Watchdog: Biden’s 2025 Budget Would Drive National Debt to $45 Trillion in 10 Years, 106 Percent of GDP

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) a budget watchdog group, found that President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget would drive the national debt to $45.1 trillion or 106 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2034, from $27.4 trillion or about 97 percent of GDP at the present time.

The organization noted that those calculations are based on the Biden administration’s own internal figures. The current $27.4 trillion debt figure is the debt held by the public, not the total national debt including intragovernmental holdings.

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Mitch McConnell’s Legacy: $27.6 Trillion in National Debt

Mitch McConnell

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday announced plans to step down as GOP conference leader in November, marking an end to his more than 20-year stint in Senate leadership that saw the U.S. accumulate a mountain of debt.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said on the Senate floor. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. However, I’ll complete my job. My colleagues have given me until we select a new leader in November and they take the helm next January.”

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Commentary: Seven Ridiculous Examples of Government Waste in 2023

Congress Spending

Almost nobody doubts that the federal government wastes a lot of money. Every day we hear stories of fraud, mismanagement, and misplaced priorities that cost taxpayers millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

But just how much money is wasted? In his annual Festivus report—named after the fictional Seinfeld holiday—Senator Rand Paul tallies up some of the most egregious examples of government waste from the year. The report for 2023 came out on December 22, and as usual, the stories spanned the range from hilarious to deeply disconcerting. In all, Paul identified $900 billion in government waste from 2023.

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Poll Finds Americans Worried About National Debt

Congress Spending

Americans are worried about the national debt, according to the results of a new poll.

Americans have the national debt crisis as one of their top concerns along with war, inflation and crime. Those polled think the overspending has a direct impact on their personal security and also has an impact on the security of the United States, according to a recent study commissioned by Main Street Economics, a nonprofit group designed to educate Americans on the nation’s debt crisis.

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Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie Says It Is ‘Economically Illiterate and Morally Deficient’ to Send More Money to Ukraine on Episode 45 of ‘Tucker on X’

In episode 45 of his newest production, “Tucker on X,” host Tucker Carlson interviewed U.S. Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY-04) who is against sending more aid money to Ukraine in the country’s fight against Russia.

Kicking off the 19-minute episode, Carlson said the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress will not accept the responsibility for the fact that the U.S. is “measurably weaker” for its support of Ukraine over the past two years in the country’s fight against Putin.

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Arizona Freedom Caucus Blasts Federal Debt Ceiling Deal, Calls for Better Results for Americans

The Arizona Freedom Caucus (AFC), a group of conservative-minded state lawmakers, released a statement Tuesday, blasting the debt ceiling limit deal made between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as a bad deal for the people of this nation.

“It should be obvious that Americans can’t afford to be saddled with yet more national debt. Given the $31.8 trillion national debt, growing by the second, prudence long ago dictated that getting spending under strict controls is non-discretionary; our runaway debt imposed by a lack of fiscal discipline at the federal level is nothing less than a national security threat,” according to the AFC’s joint statement.

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Commentary: Biden’s 10-Year Plan for Fiscal Disaster

Last month, President Joe Biden unveiled his proposed 10-year budget plan. The dollar figures are eye-popping: $17 trillion dollars in additional debt.

The previous 10-year period, 2013 through 2022, saw the national debt rise by an unprecedented $14 trillion, an amount that was turbo-boosted by the over-the-top COVID spending blowout. Yet, instead of a return to the bad-enough normalcy of an annual debt increase measured in the hundreds of billions rather than trillions, Biden wants to set a new record for debt accumulated in a decade, with an average annual deficit of $1.7 trillion being his “new normal.”

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Commentary: ‘Economist’ Krugman’s Accounting of the National Debt is Jailworthy

The national debt has risen at a blistering pace over recent decades and is now higher than any era of the nation’s history—even when adjusted for inflation, population growth, and economic growth (GDP).

Denying this reality, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote two columns for the New York Times in which he claimed that the debt is an “overhyped issue” and “isn’t all that unusual” from a historical perspective. His attempts to support these assertions employ the kind of fraudulent accounting that could land a corporate executive in jail.

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U.S. Projected to Tack on $19 Trillion in Debt over Next Decade as Spending Soars

The U.S. is likely to add $19 trillion more to the national debt in the next 10 years, which is $3 trillion higher than previously expected, new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predictions show.

By the end of 2023, the CBO projects the deficit to be $1.4 trillion, and it will continue to average about $2 trillion annually, raising the debt to about $52 trillion. The CBO report indicates that the rise in the deficit is a result of bipartisan legislation coupled with the Federal Reserve’s hike in interest rates.

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Commentary: A Blueprint for Tackling America’s Crippling National Debt

Our debt is too large. Inflation is too high. We rarely pass a budget anymore — this year neither Budget Committee even bothered to come up with one. This is how great nations become weakened nations, and with all the threats on the world stage, it is urgent we make a change now.

What we need is a budget that changes our fiscal trajectory away from one where the debt is growing faster than the economy, to one where it is stabilized and then gradually brought down.

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Manchin Condemns Schumer’s GOP Bash After Parties Compromise on Debt Limit, Says ‘Civility Is Gone’

Joe Manchin

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was once again at odd with his party Thursday evening, as fellow Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer laid into his GOP colleagues during a floor speech following a vote to approve legislation that would temporarily raise the debt ceiling.

“Republicans played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinksmanship did not work,” said Schumer, beginning a series of remarks that would target his colleagues across the aisle, including 11 of whom voted to end debate on the debt ceiling measure, allowing for the full vote to happen.

Manchin, who could be seen seated direct behind Schumer, as the New York lawmaker made his remarks, appeared at first to be shaking his head disapprovingly before placing his head in his hands.

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Yellen: U.S. Will Be out of Money in October If Congress Doesn’t Raise Debt Ceiling

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned congressional leaders Wednesday that the U.S. is on track to default on its debt sometime in October if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling.

Yellen said the Treasury would likely run out of cash in the coming weeks and exhaust its “extraordinary” spending measures to keep the country within its legal borrowing limit.

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Commentary: Inflation Hits 5.3 Percent in July as $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Easily Passes with $3.5 Trillion Stimulus Expected in September

The unadjusted consumer price index as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was 5.28 percent for the month of July, slightly lower than June at 5.32 percent, but still measuring the highest inflation on record since July 2008, when it hit nearly 5.5 percent.

The latest numbers come as Congress has easily passed another gargantuan $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending plan that included $550 billion of new spending. Interest rates have already reacted as 10-year treasuries came off a near-term low of 1.17 percent on Aug. 2 to 1.36 percent as of Aug. 12, slightly increasing inflation expectations.

The $1.2 trillion spendathon was just the latest in a long line of spending that has added $5.25 trillion to the national debt since Jan. 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic all the way to the current $28.5 trillion: the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and the $900 billion phase four under former President Donald Trump, and then the $1.9 trillion stimulus under President Joe Biden. It’s been a bipartisan affair.

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U.S. Set to Hit Debt Ceiling Within Four Months, Congressional Budget Office Estimates

The federal government is on track to reach the statutory debt limit in the fall, which would trigger a government shutdown, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate.

The U.S. is projected to reach the debt ceiling of $28.5 trillion by October or November, a CBO report released Wednesday stated. If Capitol Hill lawmakers don’t reach an agreement on raising the limit higher, the government could undergo its third shutdown in less than four years.

“If the debt limit remained unchanged, the ability to borrow using those measures would ultimately be exhausted, and the Treasury would probably run out of cash sometime in the first quarter of the next fiscal year (which begins on October 1, 2021), most likely in October or November,” the CBO report said.

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Stacey Abrams Purchased Two Homes Valued at $1.4 Million After Reporting Massive Debts in 2018

Stacey Abrams

Former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams purchased two homes worth a combined $1.4 million following her failed 2018 bid to lead the state, public records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.

Abrams purchased the homes despite reporting in a financial disclosure in early 2018 during her gubernatorial campaign that she owed the IRS $54,000 in back taxes on top of $174,000 in credit card and student loan debt.

Abrams purchased a 3,300 square foot home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, for $370,000 in September 2019, according to Nexis real estate records. The home is now worth $425,000, according to Redfin.

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Analysis: Deficit Will Top $3.6 Trillion in Fiscal Year 2021 as $7.27 Trillion of the National Debt Comes Due in the 2022

United States currency

The annual budget deficit has already hit $1.9 trillion and counting for the fiscal year that will end in September, according to the U.S. Treasury’s April statement, and it will reach as high as $3.6 trillion this year, says the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Comparatively, in 2020, the deficit totaled about $3.1 trillion for the entire year.

This comes amid the massive government spending in response to the Covid pandemic, including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March 2020, the $900 billion phase four legislation in Dec. 2020 and then President Joe Biden’s additional $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill in March 2020. Another $2.1 trillion infrastructure plan is in the works. And now, Biden is offering his $6 trillion budget, which will blow another $1.8 trillion hole in the deficit in 2022.

As a result, 33 percent of marketable national debt, or about $7.27 trillion of the $22 trillion of publicly held debt, will be coming due within the next year, according to the latest data by the U.S. Treasury. For perspective, that’s more debt than existed as recently as 2003.

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Report: U.S. National Debt Closer to $123 Trillion, Nearly $796,000 Per Household

The U.S. national debt is closer to $123 trillion, more than four times what the Treasury Department is reporting, Chicago-based Truth in Accounting calculates in its new annual analysis of the nation’s finances.

The federal government has $5.95 trillion in assets and $129.06 trillion worth of bills resulting in a $123.11 trillion shortfall, or a debt burden of $796,000 per U.S. household.

Because of this massive amount of debt and repeatedly poor financial decisions made by lawmakers, TIA gave the U.S. government an “F” grade for its financial condition.

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Congressional Budget Office Projects Record Deficits over the Next Decade

Federal deficits are projected to skyrocket over the next decade, resulting in a national debt that could be 107% of U.S. GDP, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office report.

The United States’ debt reached 100% of GDP during the past fiscal year largely due to the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March 2020. While the CBO’s February report projects unprecedented deficits, they are smaller than the office’s projections from last summer due to the country’s promising economic outlook.

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The U.S. National Debt Has Exceeded the Total Value of the GDP

The U.S. national debt now exceeds the size of America’s total gross domestic product and the milestone may have been met as early as June, according to a Friday New York Times report.

America’s federal debt stands at around $26.6 trillion — an approximate $7 trillion increase since 2016, according to fiscal data from the Treasury Department. Total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) was just over $19.4 trillion at the end of June, according to a July 30 release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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Analysis: National Debt Breaks Record for Highest Portion of U.S. Economy in Nation’s History

The U.S. national debt has just reached 120.5% of the nation’s annual economic output, breaking a record set in 1946 for the highest debt level in the history of the United States. The previous extreme of 118.4% stemmed from World War II, the deadliest and most widespread conflict in world history.

Today’s unprecedented debt-to-economy ratio—which is economists’ primary measure of government debt—includes $2.5 trillion in new debt since the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it doesn’t account for the vast bulk of economic damage inflicted by government-mandated business shutdowns, which will soon make the debt ratio significantly larger by decreasing its denominator. Although this decline has already begun, most of it is not yet reflected in the official data on the size of the U.S. economy.

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Commentary: Our Coming Debt Crisis

Ten to 20 years from now, we will not be talking about impeachment, and believe it or not, we won’t still be talking about Donald Trump either. We will be talking about our debt crisis. For all the good that came from this era, the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations will all be remembered as the ones that caused the crisis that will hammer our children and grandchildren. To understand where we are, it’s helpful to review the past few years of this issue’s development.

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‘Penny Plan’ Falls as National Debt Exceeds $21.5 Trillion

Rand Paul

by Bethany Blankley   The U.S. national debt exceeds $21.5 trillion. That’s almost quadruple the national debt when President George W. Bush first took office in 2001. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate held a vote on Sen. Rand Paul’s Penny Plan, which would reduce federal government spending and implement fiscal restraint reforms. Only 22 U.S. Senators voted for the Penny Plan, with 25 Republican senators and all Democrats voting against it. The Senate vote came months after about 130 U.S. leaders called on President Donald Trump to lead a “transparency revolution,” and reign in out-of-control federal government spending. “With the economy booming, wages rising, competitive tax rates, domestic energy production flourishing, and unemployment at a near 50-year low across every demographic – the federal debt continues to skyrocket. This is unsustainable,” they wrote in an open letter to the president. Trump responded by directing his federal agency heads to cut five percent of their budgets. Former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, and honorary chair of OpenTheBooks.com, and Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the watchdog advocacy group, said Trump’s “war on federal government waste” was “a great first step and an achievable goal.” However, his “willingness to lead by example” was…

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Commentary: Skyrocketing Debt Too Important to Be Paired With Spending Deal

US Capitol

by Justin Bogie   Two major issues that Congress will be forced to confront in the coming weeks and months are the debt limit and the future of the Budget Control Act discretionary spending caps. A report from The Hill indicates that negotiations are underway between Congress and the Trump administration to combine a two-year budget caps deal with an increase or suspension of the debt limit. Taxpayers have seen this failed approach before. For lawmakers, pairing an unpopular action, like raising the debt limit, with massive spending increases sweetens the deal. The total national debt is more than $22 trillion. An unpaid for budget deal could add at least another $2 trillion. Congress should debate the debt limit and new spending thoroughly and separately. Importantly, lawmakers must not make the fiscal situation any worse. As of May 17, the debt subject to the limit was $21.9 trillion and just $25 million short of eclipsing the limit. In total, the Treasury estimates that the national debt has increased by more half a billion dollars since Oct. 1. For the time being there is no immediate risk that the federal government will have to stop making payments or providing services. The…

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Commentary: National Debt Could Top $100 Trillion by 2037 If Congress Ignores Trump Budget

by Robert Romano   The national debt, now $22 trillion, grew by almost $1.5 trillion in 2018 as spending in Washington, D.C. continues to outpace the growth of the economy and revenues. Since 1980, the U.S. national debt has grown an average of 8.8 percent every fiscal year, but during that same period, the U.S. economy has only averaged 5.4 percent growth economic nominally before adjusting for inflation. As a result, the debt is now 105 percent of the economy. And if those trends were to continue, the debt will top $100 trillion in 2037, and exceed 193 percent debt to GDP. It’s not something that pleases me to report. I surely hope I am wrong. But even if it only grew by 7 percent, as it did last year, that still would ratchet the debt to more than $78 trillion by 2037. In plain terms, that is simply unsustainable and yet a very predictable outcome if Congress cannot get its act together. Making matters worse, it appears likely they will not get the fiscal house in order — and economic growth will be nowhere near 5.4 percent nominal, annual growth. One of the reasons for the steady growth of…

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Commentary: Debt Prioritization in Appropriation Proposals Now Will Defang the Democrats’ Shutdown Threat in the Future

By Robert Romano   Senate leaders have reached a bipartisan agreement on the 2018 budget that provides another six weeks of funding for the federal government. It gets there by ending the remainder of budget sequestration, a remnant of the 2011 debt ceiling deal, increasing defense spending by $160 billion and non-defense spending by $131 billion the next two years. As a result, one outcome for certain is there is going to be another major increase in the national debt, now nearly $20.5 trillion, without any major reforms to rein in future spending. And now there is talk of adding an increase to the debt ceiling to the legislation as well, which Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested would be extended until March 2019. Article I is only as good as the Congress we elect. The reality the nation’s fiscal house faces is the only way to get 60 votes to increase defense spending, a top Trump administration priority, is to get 60 votes to increase non-defense spending, and Republicans still lack the votes to go nuclear and eliminate the filibuster on appropriations bills. Lacking leverage or a means of resolution, these are the types of deals that will be produced, and have been…

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Tennessee U.S. Senator Bob Corker Stands By Statements Criticizing Trump Over Charlottesville

  COLUMBIA, Tennessee — U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) on Friday defended his remarks Thursday criticizing President Trump for his comments about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend between white supremacists and leftist radicals. Corker was in Columbia on Friday to speak at a joint luncheon of the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs at the Memorial Building downtown. On Thursday in Chattanooga, Corker questioned Trump’s competence and said, “He has not demonstrated that he understands what has made this nation great and what it is today, and he’s got to demonstrate the characteristics of a president who understands that.” Trump’s critics in the mainstream media and on the left, as well as some establishment Republicans, have maintained that Trump indirectly supported white supremacy by blaming both sides for the violence and saying there were innocent people on both sides. Asked by The Tennessee Star after Friday’s luncheon what he thought Trump should have said instead, Corker said he didn’t want to get into analyzing it further. “I’m trying to steer away from that,” Corker said. “What I said yesterday I think speaks for itself. Hopefully this, myself and maybe a few others speaking out, will have an effect. But I just want good…

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