Biden’s trillion-dollar budget will lead to financial collapse
Social Security is the single most expensive program the federal government runs. By itself, Social Security already accounts for a quarter of every dollar Washington spends.
And even all that spending isn’t enough: Social Security’s “unfunded liabilities” — how much money the government would need today to make up the difference between the money that will be paid into Social Security in the future and the benefits that have been promised — is about $40 trillion.
How much is $40 trillion? It is all the money in the world — literally: All the cash in circulation, plus all the deposits in checking accounts and savings accounts, adds up to about $40 trillion. That is a big hole to climb out of.
And now Social Security payments are about to go up by 6 percent. The reason? Social Security payments are linked to inflation.
When prices go up, so do Social Security payments. Seniors will enjoy the extra money, but problem is that raising Social Security payments to match inflation is likely to cause more inflation, necessitating another increase in Social Security payments, which will cause yet more inflation. Et cetera. …
Just as inflation can cause more inflation, one of the biggest drivers of today’s budget deficits are yesterday’s budget deficits. The federal government is currently spending more than half a trillion dollars a year on interest payments for money borrowed in the past — money that already has been spent. That’s more than we spend on any cabinet agency except the Department of Defense — and the cost of interest payments is getting close to that. We are something like the fool who uses a new credit card to pay his old credit card without ever paying down the debt, instead adding to it every day.
No one will take responsibility for this.
The annual cost of our interest payments grew by $100 billion over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, while Joe Biden and his congressional enablers are working overtime to do even worse. Republican Congresses and Democratic Congresses both have been to blame. …
When all the money in the world isn’t enough to make good on our promises, it is time to think fearfully about Stein’s Law, named for economist Herbert Stein: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Our budget game is one part musical chairs, one part Russian roulette, and somebody is going to have to lose when the music stops.
America is going into debt at an unprecedented rate, but what is even more alarming is that its leadership does not acknowledge that this is even a problem!
It was hard to wrap our minds around borrowing a trillion dollars to stave off the 2008 financial crisis. But now the Treasury forecasts that the United States will be borrowing nearly a trillion dollars every year from now on! That is astronomical. …
When it is politically expedient, Democrats will condemn runaway spending. But when it comes to their programs, they always want to spend more. Sadly, the same can be said of Republicans. Both parties claim they want to be fiscally responsible, but both keep spending and adding more debt.
The government’s new spending plan will hit the oft-revised debt ceiling, which is currently at $20.5 trillion, by mid-March. Rather than raising the debt limit, the new budget deal signed into law on February 9 completely removes the cap on borrowing until March 1, 2019. This means the national debt will be allowed to grow unchecked for an entire year. When the suspension ends, it will automatically be increased to reflect the borrowing that occurred in the interim. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that when it resets, it could easily be set as high as $22 trillion.
America is addicted to debt. We are hooked on it like we are hooked on drugs, and no one is serious about conquering this nation-destroying addiction.
