$53 Trillion in Debt
Earlier this month, President Biden finally released his proposed Fiscal Year 2025budget to Congress.

Over a ten-year period, the president’s budget includes:
- $86.6 trillion in spending over the next decade,
- $16.3 trillion in cumulative deficits over the next decade,
- $4.9 trillion in new taxes on American families and small businesses,
- $12.6 trillion spent paying just the interest on our national debt, which is $2 trillion more than would be spent on our national defense.

At the end of that 10-year projection, President Biden’s budget increases our gross national debt to nearly $53 trillion. The national debt held by the public would be $45 trillion—a nearly $20 trillion increase from 2023.

A different projection of the national debt released in February by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, indicates that over the next seventy-five years, the national debt will be greater than five-times the economic output of the United States (debt-to-GDP ratio). Secretary Yellen’s report states “[t]he continuous rise of the debt-to-GDP ratio indicates that current fiscal policy is unsustainable.”

During a hearing of the House Budget Committee, I asked President Biden’s Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young about this report and about how the administration’s proposals fail to ensure long-term solvency of Social Security, leaving seniors’ benefits at risk. Watch my questions by clicking the image below.

As I told Director Young, we need to have a real conversation with the American people about how we’re going to fix America’s fiscal trajectory. We know it is not sustainable—everyone agrees on that. We know we cannot tax our way out of this, it is impossible. The numbers are what they are. That is why I believe a fiscal commission is the best opportunity for us to have the conversation and identify the policy changes necessary to put America’s fiscal trajectory back on track. We can solve these very real problems, but we must act with urgency.