Folks, it just keeps getting worse!
Dear Government, Please save us from the problems you created. Thank You
The Department of the Treasury just published the audited financial statements for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023.
Also, the CBO – the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency of government who does unbiased federal financial projections – just updated their projections for the next 10 and 30-year time frames.
Here are the facts from the financials (in $ trillions of dollars):
2022 | 2023 | |
Financial statement liabilities | $39.02 | $42.90 |
Unfunded Social Security / Medicare obligation | $75.90 | $78.40 |
Debt owed to various government trust funds | $6.70 | $6.90 |
Total | $121.62 | $128.20 |
These numbers are incomprehensible to the human mind.
To put them in perspective, the Total Obligations represent $381,547 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
Here are the highlights from the CBO projections:
$18.2 trillion – the growth of the federal interest-bearing debt over the next 10 years to a total of $52.4 trillion.
$6.0 trillion – the increase in forecasted debt interest payments from 2021-2031.
$120.0 trillion – the growth of the federal interest-bearing debt over the next 30 years to a total of $154.0 trillion.
Here is the ‘good’ news: the projected debt, within 10 years, will be down to $52.4 trillion from $54.0 trillion. Unfortunately, this is not enough to resolve the national debt problem, and is still ‘unsustainable’ according to the Department of the Treasury.
More ‘good’ news: total obligations only went up $6.6 trillion in 2023 over 2022; it went up $9.0 trillion in 2022 over 2021. Isn't that special? Still going broke, but not quite as fast.
Am I crazy or what? Dave Walker, who was the Comptroller General for the United States from 1998-2008, is an expert on the financial affairs of this country. See his latest analysis here, which underscores this problem.
The USS America is headed for the iceberg, and our country is still rearranging the deck chairs rather than paying attention to the impending disaster. American citizens simply keep on keeping on, kicking the proverbial can down the road, ever nearing the fiscal cliff at the end of that road.
So what should we do about it? CUT SPENDING, THEN CUT SPENDING, THEN DO IT AGAIN.
WHY? Because we can grow our way out of the problem if we have smaller government, which is proven to increase growth, while cutting the deficits at the same time.
Elon Musk says some provocative things at times. Here is a perceptive comment about why we should leave capital allocation to private companies:
“It does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to, you know, an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government. ……So how much money do you want to give that entity?”
Taking less from the citizens and giving less to the government is good policy for growth. That is the only way to fix this horrendous debt crisis in the making and get to good fiscal policy and a more limited government. It works, the real world examples document this time and time again.
BOTTOM LINE
PLEASE! You need to learn more about where we are headed and why. Our new book, The Greatest Ponzi Scheme on Earth, would explain this in detail and what we can do about it. When you ‘get it’, you will understand that you need to voice your opinions and plead for fiscal sanity before we crash and sink the USS America. Go to mainstreeteconomics.org and Contact Congress. For heaven’s sake, quit diddling with the deck chairs and help our country change course before it is too late.
If we reach the end of the road and the crisis hits, it will be too late - the ship will sink! There will be no good answers at that point.
LEARN ECONOMICS, THEN VOTE SMART.