Staff Reports
In the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, the federal government managed to rack up a staggering $710 billion in borrowing. This expense spree kicked off just 10 days before President-elect Donald Trump was set to take the helm. It seems like the government is being run like a teenager with a credit card—quintessentially reckless and no regard for the bill that will inevitably come due.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the month of December alone contributed $85 billion to this jaw-dropping financial backdrop. Meanwhile, various federal agencies, including the cherished CBO, are bracing for a continuation of deficit spending. This comes despite Trump’s grandiose promises of spending cuts that resemble a magician’s act: all talk and no rabbit in the hat. It’s as if the phrase “cutting the budget” is being treated like a pizza: everyone wants a slice but no one wants to take the effort to slice it properly.
U.S. borrowing hits $710 billion in first 3 months of fiscal year https://t.co/I4jGfjsoy1
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) January 11, 2025
Trump is pledging to trim “hundreds of billions” from the federal spending pie in 2025 through a magical reconciliation process, which sounds more like a therapy session than a budget strategy. But the real showstopper comes from Trump’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, spearheaded by none other than Tesla’s Elon Musk and entrepreneurial firebrand Vivek Ramaswamy. If Musk’s dream of harnessing DOGE could actually net a cool trillion in budget cuts, perhaps financial clarity is not so far-fetched after all. This would be a monumental reduction considering that discretionary spending for 2023 soared to $1.7 trillion, of which half goes directly to the defense budget—a classic case of keeping the military strong while also attempting to shrink the bloated bureaucracy.
Maya MacGuineas, ever the voice of the fiscally responsible, is sounding the alarm bells. She emphasizes that U.S. borrowing shouldn’t be ignored as Trump steps into office. She warns everyone that the looming financial troubles are akin to a storm cloud hovering ominously overhead. With 2025 inundated with fiscal deadlines, MacGuineas is not holding back on the reality check. The trend has been for lawmakers to miraculously devise ways to spend more and tax less, while the actual discourse regarding cuts remains about as popular as a root canal.
As if the situation couldn’t get bleaker, Congress has been operating in the red every year since 2001. Shifts in government funding are about as rare as a unicorn sighting, with only four years in the last 50 ending in the black, the last being, you guessed it, 2001. Yet here they are again in the throes of incurring more debt, proving once more that when it comes to fiscal responsibility, the federal government has the memory of a goldfish. With any hope of a financial reckoning on the horizon, it remains to be seen if the new administration can break the cycle of horrible fiscal habits or if they will just add a few more dance moves to the defiance of economic reality.
