America's Talking - U.S. National Debt Surpasses $100K per Person

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

The rapidly growing debt of the U.S. federal government has hit another milestone, topping more than $100,000 per person. While the U.S. population and the U.S. national debt are large numbers that are difficult to calculate, the rough debt estimate and rough population estimate end up at about $100,000 of federal debt per person in the U.S. 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'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today, as he does each and every week, 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.

I was wondering, Casey, do you have $100,000 laying around that you would generously donate to the federal government? You know, I haven't got my Christmas bonus from you yet, Dan, so the jury's out. Maybe I will in a few weeks, but right now, no, not quite just a few dozens of thousands of dollars short. Why do you ask? So the reason I asked that question up front was the federal debt now has grown so much that if we were to pay off that debt in a single swoop, every single American would owe $100,000. You reported about that this week at the center square.com. That's staggering. Yeah, I mean, it is a grim milestone. And I'll say that, you know, we were really the only people to cover this. This is a crazy milestone. I mean, I think there's maybe a blogger too that covered it.

But at the national media level, we were really leading on this. And it is a grim milestone. It's sad to me, if I can inject a little opinion, it is sad to me how we keep hitting these national debt or economic. you know, milestones and they come and go and no one seems to really care. I mean, our credit date rating was downgraded a few, you know, a few weeks ago, a couple months ago. And there was a little bit of media coverage on it. But that, you know, this kind of just came and win. And then another international credit rating agency downgraded us a little bit. It just came and win. And now we're hitting $100,000 in debt per person. And, you know, we reported on it. If you're listening to this podcast or reading the centerswear.com,

You're an educated voter and you know about it, but there's no marches on Washington. There's no press conferences on Capitol Hill about this. And that's probably not a great side. How do we get this math worked out, though? Essentially, you know, there's just big top line numbers, about 330 million Americans, and the national debt is nearly $34 trillion. And so, and it's going up, you know, constantly. our deficits are over a trillion dollars a year now. And so the debt is only going to keep going up. The deficits are going up. There's no sign of raining this in. I put a graph in the story showing that how the deficits, you know, have steadily decreased since the big bailout of the 2008 financial recession and then, you know, kind of middled out. And then it COVID, they spiked. And they've gone down a little bit since COVID, but they're still higher than they were before COVID. And so,

So the president and others have taken a lot of credit for cutting deficits, but it's really a little disingenuous because our deficits now are still higher than they were in 2019, let's say. We talked about the national debt. I'm looking at the U.S. national debt clock right now. As you mentioned, it is just barreling, snowballing towards $34 trillion at $33,89898 billion. These numbers are so high. I can't even like get my mind wrapped. around him, you would think $100,000 per every single American that Congress would raise the alarm about this and do something about it, yet Congress doesn't seem interested. Yeah. Dan, do you remember when the bailout was passed in 2008 or after 2008 financial crisis?

And there was a huge debate, and it was just unfathomable to lawmakers, the American people, and the outcry over the omnibus bill, I remember just, it was like $800 billion. And there was this huge debate over whether, how it could even be that Congress would pass such a large bill. I don't know if you remember that, but now it's like commonplace that we spend well over that in a deficit each year and not in a crisis, not in a great recession. It's just kind of our normal standard operating procedure. If people remember, we actually didn't have a deficit. I believe it was in 1999 or 2000. There was no deficit.

And so this is not like America's always been this way. We've been fine so long, so far, we'll be fine. No. In about 1999 or 2000, we did not have a deficit. We actually had a budget surplus, I believe. And so to go from there in the course of 20 years to this unsustainable path, it's not a good look right now. I'll tell you what. Yeah.

I mean, essentially what we're. doing is we're going to be making our kids, our grandkids suffer because at some point, this is going to get beyond any solutions. You have almost $34 trillion in debt. You have interest on the debt. And what you've reported recently, too, about the interest payments, tell me about that. The interest payments on that debt are going to, it's like one of the most expensive items in the national budget, right? Yeah, I think this is one of the most important points because, you know, some economists and experts will say, well, we don't have to actually pay that debt back. I mean, governments hold debt. Governments hold large amounts of debt. So you could say theoretically,

like if the U.S. stopped deficit spending right now and we stopped adding to the debt, it's not like we would have to go full Dave Ramsey and sell everything to pay down our $34 trillion. We could just hold on to the $34 trillion, make payments on it, and go on our way. And there's some truth to that, but one, it's not, doesn't seem very likely that we're going to stop debt spending. And two, we are on track very, very soon within a few years to have interest on our national debt to be the single largest expense for the federal government. So it is going to impact, not just our grandchildren, it's going to impact, I mean, we're talking next five or ten years this generation when it comes to the financial outlook and what we're able to do as a country,

what we're able to spend money on, even more than defense, even more than something like Social security, which obviously needs a lot of help, we are not going to be able to address those problems as well, even if there's some kind of bigger war. We're going to be handcuffed on that. Why? Because the biggest expense for the federal government is going to be interest payments on the national debt. And so this is not just like one day our generations to come might have to pay down these trillions of dollars. This is something that we are dealing with right now. Just the interest alone is going to be our biggest expense. And so it's not just the future. It's really is now. Of course, every dollar, every U.S. taxpayer dollar that goes to pay interest on that debt is a dollar that can't go to pay for national security, to pay for social security benefits, for retirees, to pay for health care for retirees.

Of course, we could go on and on and on enlisting all the services that the federal government provides that money is being taken away from because of this deficit. It's not being talked about enough. I don't think it was mentioned at the Republican presidential primary debate that you covered the other night. It just seems to me that this should be a major issue for Congress, for presidential candidates, etc. But Casey, we are out of time. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalib. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.

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