Listen to “Record Spending Spending Again in Washington” on Spreaker.
The latest report from the Treasury Department shows a record level of spending for the first nine months of the current fiscal year, and the U.S. is on it’s way to a one trillion dollar deficit by the time the year is through.
According to Treasury, expenditures from October through June totaled nearly $3.356 trillion. Revenues came in at just over $2.6 trillion, leaving the nation with a deficit of more than $747 billion with three more months to go.
One of the nation’s top financial watchdogs says this is a bipartisan problem, noting the deficit was $5.4 trillion when George W. Bush left office. That number jumped to $19.9 trillion when Barack Obama’s presidency ended. Our debt is now headed towards $23 trillion just two-and-a-half years into the Trump administration.
OpentheBooks.com CEO Adam Andrzejewski says the current budget deficit is particularly bad considering the strength of our economy.
“Right now, we’re in a period of great economic expansion. We shouldn’t be running one trillion dollar budget deficits. You run budget deficits during an economic cycle when you slip into recession. You don’t want to run them when you’re in economic growth and expansion,” said Andrzejewski.
Andrzejewski warns Republicans that running against the big government agenda of Democrats is going to be a tougher sell because of their own lack of fiscal discipline.
But with neither party wanting to remove funding for their friends and priorities, is there any room for common ground. Andrzejewski says some ways to trim the fat ought to be obvious.
“The 20 largest federal agencies since 2003, they admit to $1.4 trillion going out the door in improper payments. Just last year, our auditors at OpentheBooks.com found a billion dollars went out the door from these federal agencies to dead people,” said Andrzejewski.
It gets worse. Andrzejewski says another six billion dollars went out in overpayments in student loans and grants and Medicare and Medicaid combined for $80-85 billion in improper payments.
Listen to the full podcast as Andrzejewski lists more wasteful spending projects that are wasting taxpayer dollars and how he encourages citizens to make their representatives pay attention to our soaring deficits and debt.
