy. You and your wife Kathy, have been married since 1986 and together have five children and eight grandchildren. You are truly someone that's fighting for Tennessee, but relatively new. So so the way that I want to start this conversation is I'm going to read off these five things, and you get to choose which one you want to start off with in explaining to the audience about who you are explaining to Carli. So here are the five things that we're going to tee you off with. Okay, able to your choice began on number one, as an attorney for nearly 40 years, you've handled more than 150 cases in Tennessee and beyond. Number two, you're a strong pro life and second amendment advocate. Number three, you oppose taxpayer funded initiatives for private companies to move to Tennessee. Number four, as a constitutional conservative, you point to the 10th Amendment. Powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved for the states. And number five. In 1975 the US national debt was 533 billion. Today, the national debt is more than 33 trillion make your choice.
Rep. Gino Bulso 01:44
Let me just go with number five, because it's the most recent and the one that I remember best. You're right. The debt was just over $500 billion in 1975 that's when President Ford was in office, and that's really when I began following the national debt. You know, a lot of folks when they're growing up, they reach for the sports pages or the cartoons or the comics first. And I always went to the sports page, but then I went to the financial page and began to see the debt rising. And as I recall at the time that Ford left office, the debt had risen to about $637 billion and then, by the time President Carter was inaugurated in January of 1977 it had gotten to be around 673 billion. And when it actually had reached 700 billion, I decided at that time as a junior in high school that I needed to do do something. So I reached out and wrote to President Carter, expressing my concern as a 15 year old with this exploding national debt of $700 billion and someone in his office was kind enough to write back to me, and then we kind of began a dialog that ultimately led to my sending him a letter, inviting him to our class as high school graduation in May of 1979 and he was unable to come, unfortunately, but sent us a very gracious letter of apology not being able to make it that we read to all the graduates. So I'll start with that, that number five for you.
Spencer 03:10
You know, hearing a billion dollars or 10 billion that's when that used to mean something back in the 70s and 80s. It's incredible now that every 90 days, our debt is going up by $1 trillion every 90 days. It is incredible how we have moved from you seeing the debt increase by 50 or $100 billion over a series of years and being alarmed by that now we're moving 1 trillion every 90 days. How did this happen?
Rep. Gino Bulso 03:46
Well, it happened, unfortunately because the political actors in Washington have become comfortable with just continuing to increase the size of the federal government, which obviously was not what our founders ever intended when you look at those numbers and compare them to today, you know, in the late 70s, we're talking about a total national debt of approximately $680 billion and that had been accumulated from 1836 when Andrew Jackson was President, When it was all paid off, up until about 1978 but now we pay an interest on the debt each year about that same amount. I think the Congressional Budget Office figures will show that in 2023 the United States paid about $680 billion just in interest in one year. So we've gone in a relatively short span of time between the time I was in high school and the time that we're sitting here talking from paying what used to be the entire national debt that was accumulated over a period of 140 years in interest every year, and we've gotten to the point where we need to do something or else our children's economic. Mixed security is going to be seriously at risk.
Carli 05:03
Yeah, when you talk about trillions and trillions of dollars, it starts to sound like Monopoly money. At some point it starts to sound like it's not real. And the Wall Street Journal just had a really interesting article published about how we are creating a really dismal future for our children by saddling them with all of this debt so you got interested in it as a 15 year old. How would you educate for our listeners today that are working with teens that have children? How do we wake up and do something for them, but also educate our youth of today about what is going on?
Rep. Gino Bulso 05:38
I think the most important thing we can do is to educate them about our American story, our American past, because it truly is remarkable. You know, we started the nation obviously, with the adoption of the Constitution back in 1787 and even then, the national debt was a big topic. It was one of the biggest topics. You'll recall that Alexander Hamilton was George Washington's first Secretary of the Treasury, and he was put in charge of doing something with the national debt. Because what had occurred, obviously, during the Revolutionary War, was that states borrowed a lot of money, particularly from foreign European powers to fund the American Revolution, and we had a debt of right about $80 million throughout the course of the Articles of Confederation throughout the 1780s and all of our founders agreed that we had to pay back 100% of that debt because we wanted to have the credit of the United States actually means something. And so the first great lesson for young people today is that you need to pay your debts, which unfortunately, is different from the message they get from a lot of Washington insiders today. I mean, think back to the case of Biden versus Nebraska that our Supreme Court decided just last year, we actually had to have the Supreme Court tell President Biden that he's not allowed to forgive, you know, $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Not only do they have no constitutional authority to do that, but it's a terrible idea. Young people need to be taught the opposite, that you repay your debts. Look what our founders did the very first thing they decided, or one of the very first things they decided, was that we're going to pay down that $80 million in debt. And they did it at a time when the revenues from all the states when we formed as a country were only about four and a half million dollars. But they were very frugal. James Madison referred to the national debt is a national curse. Thomas Jefferson said it is incumbent, using his words upon each generation to pay its own debt. Washington, in his farewell address, said the same thing, we need to borrow as little as possible and pay it back as quickly as possible, so much so that, as we touched on earlier, by 1836 when Andrew Jackson was president in a second term, we paid it down to zero, and unfortunately, we've lost that principle that we need to borrow little and pay it back quickly. And that's the one lesson I think Carli that we need to be teaching young people, and you can really use our American history as a way of teaching that
Spencer 08:19
The power of compound interest is something that I spend a lot of time in financial counseling with people that are trying to figure out how to live a life of financial freedom. And most of us have seen at least the graphical representation of what happens when you save money and that interest starts to accrue, and all of a sudden you get that hockey stick type movement, and it takes a couple decades in order to get there, but once it gets going, it is darn near irreversible in its ascent, and Warren Buffett has often called it the absolute most magical aspect of wealth creation is compounding interest. I feel like what we're seeing, though, is the reciprocal side, the opposite side of that, that our debt accumulating a trillion dollars every 90 days. Now we are well within the compounding interest that we are spending more in our annual interest payments than we are on the entire US military, which is a really stunning thing to take into consideration, because we spend a lot on our military, but to spend more on our Debt is really terrifying. So when we really zoom in to Representative Gino bolso in the 61st district in the house in Tennessee, what do you do about it? Because I might imagine that if you wanted to make a change, you might try to run for Congress, or run to be a senator, or you. Try to put yourself in a place of the federal powers. So what are you doing in state government?
Rep. Gino Bulso 10:08
That's a great question Spencer, and it does require a little bit of background, because first, let me go back to James Madison and what he wrote in Federalist number 45 that the Constitution he just wrote gave the federal government powers that were, quote, few undefined, but left to the states powers that were, quote, numerous and indefinite. So that's the structure of the federal government and the state government that we had. You had a federal government of very few powers that were defined in the Constitution, and you had states that retained under the 10th Amendment powers that were numerous and indefinite. That's what the author of our Constitution wrote. But over time, what happened is that we've had the pyramid reverse. And now you look out and you look at a federal government that purports to have powers that are numerous and indefinite, perhaps even infinite, and the powers of the states have become fewer and fewer and fewer, and it's because of the 10th Amendment that I decided to run for a state office rather than a federal office, because the way to unlock this problem, and I think maybe the only way, is to use the 10th Amendment to get the issue before the Supreme Court of the United States. Because obviously this, this problem that we have with the debt and with federal spending, is not a partisan problem. It's not Republicans versus Democrats, because both administrations have contributed greatly to the debt. It really is a problem of big government versus little government, and states need to be on the side of little, little government. That's where most of our founders were. And you know, when you look at the federal government today, those numbers you're talking about are drive principally because we have a budget, if you can call it that, with that the federal government uses where two thirds of it is spent already on paper before the year even starts on what are called entitlement programs, which, you know, it varies a little bit from year to year, but it's basically about 70% of the federal budget Congress doesn't even consider or vote on each year because their entitlement programs that are locked in. And then you've got just definitional entitlements.
Spencer 12:30
Just so people know what that is. Give a couple examples, just that.
Rep. Gino Bulso 12:35
It would be Social Security, it'd be Medicare, it'd be Medicaid, it'd be unemployment insurance. It'd be any one of a number of probably 100 other programs that are already written into law and cannot be changed by Congress. And that has occurred over time, because the federal government has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Its powers have expanded, expanded and expanded, so much so that it is now clearly beyond the scope of its properly delegated powers under the Constitution. And in particular, there's one Spencer that I want to bring to your attention, and that is what's called the general welfare clause, or also known as the taxing and spending clause. It's Article One, Section Eight, clause one of the Constitution, that says the federal government can only spend money on three things, on defense, on the debt, and on what's called, quote, the general welfare, which is a term that was defined in the late 18th century. And James Madison even talks about that term and some of his Federalist Papers, but effectively, according to Madison, the general welfare clause simply gave the federal government the authority to spend money on the 18 enumerated powers that are in Article One section eight of the Constitution that lists all the powers that Congress have. And so he did not view that as an additional grant of federal power or federal authority. And the country ran that way up until 1936 and the Supreme Court even interpreted the constitution that way. And so in 1936 what happened was that the US Supreme Court decided a case called us versus Butler, where, in In summary, it abandoned James Madison's view of the general welfare clause and embraced Alexander Hamilton's more expansive view that the general welfare clause, or the taxing and spending clause, as some call it, was actually an additional grant of federal power and authority and could be used by the federal government to create new programs. And so what we saw from the New Deal onward was an explosion of all kinds of programs, and it has never relented, and it has gotten to the point where it's imperative that we get to the Supreme Court, and we get the court to return to the way that. Welfare clause was intended by James Madison. In other words, we need the court to go back and revisit this US versus Butler case. And when they do, I think they'll find that what's been going on increasingly over the last 100 years is beyond the scope of the Constitution, and it will, I hope, accept the case. I filed a bill when the very first, in fact, I think it was the first bill I filed. As a representative HB 0038, last year was to amend one of Tennessee's statutes to give the general assembly the authority to file in federal court a case that would exonerate or implement Tennessee's rights under the 10th Amendment to rein in out of control federal spending that was passed in both houses. Governor Lee signed it, and I've got the complaint ready to go with the Supreme Court. The Speaker of the House, Cameron Saxon has approved its filing. I don't yet have the authority of Lieutenant Governor to file it, but under the legislation that we passed, once we have both the Speaker of the House and the Speaker of the Senate in agreement, we're going to be able to file this case in the US Supreme Court, directly under their original jurisdiction, and try to vindicate Tennessee's 10th Amendment rights, and have them get involved. Because I think one thing we've seen is that left alone to their own devices, the legislative and executive branches are not going to be able to solve this problem until it's too late. We really need the Supreme Court to step back in and to reform the government the way it was intended by the founders.
Carli 16:34
So if you get to the Supreme Court and were successful with this case, when the rights come back to the states, help me understand and help our listeners understand. So then would it come to the state legislature to help oversee spending, or would it go to a vote? Help me understand what you're seeking to accomplish? Should you be successful in the Supreme Court?
Rep. Gino Bulso 16:57
Sure, the complaint that I've drafted lays this out Carli, but effectively, we're asking the Supreme Court to find that the federal government, as currently constituted, is too big, that it's involved in things over which it has no proper constitutional role, say, For example, the Department of Education, there obviously wasn't a Department of Education at any time in the first 200 years of our nation. It was created, I believe it was in April of 1980 during the Carter administration. It now probably has a budget of $80 billion just using it as an example, one of the things we ask is for the Supreme Court to rule that the existence of the Federal Department of Education is unconstitutional because they're nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to get involved in education. That is one of those powers that was reserved to the States or to the people under the 10th Amendment. That's just one example, but the idea is that we have the Supreme Court look at the scope and size of the federal government and trim it back to its proper constitutional role, and that includes not just departments, but also programs and other ways that it has of spending money. Because obviously, right now, most of your tax dollars go to Washington. They don't stay here in Tennessee. The idea being that if we can actually reduce the size of the government, reduce its role, your tax dollars will stay here in Tennessee, they'll stay in Kentucky, they'll stay in Alabama, they'll stay in Georgia, and let those states actually run their governments the way that the Founders intended that they do so. So that's that's really the relief that we're seeking. We're going into the Supreme Court and affecting, effectively asking it to bring the federal government back into the bounds of the Constitution, make it a smaller federal government, which will make it necessarily a leaner and meaner federal government, and let the states, who can do so with less bureaucracy and more efficiency, handle things like education, health care, other things that really have caused this expansion of the federal government over the last 100 years.
Spencer 19:14
I feel like a lot of average Americans, when asked about the Department of Education, might think that it has been around for hundreds of years, because their thought being well, we've got public schools, so who else is going to do it? But I think to describe what the federal government has done is that in the 80s, they said, All right, all you states, you no longer have the authority to decide what your citizens should be taught. We are going meaning the federal government is going to take the curriculum, take the content, the education platform, out of your hands, and establish a federal. Are nationwide standard thresholds that you have to do and states, rather than having the opportunity to say, hey, we're a state that really wants to lean into more of an agricultural type education, or we're a state that wants to lean more into a technology education, something that is unique to what makes that particular state tick, they no longer have that power. And so I think it's an interesting aspect just to learn that the Department of Education is a relatively in our country's history, newer experiment. Do you know? And I just would appreciate because you're clearly such a historical scholar in this whose fault is it at the state level, when the powers are taken away by the federal government? So when the federal government says, All right, state, you don't get the chance to choose what your kids are going to be taught anymore. Who rolled over and said, Well, that's what the federal government says. So that's what it's got to be. What what authority, what weapon did the federal government have to force down various states throats the taking of their power,
Rep. Gino Bulso 21:24
Another great question, Spencer, and ultimately, it comes down to the power of the purse. Because at one level, you're right. States have for too long allowed the federal government to grow and grow and grow beyond the scope of its constitutional authority, and you know, I can't take responsibility for what happened before I was born, or even up until the time I was 15, but since that time, what I've seen is something that needs to stop, but it becomes somewhat problematic, because when you have courageous statesmen that step out and actually try to take a stand, they're thought to be somewhat imprudent for doing so. And let me just give you a concrete example. Since we're talking about education, let's stay with that. You know, there's a point at which the economic grab that the federal government has done really affects individual liberties of states, because what has been occurring is that the federal government, through the power of the federal income tax, takes up tax dollars, and then, in the case of education, it sends those dollars back to individual states with specific mandates, saying, if you want money from our Federal Department of Education, you have To teach this particular curriculum, you have to have this type of nutrition program, you have to behave in the way that the federal government wants you to. And some states have thought about not taking the federal government and not following the mandates. We're one of those states. I think both Speakers of the House and the Senate have recently talked about not accepting federal dollars, and they're ridiculed, primarily by the folks on the left, saying, look how stupid that would be. That's punishing Tennessee's children. Actually, it's doing the exact opposite. It is trying to return liberty to the state of Tennessee to educate children the way that Tennesseans want them to be educated. But that really is the is the problem Spencer, that the federal government has succeeded in sucking up all the money and then giving it back, either for education or for health care or for transportation or for any one of a number of other issues, and set and sort of control the behavior of the states. And it's it's time that we stop that. And now I'm in public life as one statesman trying to stop it.
Spencer 23:43
That makes a lot of sense because, like just with the education example, the federal government says, Well, if you don't want to follow our rules, then you don't get any of the money. And all of a sudden, Tennessee, with a $56 billion budget, says, well, we don't have the room in our budget to be able to absorb all of the gaping hole that a complete zeroing out of federal funds would generate, and that's just on one silo of education, you mentioned some others, of transportation, healthcare that the federal government, almost like a creeping wave, has their claws so far into the state that to try to extract yourself from it would obliterate a state's budget. So I think it just kind of leans back to Carli's question is, let's say that you get a Supreme Court that is sympathetic to your cause and says the federal government is doing wildly and vastly more than what they should have done. How do you unwind this? Because it seems like it would be 10 or 20 or 30. Years worth of trying to figure out how to restore balance to the order.
Rep. Gino Bulso 25:08
Once again, Spencer, you're on the money with these questions today. You're exactly where you need to be. And also, I'll point out that what you're talking about are things that you know I considered before I actually decided to run because I wanted to frame this in a way that I really thought the Supreme Court would accept it and could do something about it. And when you think about it, you know, we are in an economic state that's not great, but there's no need to panic, certainly not yet, because we as a state, we as a country, we as a country. Because, despite all of the you know, pick working and spending that's been going on over the last 100 years in our country, our debt is still just about 125% of our GDP, I mean, the sum total of all goods and services produced in the country for a year, which is not a good place to be, but it's not catastrophic. So that if we could simply just stop the spending, if we could freeze the increases in spending and the growth of government and the size of government to let revenues catch up to the already existing obligations that we've got, we could, we could turn this ship around. You're right. It's going to take 1020, 30, maybe even 50 years. But what the Supreme Court could do, by way of remedy, is saying, federal government, you're beyond the scope of your authority. We're issuing an injunction freezing federal spending at the current, current level, and you have to reduce your spending so much, by so much percentage every year, and then over time, the federal government will have to decrease its size under court order and get back within the bounds of its properly delegated role under the Constitution. And I think we've got the constitutional conservatives on the Supreme Court right now to do this. We saw what they did back in June of 2022 obviously, when they issued decisions on religious liberty, on the second amendment on Roe versus Wade, where the justices were not bashful about taking erroneous precedent from the past and correcting it so that it actually does more realistically align with the language of our Constitution. I think they're ready to do it on this economic front as well.
Carli 27:29
Part of what you're talking about makes me think about you want to kind of put America on a diet. And everyone knows that when you hit january 1 and it's time to eat the salad and the veggies for a little bit. Everyone's a little grumpy for a couple weeks, right? So I'm curious, because all of this makes fiscal sense. I'm curious. Have you thought at all about how to educate the population on the fact that it's time for a little salad? It's time for our kids sake, to introduce some nutrition into our balance and budget, you know, so that we can live long and prosper.
Rep. Gino Bulso 28:11
The good news Carli is, I think most folks, many folks, at least, are already there. They already see the size of the federal government as being an existential threat to the economic security of their children. Now there's obviously a large percentage of Americans that would disagree. There are folks who have a view that it's better for the government to take care of the people than to require the people take care of themselves, which when you cut through a lot of the complexity of political life at bottom, that really is what the debate is about. You know, are you somebody who wants the government to take care of everybody? And there are a lot of folks on the left that want that. That's in part why we are where we are, where two thirds of our federal spending is on entitlement programs. But I think there's a bigger percentage of us that say, No, that's not what America is all about. America is about individuals taking care of themselves and taking care of their families and having the government get out of the way allow folks the liberty to live as they want, to work as they want, to raise a family as they want. So I think many of our colleagues here in Tennessee and across the country, Carli are there with us. They simply really need to convince the politicians that that's where we need to go. And one reason why this hasn't been done before is because it does require a bit of political courage. You know, back in the early 90s, during President Clinton's first term, there was a bipartisan commission on entitlement reform that really had done a lot of work in Congress. I believe it was chaired by a former Democratic senator from Nebraska. Bob Carey, who was later himself a presidential candidate, and they had a report that had wonderful ideas, very innovative and creative, as to how we could turn this ship around 30 years ago, back when our debt might have stood at six or $8 billion not the 35 excuse me, trillion dollars, not the 35 trillion that it is now. So it really, I think it has been a lack of political courage all along that has gotten us to where we are, because it's easier just to sort of pass the buck to the next group of politicians. No one wants to put the American folks on a diet. No one wants to tell folks they have to eat the salad in the broccoli, at least not in the legislative or executive branches. I don't think that same impediment would be a problem with the US Supreme Court. Obviously, they're appointed for life, and for good reason, as our Founders intended. I don't think they're going to be affected or persuaded by whatever, whatever political winds might blow, they're ready if presented with the case to find that the federal government is beyond the scope of its powers under both article one and Article Two, and to start reining them in. So I think the I think the will of the population is there, and I think the will of the Supreme Court will be there. What we've always lacked is just the political will of our representatives in Washington, in the legislative and executive branches.
Carli 31:26
Do you see the rise of social media being a hindrance in that? I mean, political courage is something that we need from our representatives across the board, across time, but I think now it's so easy to take out of context what you do in the legislature to make a tweet and carry a narrative without looking at the big picture or educating about the entire issue, it just becomes a bomb being thrown from left to right and back and forth again. Do you think that's part of the issue?
Rep. Gino Bulso 31:59
I do, and I think, I think it definitely is, and social media has only kind of exacerbated problems that have existed and have grown over time with the more mainstream media in general. Because if you look at, you know, I think JD Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy. I think he points out that, and I think Dr Ben Carson does in his book the perilous fight that we really have had three institutions that have continued to lean more and more left over time and become more and more misrepresentative of where the population of the United States is as a whole. You look at the mainstream media, you look at Entertainment, you look at education. I mean, the national teachers union, things that are being done, not just in K through 12, but in higher education. You've got major institutions in this country that are kind of going off the deep end, on the left, pushing a particular agenda, a particular with a particular bias. And I really didn't really appreciate this much until I got into public life and started reading some of the articles that folks write about me and about legislation that I'm carrying. It's unbelievable to see the implicit bias that some of these reporters and folks in the news media don't even realize they have just in the language they use. You can tell that they're coming at it and reporting on it with a particular political view. And certainly, the same thing is true in social media when you talk about the fact that we want honest, truthful information to be in the public domain, we don't need, you know, misleading statements. We don't need false representations. But unfortunately, with the rise of social media, you get a lot of that, and then folks obviously have to respond to it, and it becomes something of a blur, which is one reason why I spend virtually no time on social media, either creating content or reading content. It's just not something I've ever found to be very productive. It's completely distracting, frankly. And so I think the rise of social media has kind of exacerbated a problem that's been growing for decades now.
Spencer 34:13
One of my favorite things in speech and debate when I did high school and college is to test my theory by taking an opposing viewpoint and seeing how I might argue it from the opposite side. So allow me to present a scenario to you that will try to oppose one of the structures, I think, an underpinning argument to what you have, and I'd be really fascinated to hear what you have to say. So one of the underlying principles that you articulate is the debt to GDP ratio. So the 125% where, just to put that into layman terms, if we are earning as a nation $100 a year, we've got about $125 Dollars worth of debt corresponding so how would you respond to an attack to say that 125% of a debt to GDP ratio is actually not that bad at all, and is something that we could view and do view as healthy in other frameworks, like in a household balance sheet or a business balance sheet,
Rep. Gino Bulso 35:28
and in two ways, one, the first point is, is Liberty, where you have a family that has a household income of $100,000 and takes out a $400,000 mortgage, they are choosing to live a particular way there. They may be within their means, they may be outside of their means, but they have the freedom and the liberty to decide how much they're going to work, to some extent, how much they're going to make and what they're going to spend their money on. With the federal government, the opposite is true. The more the federal government spends, the less Liberty you have, because in order to satisfy that debt, in order to pay those bills, it has to tax more and more, which is not just an economic issue, but a question of liberty. Because at some point, Spencer, if the government takes half of your income that you know from your business here, or 60% or 70% Yeah, it could fund a $35 trillion debt. But is that the country we want? Absolutely not. So the first point is one of liberty. It's not really an economic issue. It's what kind of country do you want to live in? Do you want to live in a country where the government effectively confiscates your wealth and spends it? Is it see fit? Sees fit? Well, then you know, maybe you're happy with the current state of affairs. But the second point is an economic one, and it goes back to your point about compound interest. It's not the case anymore that the government can just continue to spend without causing adverse consequences. You pointed out earlier that now the interest that we spend on the debt annually exceeds our defense budget. Our defense budget, I think, is somewhere around $800 billion that's right, we've got maybe 3 million employees in the Department of Defense, when you consider active duty soldiers, reserve soldiers in the civilian force, not to mention the cost of all of our weapon systems. So when you take the fact that right now, we are spending more in interest than on the entire defense of the free world, and that's only going to that interest, amount is only going to continue to rise because of the effects of compound interest, at some point you're going to have to cut the size of your military. And guess what? Carli, we've already done that. When you look at the amount we spend on the Department of Defense as a percentage of our GDP, the last figure I saw that it was 3% it hasn't been that low since before the Korean War. So we are actively putting ourselves at risk economically because we have to pay the interest on this ridiculous debt. So whether you look at it as from a standpoint of freedom and liberty, or you look at it economically, we're down. We're heading down a road where we don't want to go.
Spencer 38:13
So in a home ownership example, we're turning off the HVAC, we're turning off the lights, we're letting the driveway crack like we're doing the types of things that are indicators that things are not well. That's exactly right. That's exactly feeling healthy in our financial situation.
Rep. Gino Bulso 38:30
And when you're in public life, I mean, you've got a sacred trust to spend the public's money wisely. You don't, and you shouldn't have the choice of being wasteful in your own but in someone's own particular life, they've got their freedom in our country to spend whatever they want. But when you're in public life, it's exactly the opposite. You have to be conservative, you have to spend public tax dollars only when necessary.
Spencer 38:57
I love getting to ask you these mechanical questions, because I think it really frames up why you've run for office. Is a really ingenious approach of a bottom up effort to change things, to be able to bring it from a state legislature a lawsuit all the way up to the Supreme Court is something that you can really only do from your posture versus a federal role. So that makes a ton of sense to me, and I just love exploring the idea, because you've clearly put so much effort into thinking four and five dimensional chess about how this plays out. So just one other mechanical question that I'm just curious to hear, what your new paradigm of how the world would look. We know that we pay a lot of money in federal taxes, and I wear those scars on my back, as you were right to point out. Out a couple minutes ago. And so it stands to reason that the Supreme Court says the federal government is way beyond what it should be. We're going to put this curtailment in place over a 10 or 20 or 30 year time frame. Then the government should tax us less because the services that they're providing are being diminished. But then, in your framework, the states are going to start to increase in their responsibilities of the services that they have to provide. If the government is not providing some of them, not all of them would transfer to the state responsibility. What? But some would, so, how would the states receive revenue in order to be able to provide some of the services that the federal government was overreaching in providing? Does that does that question makes sense?
Rep. Gino Bulso 41:00
It does. It absolutely does. And I think the answer is that it would be done on a state by state basis, because different states would decide to provide different levels of service. I mean, for example, California might decide they want to have a statewide health care system. They might want to provide health care for every Californian, and if the Californians wanted to do that, you know, we've got 50 states, so they're allowed to do that in Tennessee, I don't think that would be the case. I think in Tennessee, what you'd see is a more robust private industry health care system, where folks are left with the freedom and liberty to decide how much health care they want, whether they get private insurance or some other type of insurance. And so you know how states would raise money, how much they would raise and how they would spend. It would be decided 50 different ways, which is the way the country was founded. Spencer, remember Federalist number 45 the powers of our states are numerous and indefinite. Anything that's not listed in the Constitution is reserved to the States or to the people. And you know, people would it would be decided differently. We've seen that in our recent historical experience, when Roe versus Wade was reversed, because the whole problem there wasn't whether abortion is a good idea or a bad idea. The question is whether the Constitution provided a fundamental right to an abortion. Of course it doesn't, because it says nothing about it. And so now the issue is with the states and the states. Each state gets to decide what their law is, and obviously in Tennessee, we've decided that question one way. In California, they decided it the opposite way, but that's what makes our country strong. That's what makes our country great. That's what makes our country the country that the founders gave us, if we can keep it.
Spencer 42:54
I think that frames it really well. Is that we're already seeing states that are distinguishing themselves from one to another. We're seeing people move to some states and leave other states. And it seems as though, if the Supreme Court were to really return the power back to the state level, the distinction that you would see between a California in a Tennessee would grow even sharper, because it really is. You get to paint by numbers in the way that you want to do it, and there's no one else to point the finger at outside of the limited scope of what the federal government does. Your state looks how it looks because of the decisions that your state legislature has made.
Rep. Gino Bulso 43:44
Even more fundamentally because of the decisions that the people of those states make, because they elect those legislators and and that's really all the power it comes from the people. That's the whole concept of our government. And the state governments are much closer to the people than the federal government, obviously, and so I think that's the way it was intended. And I tell you, if we could ever get back to the point where we had the kind of government that our Founders intended us to have, we'd have an explosion of economic activity. We'd have an explosion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because every one of us gets to decide, you know, of your own free will, where you want to live, what kind of life you want to have, what kind of family you want to have, and you get to make those decisions because you're an American, and you can live in Tennessee or you can live in California. But see, we don't have that freedom, and we have the federal government dictating everything across the board, which is a form of socialism that our founders would have found abhorrent every one of them to a T.
Spencer 44:45
We have a section every podcast of no dumb questions, which is a unique one to get to ask you, because you occupy a space in government that a lot of people have a lot of just lack. Clarity or uncertainty about what you do every day and how it all works. Most people didn't get a civics class, and certainly not on their state legislature and how it all works. That's how you and I got to spend some time together. Is that you taught me and my staff a six hour session on how a bill becomes a law, which I would say the overwhelming majority of people in any given state, wouldn't be able to articulate very cleanly how that process happens. So I just have a couple dumb questions that I'd just be curious to get your thoughts on. So as a business owner that hires a ton of people and knows that competition for talent is really high, and you have to pay in order to be able to get talent and retain talent and offer the type of future to them, to keep them working to be in the house legislature, you earn a whopping salary of about $25,000 I might be one or $2,000 off, but that's your annual salary, right, correct? So as a business owner, I see that and say, How in the world is something as important as our state legislature that governs, in part, a $56 billion budget for the state of Tennessee going to attract and retain talent when the annual salary to hold that position is below the poverty line. So help me reconcile those things, sure that I just fear for my state and for our elected officials that no one's going to be in line to say, You know what we need to do. We need to pay our politicians more. I mean, that is going to not do well on any type of testing. But I also just struggle with how we should think about that.
Rep. Gino Bulso 46:58
Here's one way, and that is as an employer, when you set a level of compensation, you're considering what type of a person you want to attract, you know, what's going to motivate this person? Is it more salary? Is it more benefits? Is it better parking? You know exactly what is it? And with the government, when you think about it, what you want to attract are folks who are there, not for any type of self aggrandizement, but you want people who are going to sacrifice for the common good, for the public good, and so when you're trying to attract that person, increasing a salary, I don't think would work, because one of the things that I didn't consider in running for office was how much state representatives are paid. I didn't care. I mean, I would do it for nothing, because that's really not something that motivates me. And Frank frankly, going back to our founders, when you look at the folks that signed the Declaration of Independence, what motivated them to put their lives on the line, their fortunes on the line, their sacred honor on the line, only sacrifice. Yeah, no amount of money would have gotten them to do that. And I think when you look historically at our best leaders, both at the federal level and the state and the local levels, you're going to find that the best folks aren't there, and we're not attracted by the amount of compensation they made from the public FISC. They're there because they want to be public servants. They want to sacrifice themselves. They want to sacrifice time away from family and other obligations to give back to the community. And so I think that's why it really, although somewhat counterintuitive, wouldn't get you better people to increase the salary of state representatives?
Spencer 48:46
It's a great answer.
Carli 48:49
I’m interested. Every answer you've given today, I've kind of loved this part is you go back to the founding fathers. You're quoting the Federalist Papers. Were you always a historian? Where did this passion come from? Was it truly when you were 15? Where did all of this knowledge amass that you are, that we are squeezing out here today?
Spencer 49:10
If you tell me, it came from the Federal Department of Education?
Rep. Gino Bulso 49:16
No, it predates the Federal Department of Education, because I'd finished high school by then. But, you know, I think it really just goes back harder the way I was brought up. You know, I come from a family of immigrants. My grandparents came over from Italy. My parents were first generation Americans, but you know, I knew my extended family from the time I was very small, and everyone was just so proud to be an American. Everyone just loved this country that when I was going to school, I soaked up as much education as I could about American history, learning about our founding principles. And you know, one thing that we tend to forget is that we have a government that really is built on a radical proposition that we should use our. Own free will in determining what type of lives we lead, what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence was entirely correct. I mean, we all are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that's not the case in many countries, but in ours, that is a bedrock principle, that you give freedom and liberty to individual people. That's also obviously something that's very deep in our Christian religious tradition as well, because all are equal before God. All are free before God. We've got the same founding principle to our country. All are equal before the law. Everyone is free. And so it does go back to before I was 15, because I just think we got a great country. I just love it, and I'm tickled pink that I get to do something in public office to try to advance those principles more and more every day, even if people like to criticize you for it, sometimes that's okay. I don't mind.
Spencer 51:01
How has your family absorbed you being a public official? This is pretty new for you still. I mean, elected in 2022 so what are the dynamics that can you go out to eat at a restaurant and like, not have people come up to your table and talk to you about something that you did in the workday? I mean, most of us enjoy that privilege of being able to be relatively anonymous. So how does that work?
Rep. Gino Bulso 51:25
It works differently. This weekend, I was in Chattanooga playing in a tennis tournament, a state level usta event. And because, you know, I was playing on Sunday morning, I went to mass at the basilica in Chattanooga on Saturday night, and after mass, you know, someone just came running up to me and said, representative, also representative also just wanted to shake your hand and say hello. I mean, somebody I'd never met before, but they had been following some of the work that I'd been doing in the legislature, and were just excited that they actually had somebody who understands what conservative constitutional principles are all about. So it has changed a little bit. Spencer, most folks still don't know who we are. I mean, you can go around for the most part in anonymity, but among those who actually pay attention, you do obviously attract more attention in the public, and I try to keep you know my family somewhat out of the spotlight as much as possible, just because of the different threats that come about from time to time, and you'll never see, you know, a picture of one of my grandchildren posted anywhere in in our media. Some children are adults now, so it's a little bit different. But for the most part, my family is very supportive of of what I'm doing, they're 100% behind me, but we try to keep the family life and the political life somewhat separate so that there's no blowback on the family just because of what I may be doing in the state legislature.
Spencer 52:56
And maybe just as a last civics lesson, because these are things that a lot of Tennesseans just don't get to know. And really, I found fascinating. Will you just tell our audience how long an actual legislative session is? A lot of people think that you do work from January 1 to December 31 in the legislative session, but maybe just talk about that for a second. Talk about how long your term is, and just just a couple different things that, if you were teaching some high school students that were listening, or some people that are new to Tennessee, what they should know about their legislature a little bit Sure.
Rep. Gino Bulso 53:31
Right now, we are in the midst of an election season, and the people of Tennessee will, on November five, elect what's called the 100 and 14th General Assembly. And a general assembly lasts for two years, and there are a maximum of 90 legislative days for each General Assembly, which is obviously divided over two years. So on average, in the first year of the 100 and 14th General Assembly, which will be 2025 You'll have about 45 legislative days, maybe a few lower than that. And then in the next year, 2026 you'll have another approximately 45 days. And so we're actually in session on the floor in both the House and the Senate, not more than 90 days over two years now those are days that you're actually on the floor. Like if you were on the floor Monday and Thursday, and you were committee meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, that only counts as two legislative days. And so our legislative sessions tend to run from the beginning of January to the end of April, so that's more than 45 days, but that's because we're only on the floor in legislative session on average two days a week. So it stretches out over two years. It's 90 days, but it is all going directly back, and ties back to our constitution of 1870 and how the legislative branch is put together.
Spencer 54:58
And so the Tennessee constitution. And says you get 90 days, it does. For two years, it does. And I think the theme behind that, if you had to explain why, they would say you get these days and nothing more, why would a state constitution have that limitation in place?
Rep. Gino Bulso 55:15
I think because the framers understood that that was enough. You know, they you want. You really do want a a citizen legislature? We don't, I think, really want professional politicians, folks that only spend all their time making political decisions, because that does, to a certain extent, you know, hinder your ability to understand what it means to live under the laws that you're passing and to be, you know, a working, productive member of a community. Now our federal government set up somewhat differently, and I guess there are good reasons for that, but that's another reason why states should have the powers that they were afforded under the Constitution, because they are actually run by the people through for the most part part time, legislatures, just like we have in Tennessee.
Spencer 56:01
And I think that brings it full circle to you're a practicing attorney. You still practice as an attorney now. And I think it also speaks to the question about salary and compensation. Is to say this is meant to be a citizenry based government, and we don't want someone that is in their 365 days, that is living off of the taxpayer. Instead, they'll be offered some compensation to be there. But in spirit, we really want them participating in society, not detached and removed. And that's a really interesting piece that I think you've showed us throughout our time on the podcast is the intentionality behind our nation's constitution, our state's constitution, and the various ways that, no matter how precise each one was written, it leaves open for interpretation and argument and debate and For you to be the scholar that you are, and to address an issue that from a bipartisan perspective, both Republicans and Democrats will acknowledge the debt is not in a good place. To be able to come up with a strategy to be able to generate change, and to feel so passionately about that to set aside the rest of your life to come and serve in the legislature is really an admirable and very strategic approach to how to create change. I really appreciate the spirit of an educator that you've brought on here, too, because I think a lot of people when confronted with the idea of civics, quickly get to just, I have no headspace for trying to learn that. And I think you've done a really great job of meeting us where we're at to say, let me break this down in a format that isn't your day job, but impacts each and every Tennessee and each and every American in a really significant way, us, our kids, our grandkids, and you've done a great job in articulating that today.
Rep. Gino Bulso 58:11
Well, thank you very much. Spencer, it's been a pleasure being here with you.
