In the category of Decades-Old Problems, our National Debt is one of them, a seriously pervasive one. It ought to be close to National Priority No. 1, but over the years it has been subverted and literarily raped by Keynesian Economics (and its antiquated spawn, Modern Monetary Theory). Keynes believed that government should print vast sums of money when emergencies arise, but the problem surfaces when politicians ignore the other part of Keynes— when times are good, must-do spending cuts and deficit reductions never get done. Take for example, from 2020 to 2026, the National Debt rose by $14,000,000,000,000, under the starting guise of combatting the COVID “crisis”. Now the net interest on the debt is approaching $1 trillion annually. Then, if we add in the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, that’s another $3.5 trillion coming due.
The U.S. spends much more money than it collects in revenue. Thursday, the national debt reached $39 trillion. This was less than five months after it hit $38 trillion. In 2024, the Bank of America reported that the nation’s debt was growing by $1 trillion every 100 days. At our current pace of profligacy, the debt will probably accelerate; we could reach three trillion-dollar milestones in one fiscal year.
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The government is borrowing as if it were in a crisis, even though it isn’t. The national debt will exceed $40 trillion by the end of October, the Peterson Foundation projects. And the Congressional Budget Office tells us that in 10 years, the nation will spend more than $2 trillion (two thousand billion) annually just on debt service, which is already the fastest-growing part of the budget. This is a structural fiscal imbalance. Some of the biggest names in American finance speak in alarmed tones about America’s outsize debt load and a coming crash.
Columnist George Will reminds us that 75 percent of federal spending (e.g., entitlements, debt service) is on autopilot. The Rs and the Ds fight over only about 20 percent or so of the budget. Will correctly identifies the real problem (spending borrowed dollars on mandatory entitlement programs which don’t seem to be monitored, and only expand rather than being reined in).
Economist John Mauldin makes a great point on the “we owe the debt to ourselves” rubbish. The Luddites say that much of the debt is money we owe ourselves, in the form of Social Security and highway trust funds, pension balances, and so on. As if that means the debt does not have to be paid. Anyone who says such a thing is giving you economic bull patties. Social Security will need to be paid for, whether the money comes from the trust fund or the federal budget. It is not something we owe to ourselves; it is something we owe to future recipients who are paying into the system just like us older folks did.
Furthermore, the U.S. had to borrow much of the money we have spent from some persons or some government or institution. About 25-30% of U.S. public debt is foreign owned. The biggest foreign lenders are Japan, China., the U.K., Belgium, the European Union, and oil-exporting nations. Those lenders are not “ourselves” and will want their loans repaid, with interest.
The impending finance doom America faces cannot be allowed to go on forever. At some future point, lenders to the U.S. will begin to seriously doubt our capacity to repay our borrowings. The lenders will demand higher interest rates to compensate them for the added risk. This will prompt an economic slowdown that will exacerbate the U.S. fiscal crisis, reduce revenue, and launch a vicious cycle. Someone has said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
We have created this mess over decades, and we cannot get out of it quickly. But we can start taking steps in the next federal budget to prevent things from getting worse. No spending should be authorized that raises the budget deficit above the baseline, and no new tax cuts should be enacted that raise the deficit. Restraining increases in federal spending lowers expected future tax rates and debt. Spending cuts address the root cause of the debt problem. This is what it means to stop digging when you are already in a hole.
Other stories you may want to read:
- John R. Smith: National Debt Hits Stratosphere - March 22, 2026
- Cartoons: Dems Shutdown DHS, Election Fraud, and Unhappy Meals - March 18, 2026
- Best Cartoons: Social Rama, Crazy Carville, and Supreme Leader - March 11, 2026