Posted on 04/15/2025 5:40:02 AM PDT by Red Badger
As Americans file their taxes at the last minute this April 15, the federal debt – and Americans’ federal debt burden – continues to grow.
While the federal government reports a national debt nearing $37 trillion, one budget watchdog says the figure is actually much higher: $158.6 trillion, amounting to $974,000 for each federal taxpayer.
Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit budget accountability group that emphasizes a different approach to government accounting, released those figures, arguing that they more accurately represent the fiscal situation of the federal government.
TIA’s report includes $51.6 trillion for Medicare and $67.1 trillion for Social Security for benefits that have been promised to recipients down the road but are not considered in the ordinary national debt conversation.
“These numbers come from the Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports, which include calculations of the present value of projected benefits over the next 75 years, offset by the dedicated receipts expected over that period,” TIA Founder and CEO Sheila Weinberg told The Center Square. “Our calculations focus only on current participants – we do not include receipts or benefits from future participants.
“For Medicare specifically, in addition to the estimates based on current law, the actuaries also provide projections under the ‘Illustrative Alternative Scenario’… This scenario includes more realistic assumptions about future physician payment rates, and we use the IAS in our estimates.”
For instance, current government debt levels do not take into account the future payments for Social Mecurity and Medicare in the coming years, some of the nation’s biggest and most problematic financial obligations.
“The Treasury Department only included a fraction, $241 billion, of the Social Security and Medicare liabilities on the federal balance sheet because unknown to most people, according to government documents, recipients do not have the right to any benefits beyond the benefits to be paid next month, and laws to reduce or stop future benefits can be passed at any time,” reads TIA’s report, first obtained by The Center Square.
Budget experts have raised the alarm for years about the federal government’s runaway spending – under both political parties – and the threat it poses to the U.S.
“Our country’s financial condition continues to spiral out of control, and taxpayers are left holding the bag,” Weinberg said.
TIA argues current federal accounting downplays the severity of the U.S. debt problem.
“Nontransparent, flawed budgeting and accounting techniques currently produce inaccurate amounts, making the federal government’s finances difficult, if not impossible, to manage,” the report said. “The first step in managing the nation’s finances should be presenting accurate and transparent figures through full accrual budgeting and accounting that includes the costs and growth in the liabilities related to the two programs our seniors rely on the most, Social Security and Medicare. This would enable Congress, the President, and the American people to make better-informed tax and spending decisions.”
Why not a bazillion gillion?
Honesty such numbers are just silly at this point. You can only try to grab a headline so hard before you come across as nonsense.
The unfunded pension liabilities will really get your attention. The average citizen is armed and looking forward to the day when government officials want to force payment of their exorbitant and unconscionable government pensions!!
Ooooooooooopsie Daisy!!
The article is a little bit incorrect.
A failure to pay a medicare payment or a social security payment is not default. Only a failure to provide interest service on Treasury bonds or to redeem that treasury bond when it reaches maturity is default.
When there is a default all currently existing debt becomes payable in full immediately. That’s the definition of default.
That would not take place if social security payments did not get made.
If you do a personal balance sheet. Do you count all future mortgage payments, and all future retirement spending?
It’s a ridiculous exercise unless you also calculate the asset side of the balance sheet including projected tax revenues, tariff revenues, inflation in government buildings, gold, military assets, roads and bridges, etc.
‘“The Treasury Department only included a fraction, $241 billion, of the Social Security and Medicare liabilities on the federal balance sheet because unknown to most people, according to government documents, recipients do not have the right to any benefits beyond the benefits to be paid next month, and laws to reduce or stop future benefits can be passed at any time,” reads TIA’s report, first obtained by The Center Square.’
Ponzi-ish
Just curious:
Has anyone ever run the numbers on what would have happened had they actually pegged social security to the stock market in the 90s as was proposed - and defeated - at the time (as memory serves)??
So panic. But don;t panic. And please subscribe, because that is his business model.
AI shows he is involved with Hasai, Inc, which one learns is "a social media marketing firm specializing in driving traffic through the 5 major viral outlets: Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon."
And "JD Rucker, based in Orange, CA, US, is currently a Editor In Chief at NOQ Report. JD Rucker brings experience from previous roles at Dealer Authority, KPA LLC, Hasai, Inc and TK Carsites. JD Rucker holds a 1992 - 1994 University of Oklahoma. With a robust skill set that includes Blogging, Social Media, SEO, Reputation Management, MSN AdCenter and more. JD Rucker has 2 emails and 2 mobile phone numbers on RocketReach."
Source: "JD Rucker Summary"
So "Budget Group Says the Actual Federal Debt Is $158.6 Trillion" is worth us panicking? Or not panicking? Or subscribing to one of the several social media and messaging entities with which Rucker is associated?
Pedo Joe Bidenskyyyyyy should be forced to explain where this money went before he starts his fascist BS tonight.
That’s dumb. Nobody projects debt 75 years out. Also, workers will still contribute to social security for those 75 years. Did they subtract those revenues since they are being cute?
In the real world, unfunded liabilities, like site clean-up costs, legal settlements with future payments, or promised pensions, are counted as long-term debt.
Why should Fed.gov be any different?
I think they were netting the future liabilities against future revenues. And they came up with that difference.
If they didn’t take future revenues into account, then this whole article is nonsense
This is closer to what I've long known the cost of unfunded mandates to be.
Pat Buchanan was claiming back in the 1990s that it was over 100 trillion.
Good that people are finally realizing the Federal government is in way more debt than people understand.
Yes, it is. All of the corruption is going to end up crushing the common people.
When I calculate my debt, I don't include future payments for my water, electric and natural gas bills for the next ten years.
But you don’t include all future mortgage payments. You include only the current value of the mortgage. And you also include the value of the house and other assets in a net worth statement.
Treating Government future debt payments as a current liability is non-sensical. You would need to project future revenues to complete the net worth.
As recently as 2000 and 2004, Bush 43’s platform included the beginning of a shift of Social Security to individually owned, savings and investment based, fully inheritable personal accounts.
The dems demonized this as “privatization” and AlGore hyperventilated about “risky schemes,” trying to terrorize the ignoramuses into thinking that a fully funded system with tangible assets was risky while kiting bad checks to future generations in a Ponzi scheme was safe. Bush got elected anyhow. This has been Republican orthodoxy for decades, and I suspect that wide majorities of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate would have supported it. There was never any opening, however, to attract enough dem crossover votes to break a filibuster — I think the last honest democrat may have been Bill Bradley — and there was no appetite for casting politically risky votes for something that could not pass.
It ain’t impossible. Since that time, however, Obama of course had no interest, Trump walked away from it, and Biden ... well, was hopeless. Trump gives no sign of pivoting now. If that remains the case, it will have been 20 years since serious reform was attempted, and with every year that passes, we spiral deeper into the hole.
At this point, I expect that we will ride the Ponzi scheme into the ground. When bankruptcy looms, the fedgov will be faced with sovereign default. The EASIEST way out of the box, both fiscally and politically, will be repudiation of the unfunded liabilities in Social Security.
This will be done via severe means testing, rationalized (at least by the dems) as “social justice.” People with reasonably good private sector or government pensions, and people with private savings, will see benefits cancelled. Social Security will be rationalized as a straightforward old age welfare program.
Sorry, chumps.
Medicare will also be slashed via draconian rationing. Benefits now routinely extended to older patients will be eliminated. The elderly will be made comfortable and parked in their wheelchairs, with helpful therapists and social workers encouraging assisted suicide.
There. The above eliminates the bulk of the implicit national debt, which is mostly unfunded liabilities of the entitlement programs.
Then we will need draconian cuts to all discretionary domestic spending as well as national defense. Maybe turnabout is fair play, and we can get used to living under the Canadian and Mexican defense umbrellas. All U.S. allies abroad will be on their own.
If they had just kept 1% of incoming SS and Medicare taxes in an earning fund they’d have trillions.
They spent it.
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