The solution here is politically difficult, but it is not complicated.

O n July 31, 2024, the national debt eclipsed $35 trillion. On November 21, a mere 114 days later, it crossed $36 trillion. We crossed $37 trillion 263 days later. While this might look like progress, since it took over twice as many days to go another trillion dollars in debt, most of that is masked by the fact that the Treasury had been using extraordinary measures to avoid adding to the stated total national debt for months. This is why national debt figures jumped from $36.2 trillion on July 3 to $36.6 trillion on July 7, after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the debt limit.

The simple truth is that the federal government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Solving a spending problem on this scale, however, is not a matter of “improving efficiency” and “rooting out waste, fraud and abuse.” It is about solving two fundamental issues: The government is involved in far too many things and lacks a sensible budget process. The inevitable result is a government that simultaneously overspends and underdelivers.

Starving the Beast

With an overall budget of $7.3 trillion this year and projected revenues of $5.5 trillion, the federal government’s deficit for this year alone is projected to be about $1.8 trillion. In order to bring its fiscal affairs in order, Congress would have to cut its spending by 24.5 percent just to bring it in line with its own revenue projections; in other words — to balance the budget through spending cuts.

Simply slashing every agency’s budget by 24.5 percent would clearly not be tenable. The problem here is not that we need to starve the beast of resources and try to force them to deliver on their promises with fewer resources. The problem is that the federal government has made far too many promises to far too many people.

Instead, what we need to do is starve the beast of responsibilities. This will require a careful reading of the Constitution, which serves as a guidebook, and specifically the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states or to the people all powers not granted to the federal government.

Eliminating USAID was a good start, but this only saved $44.2 billion. The government would have to eliminate USAID 41 times to bring the budget back into balance. Other areas of cuts could include the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There is no provision within the Constitution for the federal government to have a role in education or housing and urban development, and most of what Commerce does is cronyism. These departments have a total budget for this year of $585.8 billion.

To make real budgetary progress, though, the U.S. must tackle entitlement reform. In 2024, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone constituted 44 percent of all federal spending, or just under $3 trillion. The problem here is not that there are (supposedly) millions of people over 100 years old receiving Social Security payments. The federal government is not set up as an investment firm, capable of managing finances for millions of people, nor is it an insurance agency. These are promises that Washington bureaucrats have no business making and no ability to keep. The problem here is not that the government insufficiently funds these programs. For example, when health care is paid for by reaching into the pockets of other Americans, costs skyrocket.

Budget Process Reform

In addition to starving the beast of resources, the U.S. needs serious budget reform. In February, President Trump himself called for a balanced budget. Representative Vern Buchanan (R., Fla.) has proposed a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in each congressional term he has been in office. But with the many budget tricks and gimmicks available to Congress, there is little hope that this could work in practice.

Instead, what we need is to abolish the debt ceiling altogether and return to our pre-1917 fiscal roots. From our nation’s Founding through to 1917, Congress had to authorize every issuance of public debt. Major purchases, such as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Panama Canal in 1912, were financed in this way. What this meant was that these debts were allowed only after Congress explicitly granted authority for them. Because of this, voters could evaluate both the amount of debt that Congress had authorized and its purpose, allowing them to judge whether the purchase warranted incurring debts. This gave voters the ability to serve as a sort of external reviewer of government debt, much like a bank or a credit agency reviewing mortgages and auto loans for private citizens.

This changed in 1917 with the passage of the Second Liberty Bond Act. Originally conceived as a temporary means to afford the Treasury increased flexibility during wartime, it instead created a de facto national credit card. Congress no longer had to approve debts on a project-specific basis. The debt from a spending package covering crucial national infrastructure projects and one covering mindless pet projects are treated exactly the same, legislatively. This would be like using the same process to buy a house as you do to buy a soft drink at a gas station — just put it on a credit card.

Congress routinely runs into its own self-imposed debt limit. And after months of political theater, with members of both parties blaming the other for being unreasonable, being unwilling to compromise, or putting the American people at risk (which costs Americans dearly), Congress inevitably raises its own debt limit. This would be like giving a household the ability to raise their own credit limit on their already-maxed-out credit cards.

A Choice Between Two Futures

As the kids are saying today, “the math isn’t mathing.” At our current fiscal trajectory, interest payments alone, which already exceeded national defense last year, will soon become the top budget expense each year.

The solution here is politically difficult, but it is not complicated. We must first return the federal government to its constitutional boundaries, eliminating entirely departments which have no business existing at the federal level. The problem is not about efficiency, it’s about legitimacy. Second, we must end the failed experiment of the debt ceiling and return to project-specific debt authorization, which would force Congress to defend each borrowing decision to voters.

This may seem radical, but what’s truly radical is adding $2 trillion to our national debt in one year, especially during a time of national peace, of economic prosperity, and with no massive infrastructure project on the horizon.