From Washington to Trump: America's Inability To Control Its National Debt
 

Government spending is a big problem that needs to be controlled; however, the United States government has failed to accomplish this vital task.

First, we must understand that the federal deficit is nothing new. However, Republican lawmakers insist on painting the problem as one that has emerged only in the past few decades. The reality is that the United States has been in debt from the very beginning.

According to the United States Department of the Treasury records, debt incurred during the Revolutionary War totaled $75,463,476.52 by the start of 1791. In the 45 years that followed, the debt continued to grow.

During the Jackson Administration, the debt shrank to zero by January 1835, but soon after, it spiraled out of control, reaching into the millions.

The costs of the American Civil War blew the debt out of the water, reaching $65 million in 1860, passing $1 billion in 1863, and $2.7 billion post-war.

The financial panics and crises of the early 20th century would cause many financial experts to reconsider their opposition to a central bank. Legislation and Constitutional amendment created the Federal Reserve system in 1913, "giving” [the government the] “responsibility of maintaining flexibility in the money supply, providing a way to rediscount bank loans (by selling loans on a secondary market to increase credit) and overseeing the functions of the banking system. Before our entrance into WWI, the Treasury also underwent a reorganization process."

The Treasury would borrow, issue bonds, and raise taxes to pay for World War I.

The build-up to and cost of World War II increased the national debt from $51 billion in 1940 to $260 billion following the war, and it has not stopped growing. Government spending would match the rate of inflation until the 1980s, when it again increased rapidly, more than tripling between 1980 and 1990.

Despite a slight drop following the end of the Cold War, the gross national debt had grown to $10.3 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2008, approximately ten times its 1980 level.

Only once in recent history has the national deficit been reduced from the red to the black, and that was during Bill Clinton's administration. This was done by Democrats, Clinton, and Republicans who controlled Congress by agreeing to raise taxes on the highest earners and drastically reduce government spending.

Clinton's predecessors overspent, including the Administrations of George W. Bush, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the spending of the Obama years, the billions of dollars in stimulus given to the American public by the first Trump Administration and the Biden Administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, and President Biden's increases in spending in other areas.

Today's left-wing talks about raising taxes on the nation's wealthy today but refuses to cut spending. Without a reduction in spending, there is no way to bring down the deficit or balance the budget, no matter how much any socioeconomic group is taxed. As Dr. Thomas Sowell mentioned in his 2017 book Trickle Down Theory And Rax Cuts For The Rich, even with the tax cuts of the Reagan years, the tax returns of the federal government show that more revenue was collected during the 1980s than in the previous two decades. It wasn't a matter of not having enough revenue; it was an issue of spending more than what the government brought in.

The Republicans have long touted that reducing taxes for the highest earners will result in higher wages for the workers as the job creators would have more money to pay them. This idea is called Trickle Down Economics, and it is good on paper but hasn't exactly worked. Greed is just one reason cited as to why. Lower tax rates for the middle and lower classes are beneficial as they'll have more money to spend in the economy, which creates jobs and allows them to save; tax loopholes, however, and write-offs allow the highest earners to pay less than what one might expect them to even in a Progressive Tax System which the United States operates under.

The fact remains that president after president, Congress after Congress, has failed to reign in spending and find an effective way to reduce the deficit. Entitlement programs that fall into the Mandatory Spending column must be paid for, no matter what, such as Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), and Social Security, which consume most of federal spending. Discretionary spending, like defense funding, can be curved or slashed and must not be paid for. Despite the left's obsession with cutting it, a defense spending cut wouldn't dent today's deficit.

You could eliminate entitlement programs, which would significantly cut spending, but nobody wants to see improvised senior citizens and hungry families. You can raise taxes on "the rich," but if the government is spending more than it brings in, the financial crisis will continue.

Presidents and Congress must put politics and parties aside and agree on where to cut spending soon. According to experts, the system will implode if the debt crisis continues much longer, creating a catastrophic economic crisis that could lead to massive layoffs and job loss, high interest rates, a recession, a stock market crash, and reduced government investment in infrastructure, healthcare, and education. If this occurs, there may be no coming back.

https://treasurydirect.gov/government/historical-debt-outstanding/

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/04/17/tax-cuts-for-the-rich

https://fortune.com/2023/02/01/can-republicans-balance-budget-deficit-debt-kevin-mccarthy-bill-clinton-1990s-harvard-professor/

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/#:~:text=Tax%20cuts%2C%20stimulus%20programs%2C%20increased,rises%20in%20the%20national%20debt.