Posted on 11/21/2025 9:15:23 AM PST by Whatever Works
Just a running arithmetic commentary on where we are.
(Excerpt) Read more at usdebtclock.org ...
Not at all true - and it’s not super-hard to pay it off - just hard.
What most people don’t understand about the national debt they do in fact understand trivially regarding their own debt. For instance, buy a big house - now you’re $1M in debt. You make a fraction of that. How are you ever going to pay it off? Easy - make your mortgage payments on time every month, and it eventually just disappears. But there’s a catch. You can’t amass large amounts of debt elsewhere, and you can’t keep borrowing against the mortgage (which prevents the principle from getting smaller).
Just do that - only that - and you retire the mortgage in 20 years - or these days more commonly 30 years.
Now, let me just rephrase that a little: a big up-front debt is scary ($1M mortgage, for example), but if you just live WITHIN YOUR MEANS and pay all your bills, the mortgage will disappear over time.
Why doesn’t the national debt disappear? Because we NEVER live within our means. Balance the budget, even run a SMALL surplus, and the debt will just start disappearing. And let me be clear - round up - say we have a $40T debt - we DO NOT have to run $2T surpluses for 20 years straight, like most assume, to retire that debt. We just have to keep the budget BALANCED. Why? Because the government makes it budget out like you do. When you live within your budget you are NOT spending more than you make, but part of that spending is on your debt (that $1M mortgage, as an example).
The annual budget INCLUDES payments against the preexisting debt. So STOP BUYING MORE DEBT and run a balanced budget and you start paying all of your debts off. Those notes are in various equities, some as little as a few years and some a couple of decades. Just pay on them, with no new debts, and they all get paid off on their cycle.
And this is the most important point here - if the US started running a BALANCED budget our credit rating would SKYROCKET and the economy would EXPLODE - making it even easier to pay off the debt. But, unlike what most would assume, you CANNOT run a big surplus to pay it off faster. BAD idea. Even if you use the whole surplus to pay it off and not on pork - because the money is ALWAYS more productive in the hands of the people. So keep reducing taxes more and more to keep the surplus down.
It’s the opposite of a vicious circle. Just look up Thomas Sowell.
I actually like that way of thinking. Most people can’t even grasp a billion, much less a trillion.
Just stop the clock.
There, fixed it.
“$4 trillion on The Big Beautiful Budget Buster - $113 billion more on defense. 65% increase in GWB’s Dept. of Homeland Security. “
The BBB is projected to have a several trillion dollar surplus over ten years.
“Do you actually read stuff here on FR, or just skip to comments?”
Sometimes the comments are better than the articles. Especially when they come from the anti-Trump media. Perhaps you should be more wary of their content.
“Do you actually read stuff here on FR, or just skip to comments?”
Recently posted article:
My life has seen zero improvement since Trump took office. It’s actually worse.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4351943/posts
“$113 billion more on defense.”
You need to understand the $113 billion number. It is a reconciliation value.
Spending FY 2023 - $916 billion
Spending FY 2025 - $848 billion
Spending FY 2026 - $1,000 billion
lol... "projected." By like Karoline Leavitt types or some such.
We all know, you included, that spending a lot of money is just spending a lot of money, and that rosey projections never come true. Around 1/4 of the national debt was under Trump"s watch.
Granted not all that is The Donald's fault. He is also somewhat more frugal this term and is cutting more as well, thus far.
I doubt we have 10 years to find out anyway. We're in the unsustainable stratosphere and something's gotta give. Currency change, default, Weimer redux... whatever.
“lol... “projected.” By like Karoline Leavitt types or some such.”
ROTFLMAO! You REALLY should know a subject BEFORE posting.
You are just looking foolish.
Let us do a thought experiment—and the government defaulted on the debt.
Let us call it a soft default—kept paying interest for a few years but then stopped—and refused to pay the principal.
One consequence would be nobody would want to loan us money.
Oh the horror.
Then we would have to have a balanced budget.
Mission accomplished.
You're one of the few, of any persuasion, who thinks Trump is some type of fiscal hawk, when nearly 1/4 of our debt happened when he had the veto pen.
Facts hurt your vagina.
We were discusing the present term. You lost there so you are jumping back to 2020 ...
You asked me to provide "examples" of Trump's proclivity for spending, and I did.
The upcoming $2k per person fed.gov giveaway is estimated to cost around $600b... THIS term. That plus the $300b+ in COVID spending is nearly a trillion dollars alone. All of it initiated solely by him - no excuses of having his hand forced by dems.
Trump, is a spendy guy. Sorry that hurts your feels, try this:
“The upcoming $2k per person fed.gov giveaway is estimated to cost around $600b... “
I guess you are not in favor of returning money to taxpayers.
Are you then in favor of raising taxes?
“The upcoming $2k per person fed.gov giveaway is estimated to cost around $600b.”
You need to get your facts straight. I know it will be hard, but try.
It hasn’t passed congress so we don’t know th3 details so how can you know?
It may not be $2k and definitely will not go to each person so your $600 billion number is pulled out of your behind.
“All of it initiated solely by him - no excuses of having his hand forced by dems.”
The dems passed the house bill ...
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