Economy > National Debt

Let's Stop Paying to Bankrupt America

For decades, politicians in Washington have paid lip service to “fiscal responsibility” as they practice fiscal irresponsibility on a scale unprecedented in American history.

Jim Cardoza | May 28, 2026

For decades, politicians in Washington have paid lip service to “fiscal responsibility” as they practice fiscal irresponsibility on a scale unprecedented in American history. The national debt of the United States has now climbed beyond $35 trillion, a number so large that it has ceased to register emotionally with most citizens. Yet numbers do not lose their consequences simply because they become difficult to imagine. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars. Thirty-five trillion dollars represents obligations so enormous that future generations may spend much of their lives paying for promises made long before they were old enough to vote.

What is particularly remarkable is not merely the size of the debt, but the normalization of it. Politicians announce deficits in the hundreds of billions as casually as a family discusses grocery expenses. News reports treat another trillion added to the debt as routine political weather. Meanwhile, the same people who lecture ordinary Americans about budgeting, sustainability, and sacrifice routinely spend money the government does not possess.

No household can survive indefinitely by spending more than it earns. No business can remain solvent by perpetually borrowing to finance daily operations. Yet somehow, we are expected to believe that the federal government alone has discovered a magical exemption from economic reality. It has not.

The laws of economics do not disappear because politicians vote against them.

For years, America enjoyed advantages that concealed the danger. The U.S. dollar served as the world’s reserve currency. Foreign governments eagerly purchased Treasury bonds. Interest rates remained relatively low. These conditions allowed Washington to postpone consequences that would have arrived swiftly in less fortunate nations. But postponing consequences is not the same thing as eliminating them.

Already, interest payments on the national debt consume staggering amounts of federal revenue. The government is increasingly borrowing money merely to pay........

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