money US national debt tops $33 trillion: Why GOP proposals won't fix it
The U.S. national debt has topped $33 trillion for the first time as a potential government shutdown looms. In the video above, Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman explains why the debt is "only going to get dramatically worse" and Republican budget proposals won't fix it.
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Video Transcript
- Rick, at the same time, we're talking about $33 trillion in national debt. I mean, what have the conversations inside the Beltway sounded like as you've continued to track them?
RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, we just hit that new threshold. So we went from total national debt in the $32 trillion range. It tipped over the $33 trillion threshold. I mean, this is another reason that this is kind of ridiculous, what the Republicans are doing in Congress. The main reason we have $33 trillion in debt, and it's only going to get dramatically worse, it's all the programs that nobody is willing to do anything about. It's Medicare. It's Social Security. It's Medicaid.
And also, I mean, we spend a ton of money on defense, and that's where the money is. Those four things right there are about 50% of all funding, and that's not what Republicans are talking about cutting. They're talking about cutting like $0.05 from the IRS budget. The IRS does tax enforcement. They want to cut a buck here, a buck there from the Securities and Exchange Commission from regulatory agencies.
Even if they were able to get all the spending cuts they want, it would make no difference in the trajectory of the federal debt. So they're not talking about the serious issues that really do exist, they're just talking about how to make some kind of point about the power they have to shut down the government. So I'm afraid they are going to probably be able to shut down the government, this small coterie of radical Republicans. And then maybe we'll get serious about figuring out a way out of it.
- All right, Rick, thanks for continuing to track this so only one of us gets a headache on a daily basis. We appreciate it.
