Congressional Budget Office Projects Public Debt Will Hit $52 Trillion by 2035
Tech billionaire Elon Musk told Mark Penn on January 8 that the Department of Government Efficiency may be unable to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Still, he hopes aiming for $2 trillion will enable him to get at least $1 trillion in budget cuts. Hopefully he is right, because the United States is hurtling toward bankruptcy.
The Congressional Budget Office’s January report says the public debt is projected to rise from $36 trillion today to $52 trillion in 2035. That will be 118 percent of the nation’s projected gross domestic product.
The country has run a budget surplus only four times in the past 50 years, so the federal government is on the fast track to bankruptcy unless the Trump administration and Congress can rein in out-of-control spending.
Bad budgeting: America’s spending problem is hard to fathom. For perspective, compare the federal government to a household. Slash seven zeros from the official figures, and it is like a well-to-do family that earns $492,000 a year yet spends $675,000 a year. This family put a staggering $183,000 on its credit card last year, even though it already had $2.9 million in credit card debt. It pays $88,000 a year in interest and has already looted $730,000 from its retirement account. No well-managed bank would lend this family money.
National choice: The Department of Government Efficiency needs to slash $1.8 trillion from the federal budget just to balance the budget. It will need to slash more if Americans want to experience their first budget surplus since 2001.
Yet a new Associated Press–norc Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that only 1 in 3 Americans supports the Department of Government Efficiency. This is a national travesty.
Such enormous debt is not only unsustainable, it is sinful. The Bible says, “The wicked borrows, and cannot pay back” (Psalm 37:21; Revised Standard Version), and “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children …” (Proverbs 13:22).
Learn more: Read our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches America’s Economic Collapse.”