The June Budget Numbers Prove Washington Has a Spending Addiction, Not a Revenue Problem

The CBO Baseline Is a Fiscal Fire Alarm

The Congressional Budget Office's February 2026 outlook should end any polite fiction that the federal budget is under control. The agency projects a $1.853 trillion deficit for fiscal 2026, with debt held by the public climbing to 101 percent of GDP by September 30 and on pace to hit 120 percent by 2036. Those figures come from an institution that has no partisan ax to grind. They are not a campaign press release. They are a measurement of how fast the ship is taking on water.

The same report shows cumulative deficits of $23.1 trillion between 2026 and 2035, a jump of $1.4 trillion from the agency's prior baseline. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act added an estimated $4.7 trillion to projected deficits, while changes in immigration policy added another $500 billion. Tariffs were projected to reduce deficits by about $3 trillion, which means Congress and the White House could have used that revenue to narrow the gap and instead chose to spend it. That is not a revenue problem. That is a priority problem.

Interest Is Now the Fastest-Growing Line Item

Debt service has become the silent budget killer. CBO estimates that net interest will exceed $1 trillion in fiscal 2026, more than Washington spends on national defense, and will surpass $2 trillion annually by 2036 as the 10-year Treasury yield hovers near 4.1 percent this year. The Treasury Department spent $433 billion servicing debt in just the first five months of fiscal 2026, a period in which the government borrowed $1 trillion and paid an extra $31 billion in interest compared with the prior year.

And those numbers mean something tangible. Every dollar sent to bondholders is a dollar not spent on a soldier's training, a bridge inspection, or a cancer trial. Worse, much of that interest flows to foreign central banks and institutional investors who do not vote here and do not care about our grandchildren. The debt is not merely a statistic on a chart. It is a claim on future labor that Washington writes without asking the future workers.

Mandatory Spending Makes Congress a Bystander

Most federal spending now runs on autopilot, so Congress debates budgets while Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid consume ever larger shares of a shrinking pie. CBO projects Social Security outlays rising from 5.2 percent of GDP in 2026 to 5.9 percent by 2036, Medicare from 4.0 to 5.2 percent, and net interest from 3.3 to 4.6 percent. Total federal outlays are projected to climb from $7.0 trillion in fiscal 2025 to $11.4 trillion in 2036, while revenue grows more modestly from $5.2 trillion to $8.3 trillion.

The political class responds to these trends with commission proposals, means-testing tweaks, and solemn speeches about protecting beneficiaries. But what it rarely does is admit that the programs were designed in an era of seven children per retiree and are now supported by two. Means testing is not reform. It is a way to make the middle class pay twice while pretending the structure is sound. Real reform means allowing younger workers to opt out of a system that cannot keep its promises.

Bureaucracy Multiplies Every Dollar

Every dollar that Congress appropriates passes through an administrative filter that turns a simple transfer into a permanent program with overhead, auditors, and a congressional relations team. The Government Accountability Office places dozens of federal programs on its high-risk list because of duplication, fraud, and mismanagement, and the Treasury Department still cannot produce clean financial statements after decades of trying. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that improper payments across federal programs run into the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Consider the layers involved in a single rural broadband grant. The Commerce Department writes the notice. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration reviews applications. States add their own paperwork. Consultants take a cut. Contractors hire compliance officers. By the time a dollar reaches a fiber line, it has been sliced by bureaucrats at every level. That is not investment. That is a jobs program for people with master's degrees in public administration.

The Only Fix Is to Spend Less

The libertarian answer is not a clever new tax or a bipartisan commission. It is a hard spending cap tied to population growth and inflation, a return of emergency programs to their expiration dates, and the elimination of entire cabinet departments that duplicate state and private functions. Congress should pass a balanced-budget amendment with real teeth, not the paper tiger versions that allow a simple majority to waive the rules whenever the polls get uncomfortable.

Americans are generous. They will fund a safety net for the truly needy. They will not fund a federal apparatus that borrows $50 billion per week, pays $1 trillion in interest, and still demands more. The CBO has done the country a service by laying out the arithmetic. The question is whether anyone in Washington will do the math. If they will not, the voters must do it for them.