The United States has hit a troublesome milestone, having now arrived at a debt burden of more than $40 trillion. Recently on The Drew Mariani Show, Drew welcomed Chris Temple of The National Investor to discuss the economic consequences of the debt. 

“We’re on an unsustainable pace,” Temple said of the debt, which has more than doubled since 2015. “You can’t just continue to print money anymore and think you’re gonna get away with it forever.”

The main drivers of the debt are entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) and defense. Columnist Kevin Williamson argues there is no easy way out of the problem “without entitlement reform and higher taxes or major defense cuts – very likely, all of the above will be required,” he wrote in a recent newsletter. 

Unfortunately, the interest payments on the debt are also a cause for concern. They currently exceed $1.1 trillion. 

The Fed

Temple told Drew that the United Staes is already in a fiscal crisis, and is convinced the Federal Reserve should have raised rates “yesterday.” He told Drew, “Had the Fed raised interest rates at its last meeting, [Treasury Secretary] Bessent would not have had to intervene in the bond market a week or so ago.” That move by the Treasury, a bond buyback program designed to curb the yields on long term securities, was rebuffed by Wall Street, which is still worried about “burgeoning government debt,” according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Outcry from Congress

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has sounded the alarm on the debt problem. “A debt-to-GDP ratio above 100% means we now owe more than our entire economy produces in a year,” he wrote on X. “It is time for Washington to do the hard work of actually balancing the budget instead of talking about it every election cycle.”

Last year, Paul re-introduced the “Six Penny Plan” which would “cut 6¢ from every $1 the federal government spends and balance the budget in the next five years.”

Growth 

President Trump when, asked about the debt recently, said it has been a problem for a long time. “The way you take care of debt is with growth,” he told reporters. “We’ve never had growth like we have right now.”