Federal Budget

Washington spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal 2024 while borrowing $1.8 trillion, and the result is a bureaucracy that grows faster than the economy it supposedly serves.

Federal spending has outrun revenue for two decades, with national debt exceeding $36 trillion and annual interest payments surpassing $1 trillion. The budget process rewards politicians who hide costs in emergency supplements and earmarks, leaving the bill for future taxpayers.

Congress treats the budget as a routine appropriations exercise, but the process has become a permission slip for permanent bureaucracy, sweetheart grants, and bookkeeping tricks that hide trillions in obligations. A real spending cut requires zero basing every program.

Federal interest payments now consume more tax revenue than the entire defense budget, yet Congress keeps passing emergency spending bills. The budget process is broken because politicians treat your wallet like an unlimited credit line.

Congress will raise the debt ceiling again because neither party wants to cut the $6.8 trillion annual budget that feeds agencies, contractors, and entitlement growth. The limit is not a brake; it is a speed bump on the road to a $50 trillion debt.

The government kept TSA workers paid through accounting tricks. Congress called it breathing room. Economists should call it what it is: deferred reckoning.

Big Tech wants to scrub your floors while Big Government scrubs your paycheck. Darla Jean Pickett argues that Amazon's gadgets and Washington's spending spree both leave ordinary Texans with the bill.