US hits $38T in debt. Fastest accumulation of $1T outside pandemic

As my sibling comment states, mandatory spending is spending which is required by existing laws which have already been passed. But a secondary point is that mandatory spending means no one knows how much it'll be ahead of time. You can only find out how much actual mandatory spending happened after the fact. Contrast this with discretionary spending, where the budget says how much can be spent on a given set of things (like airplanes, or road improvements, or new toilets for all the Navy submarines) so you know ahead of time the spending amount.

Debating changing mandatory spending laws in order to hopefully reduce mandatory spending is totally allowed, it's just very hard to know exactly how much you'd save with any change. The CBO will make estimates for you, but those are going to be based on assumptions which may or may not turn out to reflect reality in the future.

"Mandatory" in the sense that there are laws on the books that say it must be spent.

Sure, Medicare or Social Security can be cut, but see how that flies in the polls.

> Is "mandatory" spending actually fundamentally mandatory? Characterizing it as such feels like a sleight of hand that prevents us from discussing whether that spend is truly necessary.

> In an overspending crisis of such magnitude I wish there was more urgency in the culture to cut spending across every budget segment regardless of whether it's "mandatory" or not.

I'm betting it includes stuff like Social Security payments, Medicare, etc. So it's fundamentally mandatory as real people's lives were planned around its availability.

So weak trollish humor is allowed on here now apparently.

A strong argument in favor of divided government.

Nobody said "Often a surplus"?

Every Republican administration in the last 50 years (save Bush Sr.) has passed a giant tax cut without cutting spending nearly enough to pay for it (and usually increasing spending). Trump himself has done this twice.

Let's not pretend like the two parties are the same with regard to fiscal irresponsibility.

The U.S. government structurally cannot run a surplus because when they have income in excess of obligations they store it in U.S. Treasury bonds, which creates offsetting debt.

> Obama and Biden ran gigantic budget deficits

If you actually look at the deficit year by year, Obama and Biden each entered office with a huge economic crisis that ballooned the deficit, and then lowered it year by year. I mean, it was highest under Trump.

And if you look at Bush and Trump, they started with a lower deficit and raised it year by year.

If your marker is a "budget surplus", nobody does that. The only people that get close are Democrats because they literally reduce spending. And then a Republican takes office, bangs on about the deficit so they can slash social programs, but spends even more than they slashed on military. This is not hidden information.

I don't care that much about the deficit, it's not the cause of our most immediate problems. It's just something both parties bring up when convenient.

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They don't care about the spending. They yammer about it as a way of shifting funds towards things they care about, like the military or their new gestapo or buying votes from their disaffected constituents, but they've never given a shit about the deficit, and have never done anything to stop it.

The closest they ever came to actually caring about government was with Musk who went in and actually started (illegally) ripping shit out. But the things he ripped out were inconsequential things that conservatives didn't like, and he didn't even make a dent in the actual budget. All of the things that Musk got rid of were congressionally appropriated and could have easily been congressionally (i.e. legally) de-appropriated accordingly and it supposedly would be easy for them to do with majority control over the house, senate, executive, and judiciary...but they didn't do it, because they don't actually want to cut the budget.

It actually isn't as simple as 'always,' as military spending alone as an axis of evaluation yields interesting nuance

I think Democrats have a logic for not paying it. This is an investment in people. If you want to start a business you raise money first thing and deliver in future. Government raised money, they'll invest it in development which will pay back in the future. Whether the process is efficient is a different debate.

I do not understand though, why Republicans talk about cutting spending, and then blow through the ceiling when they have the power.

> Neither party has any intention of repaying any of the $38 trillion

What are you talking about here? Federal debt is repaid on bond schedules fixed by statute. You can look it all up. You can argue about whether the debt load is too high, too low, whatever. But you can't just pretend they ran away with the money like a thief. People loaned the government that money because they know the government is good for it.

> Middle class salary workers pay a lot of tax

No they don't. If we're talking about federal income tax, the vast majority of is paid by the wealthy.

I edited the typo. Thanks for your other opinion, nerdsniper

I'm in exactly this position. I keep getting offers that would increase my monthly bill.

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2025/what-drives-cons...

Day gig is at a firm that extends consumer credit, so I keep an eye on cost of capital tracking, monitoring the spread, etc. Any debt packaged and sold into debt markets (asset backed securities) competes against treasuries from a yield (and risk premium pricing) spread perspective. Mortgages, auto loans, some credit card books, etc.

When the Fed cuts rates, your deposit account provider is going to start cutting your interest rate paid right away, but they’re going to maintain their credit rate pricing as long as possible (considering competition from other lenders) to maintain their spread and profit as long as possible. You see this with credit card interest rates, for example.

TLDR 10Y treasury sets the rate floor, broadly speaking.

It could be said that all your base belong to US

I don’t have the answers but we have a system where, if you loan out money we expect a return that is a percentage of the amount of the loan, rather than say a flat loan fee.

> inflation doesn't increase the dollar amount owned

In theory no, but when old debt matures, it is often paid by issuing newer debt that is financed at the higher rate. So in practice inflation does increase the dollar amount owned unless the government actively reduces the debt.

Also US crises make money to worth more. You can buy the same asset for a less amount.

it makes servicing a debt easier because the amount owed doesn't inflate but that doesn't actually make it irrelevant to this metric because what we're looking at is new borrowing, not accumulated debt. if an apple cost a penny a hundred years ago and a dollar today, and the government borrowed to buy an apple a hundred years ago and then again to buy another apple today, it makes sense to compare apples to apples and the only way to do that is to adjust that penny to what it would be worth today, one dollar

Yes, it is called “real GDP growth.”

What is so hard about understanding their desire? They want to keep more money for themselves so they can buy more yachts, invest in more things, whatever. This is just how humans are.

It's up to policy makers (i.e. government when it comes to taxation) to structure the system to mitigate the inherent self-interest that people have. Obviously that's easier said than done when the ultra-rich buy off the politicians, but human nature just is what it is.

To clarify a bit...

I meant I understand it in the sense that to get that wealthy in the first place you have to have a special kind of self-interested sociopathy, so in that regard I understand their desire. Not that I agree with it.

"Business is a good game—lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money" -- Nolan Bushnell

Once you get that wealthy the money is more of a disk measuring contest. There is no productive way for one person to really use money of that magnitude, the best they can do is dump it into stocks, bonds, real-estate, etc..., but nothing that really moves the economy. It's a big failure from an economic standpoint. Lots of "dead" money not being productively used.

> Three yachts instead of two?

No, the thing is to have a yacht with a yacht for a dinghy. And that comes with a helicopter.

All. They want it all.

> A higher score than some other rich douchebag destroying lives for fun?

I mean, yeah, I think this is mostly it. Its gamification.

At the top level they all have more wealth than they could ever possibly use, even accounting for many generations of offspring.