OPINION:
In the 2018 midterm election campaigns, 140 political ads focused on the national debt. This year, that number was 30.
According to the ad tracking firm AdImpact, the debt ranked 52nd among issues discussed in the 2026 campaigns. It was hard to find an issue voters cared about less than the national debt.
On Sept. 30, total gross national debt reached $40 trillion, exceeding 100% of gross domestic product, while debt held by the public approached 100% of GDP for the first time since World War II.
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If the public has stopped caring about the debt, it might be because politicians have stopped talking about it. Those who do are usually ignored.
In the Republican special primary in South Carolina to replace the late Lindsey Graham, former Gov. Mark Sanford tried to revive his political career by warning that the debt was reaching a “tipping point” and could crush the economy. He came in fourth.
The debt is like a snow-covered mountain peak looming over a village in the valley. Nobody cares about it until an avalanche sweeps away all the people and houses below.
What would a fiscal avalanche look like? Investors might stop buying bonds because they have lost confidence in the federal government’s ability to repay them, or because they demand exorbitant interest rates.
As interest grows as a percentage of the budget, it crowds out discretionary spending, including funding for national parks and food inspection.
What happens when Social Security becomes insolvent, as it is projected to do by 2032? Where will Washington find the funds to prop it up, absent an astronomical tax increase, which would send the economy into a tailspin?
For fiscal year 2025, net interest on the debt reached $970 billion, exceeding national defense spending and representing one of the largest single expenditures in the federal budget. The Congressional Budget Office projects net interest payments to continue rising rapidly, reaching more than $1.4 trillion annually by the end of the decade.
Serious reforms are needed to tame the debt monster, but that requires hard choices — not the kind politicians like to make.
If we are not worrying about the debt now, when do we start worrying — when it reaches 200% of GDP, when interest on the debt crowds out all discretionary spending, when the bond market collapses? By then, it will be too late.
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