America’s national debt now exceeds $123 trillion, according to a new report, or more than four times the official figure of $28 trillion, as calculated by the U.S. Treasury Department at the end of March 2021. Federal spending related to the CCP virus pandemic and economic lockdown added nearly $10 trillion to the total in 2020, according to the latest edition of the “Financial State of the Union 2021” report, compiled and published annually by Chicago-based nonprofit Truth in Accounting (TIA).
Rising National Debt
“Our measure of the government’s financial condition includes reported federal assets and liabilities, as well as promised, but not funded, Social Security and Medicare benefits,” the report stated. “Elected and non-elected officials have made repeated financial decisions that have left the federal government with a debt burden of $123.11 trillion, including unfunded Social Security and Medicare promises.”
The TIA report includes in its total debt calculation of $55.12 trillion in unfunded Medicare benefits and $41.20 trillion in unfunded Social Security benefits. Treasury officials don’t include unfunded benefits because they claim recipients have no right to future payments, only to those under current entitlement laws.
The total debt, according to the report, “equates to a $796,000 burden for every federal taxpayer. Because the federal government would need such a vast amount of money from taxpayers to cover this debt, it received an ‘F’ grade for its financial condition.” Unlike many state governments, the federal government doesn’t maintain a cash reserve to deal with spending necessitated by unexpected crises such as a virus pandemic. They just borrow or print more money! Should we let the Congress off the hook?
“If the federal government was properly prepared for a crisis, it would not have had to borrow money,” TIA stated, “a third (35 percent) of the spending went to what TIA described as Other.” Article courtesy of AMAC.