By Richard Harris for TOWNHALL
America is drowning in debt. Our national debt has now surpassed $36 trillion, amounting to 124% of our GDP. Interest payments alone cost taxpayers $882 billion a year — 13% of the entire federal budget — just to service that debt. If we don’t act now, we risk sinking the ship. Yet, Democrats seem content to just rearrange the deck chairs while the vessel goes down.
President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) is no panacea, but it is a serious first step toward restoring fiscal responsibility.
The 2024 federal budget is a record-breaking $6.75 trillion, a 10% jump from 2023. But projected revenue is only $4.9 trillion, leaving a $1.8 trillion deficit — and that’s after a $1.7 trillion deficit last year. These shortfalls are financed by borrowing, which drives up interest payments even further.
More than 72% of the federal budget now goes to “mandatory” programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment and debt interest. That leaves only a fraction of federal spending available for cuts.
The House version of the OBBB targets this imbalance by proposing $1.7 trillion in mandatory spending reductions over ten years, including $1 trillion in Medicaid reforms. These are both fiscally and morally necessary.
