By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE
The rapidly growing debt of the U.S. federal government has hit another milestone, topping more than $100,000 per person.
While the U.S. population and the U.S. national debt are large numbers that are difficult to calculate, the rough debt estimate and rough population estimate end up at about $100,000 of federal debt per person in the U.S.
The U.S. Census population clock estimates the U.S. population at nearly 336 million. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department estimates the national debt is nearly $34 trillion.
“The national debt just exceeded $100,000 per citizen,” Rep. John James, R-Mich., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This should send a message to the White House that this reckless federal spending is at a breaking point.”
The U.S. Treasury confirmed in the middle of last month that in the first month of this fiscal year, the federal government had a deficit of $67 billion.
Concern about rising debt has grown along with the debt and recent international credit downgrades for the U.S.
The federal government received a credit downgrade from Fitch Ratings, one of the top international credit rating agencies in the world. The rating went from AAA to AA+.
Moody’s, one of the other top three credit rating groups, announced last week that it was lowering its evaluation of the U.S. credit from “stable” to “negative.”
The trust funds for Medicare, Social Security and highways are facing insolvency within a decade as the federal government borrows billions of dollars per day.
Despite these red flags, federal deficit spending, which has been elevated since the COVID-19 pandemic, Congressional spending shows little sign of slowing down. Deficits spiked during the pandemic, and while they have decreased from their COVID-era peaks, they still remain higher than before the pandemic.
No, I don’t think our share of the national debt is $100,000. We the people haven’t been given any say in the reckless spending on subjects including but not limited to foreign wars. I believe that most if not all of our local, state, and federal officials were selected rather than elected. It is far past time to restore our constitutional republic as originally intended by our founding fathers, one nation under God.
As citizens thereof, we are all equal partners in our constitutional republic. Therefore, if we chose irresponsible politicians to run our government, then we must accept responsibility for our foolish choices. A master is not justified in blaming the servants he hires for the consequences of their failures. Morally speaking, the master is responsible.
Wayne ,
In principle I agree.
In reality not so much.
The problem is the politicians haven’t been working for us. They have been enriching themselves and doing favors for lobbyists and special interests.
This washes our hands of responsibility except the responsibility to get different ones.
We don’t have legal or physical control of them once they are elected. Never do they receive 50 % of eligible voters support. ( many people don’t vote)
Therefore we are not legally responsible for their actions while in office. Aka – running up the debt . Imo they are legally responsible as free men .
We don’t tell them how to vote . We don’t have any formal legal control.
To an extreme analysis ,If someone I elected committed crimes politically or personally , there is no law that says i can be sued or convicted for their actions.
So we do not personally owe that money.
Perhaps we might morally??? If we benefited in some way.
I don’t know. Probably not even then because most of us don’t agree with what is being done in Washington.
Quick Joe get Liar Mayorkas on the horn and let’s get invitations out to all the people in the world who are living in s**thole conditions and get them over here ASAP.
Gift wrap that free cell phone with a voter registration card and an airline ticket to the destination of their choice. When they land hand them their free debit card so they wont have to bother standing in line at the bank to collect their monthly salary for traveling to beautiful downtown America! Lots of problems solved.
That will lower that number to maybe 60 or 70K per person….Thats a much more acceptable number.
Its amazing how easy it is to solve the worlds problems using the working man’s money!
And woke Joe can’t lose the selection with another 20 or 30 million on top of the 80 million he got the first merry go-round.
Good thing there are covid loans!
Truth be told, does anyone really give a dam at this point considering in 2033 the national debt is projected to eclipse $50 trillion. Round and round it goes were we stop nobody knows.
Not really. Just numbers.
Oh we know where it goes. Our economy hits the wall. People starve. Anarchy ensues. Life as we know it gets replaced with a deadly nightmare of horrific proportions. Do not kid yourself; this is real.
My share is not any money.
I paid taxes and put money into social Security and Medicare.
I balance my funds so as far as I am concerned the politicians and CEO’s owe the borrowed money.
We need to go bankrupt so to get the 50% off of the government freebie programs.
Government irresponsibility.
The facts contained in this article are true and the IRS will do all it can to get every last cent from all of us.
I have a small business (read: VERY small agricultural business) and I have been under audit or 18 very stressful months. For 17 years, I hired a retired USAF member who also claimed to be an IRS enrolled agent to prepare/complete my tax returns. When I came under audit due to his errors and I asked for his help, he told me “you’re on your own”. My advice now is to steer clear of Bill and his daughter if you want to have your taxes done accurately!
In the end, I paid many thousands of dollars I do not have to the IRS along with many more thousands of dollars to H&R Block to help me with this audit. The IRS got all they demanded from me and the satisfaction of completing an audit on a relatively easy series of returns.
Now I get heart palpitations when I drive by the IRS building on 36th Avenue. “Fasten your seatbelts” because the IRS will be coming after some of you next. The government wants to spend all the money they can get.
Most pps don’t understand the huge tax burden that small businesses have to absorb. Having a solid tax expert/financial advisor at your side is expensive, but is worth it. A couple of notes:
1) An enrolled Agent is a tax expert and should be able to minimize any risk and exposure to IRS audits. If you are audited, and an additional tax is levied, you are responsible for that tax. That’s why it is so important to have solid tax advice. Did you verify his/her enrolled agent status? If they held themselve out as an Enrolled Agent and are not, that would constitute “Gross Negligence”. You might want to hire a lawyer for further advise.
2) If an additional tax was levied due to failure to negligence (he/she prepared the return and should have identified any protential risk), he/she is liable for any penalties assessed But you are still liable for the tax bill.
A good tax expert can assist in you keeping tax expectations within reason, so that you don’t get “hammered” with a huge tax bill.
Screwtape said:
Everything is fine!
You don’t seem to mind while your country is looted financially and morally.
Can I interest you in another round of printing more dollars? It’s free money! You seem to like that more then anything else.
And by the way, do I have to remind you again? Those children of yours are mine. Ha ha. I mean the state. Let us educate them for you.
Sit back and relax. It will all be over soon.
Trump’s gift to billionaires contributed to our debt.
yes as we are all aware the national debt and spending were totally balanced and nothing was wasted prior to the trump presidency
“Modern economics” at its finest.
are there no debtors prisons? no houses for the poor? Merry Christmas all you GOP Scrounge’s!!!! lets bankrupt the nation, lets play Hungry and Ukraine. I am sure you’ll end up on the top tier!!
everyones delusion. crash the system and only they will survive. sorry pumpkin, uncle Ronnie screwed the system in 1980, Roberts gave us eminent domain, repealed class action lawsuits and allowed Citizens United. you weren’t invited to the party, you got handed the bill
There hasn’t been a poor house here in almost 100 years.
It was Ronnie’s policies that gave Billy the first federal balanced budget since before WWII – which he promptly squandered with out-of-control spending. Let’s keep our history true – not adjusted to fit trollish lefty fantasy.
Alaskans bear disproportionate blame in this. We are the ones that demand federal spending here no matter the need or the use. We routinely see hundreds of thousands of federal dollars per rural house to hook up to the internet when the house would not even sell for that much money, and where there is no local property tax. Every Alaskan is arguably as indigent as is that village resident who takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to be hooked up to the internet and takes PCE to pay for his electricity!
Probably 95% of all health care in Alaska is paid by government; Medicare, Medicaid, BIA, PERS, TRS, state and federal employee health care, and US Armed Forces health care. When has any Alaskan refused a federal dollar of spending? Reducing federal waste should begin at home. I would bet that half of all non-military federal employees could be sent packing and no one except Alaskans on the dole would notice.
Write to US House Speaker Mike Johnson and tell him about the incredible federal waste right here in Alaska if you want to see the federal deficit begin to be paid down. Remember, that homosexual White House Transportation Secretary used his US taxpayer-assigned executive jet to come here this year, and out media celebrated the visit while both R and D elected Alaska officials not only met with him but danced with him!
Kayak
I am not to blame my family paid for every over priced thing. We never relied on a government hand out. The people you’re talking about are the 50% democrats leaches.
I have been saying for a while that until these policy’s affect everybody’s pocketbook nothing will change.
Us tax payers have been and are getting the shaft from liberal policy’s brought to you by politicians who don’t care. You can tell because they are not afraid to lie and steal as they get re elected anyway. This is a liberal problem that has effected us all.
You’re entitled to your opinion, and I support your right to make a fool of yourself saying it – but you city folk are just, if not more, subsidized than the Bush. Let go of your ignorant prejudice and use all that finger-pointing anger to work with us to solve the issues – including overspending.
Pity: there is a kernel of truth that gets lost in the babble that followed.
It is true we benefit from the nanny state. But what is lost is why.
Part of the conditions of statehood forced on us were designed to make us wards of the US. We have been hamstrung by DC since Seward. Federal interference occurs daily.
Our inability to make ourselves more independent is also limited by the myopic dolts we keep electing to state office. Lately, the vast majority seem to have migrated in from blue strongholds. This admittedly is self inflicted.
But a position of “if everyone would just go away” is both unrealistic and juvenile.
Well, when we keep having an election with only two parties – the first wants to spend all the money because more government is the solution, and the other wants tax cuts but no spending cuts. They both drive up the debt without any concrete solutions as to how to get a handle on it.
Sure wish there was a party of fiscal responsibility out there.
If I offer to pay mine off, in cash, can I get relieved of federal income taxes for the rest of my life?
And after that I’ll also need an overhaul on Federal monetary policy. And term limits in Congress.
Rather owe it to them than beat them out of it.
Only “persons” owe this debt. We don’t. Living lawful people are not defined as legal persons or PERSONS. Read Congressman McFadden’s speech on the Federal Reserve Corporation. He explained how they are stealing our credit and using it for their own profit and gain instead of applying it to the National Debt. They never talk about the national credit created by the people. And every time they (US INC and USA Inc) go bankrupt, they leave us with their debts. Let them pay their own debts. I didn’t ask for all these so-called services and benefits of entrapment. The actual government of, for a by the people has no bankruptcy protection.
Let me know how your clever pilpul works out when armed agents arrive to confiscate your property.
Even safe deposit boxes aren’t really secure. FBI raided one such facility and is trying to keep the contents via civil forfeiture – even though the customers had nothing to do with the crime being investigated.
I’m sympathetic, I really am – but don’t waste your energy on this. Men with guns are going to squeeze you for every penny when the chips are down. How are you going to protect yourself?
Nice semantics. Be sure and use them when the IRS or FBI come calling.
Our currency will collapse. We will then convert to some other form of digital currency, 100% controlled by the New World Order Government.
It goes down per capita with every illegal that steps in / sarc off
This article does not make it clear the debt per taxpayer. While the total debt divided by all Americans is about $100,000.00 per person, the debt per taxpayer (a much smaller slice of Americans) is about $260,000.00.
This debt matters. The debt is devaluating your money, and the total interest in our debt is now over $700 billion per year- almost what we spend on defense.
If you support Trump or Biden you are responsible for this reckless spending. Wisconsin Watch has a nice summary about how much Biden and Trump have grown the debt:
”
The national debt on Jan. 19, 2017, the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated president, was $19,944,429,217,107.
On Jan. 19, 2021, the day before Joe Biden was inaugurated, the debt was: $27,752,835,868,445 — about $7.8 trillion higher.
As of July 14, 2023, more than halfway through Biden’s term, the debt had risen by another roughly $4.7 trillion, to $32,542,410,783,067.”
Trump has run his businesses into bankruptcy multiple times- he’s not the person fiscal conservatives should be supporting.
A newborn baby in Nigeria has a higher financial net worth than that of a newborn in the USA.
Well, as we know from listening to Democrats, including Alaska Democrats, a white American baby is born owing a debt to African-Americans, actual and claimed, for slavery, a debt to Native Americans, actual and claimed, for “colonialism,” and a debt to homosexuals, transvestites, and the gender-confused for unspecified transgressions. It’s also beginning to look like that same baby owes Third World residents, even including Red Chinese, money to pay for climate change, real or imagined. (Let’s choose to not even consider the debt owed to Maine and Montana sheep herders prevented for generations from having special relationships with their charges. Those herders keep electing Angus in Maine, and John in Montana in hope of relief for the herders, if not for the sheep.) If you’re confused about all that (as I am) you can listen to the little doxology recitation that precedes many public meetings of your local Assembly and many legislative committee hearings. Shoot straight and speak the truth.
Why Nigeria Wayne? Is their Government debt free? 🤔
Thank goodness it isn’t more, eh. I wouldn’t be able to afford that and high speed cable you know…month to month.
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