Free Republic

I don't know how 'official' this site is, but if you follow U.S. Debt Clock.org, we should hit $37 trillion in the national debt sometime after 9:00 pm Eastern Time (if my math is correct, which I wouldn't count on..). If you are the kind of person who likes to watch the odometer in your car turn over, this could be a real treat. Of course, the reality is that we are governed by feckless idiots who have seemingly abandoned all fiscal reponsibility. So, this is really a monument to their uselessness.

“The modern politics of division have become a banally hectoring faux morality play put on by the theater kids for the other theater kids.” —El Gato Malo on X. President Trump Alone While Jake Tapper leads the Mea Culpa Chorus singing Kumbaya in a minor key, absolutely nobody is fooled that the grotesque psychotic deformities of US politics can be reduced to a few White House factotums lying to the news media about “Joe Biden’s” cognitive abilities. For one thing, the news media was not lied to. The news media (including Jake) lied to the nation, consistently, flagrantly, mendaciously, for...

The fiscal impact of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which one prominent budget hawk called a “debt bomb,” is becoming a significant political concern among Republican lawmakers who have made little progress toward offsetting the $3 trillion projected cost of the legislation. Some GOP senators fear that the bill’s failure to rein in federal spending in a substantial way over the next decade is fueling jitters in the bond market, where soft demand for U.S. debt has caused yields to climb in recent weeks. And they worry that if Republicans pass Trump’s bill on party-line votes in both chambers, they...

The National Debt has stopped skyrocketing since Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025. The fiscal collapse of the USA may be avoided.

Trump has been in office for only a few months and has already managed to cut national debt growth by 92 percent. This is definitely one of the things that would cause people to say, ‘I voted for this.’While the left rants and raves over cuts to various government programs, Trump is securing the nation’s financial future by getting spending under control.And remember, while Trump and Republicans are taking care of this serious business, Democrats are obsessing over and defending illegal immigrant criminals. The contrast could not be sharper.The Washington Examiner reports:Trump has slowed national debt growth by 92%For all...

I went looking for an official source of information about the amount of US National Debt, and found a table maker that produces PDF's for each month end. Here's an example; https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/static-data/published-reports/mspd-entire/MonthlyStatementPublicDebt_Entire_202412.pdf That returns the US Treasury report on the balance as of 12/31/2024. Change the digits at the end (202412 change to 202503) and get March 31, 2024. And so on. So far, so good. According to the Treasury, the national debt at 3/31/2025 was $36,218,605. Then go to usdebtclock.org, and the national debt is shown as $36,720,xxx (the numbers keep changing as you watch). Since the Treasury website...

The next time you hear someone complaining that DOGE is “slashing” federal spending or “dismantling” the government, pay close attention. There will almost certainly be an important fact left out: The gargantuan federal deficit. Every day brings a new sob story about how someone is being hurt by Elon Musk’s chainsaw because some federal program is being shut down, or because a precious federal job has been axed. Never in any of these is any context provided. And in this case, context is everything. By the time President Donald Trump took office – four months into the new fiscal year...

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is announcing that she's planning to take "extraordinary measures" to save the U.S. economy beginning on January 21 — the day after President-elect Donald Trump will officially begin his second term in office. Politico reported Friday that Yellen made the announcement in a letter to congressional leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The letter comes as the United States prepares to reach the statutory limit on borrowing, which Yellen wrote last month would happen between...

Projection is blaming someone else for your own bad behavior. We saw a classic case of projection in Thursday’s presidential debate, when President Biden—who is overseeing annual budget deficits of $2 trillion—asserted that his predecessor, Donald Trump, added more to the federal debt than anyone else. It’s part of the latest leftist argument: that if Trump wins the election, he will run deficits twice as large as Biden would. Debate moderator Jake Tapper joined the chorus of federal finance falsehoods when he claimed Trump had “approved $8.4 trillion in new debt,” while Biden’s actions will increase the debt by (merely)...

The US taxpayer has suffered a double whammy under The Federal government. First, thanks to the Federal Reserve, the purchasing power of the US Dollar has fallen 97% since the creation of The Federal Reserve in 1913 (under Woody Wilson). ... The second leg of the double whammy is the staggering $36 TRILLION is public debt, up from $321 million in 1966. That is a remarkable increase, most of it happening under Obama/Biden then Biden/Harris or 188% since Biden/Harris. Yes, Trump is sanwiched in between Obama and Biden for a scant 4 years. While we love to blame Presidents, it...

Mike Johnson is a pathetic excuse for a Republican who has no business being speaker, let alone a congressman.It’s another day that ends in “-y,” which means House Speaker Mike Johnson is busy stabbing conservative voters in the back.Following days of backdoor scheming, congressional leaders released the text of their 1,547-page spending measure to fund the federal government through March 2025. Deceptively marketed as a “continuing resolution” or CR, the bill bears all the hallmarks of the bloated omnibus packages Johnson recently promised voters wouldn’t happen under his watch.“We have broken the Christmas omni and I have no intention of...

History appears to be repeating itself this week as Congress has brokered an agreement on a massive year-end catch-all spending bill... “It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” GOP Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, who is a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said. “...people that celebrate DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] coming in, and yet we’re going to vote for another billion dollars to be added to the deficit. It’s ironic,” added the lawmaker, who probably meant to say trillion dollars, given the legislation would fund the entire government until March 14.... Fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep....

The US national debt is more than $36 trillion ... Elon Musk, who has been sounding the alarm about America's gargantuan, ever-expanding national debt, claimed that many people are unaware of the problem. "A significant % of people don’t even know that there is such a thing as a national debt!" Musk declared in a post on X. "Those that do often don’t know how big it is or that our interest payments now exceed what we spend on our military. Only a small % understand that government overspending causes inflation," ... The national debt has soared past $36 trillion....

The White House blamed former President Donald Trump and his administration for the $1.8 trillion deficit the Treasury Department reported last week for fiscal 2024, the third-largest deficit in U.S. history. “The former administration passed tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that have led to where we are currently in this deficit,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the Washington Examiner on Monday.... Jean-Pierre then compared the Biden administration’s record, including the debt ceiling deal President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to last year which would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade...

In a recent note, Bank of America warned that gold is the final safe haven in the United States amid risks related to rising national debt. Indeed, they argued that the metal has become more attractive than US Treasury bonds due to the risks of an impending debt crisis. The bank noted that the US national debt is predicted to continue reaching record levels over the next three years. Therefore, economic pressure on the country has shifted how gold reacts to macroeconomic developments such as lowered interest rates. Ultimately, the dynamic makes gold “an attractive asset,” the bank says, as...

There have been to significant jumps in the Federal Debt. The first coming after the financial crisis of 2008 and election of Obama/Biden in 2008. The second with the outbreak of Covid in 2020 and the election of Biden/Harris in 2021. The Federal (public) debt was just over $10 million when Obama/Biden were elected and it now stands at a staggering $35.7 trillion. That represents over a tripling of the Federal debt under Obama/Biden/Harris. So when asked what she would do diffeerent than Biden, Harris replied “Nothing comes to mind.” That means MORE spending, MORE debt and MORE unproductive Government...

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio says America’s $35.327646622839 trillion national debt will continue to grow no matter who wins the race for the White House. In a new interview with Bloomberg at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2024, Dalio says the fast-approaching November election represents a crossroads for a number of critical issues including taxation and the reach of the federal government. The billionaire believes the national debt is bound to be ignored while the government uses inflationary policies to reduce the real burden of its debt. “We have an enormous amount of debt, and it’s going to keep increasing....

The UK's public sector debt has hit 100% of the value of the country's annual economic output for the first time since the 1960s, according to official figures released ahead of the chancellor's maiden budget. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, in a preliminary estimate, that the figure had risen from the 99.3% figure recorded the previous month. Wider data revealed by the number crunchers showed that the government borrowed £13.7bn in August, up by £2bn on the figure expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

The interest burden of the public debt of the U.S. government has topped $1 trillion already this year, the first time interest costs have crossed the trillion dollar threshold. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, interest payments totaled $1.05 trillion, up 30 percent from a year ago, the Treasury Department said Thursday. This is the first time interest payments have ever climbed about $1 trillion. Despite claims by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to have addressed the U.S. budget deficit, the deficit is up 24 percent in the first 11 months of this fiscal...

Ask any budget expert in Washington to explain the ballooning deficit and debt, and Social Security and Medicare will be high on the list of causes. That’s wrong. The real driver, the elephant in the room, is means-tested social-welfare spending—Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold. True, Social Security and Medicare are a drain on general revenue and will become big fiscal problems if not reformed. But they aren’t the major source of our current...