Tag: debt

US demanding $100bn compensation from Ukraine

The US continues to insist that Ukraine should pay it tens of billions of dollars as part of a resource deal in compensation for American assistance in the conflict with Russia, but has scaled back its initial assessment of the final amount, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

Washington and Kiev have for weeks been discussing a resource deal – a concept first floated by Vladimir Zelensky last year – which would grant the US access to Ukraine’s deposits of rare earths.

Following a round of talks in Washington last week, officials from the administration of US President Donald Trump cut their estimate of American assistance to Kiev from more than $300 billion to about $100 billion, Bloomberg sources said. Ukraine itself assesses total aid US during the conflict with Russia at just over $90 billion.

Keep reading

Trainwreck Tim Walz Took Minnesota From A $19 Billion Surplus To A $6 Billion Deficit

Americans have seen a lot of Tim Walz lately as the failed vice-presidential candidate has held town halls nationally criticizing national Republicans. In a telling interview, he admitted to the New York Magazine this week, “90% of the time, I can be really good, but about 10% of the time, I can be a train wreck.”

And in an interview with Jake Tapper that was itself something of a train wreck, he rejected the conclusion that every American with a pulse now acknowledges: that Walz and other Democrats should have forced Joe Biden off the presidential ticket in light of his obvious cognitive decline.

Walz is indeed often a train wreck, and as Walz tramps around the country seeking to place himself as the foil to congressional Republicans and Donald Trump, to really understand what a disaster he is, we only need to look at the ongoing mess he has left behind in Minnesota.

A Fiscal Disaster of Walz’s Own Making

It is not hyperbole to say that Minnesota’s finances are in free fall. After boasting a record-setting $19 billion surplus in 2022 — larger than the full budgets of 20 U.S. states — the Minnesotans learned earlier this month that it faces a staggering $6 billion budget deficit. How did this happen? In 2023, Walz and his Democrat allies in the legislature embarked on the most reckless spending spree in Minnesota history, funneling billions into pet projects and giveaways for every left-wing constituency imaginable. The surplus wasn’t used to shore up Minnesota’s long-term financial stability or to return money to taxpayers. Instead, it was squandered in the most reckless fiscal step taken in Minnesota’s modern history.

Walz’s relationship with the truth has always been a distant one, and this case was no exception. Walz tried to falsely pin the financial crisis on the new Trump administration, despite state officials confirming that federal policy did not affect their budget projections. 

Among the drivers of the state’s coming deficit is a stagnant Minnesota economy. Although once among the strongest in the country, the state now routinely ranks in the bottom 10 states for GDP growth. Job creation has stagnated, and businesses are increasingly looking elsewhere to expand or move. Meanwhile, Walz has increased tax burdens on individuals and businesses and made Minnesota one of the least competitive states for economic growth.

Keep reading

Deadbeats! Saudis won’t pay $13.7M bill for US military fuel

Between 2015 and 2018, the United States supplied Saudi Arabia with tens of millions of dollars worth of jet fuel in support for the kingdom’s bombing campaign in Yemen. Seven years later, the Saudis refuse to repay most of their debt. And they are being rewarded for it.

A Department of Defense report that was sent to Congress last October, reviewed by Responsible Statecraft, and previously unreported suggests that Pentagon officials are becoming increasingly desperate to recoup an outstanding $13.7 million in fuel costs that Saudi Arabia owes the U.S.

“DLA energy and US central command will continue to engage the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Finance through United State Military Training Mission – Saudi Arabia scheduled meetings, various MOD/MOF and DoD Key Leader Engagements, face to face meetings within the CONUS and Saudi Arabia, and through email correspondence until the SLC fuel debt is paid in full,” the report stated.

In 2018, the Pentagon realized it had made an accounting error. The Pentagon had undercharged Saudi Arabia and the UAE by $36 million for jet fuel and another $294 million in flight hours for U.S. tanker aircraft that refueled Saudi and Emirati warplanes in midair.

With Washington’s help, the arrangement allowed Saudi and Emirati jets — which, besides actual military targets, bombed hospitals, schools, marketplaces, and weddings — to stay in the air for up to three hours instead of a mere 15 minutes. But instead of the two oil-rich Gulf nations footing the bill for the aerial-refueling process, as is required by law, it was the American taxpayer.

Seven years later — while the larger flight hours bill has been paid — Saudi Arabia has yet to pay $13.7 million worth of its jet fuel debt. The UAE, which owed the U.S. around $15 million for jet fuel, has reimbursed Washington in full.

The kingdom certainly does not lack the funds. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund oversees $925 billion in assets.

Rather, Saudi Arabia appears to be pleading ignorance; the Intercept reported that Saudi officials told representatives of the Defense Logistics Agency and U.S. Central Command last year that they were “not aware of the outstanding debt and requested some additional time to investigate the issue.”

Keep reading

1500+ “Zombie Programs”, Over 8% of Federal Budget Spending at $516 billion, is Unauthorized, Possibly Illegal

Hardworking Americans face rising prices and a weaponized federal government, yet more than 1,500 federal programs are still receiving billions in taxpayer dollars despite their legal authorizations expiring years or even decades ago.

A federal program is separately authorized and funded by Congress. If a program is not authorized, or authorized at a specific level, it is not supposed to receive funding. But because of Congressional inaction, apathy, and inattention, these programs regularly receive such funding even though they lack legal authorization.

491 specifically-identified unauthorized programs and federal spending accounts for roughly 8% of the annual federal budget of $6.45 trillion, or $516 billion dollars. The DOGE effort to cut government fraud, waste, and abuse has so far saved taxpayers $140 billion by comparison.

The Congressional Budget Office couldn’t find or estimate the dollar amounts spent by the other 1,000 zombie programs they identified.

According to a recent investigation by RealClearInvestigations, the United States government is quietly funding what experts are calling “zombie programs” — agencies and initiatives that legally expired but are kept alive through backdoor budget tricks and annual appropriations.

In 2016, candidate Trump even mentioned this concept of refusing to pay for unauthorized programs as a way to get more funding to the military. The media ‘fact checked’ Trump’s claim as ‘false’ even though it was true, because, they said, Congress doesn’t have to follow the law.

One of the most egregious examples? The Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a taxpayer-funded outfit originally established to provide free legal assistance to low-income Americans. Congress let its authorization expire in 1980, yet the agency is still alive and well in 2025 — operating with 135 employees and a $560 million budget.

Republicans in 2011 tried to make modest cuts to the LSC, and the left-wing mainstream media said it would cause major social problems. Leftist media said it was going to “gut a crucial anti-poverty lifeline.” Left-wing non-profits rallied to protect this subsidy and corporate welfare to the nation’s attorneys.

The LSC has long been accused of funding politically motivated litigation, supporting left-leaning advocacy groups, and diverting taxpayer money into causes far beyond its original mandate. In past decades, LSC grantees have been caught assisting in lawsuits to block welfare reform, challenging voter ID laws, and filing environmental and immigration-related lawsuits aimed at advancing progressive policy goals rather than defending the poor in court. Some grantees have used federal funds to lobby state legislatures, coordinate with activist networks, and even sue landlords and small businesses en masse under dubious legal theories.

45 years after it was supposed to be shut down, the LSC is still spending hundreds of millions with zero legislative oversight.

This problem has been plaguing Congress for years, and many white papers and organizations have attempted to bring this problem to the legislature’s attention for many years.

Keep reading

CBO Issues Dire Forecast for US Debt

The US Congressional Budget Office is warning that the federal deficit has hit a point of no return. It is far too late to cut wasteful government spending. Politicians have kicked the can down the road for far too long and left us with a financial system held up through perpetual borrowing that cannot be reversed.

The CBO’s long-term forecast shows the federal deficit rising to 7.3% of GDP by 2055, but the figure is currently at 6.2% as of 2025 and this is an optimistic report. In contrast, the 30-year average from 1995 to 2024 was 3.9% of GDP. Public debt is projected to hit 156% of GDP by 2055, up from the 100% of GDP we face today.

Now the CBO mentioned that Trump’s tariffs could negatively impact the economy but we reached the point of no return years ago. Trump cannot be blamed for the current situation in the least. “Mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook,” the Long-Term Budget Outlook: 2025 to 2055 stated.

The Baby Boomer generation is at or nearing retirement and Social Security benefits are currently at 5.2% of GDP. The CBO believes this will reach 6.1% of GDP in 2055 but fail to recognize the fund is drying up. The Ponzi Scheme will come crashing down.

Interest expenditures alone have hit 3.2% of GDP as America. In 2024, the US spent $881 billion simple to finance its massive debt, and that figure is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. We spend more on servicing debt than we do on defense spending at this point.

Raising taxes cannot solve this massive issue, but that will not prevent the government from attempting to extort the people to cover their fiscal mismanagement. The government knows it is trapped and will continue to hold off on paying down their debt as long as possible. Worse still, other nations are decreasing their investments in Treasuries as we have seen with China and Russia. Japan is our main buyer now but they have their own colossal problems.

Keep reading

Treasury burned through $286BN of its cash balance in the past month

The US Treasury Department has burned through cash at a historic rate in the last month – an alarming signal that may require lawmakers to intervene to prevent the country from defaulting on the national debt.

The agency, now led by former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, has burned through $286 billion in the month of March alone.

This is the largest single-month drawdown in American history, and it’s only rivaled by the Treasury spending $279 billion in August 2021 during the height of the pandemic. 

The Treasury General Account (TGA), essentially the US government’s checking account, now has just $280 billion left for disbursing funds for Social Security checks, government salaries and other crucial programs millions of Americans rely on.

The last time the Treasury’s coffers dwindled this low was in 2023 when the US breached the debt ceiling, a legal limit set by Congress on how much the government can borrow to pay its bills.   

By May of that year, the TGA, which is managed by the Federal Reserve, was down to just $37 billion. 

This prompted then-President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to strike a deal suspending the debt limit. 

The government proceeded to issue new debt in the form of bonds and by October 2023, the TGA soared back up to more than $800 billion. It stayed at around that amount give or take $100 billion for the rest of Biden’s term.

On January 21, 2025, the day after Trump was sworn in, the Treasury was still flush with $704 billion. The account balance has fallen by an unprecedented 60 percent in just three months.

Keep reading

The American Public Will Have To Step In To Eliminate The Parasitic Bureaucracy

The reasons why conservatives fight so adamantly for smaller government have never been more obvious than they are today. Even before the DOGE audits, the galactic cost of federal debt spending was clearly crushing our economy. The interest payments alone are costing the American taxpayer around $1 trillion annually. If nothing changes for the better the national debt will hit $54 trillion by 2034.

Of course, this is unsustainable. The system will completely collapse well before another decade ends; under the weight of rising interest rates or under the weight of exponential inflation. We are already seeing the results of the spending bonanza through ongoing stagflation. Prices on most goods are 30% higher (or more) in the past 5 years. Home prices and rent costs are up at least 50% on average. Americans are being financially suffocated.

The US public wants a reckoning for this theft – And yes, it is theft. Our government, like an MC Escher drawing, is an endless maze of dead ends and black holes. It’s a vampiric organism that siphons money from taxpayer pockets, infinitely churning and embezzling and feeding until there is nothing left. It will not stop, until we make it stop.

Part of this parasite’s defense is to pretend like it doesn’t exist. We know it exists because we can see our blood being drained; we can see the results. But proving that it exists is another matter and it was nearly impossible because the only entity that has been allowed to audit the government is the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In other words, the government audits itself.

Most of our government apparatus is NOT elected. The vast majority of it is created from thin air through bureaucracy. Each new tentacle, once created, grows without regulation and forms new tentacles until there is no way to tell what connects to what and where all the money is going.

The original source of this bureaucracy is a cabal of ultra rich elites backing unaccountable NGOs. They helped to create the system over decades so that they could slither back and forth from government to NGOs to corporations without being noticed. The revolving door became standard and the same wealthy moguls and social engineers heading up think tanks and non-profits and international conglomerates were now able to cycle into various government agencies and change policy to benefit them.

Without the bureaucracy the power of the elites is greatly diminished. That is to say, bureaucratic agencies ARE the true power in government – Not presidents, not congressmen, not senators, and certainly not the American people. Political parties can change, presidents can change, the US can go from red to blue and back again, and the system remains mostly the same.

Until the Trump Administration and DOGE, no one has even tried to audit the government and figure out what the majority of these agencies are doing. The same goes for the Federal Reserve Bank, which facilitates fiat cash beyond the limits of taxpayer funds. They make deficit spending possible and allow the bureaucracy to grow without restriction. The Fed has never faced a full audit either, and good luck trying to get Congress to institute one.

The bottom line is this: The government has been deliberately engineered in such a way that nothing can ever be fixed or reformed. The existence of “the bureaucracy” as we know it today was never intended by the Founding Fathers and it should not be allowed to remain. It is the “Shadow Government”, or at least, it is the primary mechanism by which the Shadow Government rules over the US. Get rid of the bureaucracy and the elites lose everything.

This is why the global geopolitical reaction to DOGE has been so insane and violent; the parasites are seeking to protect themselves and keep their blood supply flowing.

Keep reading

LA Budget Crisis, Deficit Approaches $1 Billion, Layoffs ‘Nearly Inevitable’

L.A.’s financial problems exploded into a full-blown crisis on Wednesday, with the city’s top budget official announcing that next year’s shortfall is now just shy of $1 billion, making layoffs “nearly inevitable.”

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo said Mayor Karen Bass’ proposed budget, which will be released April 21, will close that gap, but it will require difficult “cost-cutting decisions.” He warned that the severity of revenue declines and rising costs has created a budget gap that makes layoffs “nearly inevitable.”

Szabo, in his presentation to the council Wednesday, attributed the city’s financial woes, in part, to increased spending on legal payouts, which have ballooned over the last few years. Tax revenues have been coming in much weaker than expected — and are expected to soften further in the upcoming budget year, which starts July 1.

Pay raises for city employees that are scheduled to go into effect in the coming budget year are expected to consume an additional $250 million. On top of that, Szabo said, the city needs to put hundreds of millions into its reserve fund, which has been drained in recent months in an attempt to balance this year’s budget.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who heads the budget committee, said the council will need to look at the possibility of asking unions representing city workers to defer the scheduled raises or make other concessions.

“I think everything needs to be on the table,” she said in an interview.

David Green, president and executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 721, called Szabo’s remarks “short-sighted and irresponsible.”

“There’s no question that all of us are in shock with this number,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who sits on the council’s budget committee.

Blumenfield predicted that city leaders would need to seek financial concessions from the workforce.

“Eighty percent of our expenses is labor,” he said. “If we are short more than 10% of our budget, the ‘math doesn’t math’ without looking at labor costs.”

Over the last two years, Bass and the council have signed off on raises and increased benefits for an array of unions — first police officers, then civilian city workers, then firefighters.

Keep reading

US Household Debt Surpassed $18 Trillion

American households have been unable to pay off their debts. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported that household debt has reached a new all-time high at $18.04 TRILLION.

Americans acquired an additional $93 billion in outstanding payments during Q4 of 2024, with half of this debt finding its way onto high interest credit cards. Credit card debt has also reached a record high at $1.21 trillion. I reported in January that credit card defaults his a 14-year high after skyrocketing by 50% in a one-year period.

Donald Trump said during his campaign that he would like to cap credit card interest fees at 10%, perhaps for a temporary period. There are now bipartisan calls for companies to lower fees, with Congresswomen like AOC and Anna Paulina Luna both championing a 10% credit card cap.

Prior to the pandemic, Americans paid $120 billion annually in credit card interest fees from 2018 to 2020, amounting to $1,000 annually per household. In 2022, consumers were paying $105 billion in interest as it has become the main cost behind having a credit card. Rates on credit cards have doubled in a mere decade from 12.9% in 2013 to 22.8% in 2023.

Keep reading

Musk Fired-Up About Paul’s Rescission Idea For Slashing Spending Up To $500 Billion

Seeking to codify spending cuts pursued by his Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk held a closed-door lunch with Republican senators on Wednesday. Musk was said to be “elated” with Sen. Rand Paul’s recommendation to make the cuts stick with a relatively expeditious budget-slashing technique called “rescission.” The approach could guide DOGE cuts around federal judges who consider executive-branch-initiated spending cuts as exceeding constitutional authority. 

Rescission offers a means by which presidents can collaborate with Congress to cancel previously-appropriated spending. Enabled by Title X of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the rarely-used process starts with the president sending a special message to Congress, providing specific details about which budgetary authorities he wants to rescind. 

With Republicans holding a narrow 53-47 Senate majority, one of the most attractive aspects of rescission is that it doesn’t require 60 votes — a simple majority suffices to grant the president’s wish. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told reporters that Musk was “elated” with Paul’s proposal: “I think he didn’t realize it could be done at 51.” According to South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, it was the first time Musk had heard of the rescission process. He said Musk reacted by triumphantly lifting his arms into the air.  

The approach promises to immunize DOGE spending cuts from federal judges who are skeptical about the executive branch’s power to cut spending that was duly authorized by Congress. This week has seen two major developments that demonstrate the strength of that judicial headwind:

Rescission is an alternative to “impoundment,” by which presidents unilaterally delay Congressionally-directed spending. First used by Thomas Jefferson, the method was restricted by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) after Democrats felt President Nixon was abusing it. Trump has called ICA “a disaster of a law” and vowed to “do everything I can to challenge [it] in court, and if necessary, get Congress to overturn it.” However, as noted above, the same law provides the opportunity for rescission, which means Trump can use ICA to his advantage. 

Keep reading