The Issues

Our Congressional budget has very rarely ever been balanced. In the past 50 years, there were only 4 annual budgets that didn't run a deficit: 1969, 1998, 1999, and 2001. This may make deficit and debt seem normal. However, we have never before racked up the kind of debt that we have now. In the year 2000, our national debt was roughly $5.6 trillion. In 2015, it grew to about $18 trillion. Today, not even a full 10 years later, our debt is now around $36 trillion. We have literally doubled our national debt in the past 10 years. And with debt comes interest. 10 years ago, the annual interest on our debt was about $0.5 trillion, whereas now it's $1.1 trillion. Of all the possible cuts Congress can make to the budget, interest payments aren't one of them. Interest payments to our country's debtors are inescapable. And the higher our interest payments become, the more Congress will need to cut from everything else in order to balance the budget.

Beyond just the sheer amount of our excessive spending, though, is the ineffective proceses that Congress has used to try and curb it. Since 1960, Congress has voted 78 times to raise the debt ceiling. That's more than one raising every single year. On top of that, many choices in spending increases and spending cuts have done little to help the situation. As just one example, the Affordable Care Act contributes roughly $1.8 trillion each year to the federal deficit. Yet, despite health insurance companies seeing record profits over the past decade, Congress has made no coordinated attempt whatsoever to curb premium costs. Similarly, Medicare has been historically unable to negotiate drug prices with pharamceutical providers, despite pharmaceutical companies reporting massive profits while paying little to no income tax for the past decade. It wasn't until 2022 when even a modest nod toward this problem was made, and Congress has still made no effort to actually get these incredibly profitable companies to pay proper income tax. These are just a handful of examples of consistent, systemic behavior of incompetence that has led us to a massive amount of debt and a dangerously deficit budget.

If we do nothing about this in the next 10 years, our debt growth will almost certainly spiral out of control, beyond our ability to repair before our country is forced to default.

• How Can We Fix This?

The relative costs of housing, vehicle ownership, healthcare, insurance, and even basic necessities like food have seen substantial increases since 1980, some of them quite massive. Factored into a single Consumer Price Index, prices today have generally risen by around 400% (i.e. $1 in 1980 was able to buy the same amount of goods as $4 today in 2025). Incomes, however, have not kept up. Ordinary Americans over this same time period have only seen an income increase of 54% over this same time period. The result is a reality way too many of us are painfully familiar with: our wages are buying us profoundly less than what our parents and grandparents were able to afford at our age. For many people, the American Dream isn't so much a 'slim possibility' as much as it is a cruel joke. Even for the more fortunate, financial stability is becoming more and more of an uncertainty. The modest wealth and security that many had worked incredibly hard for is gradually slipping away, thanks to a mixture of skyrocketing prices and pitiful wage growth.

What's more, the social programs meant to safeguard hardworking citizens who fall on hard times are under attack. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have been continually labeled as major sources of fraud, despite erroneous payment rates of only 0.3% for Social Security, about 5.7% for Medicare, and roughly 5.09% for Medicaid. Now, the recent 7,000 staff reductions to Social Security offices have devastated productivity and generated panicked confusion in an already strained system. The 80,000 worker reduction to VA offices, including a 1,000 reduction in IT staff despite the current administration claiming a desire to modernize government processes through technology, is estimated to have similar effects. This is on top of absurd additional work requirements for these programs and SNAP, despite research showing work requirements don't actually fix employment instability. Americans who have ever needed temporary assistance from these programs can attest to how lifechanging they can be. There's now a very real possibility that citizens in the future will have no real option to turn to, if they ever need temporary help. To add insult to injury, small farms in Texas vital to food production are losing subsidies, crippling hardworking people who make one of the most important contributions to this country. All the while, regulations designed to prevent large corporations from engaging in harmful and deceptive practices are being repealed, further setting the stage for lower- and middle-class collapse.

If we do nothing about this in the next 10 years, many ordinary Americans will end up destitute, and only the richest will be able to live securely and comfortably in this nation.

• How Can We Fix This?

Excessive money in American politics is nothing new. Comedians time and again deliver clever quips about what we all understand to basically be legalized bribery. Politicians receive exorbitant gifts and campaign contributions from dozens of large businesses through corporate PACs, then 'coincidentally' pass laws later that fit perfectly within those companies' interests. We hear and see examples of this all the time. And we pay the price for their gains. Factories get emissions regulations removed to cut costs, and this causes spikes in cancer for the people who live and work nearby. Health providers add legal provisions to allow them to deny more claims, and this causes people to either have to pay for treatment out of pocket, get sicker, or just straight up die. Mixed in with all of these actions that cause direct harm to people is legislation that enriches companies at our expense through bloated government contracts with the private sector, or redirects funding from more important and useful programs into special deductions and exemptions for the wealthiest individuals and organizations. Often, Congress members directly benefit through insider trading deals with the companies that profit from their enacted bills.

Through it all, legislation that Americans have actually wanted for decades (higher wages, improved job markets, reduced healthcare costs, and affordable housing, to name just a few) goes completely and shamelessly ignored. Worse, we're often given bait-and-switch bills that promise to deliver on these needs, then either never follow through or actually make the situation even worse. Both Republican and Democrat lawmakers have done this. As if that weren't bad enough, we're now seeing situations where state legislators are overturning ballot initiatives introduced by their constituents. If you don't know, a 'ballot initiative' is a law proposal made by ordinary citizens. It's also worth mentioning that in nearly half of all States, including Texas, ballot initiatives aren't even allowed. This has led to a situation where the laws passed by State legislatures are often far out of touch with what the majority of constituents think, with no recourse whatsoever possible. It's a direct result of legislators catering to lobbyists, special interests, and wealthy donors, instead of the majority. Rather than passing legislation to prohibit or punish this behavior, Congress has historically ignored such bills to die soon after proposal. Over the past 5 years, only 152 out of 546 introduced bills on campaign finance reform were ever even considered for evaluation, let alone formally discussed or voted on.

If we do nothing about this in the next 10 years, corrupt Congress members and wealthy lobbyists will be empowered even further, and the status quo of "money buys laws" in Washington will become nearly impossible to overturn.

• How Can We Fix This?

Bad actors in government have always been a concern. Cultivating a healthy distrust in government is an almost uniquely American trait, and is perhaps best embodied by Ronald Reagan's use of the Russian proverb, "Trust, but verify". While initially used in the context of Soviet nuclear disarmament, that phrase also appeals to many Americans' sense of our historical origins, forming an independent nation as a response to what is commonly believed to be 'monarchic tyranny'. Yet, a little-known fact about the tensions in colonial America is that Britain's parliament was actually to blame for the laws passed against the colonies. Although King George III certainly influenced the British parliament at times (earning him tons of criticism by our nation's founders), the Constitutional Monarchy gave him very little real power. It was mostly the parliament's refusal to give American colonies the same fair representation its British citizens received that spurred on the American Revolution. This distinction matters because, at its core, our country's founding sprouted from a legislative body that disdained its constituents. This went far beyond just ignoring their legislative needs, extending to inconsistent application of existing laws and even outright violations of the rights individual colonists were supposed to have.

What we're seeing today in the United States isn't merely a repeat of our origin story, but an actual escalation. In the 1760s, power was distributed across the hands of numerous parliamentary members. They needed to coordinate in order to enact the tyranny that our founding fathers experienced. Today, we're seeing a Congress operating in a frighteningly similar way We're seeing a President trying to rule single-handedly through whim in violation of the existing laws and procedures. Funding for many organizations beneficial to ordinary Americans was denied and diverted without Congress' legally-required approval. Personnel were fired en-masse without following the appropriate lawful processes. A religious department was established in clear violation of the 'Separation of Church and State' clause. Individuals and organizations using their First Amendment rights to criticize domestic and foreign leaders were struck with financial and administrative threats. Rulings by federal judges are being repeatedly ignored by executive branch agencies. The National Guard has even been mobilized against American citizens, in direct contradiction to the requirement of an open rebellion, a foreign military invasion, or an inability of regular law enforcement to execute laws. Worse, the majority of our Congress isn't trying to stop it, but actively enabling it. If our nation's founders thought the British government of the 1760s was intolerable, they'd find what's happening now even worse.

If we do nothing about this in the next 10 years, the lawlessness will spread until our institutions and principles cease to have meaning, and Democracy in this country is dead.

• How Can We Fix This?