Government debt is out of control. Time to do something about it.

The federal debt is the largest liability that any nation has amassed at any time in human history.  The amount the federal government has borrowed is so big that it’s hard to picture.  

This may offer some perspective.  The federal government $38 trillion debt if spread equally among every worker in the United States comes to roughly $238,000.  If spread equally among every taxpayer, it would be $323,000.  If spread equally among each American it would be $107,000.  

Or compare the $238,000 in debt per worker to the average mortgage ($164,000 in 2024) or the median sale price ($310,000) of a house in Wisconsin.  

However you cut it the national debt is a huge amount of money.  

And America’s politicians are borrowing more every day.  Federal borrowing are project to go up by $2 trillion this year alone.  State and local governments are borrowing hundreds of billions more.

 Were America’s founders alive today they would be aghast at our country’s addiction to borrowing.  George Washington cautioned to avoid “accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear. " Thomas Jefferson said that there’s nothing so “demoralizing of the nation as the public debt.”  James Madison described the national debt as a “national curse.”

The founders were right about the national debt.  The debt is a curse on every taxpayer.  Those who lent trillions of dollars to the federal government expect to be paid back with interest.  Indeed, the U.S. Constitution requires that the government honor its debts.  That means higher taxes in the future and less money for other government programs.

The national debt is a curse on every worker.  Government borrowing drives up interest rates.  That makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow and invest.  The result is lower economic growth, fewer opportunities for job and career advancement, and lower earnings.

The national debt is a curse on every American.  It lowers our standard of living.  And eventually America’s ability to borrow will run out.  At best, that means that America will not have the capacity to lead in the world and the flexibility to deal with wars, pandemics or other crises.  At worst, another Great Depression.     

 
Fortunately, there’s still time to break the curse.  Government spending needs to go down.  That means cutting waste through programs like the Division of Government Efficiency.  But it also requires the public to be more realistic about what they demand from government.  

And the public needs to message to politicians that it’s time for this reckless borrowing to stop.   America’s politicians are addicted to debt.  It’s time to put them in detox.