Posted on 08/25/2026 11:09:33 AM PDT by MtnClimber
It has been amusing to watch mainstream journalists (who’ve largely ignored the national debt crisis until it hit a nice round number of $40 trillion) try to explain how it’s all the fault of Middle East wars and tax cuts.
Somehow, the fact that federal spending has increased by nearly 300% over the past 25 years never enters the picture.
Instead, we get endless accounts about how President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add $4 trillion to the national debt, and how previous tax cuts by Trump and George W. Bush are supposedly responsible for more than a third of the current debt.
The Wall Street Journal puts it this way: “Wars, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and tax cuts sent budgets off course in the early 2000s.”
False. False. And False.
Wars: In 2001, the Defense Department accounted for 15.6% of federal spending. In 2015, it was 15.2%. This year, it will account for just 12.1%.
Dot-com bubble: Federal revenues did fall 11% after the bubble burst in 2000 and the economy went into a mild recession. But revenues reached a new peak in 2005.
Tax cuts: Federal revenues today are 159% higher than they were in 2000. They are on track to climb another 38% in the next five years.
So, no. None of those explain why national debt has gone from $5.67 trillion to $40 trillion since 2000, or why it’s doubled since 2017.
What does?
Well, take a look at the chart below. What do you see?
You will perhaps notice that over the past quarter century, tax revenues as a share of GDP have hovered right around 17.4% – which was the average from 1946 to 2000. All the Bush and Trump tax cuts did was keep revenues in that narrow range.
But look at spending. From 1946 to 2000, it averaged 19% of GDP. The last time there was a budget surplus, spending was below that long-term trend. Since then, it’s never been close.
And there were two massive increases in spending, thanks to Barack Obama’s failed “stimulus” and Joe Biden’s failed “rescue plan,” neither of which was needed and both of which were followed by sluggish growth.
In addition, both Obama and Biden expanded the entitlement state, which set the federal government on a permanently higher spending path. There were plenty of bipartisan spending splurges as well.
The result is that while revenues went up 159%, spending has gone up almost twice as fast.
To Democrats, this is just evidence that taxes are too low. But it would be impossible to raise taxes enough to pay for all this additional spending without crashing the economy, which would, in turn, suppress tax revenues and increase federal entitlement spending.
We got into this hole because politicians have been spending like there’s no tomorrow. The only way out of this hole is to cut spending. Or at least moderate its growth so spending as a share of GDP can return to its historic average.
That should be simple enough even for brain-dead corporate journalists to understand.
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How much of this spending went to left wing NGOs and was lost to fraud.
AOC should pay back her student loan.
Hey, I’ve been doing my part.
Modern Monetary Theory.
Only something that forces spending down, like a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) has any chance of success. Congress won't pass that. The states came close to calling a Convention Of States to create a BBA . In response Congress passed a phony alternative and the ploy worked.
It’s not actually the spending that’s the issue, it’s the creating the funds to facilitate that spending that’s the problem. THe money supply is increasing due to fractional reserve bankstering, and the governement is first to spend this new “money”, while we as savers have part of our accounts stolen in the form of inflation.
It’s sustainable for another 2 decades but that’s it.
It’s a good article... but it’s just as slanted as the WSJ.
It’s been a Bi-Partisan effort to get to this level of debt. All of the issues mentioned by every party helped dig the hole.
Allowing tens of millions of illegals into the country and giving the back door access to benefits and a front-line seats at the University of Fraud also made things worse.
This problems IS fixable... I still believe that. But man, are we running out of time. We have to cap spending, hard. And we’re going to have to put much stricter limitations on who gets aid.
We probably will have to raise taxes some... but it’s going to have to be broad based..ie NOT just on the rich. Even with all this, it will take some time. But we can get there.
The only other option is, debase the currency and see EVERYONE take a huge hit in their standard of living. If people think things are unaffordable now? What what happens with uncontrolled inflation.
Giving away money to scammers and buying votes with taxes is not “spending.” Time to shut this down.
any fiscally conservative politician gets ridiculed and laughed out of town.
The “Cost of Government”, which isn’t included in the standard measures of inflation, is the SINGLE LARGEST cause of inflation and “unaffordability” of everyday needs.
Sorry folks, we’re not gonna grow or save our way out of this. Too much debt.
There WILL be a reckoning, and it’ll be ugly.
One analysis: check out John Mauldin’s thoughts from the front line.
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/
Just one of the many wonders of Central banking using Credit Money. Andrew Jackson was the last person to put and to the banking Cartel and PAY OFF THE DEBT, and he did it by Abolishing the 2nd Central Bank, we need to the same with the 3rd central bank.
Through the decades the government has published a pie chart depicting the various ways the taxpayer’s wallet was eaten by the wild dogs. The big honking expense that was treated with whispers of fear was entitlements, which they said could not be touched for its political sensitivity.
Now we know Entitlements was as fraudulent as a 400lb urban lovely walking out without paying for her rampage through the buffet.
There is nothing that can be done because everyone is allowed to vote. Even bankruptcy does not remove one’s franchise. We allow people who can not take care of themselves a voice in how the rest of us have to live. Democracy is doomed; it is just a matter of time
That image of the debt equivalent was perfect.
Ping
total historical spending since President Lyndon Johnson launched the “War on Poverty” in 1965 has exceeded $30 trillion
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