America's Talking - National Debt Surpasses $33 Trillion

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

The U.S. gross national debt surpassed $33 trillion, a troubling benchmark as lawmakers show little interest in reining in spending, let alone a balanced budget. The milestone comes as Congress faces a deadline of Sept. 30 to pass another spending measure or face a federal government shutdown. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I am Dan McAulip, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey, how are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, September 22nd. Casey, as Congress debates a new continuing resolution to fund the federal government to keep it open past this month, A lesser reported story in the national media relates to the national debt, which blew past the $33 trillion mark this week. Casey, you've been covering both the debt story and the story about the possibility of a partial government shutdown. Why don't we start with a debt?

What does it mean for taxpayers? Yeah, this is definitely has a big impact on taxpayers. With the national debt went well past $33 trillion, I believe it's at $33.4 trillion. dollars. This impacts taxpayers in a few ways. I mean, firstly, we've talked a lot at the center square.com and on this podcast about inflation. And in August, inflation spiked well beyond what was expected. It was, you know, 0.6% increase and 0.7% increase for consumer and producer goods, which really ended this steady streak of inflation slowing. Okay, things are getting better. the Fed had raised rates several times, which if anyone's trying to buy a house, you've noticed that.

The rates have shot up to, you know, about 7%. But it was the price we had to pay to get inflation down, right? Well, in August, inflation is back up. And if it continues, if inflation continues at the rate that it wasn't in August, which we don't know if it will. But if it did, then we're going to be in a lot of trouble because that is those levels in August were pretty much the peak, some of the worst that, as bad as the worst of what we saw. during the post-COVID or during COVID era, inflation spike early in the Biden administration. So, you know, we're poised here to potentially really continue another upward spike of inflation, though a lot of experts say that won't happen, though they didn't think August would be what it was either.

So we'll wait and see on the kind of bad news there. But how does that tie into the debt? Well, the deficits, which, you know, range from, you know, one to two trillion dollars lately these years, those are financed by printing money in part. That's how they make it work. They print money to offset a lot of this debt spending. And so, of course, increasing the money supply, which is the money supply is absolutely increased astronomically in the last five years or so. Doing that to help offset the debt spending increases inflation.

Right. So this, you know, not to mention, Dan, you remember we talked about. this story and wrote about it earlier this year, but one of the top three credit agencies, international credit agencies, downgraded the U.S. credit rating, basically the U.S. credit score. And they pointed to our spending, which is, you know, runaway spending, out of control. And also they pointed to what you referenced earlier, the fact that the government almost shuts down a couple times a year. And we almost aren't able to make our payments, you know, just on our debts. And I'll hand it back over to your.

of, but I will just say this is a pretty fun, kind of terrifying fact that we are quickly approaching the interest payments on the national debt being the biggest expense for the U.S. government. So if you could imagine your finances being so bad personally that the interest payment on your credit card is your biggest expense, and you're in a lot of trouble. Yeah. Interesting. You use the word fun and terrifying in the same description of what the national debt is. But $33 trillion. That's a number that I can't get my head around. I'm sure most Americans, many of our listeners, can't get their head around it. Breaking it down. And you have a pretty big head, Dan, so I don't know if that's a compliment or something other than that. No, it's your intellect.

That's the, that's, keep going. Keep going. It's fine. Well, just to break it down, you quoted in your story on the national debt surpassing 33 million. You've got to get your letters right in that trillion dollars. Representative Dan Bishop, a Republican for North Carolina, who broke it down to, you know, if we were to pay off, if Americans were to pay off that $3,000, excuse me, $33 trillion in debt. It's such a large number. It's hard for me to even say that every single family share would be, to pay it down would be more than $260,000. That's like buying a house just to pay off. Every American family would have to buy or give money for a new house to pay off the national debt.

That's just unbelievable. It is unbelievable and it's not sustainable either, right? I mean, like I said, the interest payment's about to be the biggest expense. There are several government programs which are on pace to be insolvent. I mean, we really don't have any big plans like the Highway Fund, I believe, is going to be. be insolvent soon in just, you know, just a few years. And there's no real plan to do anything about that. So, and social security. The federal program that Americans, many, most Americans rely on to be able to retire 10 years. They said there's going to have to be huge changes in the program if

nothing is done about it. Exactly. And the deficits right now are actually bigger than they were, you know, five years ago. So the problem has actually gotten worse because of COVID, you know, And we used that to justify running up these huge multi-trillion dollar deficits. And so it's uncharted territory. No one has ever had as much debt as we are getting into. The credit ratings going down. Inflation is up and Congress is headed towards another partial government shutdown, I think. Right.

And you also wrote this week about a bipartisan coalition of budget and financial experts forming to try and address this debt issue. but here we are at $33 trillion. I mean, what are they going to do? Yeah, I mean, this is interesting. It shows how bad things are. You know, bipartisan groups joining together to say, hey, the debt is out of control. We have to do something.

So I think it's just a sign of how bad things can be. They sent a letter to, you know, House and Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle and ask for this fiscal commission. It can be helpful. It can be useful. The bipartisan weight behind it, you know, can help them make recommendations. but it's also something to be wary of because creating a fiscal commission can be a Congress's kind of political way of not actually doing anything.

Yeah, hey, we're doing something. Americans are trying to do something to address the debt issue. Yeah, they always, whenever they don't, can't solve a problem, they'll just create something to study the problem. You know, we'll create a commission to study the border. we'll create a commission to do something. So, I mean, it's helpful and it's good to have research, but if it's not coupled with action, then it's not very useful. Okay, Casey, in the moments we have left, Congress remains at an impasse on the continuing resolution to fund, to keep the government open past

September 30th. Just give us a brief, give our listeners a brief update on where we're at with that. Yeah, I mean, this is the most, I think, angry and dysfunctional I have seen the House in a while now. There's several holdout Republicans who are very frustrated. who are not helping out McCarthy in passing this. Democrats definitely don't want to help them out. There's rumblings in the Senate of them passing some kind of a spending measure. I think at this point, McCarthy is just desperate to pass the CR that can just get by him a little bit more time because they don't have the spending bills ready. There's not cohesion and unity in the House.

I think the White House is seemingly ready to veto something. But if it came down to it, I'm not sure they actually would veto something to shut down the government. So this is the closest we've been to a government shutdown in a while, my opinion. Listeners can keep up with that all facets of this story at thecentersquare.com because Casey Harper will continue to be on top of it. But we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McAulb. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.