At last, we have truly done it! You maniacs! You managed to blow it apart!
According to the bean-counters in the statistics division, U.S. government debt has breached a critical threshold: debt held by the public now surpasses 100 percent of GDP, with figures around $31.27 trillion in debt and about $31.22 trillion in GDP, respectively.
What this implies is that even if the federal government could enact a tax that confiscated 100 percent of the nation’s output for an entire year—if consumer spending somehow fell to zero and Americans redirected every ounce of their labor toward the national debt—it still wouldn’t be enough.
Oh, don’t worry—it gets worse.
Beyond the $31.3 trillion in federal debt itself, there sits roughly $88 trillion (some estimates run higher) in unfunded liabilities for major programs like Social Security and Medicare. There’s an additional roughly $1.5 trillion in unfunded state and local government pension obligations, which aren’t a formal federal liability, but from the taxpayers’ collective standpoint they are essentially the same burden, and the push for a federal bailout of the states could easily overwhelm a Congress that has shown little spine. Let’s call the total about $120 trillion. That amount slightly exceeds the entire economic output of humanity in 2025. It is an enormous sum: even by using a broad definition of money (here, M2—currency, checking and savings deposits, and smaller instruments like certificates of deposit)—it is, fun fact, more than all the money in the world.
Oh, don’t worry—it gets worse!
The Congressional Budget Office adds this rather upbeat context:
Deficits
In CBO’s projections, the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2026 stands at $1.9 trillion and is expected to rise to $3.1 trillion by 2036. As a share of the economy, the deficit would be 5.8 percent of GDP in 2026 and grow to 6.7 percent in 2036, which is higher than the 50-year average deficit of 3.8 percent. Much of that increase is driven by higher net interest costs. The primary deficit, excluding those interest costs, runs at 2.6 percent of GDP this year and remains below that through 2036, ending at 2.1 percent.
Debt
From 2026 to 2036, sizable and rising deficits push debt upward. Federal debt held by the public climbs from 101 percent of GDP this year to 120 percent in 2036, surpassing its previous peak of 106 percent of GDP in 1946.
Outlays and Revenues
In CBO’s projections, federal outlays in 2026 total $7.4 trillion, or 23.3 percent of GDP. Relative to the economy’s size, outlays stay near their 2026 level through 2028 and then rise to reach 24.4 percent of GDP in 2036; this trend reflects greater spending on Social Security and Medicare and growth in net interest costs, partly offset by declines in discretionary programs. Revenues total $5.6 trillion, or 17.5 percent of GDP, in 2026. Across 2026–2036, higher individual income tax receipts and remittances from the Federal Reserve are partly offset by shrinking customs duties relative to the economy’s size. By 2036, revenues total 17.8 percent of GDP, just a touch above the 50-year average of 17.3 percent.
The editors at The Dispatch have asked me to keep the profanity to a minimum, so I won’t spell out plainly what this situation is: let’s just say it’s a problem we have not ducked.
