The national debt is nearing $40 trillion, passing $39.5 trillion this month. The projected budget deficit this year, before the Iran not-war happened, was $1.9 trillion. Proposed extraordinary spending now pending in Congress could push this year’s deficit beyond $2 trillion.
The staggering amount of debt itself helps generate huge budget deficits. The interest on the debt this fiscal year is projected to hit $1 trillion for the first time. That amounts to 15% of total government spending. It is projected to grow as the debt continues to escalate. Both parties blame the other for mounting debt. As the chart shows, the debt has been surging since Bill Clinton was president under both parties.
(insert attached chart - you can scale to fit) The U.S. debt to GDP ratio of 123% ranks behind only Japan among nations with developed economies. Germany’s ratio is half ours at 62%. However, France and Canada rank just below the U.S. with 113% and 111% ratios respectively. The main drivers of the current $1.9 trillion deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are tax cuts and spending in the Big Beautiful Bill, rising interest costs, tariffs, and higher mandatory spending. The CBO projects annual deficits to average more than 6% of GDP over the next decade. Surprisingly in the face of the debt and current deficit, the president and congressional leaders are asking for an extraordinary 40% spending increase for defense to $1.5 trillion and prefunding homeland security for three years at $75 billion. The data suggests there are few if any true fiscal conservatives left in Washington. ““The way of fools seems right to them,” – Proverbs 12:15. Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from North Jackson.
4 comments:
A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.
What is the point of being a fiscal conservative when our entire economy is based on magical Monopoly money? We don’t need sound fiscal responsibility. We need sound money. We need a currency backed by something more than a debt ledger that says “we print $1 trillion this year and the American people will pay $100 billion annually amortization for the next 300 years”
Our elected representatives at EVERY level have failed us. None are concerned with actual solutions, only to consolidate their power to enrich themselves. We the people are eager to blame the party that we are not aligned with not realizing that is what the elected officials want, divide us to remain in power. We have only ourselves to blame by continuing to elect the same corrupt politicians over and over. Bennie Thompson is a good example. He represents one of the poorest districts in the country. It was when he was elected decades ago and he has done nothing to improve the lives of the people he represents, yet he is overwhelmingly re-elected every two years. Don’t blame him, blame yourself if you voted for him. That goes for the vast majority, both republicans and democrats who consistently are returned to office time after time.
There will be a day of reckoning with the financial problems the country has. I’m not smart enough to know what that will look like, but it’s coming.
If u are waiting for the current administration to practice fiscal responsibility, u have the wrong president. Trump (as a businessman) used leverage to pump returns. When the debt gets to be too much, u file bankruptcy, reorganize and start over, erasing the obligations from the previous debt. Will America ever do that? I think it is a possibility.
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