The U.S. is the strongest and most prosperous country the world has ever known, and also one of the freest countries in the world today.   We are blessed to live in America.  But, of course, we do have big problems to address.  Among the most urgent of these problems is our massive, and rapidly increasing, national debt, now sitting at close to $37 trillion.  Annual spending deficits are approaching $2 trillion, which means that, not only is our debt way too large, it is also rapidly increasing at the rate of almost $2 trillion per year.

I have recently stated that controlling inflation is Trump’s biggest (political) challenge. But this can only be done successfully by shrinking the annual deficit, which, as a practical matter, means cutting federal spending.

Senator Ron Johnson has recently given an excellent analysis of our federal spending challenge.

As he says:

• In FY 2019, federal outlays totaled $4.447 trillion. In FY 2020, federal outlays jumped to $6.554 trillion because of the pandemic spending spree.  Although grossly overdone, the spike was understandable.  Cities locked down, businesses closed, and unemployment soared.  Between March 2020 and March 2022, the federal government spent $5.2 trillion on Covid relief alone.
• There is no justification for maintaining this level of spending now that the pandemic is over. Yet we have turned pandemic spending into the new baseline, spending $6.6 trillion, $6.8 trillion, $6.3 trillion, $6.1 trillion, and $6.8 trillion in FYs 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively.  President Biden’s proposed FY 2025 budget was $7.3 trillion.  This is $2.8 trillion (63.3%) higher than the FY 2019 spending of $4.4 trillion.
• A reasonable way to increase federal spending from one year to the next would allow for both population growth and inflation. Using FY 1998 as a base (the first year we’ve had a balanced budget since 1969), Senator Johnson calculates a total (reasonable!) budget for FY 2025 of $5.5 trillion.  President Biden also projected FY 2025 revenue of $5.5 trillion which would create a balanced budget.  Using pre-pandemic FY2019 outlays as a base would result in a FY 2025 budget of $6.5 trillion with a deficit of $1 trillion, still vastly superior to our current $1.85 trillion annual deficit from FY 2024.
• A continuing resolution passed in April 2025 “continues” the FY 2024 budget of $6.8 trillion to FY 2025. There does not appear to be a good estimate for the FY 2025 deficit under the continuing resolution.
• The federal debt has skyrocketed from “only” $5.5 trillion in 1998 to over $36 trillion today. A dollar held in 1998 is worth only 51 cents today.  Today’s big spenders should explain why they’ve allowed this devaluation of the dollar to occur!

Conclusion.  Fiscal sanity and responsibility in Washington are badly needed.  Cutting federal spending back to more appropriate levels should be a top priority for our national leaders.  Not only is it plain common sense, but it is also necessary for controlling inflation, which is Trump’s biggest challenge.

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