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.
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.
34 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.
@8:16 I guess that is the one benefit of having a private central bank. The non-Federal Reserve can go bankrupt and disappear with all that debt while the US Treasury remains. Perhaps the federal bankruptcy court will just confiscate and destroy the treasury debt held by the Central Bank? I am sure it has all been transferred to Lord Rothschild.
@8:15
I will tell you what it will look like.
About the same as now but our credit and currency will be valued on the same level as Canadian, Australia, and New Zealand dollars. Also, the various peso based economies of the world.
It will make whatever we produce more price competitive with the emerging economies. It’s why we shouldn’t have outsourced and then sold the tooling for everything to China.
These people in congress are not going to change and sooner or later they are going to wreck this country.
The reality of deficit spending even while cutting taxes should show the average citizen that both parties are engaged in nothing more than personal power grabs for themselves and their billionaire bosses. They have perfected the game of either blaming the other for fiscal irresponsibility or for neglect of the peoples welfare while both loot at the expense of the common people. All while we hate the other guy. We look like fools.
Blame yourself yes
There is no bankruptcy for a nation but maybe our debtors can come take it back by force. Maybe or maybe not
Might is always right, you see
When every dollar, every dollar is a dollar printed from debt there's noway out of debt.
If you have any paper money, pull it out look at the top of the debt note. Federal Reserve Note is printed at the top, not U.S. Government. That is a debt instrument that belongs to the Federal Reserve. It only has value, because the oil markets trade in U.S. dollars.
Those international bankers of the Federal Reserve have been stealing the labor of the U.S. working class for over 100 years, all the while milking this country dry.
Every politician knows we will never pay back the money we borrow. Just who do you think will do anything except complain? As long as we keep making rich people out of politicians they will continue the same way as they have been doing.
Solution? Term limits.
We have abundant food production and abundant energy. If Russia can survive with those plus crippling sanctions, then we should do just fine on our own with our resources and no sanctions.
But then again, Russia had the good sense to arrest Brittney Griner and sentence her to 25 years hard labor for smuggling drugs and Trump traded an evil merchant of death to Russia for a worthless basketball American.
@10:39 AM
The majority debtor is the American people who pay in many ways.
We pay via taxation and we pay via inflation. Inflation that robs our savings of value.
A million seconds is 11.5 days, a billion seconds is 31.7 years, and a trillion seconds is 31,689 years.
Here are a couple of relevant sites to scratch your chin to:
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/see-who-owns-the-39-trillion-u-s-debt-in-2026-from-domestic-and-foreign-holders-to-the-fed-and-mutual-and-pension-funds/
So Bill has finally figured out what the rest of us have known for years. I wonder if Bill has caught on to the notion that tomorrow morning the sun will rise in the east.
Bill discovers the obvious.
Same guy who laments the fiscal restraint Conservatives in MS have shown by NOT expanding Medicaid
, now lamenting not enough fiscal Conservatives
Maybe I'll hit myself over the head enough times with a hammer to where eventually it feels better. Continue to debate Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, etc. All losers!!
"Trump traded an evil merchant of death to Russia for a worthless basketball American", that was Joe Biden that made that trade.
@April 19, 2026 at 11:33 AM - That's a pretty feeble attempt at agitprop. Brittney Griner was traded for Viktor Bout on Sleepy Joe's watch.
Among comments thus far:
No gold or crypto brokers;
No concrete bunker diggers;
No 25 year MRE sellers;
So gloom of desperation hasn't swamped JJ yet.
You cannot tell which way the train went by looking at the tracks. Makes about as much sense as our government spending. I’ve spent a lifetime striving to spend less money than I took in, yet the government just keeps on spending above what it takes in.
Since 1980 I find that federal tax revenues have decreased only four times from the previous year. (2001, 2002, 2003, 2009.)
So that means those evil tax cuts aren’t as much a cause for the deficits as the spending habits of government. And with the largest part of government spending labeled as untouchable entitlements and this is added to the interest expense on the debt, as opposed to discretionary spending, one can see that there is no political will control spending.
Our only hope, in my opinion, is for our economic growth to outgrow the growth of the debt.
And to think how a backward place like Mississippi actually has balanced budgets, budget surpluses, and has been reducing state debt.
Too bad that the very people that has to vote on that are the people it will affect.
2:21pm
Fortunately, states cannot, by law, print money.
Agree, Economic growth must increase faster than debt. Or we create wealth faster than we burn it in the government incinerator.
Where's Paul Ryan these days? He's the one who blew a hole in the national deficit in 2017 with the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act."
It was supposed to be a tax break for the middle class, but 47% went to the top 0.1% of families, in typical fashion.
GOP controls both houses of Congress and the White House. No excuses.
The Fiscal Conservatives are only conservative when it comes to the items they are against.
Ooops!
(but not really)
Ronald Reagan won the election in 1980 by claiming he would reduce the deficit and balance the budget. We know how that turned out.
Cuckservatives are a joke. The only things they care about “conserving” don’t include a future for their own grandchildren. So they’ve lost the plot.
Hate to point out his data: National debt went parabolic starting with Obama. Along with Biden, they own half the entire debt accumulated over the last 48 years. And they did it in 12...
8:34, While that is true, I'll point out that half of the entire national debt was accumulated in just the last 9 years, after the corporate tax rate was lowered under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was passed in Trump's first year in office, when the GOP held the House, Senate, and the White House.
And just last year, the GOP renewed that law, while holding the House, Senate, and the White House.
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