"Hey, can I get that $36 trillion back that I loaned you? Hey! Come back here!"

A little over four months ago, I attended FreedomFest 2024 here in Las Vegas, NV. I wrote here about meeting Congressman Thomas and buying one of his homemade debt badges. Here it is, showing the US national debt back in July, when it was a little under $35 trillion. I remarked then how eerily fast the numbers went up.

He built this thing to clip on to his lapel to show his fellow legislators how broke we are. I guess he hoped to shame them into stopping spending us into ruin. Nice try. Noble aim. Game effort.

It isn’t working though. Just four months later, a week before Thanksgiving, and our debt now stands at over $36 trillion.

Here’s a site showing a breakdown of all that debt. It’s not for the faint of heart.

I honestly don’t have a clue what to do about all this debt. The numbers are incomprehensible. And no matter how often Congressman Massie emphasizes the point, his colleagues keep spending and spending and spending.

Maybe Trump’s new DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), manned by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, can do something about the problem? I doubt it. Most of the spending is hardwired into the budget, or “non-discretionary” as they say.

To stop spending so much we really do need Congress on board. The executive branch can’t do it alone. Even if DOGE was wildly successful, it would still amount to a drop in the bucket.

And we are currently adding $1 trillion to our debt roughly every 100 days — and climbing.

The other possible solution is to cut a bunch of the wasteful regulations that hamper the US economy, especially those regulations that our choking our production of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. That’s also part of DOGE’s purview.

If the government did that (in a long-term credible way), perhaps we could grow our way out of this mess. Maybe a combination of reductions in wasteful spending, and unleashing energy production, and cutting regulations across the board, and ending our expensive military adventurism, and robots, and AI, and better battery technology, and a miracle or two…

Maybe.

But I’m not optimistic. I’m horrified. And because misery loves company, I decided to share my horror with you fine people. Apologies.

Naturally,

Adam