The U.S. Debt: The Mad Aunt in the Attic

Article 1 of the United States Constitution is where the House and Senate have oversight and control the purse strings. This has been lost because MAGA Republicans have surrendered their rights to the Executive branch. Every citizen that loves this country and loves their flag should demand that Article 1 be reinstated by using oversight and taking back the purse strings, otherwise the spending over budget will go on and on. We simply cannot tolerate any more capricious spending. We must forget party lines, think of our flag, our Constitution and courageously apply the brakes on the theft by credit card use of the U.S. Treasury.

Whoa! Tariffs are just a tax on American citizens who buy foreign goods!

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S APPROACH

President Trump, since he took office January 20th, 2025, until May 15^thof this year, has spent $2.7 trillion over budget (not a typo). Our national debt is now $39 trillion. It will be $40 trillion or more by the end of January 2027. By that time the debt service to pay interest on the bonds will exceed over $1 trillion. That represents more money than anything else in the U.S. budget except the military.

This is a very sad commentary on how we handle national debt. Especially when you consider that we were promised by President Trump that the government institutions that he gutted would LOWER government spending, not INCREASE it. After all the redoing of our institutions using Project 2025 ideas and DOGE, we were promised there would be large savings. Elon Musk was made head of DOGE and promptly said, “I will be getting rid of the weeds and many institutions so the weeds will not come back” (remember the “weeds” are federal employees). How did all that work out? Well 200,000 federal employees were laid off. Many were laid off and left empty spaces and knowledge behind. So, DOGE had to run out and get no-bid contractors to fill the gaps. Now FEMA will not be prepared for hurricanes because of the so-called “streamlining”. Tornado warnings systems have failed to give early warnings because of so many layoffs in the meteorology department. Our medical research, our EPA, and others have been denied funding so that services will be weak. The worst example of this funding tragedy is that of USAID’s destruction. USAID was founded in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy to project American soft power for starving children throughout the world by getting them food and medicine. In 1962 we spent 3% of our budget on foreign aid and foreign embassies, now that figure is below 1%. We will never again win international acclaim by destroying these charitable soft power organizations. Our American farmers will be the losers as well as the starving children, and poor communities losing clinics in several countries.

In February 2025 during the reorganization of USAID, many tons of food grown by our farmers was left sitting in warehouses, sitting on wharfs and left in transit. But all activities were directed to be curtailed by the Trump Administration. Within three months, over 700,000 children starved to death. In some cases adults as well as children were dying due to the closing down of medical clinics. Does anyone care? A reminder, over half of the billionaire class believe that humans do not have a soul. So, the president and his Cabinet seem to have quietly just yawned for these losses of children. Further, the likes of Elon Musk, Kevin Roberts, Russ Vought and Vice President JD Vance don’t seem to care one wit that we are losing the “hearts and minds” of many of our allies. We are on track to abandoning soft power and our influence throughout the world. This will be replaced by China who are in over 50 countries selling their politics. Are we just going to abandon our political assistance and influence throughout the world? You betcha!

How about all the other changes being made? Do we have any proof that it saved money? The only thing we heard was buckets of BS from Elon Musk and DOGE. They delivered no resounding proof that they found “waste, fraud and abuse” that was out of control. Please note they laid off 25,000 IRS employees. They cut the VA by 30,000 employees. They laid off hundreds of Dept of Justice attorneys and FBI employees who were considered disloyal to this Administration. The IRS was told that because of the expense of auditing billionaires and millionaires, it would be cheaper to go after more middle-class taxpayers. White-collar crime in the Justice Department will have less emphasis in pursuing wrong doers. Dear reader please note these cuts will diminish income into the U.S. Treasury, as well as incentivizing more corruption.

In this Administration, improving the national debt situation has never been seriously on the agenda. In the past 50 years in America, we have been on a spending spree. If you go back to 1986 during the second term of Ronald Reagan, you will find he did a very good job of giving Stinger missiles to Afghan freedom fighters. He did a good job of tearing down the Berlin Wall and breaking up the Soviet Union’s occupation of Eastern European countries. However, he cut taxes for everyone and then demanded the banks and the savings and loans loosen up their lending procedures as an incentive to medium and large sized corporations. The result caused a failure of many of these entities. The American taxpayer eventually had to bail them out. Then our next president, George Herbert Walker Bush led a war against Iraq because of the invasion of Kuwait. That cost the U.S. Treasury billions. So, in 1992 when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected to the Executive branch, they decided courageously to raise taxes on everyone, including the wealthy. They also passed a ten-year assault weapons ban. They also addressed the welfare situation and made changes in our criminal justice systems. The long and short of it was that in eight years under the Clinton Administration, there were 22 million new jobs added. When Bill Clinton visited Wall Street the last November of his service, they gave him a standing ovation. Unfortunately, the assault weapons ban only lasted for 10 years. Meanwhile, three years in a row under Clinton this country had a budget surplus. Dear reader please note that not a single Republican Senator or Representative voted for the tax increases. Also, it is worthy of note that Tom Foley, Speaker of the House from 1992 lost his next election because he voted for that tax increase and the assault weapons ban. His only reaction was, “I just voted my conscience”. Recently a similar thing happened in Indiana to six Republican State Senators who voted their conscience over redistricting in Indiana. President Trump spent $12 million and made sure they were defeated. Translation: our president demands loyalty over your use of conscience!!!

The 2008 HUD and mortgage scandals took place on Wall Street giving them a scare and a near death experience. “We never saw it coming”, was the statement from the SEC and other Wall Stret “gurus”. Homes were being purchased with nothing down. Background checks were eliminated in many aspects. The banks were loaning money on home equity loans to the tune of $50,000 and $100,000 or more above the value of the homes. President Barack Obama had to take control of his new Administration and bail the country out of this crisis that landed in this lap.

There has been no attention shown to the skyrocketing national debt by this Administration. Also, it is not on the billionaire agenda. I have seen no AI projections about the debt. In fact, now AI executives are beginning to speak of AI being regulated by the government. That may be a good idea because AI has no conscience and robots don't pay taxes. If AI displaces 20 million Americans from their jobs, how will that affect the U.S. Treasury? Remember, in the past 50 years, except for the Clinton Administration there has been extensive credit card use by the Government raiding the U.S. Treasury. We also have to address tax money flow. The general rule is (until this Administration) governments go to collect taxes from those most able to pay. For example, in WWII and several years thereafter, the government imposed a 90% bracket for those Americans whose incomes surpassed $100,000 a year (not a typo). Please fact check that statement! Also please note that in WWII all classes of citizens were buying war bonds, victory stamps, and many were sending in more money to the Internal Revenue Service than was required. Remember we went from three aircraft carriers in 1940 to 68 by 1945. Right now, for the first time since WWII, our national debt exceeds our GDP, which is at is $31.5 trillion a year and our current accumulated nation debt is $39 trillion. We are on a trajectory to disaster in my opinion. We would be better served if we embraced manmade real intelligence to look for a way out of this debt. No one believes AI is a magic bullet for solving the national debt.

The current administration is giving out no bid contracts and giving charge cards to several countries to use against our U.S. Treasury. The President of the United States has increased his family estate by at least $4 billion since taking office. We are spending money on capricious activities throughout this Administration. Cabinet members and political appointees are all tapping into easy no-bid contracts. We are hiring many untrained, unsophisticated members of ICE and the FBI. The standards have been lowered, and incentive money is passed out like free candy bars.

THE REMEDY

What's needed is simple but unfortunately very difficult for MAGA followers in the House and Senate. We can save probably $1 trillion between now and January 2027 by taking back oversight and the control of the purse strings, giving rebirth to the U.S. Constitution. Every child and all of our grandchildren, will benefit if we stop shredding the U.S Constitution. Why don’t we all stand up against party lines, face the truth, take back oversight and the purse strings?! Mark Twain said, “everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it”. We must now face the music and tighten our belts and stop bankrupting the lower middle class through inflation depriving them of obtainable medical insurance, depriving rural areas of hospitals due to Medicaid cuts, and finally, runaway food and gas expenses. Article 1 of the United States Constitution is where the House and Senate have oversight and control the purse strings. This has been lost because MAGA Republicans have surrendered their rights to the Executive branch. Every citizen that loves this country and loves their flag should demand that Article 1 be reinstated by using oversight and taking back the purse strings, otherwise the spending over budget will go on and on. We simply cannot tolerate any more capricious spending. We must forget party lines, think of our flag, our Constitution and courageously apply the brakes on the theft by credit card use of the U.S. Treasury. Finally, let’s be conscious if this applies, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

How can we teach our children that it's wrong to have runaway debt and that it's wrong to use credit cards beyond our means. How can we leave our children a debt of over $40 trillion? Dear reader, let us now use every moment to begin anew, attacking this sad financial situation in the United States. This problem is an embarrassment to every American who has to balance their own budget. Dear reader, I encourage you to fact check all the statements I made above. I encourage you to give freely all of your patriotism to the U.S. Constitution, your flag, and most importantly, your children and grandchildren. We must simply not leave them a bankrupt country.

Without a vision over how to escape the mayhem and chaos in our midst, the people may perish.

Opening Image: Getty, Adobe Stock, Stablediffusion.com, Saaria.com,