Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot

This week, I'm going to start with a conversation about money and the lack of it. And, yes, there will be some criticism of the administration, but if we are vewy, vewy, quiet, maybe we can keep from waking the President.

But I do want to emphasize the problem I'm talking about is a bi-partisan one. but it is being supercharged by the current crowd in DC. Let's start with our national debt. I know, I've gone into this before, but to keep it simple, the United States is technically insolvent. We are the Spirit Airlines of governments right now.

The Treasury Department, led by a billionaire, reports that our debt is growing faster than our economy. Think of your family budget. You keep buying things while your income remains the same. Sooner or later, it will catch up to you.

Newly-released Treasury financial statements show that as of Sept. 30, 2025, the federal government held $6.06 trillion in total assets against a staggering $47.78 trillion in liabilities.  It excludes unfunded obligations tied to major social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. The 75-year unfunded social insurance obligation — the gap between projected spending and revenues — jumped by $10.1 trillion in the past fiscal year to $88.4 trillion. 

I guess a giant yard sale might be in order. Imagine the Statue of Liberty in your own front yard, your face on Mt. Rushmore!

And we just keep spending more than we take in. In fiscal year 2025, federal revenue totaled $5.24 trillion, while spending reached $7.34 trillion. We are in what one financial industry leader called a "debt death spiral." We won't technically run out of dollars because we can print more of them. But each one will be worth progressively less.

That economic growth has been slowed by the effective destruction of our international trade structure and allies who are looking elsewhere for someone sensible to do business with. Farmers are going broke, but hey, we'll give them $12 billion to tide them over. By the way, it won't.

And these figures were assembled before the war with Iran. I wrote a week ago about the changing nature of war and how we address it. The cost of the war with Iran has escalated rapidly, with initial estimates indicating the United States spent over $11.3 billion in the first six days of conflict. Projections by experts, including Harvard academic Linda Bilmes, suggest the total cost to the U.S. could reach or exceed $1 trillion over the next decade, driven by high munitions usage, replenishing stockpiles and long-term veterans' care. 

Now, NBC News is reporting tht the damage to US bases in the Middle East is far more extensive than first reported...

The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the Trump administration attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

So, how do we deal with this? If it were your home and you were faced with a major repair or the loss of a car, you tighten your belt a bit to make room for the expense. So, what does the only government we have do to handle this? We plan for $17 billion dollars on a new battleship armed with what are called railguns that shoot projectiles powered by energy not gunpowder. The problem is that the Navy hasn't figured out how to make them work. But never mind, the now former Navy Secretary couldn't get it moving fast enough because the President wants it now.

We are building new jet bombers and fighters that are not as invulnerable as we thought. But, hey, Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a new drone company that absolutely coincidentally has a $2.4 billion contract with the Pentagon, so the news isn't all bad.

So with the hardware bills mounting, we must be cutting back elsewhere, right? Well sure, food and medical care for lower income folks is heading way down, so don't you dare say we are being irresponsible. I mean, we could have given farmers more money if we hadn't sent $20 billion to President Milei of Argentina because he is a big MAGA fan...

Now, the President is talking about buying Spirit Airlines, the aviation equivalent of the Edsel. But he can rename it the Trump Shuttle and try that one again. The United Arab Emirates have taken an economic hit as a result of actual drone hits in the Iran War, so we are talking about bailing them out. We may be invading Cuba on the way home from the Gulf. There is of course, the $100 million to build the Arc De Trump in Washington to commemorate, well, you know.

And for all the complaining, I think it's Albert Speer's best work since Germania...

And just, by the by, since the President does not like electric power from windmills, which of course is free, we just paid a French company $1 billion not to build them.

All of this demonstrates the power of the press...well, the printing press, at least.

Now, President Trump didn't get here all by himself. We have had a rolling referendum on government spending all along, through multiple administrations. But the fact remains, the last balanced budget this country enjoyed was in the last years of the Clinton term. That took hard work by both parties to achieve. George H.W. Bush lost reelection largely due to swallowing hard and raising taxes.

In fact, with Civil Wars, World Wars, depressions, recessions, epidemics and more, it took the USA 200 years to rack up $1 trillion in national debt.

It has taken us 50 years to multiply that by 40. Not 4 but 40, 4-zero.

And it will get worse thanks to increased spending and politically attractive tax cuts, which, despite what anyone says, have never paid for themselves, no matter how big and beautiful politicians make them sound.

That shameful record of irresponsibility doesn't belong to any one party, and in fact, belongs to all of us. And no amount of Trumpian mathematics, which one critic called the Screwy Decimal System, is going to make it any better.

When your family budget hits rough water, what do you do? Can we replace the occupants of the Washington clown car with some real moms and dads who will do the same?