Op-Ed: Americans Are Paying for Out-of-Control Federal Spending

This article was authored by Andy Puzder and E.J. Antoni for the National Review on September 24, 2024

Americans are becoming a nation of debt slaves.

The Treasury Department released its monthly statement for August, and alarm bells should be ringing in Washington. Federal finance is quickly spiraling out of control, with interest payments on the debt now exceeding $1 trillion each year and growing. Kicking the deficit-spending can down the road is not something we can do for long. Runaway government spending is already turning us into a nation of debt slaves.

Not only is this the first fiscal year when interest on the federal debt eclipsed the $1 trillion threshold, but there’s still another whole month to go before the fiscal year ends. The deficit for the fiscal year to date of $1.9 trillion already exceeds the Treasury’s original estimate. To put that in perspective, on average, the federal government is spending $5.7 billion more per day than it brings in, and $3 billion of that amount is going just to pay interests on the debt, limiting the funds available for other priorities.

Politicians on the left, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, are telling the nation that this ballooning deficit is because of a revenue shortfall and therefore we need to raise tax rates in hopes of increasing tax revenue. But data published by the Biden-Harris administration’s own Treasury Department contradict this claim.

In 2021, boosted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, federal tax revenue exceeded $4 trillion for the first time ever and has hit that mark for each year of the Biden-Harris administration. In fact, CBO forecasts that 2024 will come in at nearly $5 trillion. Revenue has already increased to $4.4 trillion in the first eleven months of this fiscal year, up from $4.0 trillion in the same period last fiscal year. The problem is on the other side of the ledger: profligate government spending.

Click here to continue reading the full article: https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/americans-are-paying-for-out-of-control-federal-spending/