{"id":58505,"date":"2025-02-22T12:12:31","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T17:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=58505"},"modified":"2025-02-24T15:14:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:14:23","slug":"pay-down-debt-or-spend-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=58505","title":{"rendered":"Pay Down Debt or Spend More?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author:\u00a0 R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

The first month of the second Trump administration has not only been historic, but has shown that he is determined to keep his promises and make \u201cAmerica Great Again.\u201d\u00a0 This has been exhilarating for his supporters and for every patriotic American.\u00a0 One of the historic things he has done is the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).\u00a0 No other president has taken such a meaningful step to search out fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government, even though we all suspected it was there.\u00a0 Seemingly every day, DOGE reports examples of government spending of our tax money that needs to be stopped.<\/p>\n

Although we do not yet know the total amount of taxpayer money that can be saved, the amount will be substantial.\u00a0 The question that now arises is what to do with that money. At least three possible options are being considered.\u00a0 First:\u00a0 Pay down the national debt; second: use it in constructing the current budget; and third: give a direct refund back to the taxpayers.\u00a0 Let\u2019s examine these options.<\/p>\n

The national debt is currently is $36.5 trillion and increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days.\u00a0 By 2030, it is projected to reach $45.5 trillion.\u00a0 Just the interest payment on the debt will be $1.2 trillion this fiscal year ending in October.\u00a0 By 2035 it\u2019s projected that just the interest on the national debt will be $6 trillion.\u00a0 This far exceeds the total federal tax revenue for 2024 which was $4.5 trillion.\u00a0 What does all this tell us?\u00a0 That the federal government is on a slide to fiscal bankruptcy that is growing more inevitable every year.\u00a0 The analogy with personal finances would be owing money, say to credit cards companies, where the total interest<\/u> paid each month more<\/u> than exceeds one\u2019s monthly income!\u00a0 Clearly, this is unsustainable.<\/p>\n

As far as the annual budget option is concerned, in 2024, the federal government spent $1.8 trillion more than it took in in revenue.\u00a0 The budget being considered for this fiscal year will likely have a deficit of similar size.\u00a0\u00a0 Applying any savings found be DOGE to this year\u2019s budget would seem to help, but only if the politicians can be trusted to not<\/u> spend more since they will have more to spend.\u00a0\u00a0 Given their track record, I am not optimistic they would do the right thing.<\/p>\n

Lastly, giving a refund back to the people sounds good but in many ways is fraught with problems when deciding who should get the refund and how much.\u00a0 Generally, only about 50% of workers actually pay federal income tax.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Also, the amount of tax paid varies considerably.\u00a0 So, would it be right to grant, say, a refund of $5,000. to all workers when they vary not only in how much federal tax they paid to begin with, or whether they paid any at all? Sorting this out would be complex indeed.\u00a0 It is also likely, that infusing more cash into the system will result in higher inflation, which we must not allow to happen.<\/p>\n

Since the crisis facing our country is the national debt, it seems to me that the best strategy would be to directly apply any savings found by DOGE directly to reducing the federal debt.\u00a0 It would be equivalent to the example of the person with excessive credit card debt applying some windfall to paying the credit card off or rather taking the money and buying more things.\u00a0 We need to face up to the crisis of the national debt and the best way to do that is to apply any and all savings identified by DOGE directly to reducing that debt.\u00a0 This will show our citizens and the world that we are actually serious about solving the federal debt crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author:\u00a0 R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D.\u00a0\u00a0 The first month of the second Trump administration has not only been historic, but has shown that he is determined to keep his promises and make \u201cAmerica Great Again.\u201d\u00a0 This has been exhilarating for his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17390,10836,15654],"class_list":["post-58505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-department-of-government-efficiency-doge","tag-national-debt","tag-r-alan-harrop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58506,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58505\/revisions\/58506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}