By Patrick F. Cannon

If current trends continue and our luck holds, it looks like the interest on the national debt will reach and slightly exceed $1 Trillion for the first time in our 250 years of fiscal ups and downs. In case you’re wondering, interest payments are now 15 percent of the Federal budget. Here are the amounts per year starting in 2020 (in billions):              

2020                315

                        2021                352

                        2022                476

                        2023                659

                        2024                852

                        2025                970

                        2026                1.04 Trillion (est.)      

It seems to hardly matter which political party controls Congress or the White House – the number keep going up in a non-partisan high-speed elevator.

            I confess I had some hopes for fiscal restraint when champion father and avenging angel Elon Musk  — and his teeny bopper army – descended on Washington to drive out the money spenders. Alas, it turned out he was robbing Peter (and the rest of the Apostles) to pay Paul. Although it goes up minute by minute, the current national debt is $39.07 trillion, or $113,792 per person, including newborns. This year, the projected deficit will be $2 Trillion. Onward and upward!

            Aside from 1998-2001, when we miraculously had budget surpluses, deficits have been a way of life for most citizens alive today. At the same time, income tax rates rarely have been lower. The mid-1980s had GDP growth rates averaging about four percent a year with a top rate of about 50 percent.  Today’s top rate of 37 percent applies only to the amount of table income that exceeds approximately $640,000 for a single payer. That same prosperous person only pays 10 percent for the first $12,400; 12 percent for income from $12,400 up to $50,000; 22 percent for the amount from that $50,000 up to $105,000 – well, you get the idea.

            Not everyone earns enough to pay any Federal income taxes, but everyone pays the payroll tax of 7.65 percent —  which includes Medicare – on incomes up to $184,500. And our local and state governments grab their share. The average American pays nearly 30 percent of his or her income in taxes (the top ten percent of earners bear 90 percent of the total tax burden). Nevertheless, if governments were businesses most would have to declare bankruptcy.  (Let’s pause to give a shout out to these states, which are tops in fiscal stability: Utah, Delaware, New York, Iowa, and Georgia.)

            The easy answer to the fiscal mess it to either spend less, tax more, or a bit of both. Neither seems attractive to our current set of politicians.  Maybe one of my faithful readers has an idea that will get us out of this mess. If so, please do share it with us and your congressman and senators . It could win you Nobel Prize for economics and the undying love of your fellow Americans. Or be ignored until the bubble bursts, as it inevitably and eventually does.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon