Today, U.S. debt held by the public currently stands at a staggering $31.68 trillion, a little more than 100% of GDP. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), if Washington continues to embrace its standard operating procedure, that figure is projected to climb to a stunning 175% of GDP over the next 30 years. These debt levels flash red. Centuries of historical evidence show that once public debt exceeds 90% of GDP, economic growth slows and major troubles follow. Before we are engulfed in a financial crisis, don’t you think it is time for Washington to defuse the debt bomb?
One can clearly grasp the problem associated with excessive government debt by looking at the interest burden linked to America’s current debt level. In Fiscal 2025, 36.5% of individual income taxes collected were used to pay interest on the national debt. So, over a third of Americans’ individual income tax dollars were siphoned away and not used for the provision of government goods, services, and transfer payments. If that’s not bad enough, current taxpayers are shelling out a big slice of their taxes to service debt taken on in the past to finance government spending in years gone by, years in which some current taxpayers weren’t of voting age or might not have even been born yet. But this isn’t the end of the story. The CBO projects that by 2036 an estimated 50.6% of Americans’ individual income tax dollars will be devoted solely to servicing the government’s debt.
