Closing In On The End Of The Road

In my last blog post I highlighted the enormous number of gray-haired Baby Boomers who want Donald Trump and DOGE to keep their "hands off" cutting any of the federal budget.

This is despite the fact that the stated mission of DOGE is to identify "waste, fraud and abuse" in federal spending.

I did not think I would ever see a time where people were protesting in order to make sure that waste, fraud and abuse continue in federal government spending.

Let's put all of this in context.

The federal government is currently spending  $7.1 trillion per year.

Revenues are projected at $5 trillion.

That projects to a $2.1 trillion deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025 which is the same as it has been over the last 12 months.

Source: https://www.crfb.org/blogs/12-month-rolling-deficit-21-trillion-march-2025

The total federal debt is approaching $37 trillion.

Annual interest on that debt is now over $1 trillion

That means that about 20% of current total revenues are necessary to just pay the interest on the debt.

Source: https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Interest on the federal debt is quickly crowding out almost everything else in the federal budget.

Only Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security are larger items in the budget. 

Interest expense has already overtaken Defense spending.

 

Source: https://www.usdebtclock.org/

For perspective, federal spending in 2019 (the year before Covid) was $4.4 trillion.

Spending has increased by $2.7 trillion (+61.3%) in just the last six years. The annual deficit has more than doubled from $$984 billion in 2019 to $2.1 trillion today.

A recent Fox News poll found that 31% of voters believed that the national debt was a crisis and another 48% viewed it as a major problem. Only 20% see it as a minor problem or not a problem at all.

Interestingly, more voters actually saw the national debt as a bigger problem in 2011 and 2013 when the debt was much smaller.

In 2011, federal debt was around 95% of GDP. Today it is 122% of GDP.

Source: https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/03/fox_march-14-17-2025_national_topline_march-20-release.pdf

The current annual deficit as a percent of GDP is around 7%.

By comparison, here is how that compares to other major countries.

For the United States to get to the average budget deficit of these other countries would require that annual spending be reduced by $560 billion.

When voters were asked in the Fox News poll about their views on specific programs that could be reduced, it seems that there is no majority support for anything

The same poll found that 58% of voters disapproved of the work that Elon Musk was doing with DOGE to identify waste, fraud and abuse.

Let's recap where we are.

The United States is drowning in debt and living off of deficit spending with no end in sight.

The majority of voters apparently do not want Donald Trump to do anything about it.

They certainly do not want Elon Musk to do anything about it.

That leaves us with Congress.

What are the budget blueprints they have been working on for next 10-year budget cycle?

Last week the Senate passed a blueprint proposal (51-48) that would cut spending by $4 billion over 10 years.

Seriously?

That's right---$4 billion over 10 years compared to this year's budget of $7.1 trillion.

Why did they even bother with $4 billion? 

That doesn't even amount to a rounding error on the $86 trillion of projected spending over the next 10 years.

The House was working on a proposal that would trim $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

That sounds better but if averaged out that would be $150 billion next year on current year spending of over $7 trillion---barely 2% in reduced spending.

However, in the end, the House concurred with the Senate bill to advance the budget blueprint accepting the reality that there was no way the Senate would approve of more cuts.

It is reported that the reluctant House Republican members who want more serious spending cuts were promised verbally that cuts in line with the $1.5 trillion will be in the final budget bill that is being targeted for vote later this year.

As it is, the House approved the Senate budget blueprint by a margin of only two votes with not one Democrat in favor.

President Trump had earlier announced his full support for the Senate budget blueprint that passed that chamber which contains just $4 billion in proposed spending cuts over the next 10 years.

And we have people protesting that they want President Trump to keep his "hands off" federal spending?

What does this tell me?

We have millions upon millions of unserious citizens who are being governed by scores and scores of other unserious people in Washington, D.C.

There are a number of  Republicans who are willing to attempt to get the deficit issue under control.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be one Democrat willing to step up and do what is necessary.

Therefore, the slim majorities in Congress dictate that the only practical option is to keep kicking the can further down the road.

Of course, the end of that road will not be a very nice place for any of us.

It is what it is.