Frank is going to talk about the national debt. Frank knows this is not the most exciting topic. Frank knows eyes glaze over when numbers get big enough. Frank is going to do his best to make this real because it is real and the fact that it does not feel real is a significant part of the problem.
The national debt as of 2025 is approximately $36 trillion.
Frank will give you a moment with that number.
Thirty six trillion dollars. Thirty six thousand billion dollars. A trillion seconds ago was 31,688 years in the past. Frank is not a math teacher but Frank is going to need you to understand the scale of what is being discussed here because the people responsible for it are counting on you not understanding it.
Your share of the national debt as an American citizen is approximately $107,000. Not your household. You personally. Every man, woman, and child in this country is carrying $107,000 of debt they did not agree to, did not vote on directly, and will be paying interest on for the rest of their lives and the lives of their children.
Frank finds this relevant.
How we got here.
Frank is not going to blame one party for this because one party did not do this. Both parties did this and they did it consistently and enthusiastically over several decades while telling you the other party was the problem.
The debt was one trillion dollars in 1981. It took this country 205 years to accumulate one trillion dollars of debt. It has added thirty five trillion more in the 44 years since. Frank has a chart. The chart does not look like something a responsible institution would produce.
Every administration since Reagan has added to the debt. Republican administrations. Democratic administrations. It did not matter who was in charge. The debt went up. The only variable was how much and how fast.
Frank does not want to hear about which party is more fiscally responsible. Frank has the numbers. Neither party is fiscally responsible. One party talks about cutting spending and does not. The other party does not talk about cutting spending and does not. The result is the same. The debt goes up. The interest payments grow. The options for the future narrow.
The interest payment problem.
Here is the part Frank really needs you to understand.
The United States government now pays more in 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 paying interest to the people who lent us money we did not have.
That money does not build roads. It does not fund schools. It does not pay for veterans' care. It does not do anything except service a debt that grows faster than the payments can reduce it because we keep adding to the principal every single year.
This is not a political position. This is arithmetic. And the arithmetic currently suggests that absent significant changes to spending and revenue, the trajectory does not end in a place anyone wants to be.
What Frank thinks about this.
Frank thinks that any politician who tells you the national debt does not matter or that we can grow our way out of it or that the other party caused it and their party will fix it is either lying to you or does not understand the numbers and either way should not be managing the finances of the largest economy in human history.
Frank thinks that the reason this continues is that the people who will pay the consequences of this debt are not the same people making the decisions. The people making the decisions will be dead before the worst of it arrives. This is not a theory. This is a structural problem with a political class that thinks in two-year election cycles about a problem that compounds over decades.
Frank thinks about his kids. Frank thinks about what $107,000 per person means for the generation that had no vote in creating it. Frank thinks that if a private citizen managed their finances the way the federal government manages the national finances they would not have a credit card. They might not have a house. They would certainly not be getting more credit.
The federal government keeps getting more credit.
Frank is paying attention to this.
Frank would appreciate it if you did too.
— Frank