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Debt and Deficit. What`s the Difference?; The story of an Ambitious CNN Champion for Change Who Wants to Rescue Every Savable Animal by 2025; Chili Pepper Setting World Records on the Scoville Scale. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired October 24, 2023 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: What`s up lovely people. It`s Tuesday, October 24th. Welcome to CNN 10, the best 10 minutes in news. I`m Coy Wire and I am
pumped for tomorrow`s #YourWordWednesday. Follow me @coywire on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, and put your unique vocabulary word in the comment
section of my most recent post with your school, mascot city, your teacher`s name, and we`ll choose one fun one to work into tomorrow show.
All right ahead of Halloween, I`ve got some sweet stories for you from trick or treat trends to the tail of duke, the dog. Plus, a spicy kicker.
But first we`re digging into debt and deficit. Both are growing in the United States, but where do the national debt and deficit come from? And
what`s the difference? Here`s CNN Jon Sarlin with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JON SARLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: America lives on borrowed money. That`s why the term debt and deficit get thrown around so much. Let`s first start with
our definitions. In a given year, a country will raise money through taxes and spend money on everything that a government spends money on. If it
spends more than it takes in, the difference is called a deficit. And the government has to borrow money to pay for it.
Now, this leads us to debt and not just any debt, but the debt. The debt is the total sum of government owes. In other words, a deficit is your dirty
dish from last night. The debt is your sink.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: In the United States, our budget deficit has recently soared reaching 1.7 trillion in the most recent fiscal year. That`s a 23% increase
from the previous year. To give you some perspective, the richest man in America, Elon Musk is worth 180 billion, according to Forbes, nowhere near
the U.S. deficit.
How much is a trillion dollars? Well, if you were to stack $1 bills on top of each other, 1 trillion of them would reach nearly 68,000 miles high.
That would be into outer space, almost a third of the way to the moon.
So what`s happening? According to a lead, U.S. economist Bernard Yaros more than 40% of the recent increase in our national deficit can be attributed
to lower revenues from taxes, more spending on programs, such as social security and Medicare also playing a part.
As for our current national debt, it`s well over 30 trillion. Check out this interactive article on CNN`s website. Writer, Tami Luhby, compares
U.S. debt to snow. Starting with this small snowball in 1922, it represents 408 billion. Over the years, the debt snowball kept growing, literally
snowballing passing 10 trillion in 1998, and 30 trillion by the end of 2022, as the U.S. government spent more money than it collected. The
article puts that growing debt into perspective with this graph and breaks down the government`s spending for the fiscal year 2022, $6.27 trillion or
about $1.38 trillion less than it collected.
You can take some time to scroll through the article yourself to learn more about the deficit and debt. We`ll leave a link under this episode on our
YouTube channel.
Ten second trivia. In addition to Halloween, which of these holidays will be celebrated next week? Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Dia de los Muertos or
Labor Day?
Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday extending over the first two days of November. And it honors the lives of deceased loved ones.
Who`s excited for Halloween? It`s the most wonderful time of the fear. And it`s one week from today. I`m so excited. I candy hardy wait. I`m not going
to wear my mullet this year, though, if I`m creeping it real. This is one of my favorite looks. My costume this year is eerie resistible, though.
A survey conducted for the National Retail Federation shows that the top costume picks this year for kids are Spider-Man, a Princess or a ghost. And
for adults, a witch, a vampire or Barbie, a majority of people said they will be handing out candy and about half planned to dress up or decorate.
The survey also found that Halloween spending could reach an all-time record high of 12.2 billion as more and more people are getting into the
spirit ready to party and trick or treat in full spooktacular, free pandemic style. Booya.
Now it`s time to meet another one of our CNN Champions for Change at a no- kill animal shelter that has the ambitious goals of rescuing every savable animal by the year 2025 and revolutionizing the way we treat and adopt
shelter pets. That includes fur babies like duke and the new best friend of CNN`s Jim Acosta.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: What you doing over here? As Harry Truman once said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.
I was coming out of my seven or eight years at the White House. I was suddenly burdened with some extra time on my hands and I thought, hey, time
to get a Dog. This is Duke. He is my rescue dog that I got from Best Friends. He was found in Arkansas. Mother was in an abandoned home.
A lot of the times with these rescue animals, they`re coming out of pretty bad situations.
JULIE CASTLE, CEO, BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY: Traditional animal sheltering has been around for 150 years. The status quo was we don`t have
a choice. It`s a necessary evil in our society that we have to kill these animals.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, does that feel good?
CASTLE: Best friends really became the disruptor because they challenged the status quo.
ACOSTA: Julie is a remarkable person. She started in 1996. She was employee number 17 here and became the CEO of this amazing organization.
What they`re trying to do is sort of transform the animal rescue pet adoption experience.
ACOSTA (voice-over): Kanab, Utah this is where Best Friends basically runs their operations here in the Southwest. It`s a spectacular setting and it
makes it all the more welcoming and inviting as somebody who might be interested in adopting a pet. Go and see pigs and goats and horses. And we
saw, of course, we saw dogs and cats. There were turtles and parrots and cockatoos. I felt like Doctor Doolittle.
ALI WASZMER, DOGTOWN DIRECTOR, BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY: What we do here at the sanctuary is so incredibly unique, so we are able to help
animals that most other organizations cut in.
These aren`t throw away animals. These are precious sentient beings that deserve a second chance of life.
ACOSTA: The Arkansas facility, can you describe that?
CASTLE: Bentonville was an opportunity to reimagine you`re walking into this bright, cool environment with a coffee shop and no cages. You can
participate in that lifesaving in a way that`s very similar to something like an Apple Store.
ACOSTA (voice-over): The Arkansas facility is important to me because that`s where I got my pet from. When you look at who`s going in. There, you
know, you see a lot of young people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right, this one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Ariana. She`s two months old and two weeks. We`ve always been dog people. We just lost one and we really wanted to get
another. It`s -- it`s like a whole experience. I think when you come in here, you just tell they want you and the dog to be taken care of.
ACOSTA (voice-over): You`re trying to market this experience. Trying to transform the way people think about pet adoption that, oh, it`s a cool
place where you can go to pick up a pet.
Back in 1984, when Best Friends got started, they tell us that there was something in the neighborhood of 17 million animals that were killed in
this country. Now they`re about 378,000 last year and Best Friends is the leader in that movement. They`d like to get to this place where the United
States is a no-kill country essentially by 2025.
CASTLE: The benchmark for no-kill is 90%. Roughly 10 percent of animals that are entering America shelters probably are too sick to be saved. So
it`s that 90% benchmark that we`re after.
ACOSTA: And you think it`s possible?
CASTLE: Absolutely.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you showing off? Yes.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: For today`s 10 out of 10, we`re kicking things up a notch. Or how about several million notches on the Scoville scale? This little guy called
pepper X officially holds the Guinness record for world`s hottest chili pepper. It rates 2.69 million Scoville heat units on average, and for
reference jalapeno peppers fall between 3000 and 8,000 units. The Scoville scale was invented by pharmacologist, Wilbur Scoville in 1912 to measure
the spiciness of peppers and chilies generally related to their capsaicin, the chemical that makes them spicy. Peppers are always so annoying. They
get Jalapeno business.
It`s time now for our shout out of the day, coming in hot Canon City High School in Canon City, Colorado. Go Tigers. You all know, I love this part
of the show and we`re about to make it twice as nice. You remember that our executive producer said that if our CNN 10 YouTube channel reaches 800,000
subscribers, I can start doing two shoutouts per show. And we`re almost there. We just need not 1000, not 2000. You guessed 10,000 more
subscribers. So let`s go, looking forward to seeing those #YourWordWednesday submissions @coywire. I`m Coy. This is CNN 10. And you
are awesome.
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