The May 1 letter to the editor “Opinions should be based on facts” reminds me of the saying “dishonest people make biased arguments while pretending it’s objective truth.”
How much each American president contributed to the national debt can be easily confirmed by simply googling “how much did the national debt grow under each president,” then look at the actual numbers and ignore the percentages. The percentages are simply a calculation of how much the president increased the national debt over the previous president. They have nothing to do with the $28+ trillion we have in national debt, nor the interest we owe on it.
The national debt in and of itself is not really the issue, nor is who is responsible for it, because that honor falls to both parties equally. If you want to see what you owe individually, visit www.usdebtclock.org.
The real issue is in the long term, a growing debt burden becomes a big problem for everyone because of the interest-only payments that come out of the national budget. The interest on the national debt is how much the federal government must pay on outstanding public debt each year. The interest on the debt is $378 billion. That’s from the federal budget for fiscal year 2021 that runs from Oct. 1, 2020 through Sept. 30, 2021. The interest-only payments on our national debt are about 8% of the entire budget at about 2% interest.
To put that in perspective, veterans benefits are about 7%, education is about 5%, health is about 5% and food and agriculture are about 1%. The interest on the national debt immediately reduces the money available for other spending programs.
As the payments increase over the next decade, advocates of certain benefits will call for a reduction in spending in other areas. Simply put, if the interest rate on the national debt were to rise (as anticipated) making those payments would have to come out of programs such as those. The so-called “discretionary funds.”
The World Bank says a country reaches a tipping point when the debt-to-GDP ratio approaches or exceeds 77%. In the third quarter of 2020, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio was 127%. And we are currently running a $3.4 trillion deficit in 2021. This makes it harder for us to borrow money and at higher rates, which exacerbates the problem.
The government also owes the Social Security Trust Fund and other federal agencies. That’s called intragovernmental debt. It’s not part of the public debt and doesn’t impact the interest on the debt. That’s because it’s money the government owes itself. The majority of public debt is owned by the American people, either through individual investors, the Federal Reserve or state and local governments.
The national debt will at some point in the not too distant future become America’s biggest problem.
Owen Riess
Prior Lake
The Prior Lake American
https://www.swnewsmedia.com/prior_lake_american/news/opinion/editorial/letter-the-national-debt-is-both-parties-problem/article_311b7f2b-a679-56a3-93f4-60e140018d7c.html