The World and Everything in It: January 22, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today, new testimony on the sprawling fraud scandal in Minnesota. We have a conversation with one legislator determined to get to the bottom of it.

TESTIMONY: Many of the centers receiving the highest levels of funding were owned and operated by Somali individuals.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also today, pro-lifers unhappy with the Trump administration.

And, new travel rules block international adoptions.

Later, a former congressman’s round-the-world flight for Vietnam vets.

PEARCE: When I commit to something, I commit all the way.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on DC’s insatiable appetite.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, January 22nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kristen Flavin with today’s news.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: Greenland update » President Trump has dropped his threat to impose tariffs on several European countries after reaching a new understanding with NATO on Arctic security.

The president commented from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland Wednesday

TRUMP:  It's a long term deal. It's the ultimate long term deal, and I think it, it puts everybody in a really good position, especially as it pertains to security and minerals.

Trump said the two sides agreed on a framework for future cooperation in the Arctic, easing tensions tied to Greenland.

The move followed talks Wednesday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

RUTTE:  This is our seven allies, including United States, working on that, implementing that part of what the president has been pushing for.

Trump said discussions would continue but confirmed the tariff plan was off the table. He had confirmed earlier in the day that he was not considering using force to acquire Greenland.

The deal is also reported to include rights to rare earth minerals, but the terms of that agreement are not yet clear.

TRUMP:  The deal is gonna be put out pretty soon and we'll see. It's, uh, it's right now a little bit in progress, but pretty far along. It gets us everything we needed to get.

Trump has long argued the island is strategically important for U.S. national security, especially as Russia and China expand their presence in the region.

NATO leaders stressed that Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark and is not for sale.

Ukraine update » Also in Switzerland Wednesday, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters that he plans to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and a delegation from Ukraine:

WITKOFF: We plan to discuss peace in Ukraine in Russia.
REPORTER: And how do you think it will go?
WITKOFF: I'm hopeful that all meetings will go well on that subject. We need a peace.

But it was anything but peaceful in Ukraine overnight.

SOUND: [Zaporizhzhia attack]

Firefighters in the town of Zaporizhzhia worked to put out a blaze at a residence.

Authorities there say a Russian drone attack killed at least three people...and injured two more.

UNRWA demolition » Meanwhile in the Middle East:

SOUND: [UNRWA demolition]

Israel is facing criticism after it demolished the east Jerusalem headquarters of UNRWA. That is the United Nations’ relief agency that provides aid to Palestinians.

A UN deputy spokesman yesterday called the demolition unlawful and told reporters:

HAQ: The compound is a UN facility and is therefore inviolable under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which all UN member states are obliged to respect without exception.

But the Israeli government calls UNRWA a breeding ground for terrorism and banned it from operating in areas under Israeli jurisdiction.

Israel has claimed that UNRWA employees actively took part in the Oct 7 terror attacks against the country.

Clintons contempt of Congress » On Capitol Hill, some House Democrats have joined Republicans in voting to move forward with contempt of Congress resolutions against the Clintons.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said the panel doesn’t take the action against former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lightly.

COMER:  Since issuing the subpoenas, this committee has acted in good faith. We've offered flexibility on scheduling. The response we received was not cooperation, but defiance marked by repeated delays, excuses, and obstruction.

The Clintons have argued that the subpoenas were not legally valid. But Comer says that’s not their call to make.

COMER:   But subpoenas are not mere suggestions. They carry the force of law and require compliance.

The committee wants to question the Clintons in connection with the probe of late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Roughly half of the panel’s 19 Democrats joined Republicans on moving ahead with contempt charges against Bill Clinton. And three voted yes on contempt for Hillary Clinton.

The measures now head to the full House, where leaders could schedule a vote in the coming weeks.

If the resolution passes the House would refer the matter to the Justice Department.

Wall Street rallies » U.S. stocks rebounded Wednesday, clawing back about half of the losses from the day before WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Wall Street rallied as Investors reacted to President Trump backing away from those tariff threats.

The S&P 500 rose a little over one percent. The Dow gained nearly 600 points, and the Nasdaq also finished higher.

Markets had fallen sharply Tuesday on worries about tariffs and broader trade tensions. Wednesday’s rebound helped steady nerves, though indexes remain just below recent record highs.

Bond markets also calmed. Treasury yields slipped, a sign that investors were feeling less anxious. The dollar recovered some ground after sliding earlier in the week.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I’m Kristen Flavin.

Still ahead, new testimony on the sprawling fraud scandal in Minnesota. And later, new travel rules standing in the way of international adoptions.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 22nd of January.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up: The Minnesota Fraud Investigation.

The U.S. House Judiciary committee yesterday heard testimony on the sprawling fraud scandal in Minnesota. WORLD’s Lindsay Mast has more.

MAST: Four witnesses laid out the problem from different angles. One of them was a longtime investigator hired to examine child-care programs. Scott Dexter said despite his focus on data-driven reporting, he became the subject of an investigation based on what he found.

DEXTER As our investigations progressed, we noticed a trend: many of the centers receiving the highest levels of CCAP funding were owned and operated by Somali individuals, and the families served were predominantly Somali. This was not the basis for selecting cases, but it did become the basis for accusations against us. We were labeled as racially biased, despite the fact that our case selection was driven entirely by funding data.

He said he faced increasing restrictions on his investigations to the point that he resigned in 2019.

Also testifying was Jennifer Vanderhorst-Larson, who’s run an autism center in Minnesota for years. She says blanket cutting and withholding funding after the scandal broke has harmed autistic children needing treatment from reputable providers.

LARSON Autism therapy cannot be paused without consequences. Loss of services can erase years of progress in weeks and abrupt disruption of services can cause lifelong consequences for these children. This is not abstract harm. It is daily trauma for families already carrying extraordinary burdens

Joining us now to talk more about the fraud problems is Minnesota State Representative Kristin Robbins. She is head of the State Fraud Committee and is currently running for governor.

Representative Robbins, good morning.

KRISTIN ROBBINS: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

MAST: Absolutely. I know you've said that the fraud in Minnesota has gone on for years. There seems to be evidence to that end. So you've been there a long time. Walk us through this timeline. How did this all begin?

ROBBINS: From what I can tell, it seems that it began probably back in the 2014 era, when we had a big discovery of child care fraud cases, and there were prosecutions and people said they'd cleaned up the fraud in child care. But some of those same people involved in the child care fraud that went on to start these feeding our future sites during covid, which was another two $50 million fraud in Child Nutrition Programs, and from the feeding our future fraud, we saw that some of these same groups had then started fraud in autism centers and sober homes and non Emergency medical transportation and all these other Medicaid programs. So we clearly have seen that not only did they not stop it back in the Child Care days, but that it exploded during covid With all the new money that came to the state and then all the new Medicaid programs that Minnesota offers that many other states do not, but we have sort of leaned into all the different waivered services you can offer, and a lot of those have been found to have a lot of fraud in them.

MAST: I want to talk a little bit about the resignation of some federal prosecutors that happened over the last week or so. You know, you've been involved with the fraud. I think there was, my understanding is, there was some investigation going on by these federal prosecutors. How will that resignation affect the fraud cases going forward?

ROBBINS: Yeah, it's a tremendous blow to our efforts here in Minnesota to stop the fraud. The lead prosecutor, his name is Joe Thompson. He had been doing these cases in a very professional, non partisan way. He was the lead prosecutor when we had a Biden administration, U.S. attorney. He was the lead prosecutor under the Trump administration. US Attorney, he's just been leading these cases with his team for seven years. I'm sure that, you know, new prosecutors will be hired, but it will take them a long time to get up to speed with the depth of knowledge and experience that that prosecutorial team had. They were, they did a great service here in Minnesota, and we will miss them.

MAST: Representative Robbins, you're a politician, and this is an inherently political issue, what with the taxpayer dollars at stake? But you're also a Christian, so tell me how that affects your reaction to the fraud that's been uncovered there.

ROBBINS: Yes, my faith is very important to me. I think that it's important to a lot of members of the legislature, and we know that we are called to do good, and government is an instrument for our good, but we are also called to justice, and this is really important that we stop the criminal activity, because it is hurting taxpayers, but it is also hurting our vulnerable citizens who need these services, and so to allow fraud to continue unabated in Minnesota has hurt our state. It has eroded trust in government, and it is hurting our citizens. So I want to get at the root of it, because government is supposed to be here for our good, and that certainly has not been true with all of this rampant fraud.

MAST: What are the next steps in the fraud story? As you see it, in the coming weeks or months? Where does this need to go?

ROBBINS: Well, we are continuing unabated in our push for accountability. So the legislature is not in session right now, but I hold fraud hearings every month to continue to delve into this and expose the fraud. I have one tomorrow, and once we go into session in February, we will have weekly fraud hearings. So, as the situation with ice calms down. The fraud is not going away. We are at the tip of the iceberg. That's what I think people really need to understand. We've uncovered an estimated $9 billion in fraud, and there are programs that I have whistleblowers on where we haven't even started yet. So we have to get to the bottom of this. We have to stop the malfeasance and criminal activity in Minnesota so that we can restore trust in government, restore faith in vulnerable citizens who actually need services, and restore the faith of taxpayers that their money is being used well.

MAST: Well, Kristin Robbins is a state representative in Minnesota and head of the state fraud committee there. Representative Robbins, thank you so much.

ROBBINS: Thank you for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next on The World and Everything in It: a pro-life retreat.

A year into Trump 2.0, it’s unclear to some pro-lifers whether the current administration is with them.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: President Donald Trump has often called himself the most pro-life president in history, and it’s not without some justification. During his first term he appointed three pro-life Supreme Court justices who in 2022 voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

REICHARD: But in the years since, Trump has been less vocal about the pro-life cause. Many advocates are growing impatient with his administration’s failure to address some of their top concerns. WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry has the story.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Days after his swearing-in last January, Vice President JD Vance took the stage for the National March for Life in Washington.

VANCE: We are proud to march with you and yes, we will be back next year.

Vance pointed to policies he said would strengthen the family and he reminded pro-lifers of President Donald Trump’s support.

VANCE: I want to be clear that this administration stands by you. We stand with you, and most importantly, we stand with the most vulnerable.

In the administration’s first few days, Trump moved quickly on long-standing pro-life priorities: backing a bill on infants born alive during failed abortions and pardoning pro-life activists jailed for blocking entrances to abortion centers.

Vance is set to return to the March for Life stage again Friday. But for some pro-lifers, confidence in the administration’s direction is beginning to waver.

That confidence faltered a few weeks ago, when Trump addressed House Republicans at their annual policy retreat in Washington.

TRUMP: Now, you have to be a little flexible on Hyde, you know that.

Trump raised the issue while urging Republicans to break a stalemate over Obamacare subsidies. The Hyde Amendment bars federal funding for abortion—and for decades, pro-life groups have treated it as a bright line.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the comment did not represent a departure from administration policy—even though last January, Trump had signed an executive order pledging to enforce the Hyde Amendment.

Meanwhile, Trump last week unveiled his long-awaited healthcare plan that made no mention of Hyde.

Senator James Lankford says Hyde began as a compromise. In 1976, some pro-life lawmakers pushed for the amendment instead of a federal ban on abortion.

LANKFORD: Obamacare is a workaround. That’s why this is so contentious to say. They created a way to try to ignore the compromise that we had set 50 years ago.

A week and a half ago, 17 Republicans joined House Democrats to advance a funding extension on the Affordable Care Act without Hyde protections. The bill’s unlikely to pass in the Senate. But Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said it would withhold political support from members of Congress who backed it. SBA’s Kelsey Pritchard says Hyde remains a requirement, not a bargaining chip:

PRITCHARD: We are emphasizing to Republicans any healthcare proposal that they bring needs to incorporate Hyde.

Pritchard said another key failure of the administration for some pro-life advocates is a lack of safety reviews of the abortion drug mifepristone. Under a Biden-era rule change, women can obtain the pill online without ever seeing a medical professional in-person.

PRITCHARD: They can get rid of this rule today. There is nothing stopping them.

Over the last few months lawmakers, medical associations, and advocacy groups have called on Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary to conduct a review he’d promised. And a Senate committee last week heard testimony about major health risks of mifepristone taken without medical oversight.

PRITCHARD: The disappointment is on the end of the administration and Makary, hence why we’ve called for him to be fired for not doing this very basic common sense thing.

Makary has yet to respond to repeated letters urging him at least to review data on the risks. Senator Josh Hawley told WORLD that Makary’s silence is telling and that he now regrets voting to confirm him.

Pro-life advocates say at a minimum, the Department of Health and Human Services should reinstate pre-COVID restrictions on mifepristone. Before the Biden administration, women were required to see a medical professional in person and pick up the drug from a certified dispensing facility or hospital.

HAWLEY: This is something certainly that conservative voters want to vote for, but I hope the Congress will consider acting if for whatever reason the HHS feels it can’t. Congress can certainly impose these guidelines legislatively, and I hope we would.

As election season approaches, some say the administration needs to firm up its stance on key pro-life issues if Republicans want to maintain control of Congress. The GOP holds slim majorities in both the House and the Senate, and the pro-life voters could play a decisive role in November.

March for Life President Jenny Bradley Lichter.

LICHTER: There is a narrative out there that abortion is a losing issue politically or would be a liability for Republican candidates.

But Lichter says that story doesn’t hold up.

LICHTER: There’s plenty of counter-examples where politicians who have really fronted their pro-life convictions and have taken strong pro-life actions have been re-elected.

She points to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both of whom ran for re-election while backing pro-life policies—and won.

Wherever abortion falls in a voters’ list of priorities, pro-life advocates say Americans want to know where their candidates and President land on the topic.

Senior Policy Director for the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission Katy Roberts.

ROBERTS: We’re at this tension point where both Congress and the administration need to reveal what their commitment is to the issue of life.

As pro-lifers gather in Washington this weekend…and after they return home, they say they’ll be watching closely to see how the Trump administration responds — and whether lawmakers can hold onto their votes.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry. My colleague Carolina Lumetta provided additional reporting.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next: International adoptions denied.

A federal travel ban aimed at strengthening national security is keeping some American families from bringing home children they’ve been working years to adopt.

The order restricts or outright bans travel to the United States from nearly 40 countries.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The restrictions apply to countries with demonstrated, severe, and persistent problems in vetting and information sharing. Unlike other bans, though, this one pointedly makes no exception for international adoptions.

WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Kristin Trostel and her husband have spent the last seven years trying to adopt a child. During that process, they were matched with a seven-year-old boy named Keny. Late last year, the Alabama couple thought they were close to finally bringing Keny home.

TROSTEL: We’ve had a very very hard adoption. We’ve just had a lot of hurdles.

Keny lives in Burundi, and he has a leg deformity that’s left him, essentially, extremely knock-kneed. That, plus his age, makes him statistically less likely to be adopted.

TROSTEL: There's a drop off once kids hit five, really a lot of people don't adopt after five. And then knowing his situation with his legs, like we just really are like, oh my gosh, like, you know, he's just in a space where it'd be really easy to age out and then what do you do from there?

Burundi is one of the countries named in President Trump’s travel ban. The President banned travel to the United States for individuals from Burundi and other countries because of a lack of record-keeping and high levels of document fraud. High levels of extremism, which can lead to poor record-keeping, was also noted for some countries. The bans are country-specific to encourage cooperation with the U.S. according to each nation’s circumstances.

Trostel and her family found out about the ban while planning a trip to Africa to pick up Keny and finally bring him home for good. They’re just one of an estimated 300 families affected by the December travel ban.

TROSTEL: And we're thinking about airlines and strategies and work and, you know, how are we going to do it? And then two days later, we get an email from our agency of like, hey, like, we're figuring this out, but Burundi is impacted, and the specific visa we need is impacted. And I just thought, oh, my gosh. Like, I didn't think this process could get harder.

Adopting a child through a Hague Convention-approved process requires working through a substantial amount of paperwork. It can take years. It also takes a lot of money.

Tifany Markee is an immigration and family formation lawyer.

MARKEE: I mean, you know, we always laugh that if if people had to go through what these families went through to have a child biologically, our world would be far less populated.

She says families looking to adopt can spend anywhere from 25 to 50 thousand dollars.

MARKEE: They have to go through extreme vetting of home studies, health screening, home screening, financial screening, criminal screening, child abuse registries.

And it isn’t just the parents who are undergoing vetting. The government of the child’s country must also provide proof that the child is legitimately adoptable. The Trostels say that’s all been done for Keny, and they have the documents to prove it: his birth certificate, his mother’s death certificate, and a letter from his father giving him to a shelter.

TROSTEL: We also know that his father left the country. We have a letter from the orphanage director showing, like, yes, he is here. Here he is. We have pictures. That is also official. We've had an official from the Burundi government go and visit the shelter. So like a government official laid eyes on the child, made sure it all aligned talked to the shelter director.

Which leaves them here: in a waiting period where any blood relative of Keny’s has the right to challenge the adoption.

Since President Trump’s travel ban Trostel has gone to visit lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol. But she says for her and her family, adopting Keny isn’t a political issue. It’s a personal one.

TROSTEL: It's like, this is a little kid. You know what I mean? Help us just get this kid home. Like, we're not asking for any government help with this child. It'd be like, if we just had our own child, we just felt like, gosh, this little boy is here. He didn't ask to be born. And he's in a pretty bad circumstance and bad's like an understatement. And like we think we can help him.

The President’s order does permit Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in consultation with other officials, to allow certain individuals into the country if he determines it to be in the interest of the United States.

The U.S. State Department told WORLD this week that the Trostels and other families like them could apply for that exception. But the Department also said that it expected Rubio would only rarely be handing out those exceptions.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Time was that an intelligent princess kissing a frog turned him into a handsome prince. Now we learn that when artificial intelligence kisses a cop, it turns him into a frog.

Bear with me. Police in a small Utah town near Provo started using AI to save officers time. It listens to body cam footage and writes up what it hears.

Audio from KSTU.

OFFICER: Now the recording is saved. I just have to dock the camera and it'll write the report.

Yeah, but you’ve heard about hallucinating AI?

Well, this one went bonkers.

At some point it heard this movie playing in the background.

MOVIE: So what… you want a kiss? Kissing would be nice?

The Princess and the Frog, if you know it. That movie dialogue confused the AI, which spit out a report saying the officer had become a frog.

Just going to prove the old fairy tales are true: magic shortcuts rarely work the way you expect.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, January 22nd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up: When duty calls.

Our colleague Nick Eicher introduces us to a man with a round-the-world mission: a veteran who made a harrowing two-week flight to raise awareness for those who didn’t make it back from Vietnam.

NICK EICHER: Former congressman Steve Pearce is not a guy who talks about dreams or goals. He talks about assignments.

PEARCE: My worldview tells me that God will put road signs out there to let us know what we're supposed to be seeing and doing.

Pearce is a decorated Air Force C-130 pilot, a businessman, and a seven-term congressman from New Mexico. He’s also a Vietnam vet.

Sixty years after he first left home for combat in Vietnam, he got a new assignment. President Trump nominated Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management, the White House officially sent the nomination over to the Senate January 13th. The bureau oversees a lot. It’s responsible for more than 10 percent of the U.S. landmass. It has jurisdiction over vast stretches of the American West. It’s also in the middle of various debates over things like grazing rights, mineral leases, wildfire management, tribal relations. It’s no small assignment. One of the most consequential in the Interior Department. And environmentalists have been mobilized for months.

PEARCE: The storms we're going through today are simply preparation. They're not the end result. They're always preparing it for something else. And God is always preparing you for the next step.

Pearce knows a thing or two about preparation. His book You Had a Good Home, But You Left is a gripping tale about his 15-day solo circumnavigation of the globe. He did it in a single-engine aircraft 10 years ago … to honor fellow airmen who died in Vietnam.

PEARCE: I didn't try this for the thrill of it. I didn't try it because it's part of a bucket list.

Pearce did carry the idea of the flight for decades… but it was the men who never returned—and the ones who returned in body only—that motivated him.

He spent three years planning, almost entirely in secret. He would finish work in Congress late in the evening, sleep a few hours, then rise at 2 or 3 a.m. to pore over routes, fuel strategies, weather charts, and contingency plans.

PEARCE: I was not wanting to advertise, that I was thinking of going to anybody, not staff, not my wife, nobody.

It didn’t last. Pearce’s wife, Cynthia, walked in one night and found the floor covered in maps.

PEARCE: She says, What are you doing?... I'm just looking at places. That was pretty weak. But she said, I know what flight planning looks like. What are you thinking? I said, I'm thinking I might fly around the world. She said, I think that's a bad idea.

Pearce says he and his wife have a two-zero vote system for major decisions. Both must agree. So Pearce folded the maps, assuming the matter was settled. But two weeks later, she surprised him.

PEARCE: “I’m not going to vote against you, but I’m not going to vote for you.”

It wasn’t permission, but it wasn’t refusal.

Before he left, Pearce and Cynthia attended a ceremony for circumnavigating pilots supported by seven- and eight-person ground teams. Driving home, she asked who was on his team.

PEARCE: I haven't got a team. She said, why not?

Pearce said as a sitting ­congressman, the State Department warned him he was a “high-value target” and should keep the flight quiet.

PEARCE: She says, You can't do this by yourself.

By the second leg, fighting headwinds over the Pacific, Pearce called home. Cynthia listened—and then, as Pearce put it, “click, she hung up.”

PEARCE:About 15 minutes later, she calls, and sure enough, the thing that makes her a treasure in my life is she hates what I'm doing. She doesn't agree with it, and then she piles straight into it. And she had gone online and said it looks like a counter cyclonic flow is right on your nose. If you drop 200 miles south of course then you probably will find lesser winds. Without her, I could have never finished the flight.

Pearce says he questioned the wisdom of the trip many times, but never his commitment.

PEARCE: When I commit to something, I commit all the way, and that's the reason I don't talk about things. I tell people that that's a practice I picked up by reading about Mary when she learned that she's going to be the mother of Jesus, she didn't go out telling people in the town square. She kept the things in her heart and pondered them and and so a spiritual process I've had through my whole life is pondering.

He said the long preparation for the flight served the same purpose: a way to burn off second thoughts.

PEARCE: I will not quit because I'm tired or because I lose heart. I won't quit because it's difficult. I will not quit. I may fail, but I will not quit.

Storms taught him something about leadership. What matters, he said, is the leadership that’s revealed when the windows shake and the instruments rattle.

Pearce is not a romantic about public service. He is not rehearsing his legacy. He is simply taking up his next assignment.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Congress is once again staring down a funding deadline. The government is scheduled for shutdown on January 30 if lawmakers cannot reach a deal.

Immigration is one of the flashpoints. But the fight has also reopened a broader argument over federal spending, taxes, and the national debt.

Commentary now from WORLD’s Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS: Mitt Romney says he is worried about the future of the country.

In a recent letter to The Wall Street Journal, the former Republican presidential nominee writes that he’s open to higher taxes. His argument is that adding to the national debt faster than the economy grows “can’t go on forever.”

True, but Romney is only half right.

Because he’s wrong about the cause.

Consider this: The United States government is taking in record revenue. Tariff collections are up. Income tax receipts are near historic highs. Federal revenue now exceeds five trillion dollars a year.

And yet the national debt is approaching forty trillion dollars.

That tells you something.

This is not a revenue problem.

It’s a spending problem.

And it’s not a new one.

In April of 1985, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation about deficits and debt. What he said then sounds almost written for today:

REAGAN: No matter how hard you work, no matter how strong this economy grows, no matter how much more tax money comes to Washington, it won’t amount to a hill of beans if government won’t curb its endless appetite to spend.

Reagan’s point was simple: raising taxes without controlling spending only feeds the appetite.

REAGAN: They talk as if spending were all giving and no taking. Well, there is no magic money machine. Every dollar the government spends comes out of your pockets.

That was true forty years ago.

It’s still true today—and it explains exactly where we are.

Because despite these record revenues, Congress continues to spend more and borrow more. Cutting even the rate of growth is treated as cruelty. Fraud and waste are defended as necessities.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans receive some form of government assistance—which helps explain why spending restraint is politically radioactive.

Human nature hasn’t changed. The more people rely on government, the harder it becomes to say no.

That is why Romney’s closing line matters. He writes that he is “more concerned about the future of the country than the size of my tax bill.”

But that’s the false choice.

Before Washington takes another dollar—from Mitt Romney or you or me—it should do what Ronald Reagan demanded forty years ago: curb its appetite to spend.

Romney might profit from watching that speech.

So might the rest of Congress.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. And, Collin Garbarino reviews a new mystery coming out in theaters. That, and more, tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “And coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’ And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.’” —Matthew 13:54-57

Go now in grace and peace.

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