Pompeo calls $31 trillion national debt ‘indecent’ and makes the case for small government at CPAC

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo extolled the merits of small government and called the national debt “indecent” at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

The West Point grad argued that Republicans in recent years have given “government more power under the guise of conservatism,” which has cost the party elections, swelled the national debt and has caused a bevy of domestic economic problems accentuated under President Biden.

“A free people can’t survive an unrelenting growth of government,” the Republican former Trump Administration official told CPAC attendees.

“Pervasive regulation, taxes, government controls – these are the things that are driving inflation and make your eggs so expensive today,” he added.

“But just as importantly, they erode the American commitment to the dignity of hard work. Those of us who get up every day and get after it. The fairness of playing by the rules is abrogated when government steps in and awards bonuses to people based on something other than the fact that they worked hard and were decent and good,” Pompeo said.

“A free and sovereign nation requires each of us to be free and big government destroys that,” the former Kansas congressman argued.

Without naming names, Pompeo observed that conservative leaders nowadays seem to “want to walk away from” the commitment to equality championed by the likes Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and “they just want to hand out the benefits differently.”

“It may feel good in the moment, we may give money, your money, taxpayer money, to a conservative cause. But in the end, the liberals will get back power and they will make life difficult for all of us,” Pompeo said.

The former Trump administration CIA director argued that the GOP has lost several “winnable” races of late because “voters didn’t trust us to do any better than the tax-and-spend liberals,” adding that voters have “lost trust in conservative ideas.”

Pompeo railed against size of the national debt, and in a dig at his former boss, noted that it grew by trillions of dollars under former President Donald Trump.

“I stare today at $31 trillion in debt and tell my son, ‘Make sure you work hard, because Social Security may just not be there for you,’” Pompeo said.

“Every recent administration, Republican and Democrat alike, added trillions in dollars to our debt. That is deeply unconservative. [The] Trump administration, the administration I served, added $8 trillion in new debt. This is indecent and can’t continue. Earning back that trust will be hard work, it won’t just be a campaign speech,” he added.

A WPA Intelligence survey released last month found Pompeo far back in the pack of a hypothetical nine-person GOP primary field, with only 2% support among registered Republican voters.

Pompeo has yet to formally announce his 2024 plans, but said in December that he would make a decision on whether to run for president in the spring.