Tuesday, President Trump traveled up Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill to deliver the annual State of the Union address to Congress.

Despite the record-breaking 1 hour and 47 minute length, there was little in the way of groundbreaking policy proposals. It seems he forgot the second half of the constitutional clause that forms the basis of the SOTU: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Evidently, there were no necessary and expedient measures to recommend. That is a problem, because the nation’s finances need them.

The national debt stands at $38.7 trillion and climbing. In late October, it crossed $38 trillion. In mid-August it crossed $37 trillion. You get the picture. Taxpayers are paying roughly $1 trillion a year just to service that debt, and those payments are among the fastest-growing parts of the federal budget. Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), estimates the fiscal year 2026 deficit will total $1.8 trillion.

And that is not some anomaly. CBO’s latest long-term outlook shows deficits remaining large year after year, with federal spending consistently exceeding revenues. Debt held by the public is projected to continue rising as a share of the economy over the coming decades. It does not stabilize under current law. It climbs past previous records.

Net interest is no longer a rounding error. Under CBO’s projections, interest costs grow faster than most major spending categories and become one of the largest components of the budget. We are on track to spend more servicing past debt than on many core national priorities. That money buys nothing new. It pays for yesterday.

Even with steady economic growth, the nation’s fiscal health is projected to worsen. And health (care) has a lot to do with it. Along with Social Security, Medicare is underwater financially and is going to steadily worsen as costs far outstrip revenue. An aging population means higher benefit costs and fewer workers supporting each retiree. The best time to deal with this was more than a decade ago. Unfortunately, policymakers didn’t, so the second-best time is now.

The President did mention drivers of the debt when he touted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – the budget reconciliation package projected to add more than $4 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Extend the temporary tax provisions that expire shortly after he leaves office and the cost climbs higher. These choices sit alongside a budget outlook that already shows persistent trillion-dollar deficits and rising debt relative to GDP.

There’s another potential driver that went unmentioned. In the weeks leading up to the speech, the President indicated that he wants to increase the Pentagon budget on top of the 13 percent increase that already boosted FY2026 levels to roughly $1 trillion dollars. That apparently isn’t enough for Trump. He floated raising the Pentagon budget by 50 percent to $1.5 trillion. The Pentagon doesn’t even know how to spend that much in a year.

CBO already projects annual deficits exceeding $1.7 trillion in the coming years under current law, assuming Pentagon spending around the trillion-dollar mark. If lawmakers were to add hundreds of billions more, that increase would land on top of a budget already running large structural deficits and push them even higher. A projected $1.7 trillion deficit could easily exceed $2.2 trillion. The trajectory is upward without new expansions. Adding more only steepens the slope.

The Constitution requires the President to report on the state of the union and recommend measures he judges necessary and expedient. The fiscal state of the union is clear — persistent structural deficits, debt rising faster than the economy, and interest costs consuming a growing share of the budget. Nearly two hours at the podium, and not a single necessary and expedient measure to confront them.