Ben Shapiro appeared on a CNN panel with Abby Phillip, where he explained the main cause of America’s rising debt to a largely left-wing panel. It isn’t foreign aid or military spending, but entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These programs take up most of the budget each year and keep demanding more from taxpayers even though we already cannot afford it. Social Security was the m ost viral topic of conversation.
.@benshapiro teaching @CNN panelists how Social Security works is the video you didn't know you needed😂 pic.twitter.com/W54BsyPYKp
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 3, 2025
Many people still believe that Social Secuirty is simply getting paid back what the government took out from your paycheck earlier in life. This is simply false. The government subsidizes retirees through Social Security today using the money they tax from young people today. As Shapiro put it:
It's the government borrowing money to pay. You pay in x dollars, and then you get multiple times x dollars when you retire. That's how the system works. It is not a lockbox. This is what Al Gore was arguing about in 2000.
Ana Kaspirian, a member of the panel and current host on the far-left program, The Young Turks, blamed the rising debt on America's interference abroad. Largely arguing an opinion many isolationists hold, that it is foreign wars generating much of the economic debt of the United States. Shapiro put that fabrication to rest.
This is what happens when you show up unprepared.
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) September 3, 2025
The U.S. government spends nearly $3 TRILLION every year on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The entire defense budget was LESS than $1 trillion in 2024. It was fun to tag team this insane lie with @benshapiro 👇 pic.twitter.com/KbAzcwEaPC
Since 2001, the United States has spent roughly $8 trillion on wars in the Middle East. By comparison, aid to Ukraine amounts to about $128 billion, a fraction of that total. Over the same period, however, the government has spent $14 trillion on Social Security alone, not counting Medicare or Medicaid. Taken together, those three programs have cost taxpayers $24 trillion, with Medicare and Medicaid only beginning to add significant costs after 2008.
Wars can be stopped, entitlement programs cannot. Until that reality is confronted, America’s debt will only continue to grow.
