The nation is coming up on its 250th anniversary. It’s a time to celebrate and reflect on everything that’s happened since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There is a lot to celebrate. But reflection also means acknowledging mistakes or where things can be improved. When it comes to our nation’s finances, there’s no shortage of both. So, as we celebrate America’s first 250 years, we should also commit to putting this great experiment on stronger fiscal footing for the next 250.
Every Independence Day we try to give the Weekly Wastebasket a holiday theme. Maybe you’re headed to the beach, where you can watch your tax dollars wash into the ocean thanks to wasteful beach nourishment projects. Firing up the grill? Whether it’s hardwood charcoal or propane, you could be sending tax dollars up in smoke through money losing timber sales or royalty-free venting and flaring of natural gas on public lands.
For the 250th, we could highlight 250 ways to strengthen America by cutting the deficit. Go from fiscally fat to fiscally fit by cutting these 250 empty-calorie programs. Or, because it’s Independence Day, it’s time to Declare Independence from Debt. Or something like that.
But we didn’t get past the first, old Wastebasket we reviewed: “Independence Day Call to Rid Subsidy Dependence: Celebrating Responsibly.” Back in 2019, we described the nation’s $896 billion deficit as “astounding” and its $22 trillion of debt “mind-boggling.”
In the seven years since, the U.S. has added another $17 trillion to the debt.
That’s not astounding, it’s insane. The national debt now stands at $39.3 trillion. Spread that across every day since the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, and it works out to roughly $430 million in debt per day. Every day. For 250 years.
The reality is that the problem has grown much worse over the last quarter century. At the end of 2000, the debt stood at $5.6 trillion. Seven years later, it had climbed to $9.2 trillion. Today, it stands at roughly $39.3 trillion.
Do the math, and one fact stands out. More than 85 percent of all the debt the United States has ever accumulated has been added since 2001, in just the last 25 years.
So, over our first 225 years as a nation, we ran up less than $6 trillion in debt. That included the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, westward expansion, the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, and few other wars and challenges over the years. $5.6 trillion. Over the next 25 years, we added another $33 trillion.
To be fair, some big things happened. There was 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis and recovery, and COVID-19. In 2020 alone, we added $4.5 trillion to the debt, the largest single year increase in U.S. history. Crises are real. But they don’t explain everything. From 2010–2019, there was no recession, no world war, and no pandemic. The economy experienced a long period of steady growth. Yet, we still added another $14 trillion to the debt. That’s choices, not circumstances.
Those choices came from Democratic and Republican administrations. There were tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President Bush, then President Obama made some of those permanent, and the 2017 tax cuts under President Trump, not to mention the price tag on last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. None of them were offset. At the same time, spending continued to grow.
There’s another part of this debt story that doesn’t get enough attention — and that’s interest. Because we’re no longer just talking about principal. Since 2010, the United States has paid roughly $8 trillion in interest on the national debt. Not roads, not defense, not veterans, not research. Pure debt service. And it’s only going up. Interest on the debt has climbed to roughly $1 trillion a year, and it’s likely to keep rising.
It’s not sustainable. Both parties contributed to this debt. Not equally, not identically, but the debt is bipartisan in its origins. Fixing it will have to be bipartisan too. That means putting everything on the table: tax expenditures, entitlement programs, defense, and other discretionary spending. We cannot close this gap through waste and fraud. Not even close. The numbers don’t work. It’s time for lawmakers to do the job they auditioned for.
