Free Republic

The national debt topped the entire gross domestic product (GDP) for fiscal 2026, according to new data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). From the fourth quarter of 2025 through the third quarter of this year, the country's economic output was more than $32.2 trillion, according to the BEA's non-seasonally adjusted statistics. As of Sept. 30, the final day of the third quarter, debt held by the public was more than $32.4 trillion, per the Treasury Department. Debt held by the public is what the federal government owes to outside entities, including banks, state and local governments and foreign...

The Treasury Department released its August statement of receipts and outlays with all the ceremony the occasion deserved: none. No press conference, no address, just a PDF on a government website, the way a man slips a foreclosure notice under the door. Buried in Table 3 sits a number that would have been a scandal in any saner era: of every dollar Washington expects to collect in income taxes this year, forty-three cents will go to interest on the national debt. Not to pay it down. Just to carry it. Run the arithmetic; Treasury prints it in plain sight. The...

The U.S. finished the 2026 fiscal year with a budget deficit of nearly $2 trillion, the latest measurement to underscore the extent of the country’s financial stress. The $1.992 trillion figure was about 12% higher than the $1.775 trillion deficit in the prior fiscal year, the Treasury Department reported Friday. It’s the third-highest annual deficit in U.S. history, behind only 2020 and 2021, when the federal government was doling out trillions of dollars in financial stimulus amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2026 fiscal year saw record sums for both receipts and outlays, according to a Treasury Department official. With Friday’s...

The cost of the American dream is rising at a faster pace than household earnings, driven by notable increases in the cost of homeownership, raising children and paying for college, according to a new report. An analysis by Investopedia finds that the lifetime cost of the American dream rose 4.1% from 2025 to 2026, with the cost increasing by more than $208,000 from $5.11 million a year ago to $5.32 million this year. That cost has risen faster than wages and salaries, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for private sector wages and salaries in the past 12 months...

That spending increase was primarily driven by entitlement programs, the military, and interest payments on the national debt. The CBO notes that Social Security spending increased by 5 percent last year due to "increases in average benefits and in the number of beneficiaries." There was an 8 percent increase in spending on both Medicare and Medicaid, while military spending increased by 5 percent.

The U.S. trade deficit widened sharply in August amid an influx of goods related to the artificial intelligence build-out and the vagaries of import tariffs, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Imports swelled 4.3% for the month, pushing the total imbalance to $105.6 billion. That marked a 13.7% jump from July and was ahead of the Dow Jones consensus estimate for $102 billion. It also was the steepest deficit since the all-time gap in March 2025, recorded just before President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement of “reciprocal” tariffs against U.S. trading partners. Though the monthly total was up, the year-to-date deficit...

France is on the precipice of a dangerous financial spiral. The global surge in interest rates has exposed the country, once considered an oasis of relative stability in Europe’s financial markets, as one of the continent’s weakest links. France now pays more to borrow than former crisis hot spots like Greece and Italy. Its government is running a budget deficit surpassed only by the United States among its peers. Last week, a slow-burning selloff in France’s government bond market took an alarming turn as it spread across the continent, reviving memories of the eurozone debt crisis last decade. France’s 10-year...

The US debt load crossed $40 trillion in August 2026. The Treasury publishes the number and updates it every business day. $32.4 trillion of it is borrowed from investors, pension funds, and foreign governments. Another $7.7 trillion is owed to the government's trust funds, including the funds that pay Social Security and Medicare. I spent two terms chairing the House Financial Institutions Committee, reading numbers like these, page after page. The pace worried me more than the total ever did. Everyone quotes the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline when they talk about where the debt is headed. CBO is the nonpartisan...

President Donald Trump is once again promising Americans $5,000 checks if Republicans retain control of Congress, repeating a pledge he first made last month as the midterm elections enter their final stretch. At the same time, the administration is already sending out much smaller federal payments, including $90 payments to millions of eligible Medicare beneficiaries and $500 refunds to certain Affordable Care Act customers. That has created an unusual mix of real payments, campaign promises and growing questions about what Americans could actually receive.The distinction matters. While the $90 and $500 programs are already funded and underway, the proposed $5,000...

Ten-year interest rates have vaulted from around 4.5 percent in July to nearly 5.3 percent this week. That may not seem like a lot, but in the history of the bond market, such a rapid rise in rates is almost without precedent. The last time it happened was in 1994, when the "bond vigilantes" relentlessly sold bonds in response to Hillary Clinton's vision of "managed competition" in healthcare. The person on the street knows much more about the stock market than the government bond market, but it is the bond market that has the ability to impose fiscal discipline on...

The 5 percent barrier has long since been left behind. This week, the yield on 30-year American government bonds hit 5.6 percent, its highest level since way back in 2002, while the cost of ten-year borrowing rose to its highest level in 20 years. However hard the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tries to control it, the interest rate the American government has to pay to finance its vast deficit keeps on rising relentlessly. As it climbs towards 6 percent and perhaps even higher, surely we must soon see a change in the political debate. Three decades of financial complacency will...

Social Security’s financial problems are moving from a distant concern to something millions of Americans may have to plan around. The program’s retirement trust fund is now projected to run out of reserves in 2032, potentially forcing benefit reductions that could eventually cost the average retiree nearly $600 a month in today’s dollars. That does not mean Social Security disappears in six years. Payroll taxes would continue coming in and benefits would continue being paid. The problem is that those revenues would no longer be enough to cover 100% of the benefits currently scheduled. The 2032 Deadline Is Getting Harder...

Add it all up, and the future looks more expensive. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that if yields remain more than 80 basis points over baseline projections, the U.S. will spend $2.7 trillion on annual interest payments by the end of the decade—more than Medicare or Social Security retirement benefits. “The real threat is the debt spiral. If interest begets debt, and debt begets interest, eventually debt will spin out of control. A fiscal crisis, once unthinkable, is now a distinct possibility,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the CFRB, said on Monday. The budget watchdog and others have...

Do Americans care about America’s fast-growing national debt, now above $40 trillion? You bet they do. In the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, an overwhelming majority of the voting-age population say they’re concerned about the mounting liabilities on the nation’s balance sheet, and blame out-of-control spending for the red ink. In the latest national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken by 1,481 adults from Aug. 25 through Aug. 28, participants were asked: “The nation’s debt is close to $40 trillion. How concerned are you about the size of the U.S. national debt?” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points. As...

A new poll suggests Medicare for All could benefit Republicans in some of the country's most competitive House races, especially as progressive Democrats increasingly embrace the idea. The survey, conducted by Republican polling firm FabrizioWard on behalf of Seniors Matter for America, found that voters in battleground congressional districts would favor a Republican candidate by a 50 percent to 38 percent margin if the Democratic candidate supported replacing existing health coverage with a government-run system. The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters across 37 House districts rated Toss Up, Lean Republican, or Lean Democrat by the Cook Political Report between August...

President Donald Trump is promising a $5,000 payment to every adult American citizen if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress in November. The proposal could cost roughly $1.2 trillion, require congressional approval and inject a massive new variable into the outlook for inflation, interest rates and federal borrowing. Trump Ties $5,000 Payments to the Midterm ElectionsTrump unveiled what he called the “Trump Dividend” during the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday night.“Here is my promise: if the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them… because of our tremendous strength...

"I could end the deficit in five minutes," he said. "You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than three percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. Yeah, yeah, now you've got the incentives in the right place, right?"

Thank God, no, we aren't going bust as a nation, despite our gargantuan $40 trillion national debt. The rapid pileup of debt under Republicans and Democrats alike is certainly a disgrace and worrisome. When I came to Washington in the mid-1980s, our debt hit $1 trillion for the first time. It seemed like a tidal wave of red ink. Forty years later, we're at $40 trillion. That's a big and scary number. But our national wealth is roughly $180 trillion. So our debt-to-asset ratio, which has been rising, is still less than 25%, and much lower than at the end...

The federal deficit will be $2.1 trillion when fiscal year 2026 ends on Sept. 30, the Congressional Budget Office projected in its monthly budget review.The deficit - the gap between what the government spends and what it collects from taxes and other revenue - has never surpassed $1.8 trillion, except during the Covid-19 pandemic.Key facts: Federal revenues are up 3% in 2026 compared to last year. Even though corporate income tax revenue has declined, income and payroll tax collections increased.But federal spending is up 5%, according to the CBO. Interest on the national debt increased 14% compared to last year....

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he and other European leaders plan to travel to the United States in September to lobby US President Donald Trump to let Ukraine access some of its Patriot air defense missile stocks ahead of the winter, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing an interview. "I'm looking forward to going to New York in September," Burnham told Bloomberg. "I’ve not fully confirmed the details yet but it’s likely I will go, particularly after today’s discussion," Bloomberg quoted him as saying. Ukraine independence celebrations marked by world leaders in KyivThe leaders of Britain and France pledged...