America's Talking - Budget Group Says the Actual Federal Debt Is $158.6 Trillion

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

(The Center Square) – As Americans file their taxes at the last minute this April 15, the federal debt – and Americans’ federal debt burden – continues to grow. While the federal government reports a national debt nearing $37 trillion, one budget watchdog says the figure is actually much higher: $158.6 trillion, amounting to $974,000 for each federal taxpayer. Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit budget accountability group that emphasizes a different approach to government accounting, released those figures, arguing that they more accurately represent the fiscal situation of the federal government.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9fe2aaac-eba8-45ac-be32-67be2d90fb35.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Tax Day was Tuesday, April 15th, the deadline for the vast majority of Americans to file their federal income taxes. If you got money back, you were probably happy if you had to cut a check to the IRS, not so much. But we have to pay taxes to pay for vital services, such as Homeland security, infrastructure, and other services. Too many taxpayers feel the federal government has grown so bloated over the years that it's as much of a burden as it is helpful.

Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, being the responsible citizen that you are, I'm guessing you filed your taxes on time. I did. I filed them in March, actually, a month ahead of time. And it was a pretty pleasant experience, you know. pleasant experience that might be the first time that's ever been said about it might be it might be but I got money back so that like you said that's what it comes down to I got a little money back so well taxes were due on a day when a new report came out um Casey showing the real uh costs of

federal um debt while the U.S. government places the debt at nearing $37 trillion dollars a budget watchguard group truth and encountering. It says the figure is actually much higher. They place federal debt at $158.6 trillion when you include government entitlement programs. Tell us about that. Yeah, the national debt, we all know, is in a really a dire state. It's on track to be, you know, 37 trillion later this year. As we've talked about on this podcast before, not only the overall national debt is growing rapidly and more quickly every year.

the national deficit has increased. It's not as if we've slowing our spending or tapering off to address this problem. We're actually getting into debt faster than we ever have before. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the deficits, the national deficits never really topped a trillion dollars. Now they often top over $2 trillion. And so the debt's growing faster. But this truth in accounting report, which we were, we actually got an advanced copy of this. And it's very interesting because it throws out this whopping figure of $158.6 trillion in debt.

And so, you know, that's a huge figure, of course. But when you read it where they get it, it's not even that ridiculous when you think about it. Because what they take into account is, well, don't you assume that Medicare and Social Security are going to exist for, say, the next 50 years? I mean, I think that's your 75 years. I mean, I think that's a reasonable assumption, at least when you're financially planning, you should plan that these things are going to exist. To assume that Medicare and Social Security will no longer be an expense for the federal government at some future date is a pretty convenient assumption that helps your budgeting, right? So the truth in accounting says, well, we're going to assume that Medicare and Social Security are going to exist for the next 75 years. And if they do, then how much will the U.S. have to pay over that time?

And it turns out it's a lot. It's about, you know, 50 trillion, 51 trillion for Social Security and 67 trillion for Medicare. And so I think the numbers reversed. I think it's 51 for Medicare and 67 for Social Security, but we get the point. Right. These huge figures for these entitlement programs over the next few decades. And so I don't think it's really, you know, it's, I think some, you know, it's not how we budgeting accounting is normally done. but if you're just doing your own household income, right, and you think about how much debt do we have,

you count your mortgage, even though you have to pay it out over 30 years. You don't say, well, we don't have to pay the mortgage for 30 years, so we're not going to count that in this year's debt. It's like, well, what's your overall debt? Your overall debt is all the debt you're going to owe that you've taken out loans on. And so when you can think about it that way, the national debt is actually more scary than we realize. There's no doubt about that. Even though President Trump, you know, created the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, put Elon Musk in charge of it. And we're seeing, you know, almost every week these massive amounts of, you know, government waste and fraud that they're identifying for cuts. Those cuts are just at this point, you know, good for them. We need to trim spending. But it's really just a scratch on the surface when it comes to this. where we're at now with our national debt. It is. And now we're seeing that Elon is probably not going to be able to hit the high estimates of cuts that he originally promised. I mean, I think there's a lot of institutional

things there. I always thought that that number he threw out a trillion, two trillion was really high. Annually, right. You know, that's a lot of money. Without Congress, you really can't do that. I mean, Congress could do that overnight if they wanted, but it's really hard to do that administratively because there's just so many laws and rules on the books and such an institutional entrenchment in the bureaucracy. So, sure, they've found a lot of, you know, they've done a lot of good work highlighting waste, fraud, and abuse, these different kind of ridiculous spending examples. But ultimately, this is Congress's job. The president can't really do this. The courts can't really do it. It has to be lawmakers coming together and saying,

hey, we're going to balance the budget for a change. And so far, neither when the Republicans are in control or Democrats in control, neither have been able to get that across the finish line. It's unclear, you know, how many want to. I think there are people in both parties who are open to the idea, but the problem is they can't agree on what to cut. The funny thing is they probably both have to cut their sacred cows that they don't want to cut to really get this budget under control. And this conversation is happening at the same time where President Trump wants to extend his tax cuts and jobs act from 2017. Federal tax, face a huge tax increase if Congress does not extend that.

But of course, that comes with its own consequences if they were to extend the tax cuts, because that would even add to the federal deficit. Yeah, that's right. So the Trump tax cuts expire at the end of this year. Now, not all of them, for instance, the corporate tax rate is permanent, but things like the child tax credit being doubled, which happened in Trump's first term. that's going to expire at the end of this year unless Congress does something.

That's something that impacts a lot of people, a lot of regular Americans. And of course, there's a lot of other parts of the Trump tax cuts, but the child tax credit, I think, is one of the most, has the biggest, you know, broad impact. And so that's going to be a big tax raise, a tax hike on Americans starting at the end of this year. If something doesn't change. Now, it seems like they are going to make those permanent or extend them. The legislation has been passed at the initial. level. They're just working out the details. But it's going to come with the big price tag. And part of the ray that they justified it, you know, in the house is they said, okay, we're going to, we're going to

extend the tax cuts. And we're going to cut spending to offset the cost of these tax cuts. And it's like, okay, what spending are you going to cut? Well, we'll figure that out later. The committees will figure that out later. And so, so leadership just said, this committee, you need to cut $500 million. And this committee, you need to cut, you know, $10 billion. And so they just assign these dollar figures to these committees to say you need to cut this amount to find this much spending to cut to pay for the tax cuts. So we don't have the details yet of what exactly what spending will be cut to pay for the tax cuts. Of course, Republicans are going to take fire for that. Anytime you cut any even the smallest amount of federal spending, this collection of people who are benefiting from it,

just come out of the woodwork and call you a terrible person who hates children. grandmothers and all that. And so that's coming inevitably. But right now, we don't have all the details on what spending they're going to cut. So we can't say we don't know how they're going to try to pay for these tax cuts yet. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.