Frank already wrote about the national debt. Frank is going to write about it again because the number got bigger and Frank believes in updating the record when new evidence arrives.
The Congressional Budget Office, which is one of the few institutions in Washington that Frank has any remaining patience for because it deals in numbers rather than opinions, reported that the federal government borrowed $1.8 trillion over the past twelve months.
Frank will give you a moment with that.
$1.8 trillion. In twelve months. While Congress was busy not passing a budget, going on recess, and debating whether to use AI to approve grant applications. $1.8 trillion borrowed on top of the $36 trillion that was already there. Added to a tab that your children will inherit and their children after them.
Your share of the existing national debt is approximately $107,000. Frank wrote that in a previous post. Frank is revising the estimate upward. The math moves faster than Frank can type.
Where the money goes.
Frank wants to be specific because this is where people's eyes glaze over and Frank cannot afford for your eyes to glaze over.
The federal government now spends more money paying interest on the national debt than it spends on the entire defense budget. More than Medicare. More than Medicaid. The single largest line item in the federal budget is not roads, not schools, not the military, not healthcare. It is the interest payment on money the government borrowed because it could not live within its means.
That interest payment goes to the people who bought Treasury bonds. Some of those people are American citizens. A significant portion of them are foreign governments and foreign investors. The United States government is currently writing its largest check every year to its creditors, some of whom are not particularly friendly to American interests, because it borrowed money it did not have.
Frank finds this relevant.
The bipartisan accounting.
Frank has the numbers going back forty years. Frank is going to share them because Frank believes in evidence.
The debt was one trillion dollars in 1981. It crossed two trillion in 1986. Five trillion in 1996. Ten trillion in 2008. Twenty trillion in 2017. Thirty-six trillion today.
Every administration added to it. Republican administrations. Democratic administrations. Conservative Congresses. Liberal Congresses. The party in power did not change the trajectory. The trajectory went up regardless of who was in charge and what they said about fiscal responsibility in their campaign speeches.
Frank has listened to a lot of campaign speeches about fiscal responsibility. Frank has watched the debt chart. The speeches and the chart do not resemble each other.
What Frank thinks you should do with this information.
Frank is not going to pretend there is an easy answer here. The debt is $36 trillion. It is not going to disappear. It is not going to be paid off in Frank's lifetime or probably in your lifetime. The interest alone is consuming a larger and larger share of every tax dollar collected.
What Frank wants is for you to stop letting the people responsible for this tell you the other party caused it and their party will fix it. Both parties caused it. Neither party has fixed it. The evidence on this point is unambiguous and Frank has the receipts going back to 1981.
What Frank wants is for you to ask every candidate for every office what specifically they plan to do about $36 trillion in debt and $1.8 trillion borrowed in the last twelve months. Not what they plan to spend money on. What they plan to do about the money that has already been spent and borrowed and promised to creditors.
If the answer is a speech about the other party, Frank suggests you find a different candidate.
The debt does not care about the speech. The math does not negotiate. Frank has been saying this for years and the number keeps going up.
Frank is still saying it.
— Frank