Imagine having $80,000 in income. It’s enough to live decently and have a family. For some people reading this, it’s not a lot. For others, it’s quite a sum. But suppose at this income level you had $640,000 in debt. Or, suppose your income was $30,000 and you owed $240,000. Or, maybe you’re doing really well with an income of $200,000 but have a debt of $1.6 million.

This is where the United States government stands today. 

While there is talk about how unprecedented it is to have our national debt at more than 120 percent of GDP during peacetime, this notion actually far understates our problem. It’s not GDP that pays down the debt; it’s federal government revenue that pays down the debt. With federal revenue at around $4.5 trillion and the debt over $36 trillion, the federal government would have to spend nothing for nearly a decade for current taxes to pay off the debt.

There are, of course, a couple of alternatives. One is to grow the economy. If you owe $240,000 and your income rises to $100,000, that debt level isn’t quite so onerous. Another alternative is to reduce the value of the debt by increasing the money supply. Inflation can more than triple prices and push a current nominal income of $30,000 to $100,000, but the number of dollars borrowed ($240,000) doesn’t change. These scenarios presume that income increases alone will be enough to make the needed difference.

Mostly, it was growth that solved the debt problem after World War II. Income taxes were high, but with the only intact industrialized economy on the planet, the U.S. had an advantage. Add to this that the federal government stopped its regulation binge that contributed to putting the “Great” in Great Depression, and there was nowhere to go but up, economically. Also, the biggest war in history had just ended—a war mostly armed and fueled on one side by the United States. All that spending disappeared overnight.

Inflating the money supply to help us get out of debt should be a non-starter. It destroys confidence in the economy and growth along with it. Along with other problems, Argentina has had a big problem with inflation for decades. In 1983, already a victim of poor monetary policy, Argentina’s per capita GDP was a fraction of our own, but at more than one-fifth it was better than today’s less than one-sixth.

While growth fueled by re-industrialization and deregulation can help, at some point, our federal government must stop digging the hole even deeper. Given that revenues have historically grown and grown, it’s obvious that $2 trillion deficits (yearly shortfalls that add to the total debt) are a result of a spending problem. It would be like insisting on spending $110,000 while making only $80,000 in the face of an existing $640,000 debt. It’s just stupid.

This is why DOGE is so important. It’s about stopping the digging. But that’s really not the right metaphor. Digging isn’t fun. Spending generally is. Congress gets to look generous while spending the seed corn of future generations. Individual Americans benefit from the largesse, whether you’re quitting your job to enjoy the largesse during the Covid pandemic, or getting paid excessively for consulting services to an agency, or being paid a benefit you didn’t really earn just because the bureaucracy and generous rules let you. Lots of Americans, not just Congress, are on this gravy train (yet another metaphor).

It’s not just federal workers who will see sacrifice. Medicaid costs have exploded as a result of Obamacare, which means some who are getting free to nearly free health care might have to give it up, and the hospitals that have grown dependent on the cashflow will have to actually act like nonprofits. But there are any number of other useless spending programs, like subsidies that pay us all to burn corn (ethanol) in our gas tanks. These are reforms that can only happen with presidential and congressional leadership. DOGE alone cannot legally be the solution.

Although DOGE is not a panacea when it comes to federal spending, it’s still fun. USAID was, for the most part, a fiasco, worse than waste, and it’s getting what it deserves—virtual annihilation. The Department of Education, a make-work agency given that education is a state/local issue, is another agency that was worse than waste. It’s not fun to see people lose their jobs, but it’s fun to see worse than useless programs, projects, and contracts cleared out of the way of real progress.

For years, U.S. Senator (and former OCPA trustee) Tom Coburn brought federal waste to light. His effectiveness was limited, not due to any shortcoming of Senator Coburn, but because congressional and presidential leadership didn’t care.

Now, the right people appear to care.

For some entertainment, and to see just how ridiculous federal spending has gotten, check out doge-tracker.com. Click on “WTF” (Wasteful Taxpayer Spending) in the upper left of the page and play the little game. It asks which spending item on the page is real or fake. They’re all ridiculous, making it hard to separate fact from fiction, but it’s worth the education. For example, “The Department of Defense purchased an $8,395 lobster tank for undisclosed purposes”—that’s a real spending item. Given this and other absurd examples, it’s worth thinking about whether raising taxes or imposing spending discipline is the right way to fix what’s ailing the federal fisc.