The Fiscal Fiasco

When former President Barack Obama was in office in 2014, Democrats controlled the Senate, and Republicans controlled the House of Representatives.

Then-Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who chaired the House Budget Committee that year, sponsored a budget resolution that had no chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled Senate or securing the signature of Obama.

But this resolution -- which called for balancing the federal budget within 10 years -- did pass the House by a 219-205 vote.

Not one Democrat voted for it.

Ryan's Budget Committee published a report on this bill that highlighted the need to balance the federal budget and limit the debt.

"The President's budget never balances -- ever," this report said in reference to Obama's budget. "Instead, it allows our debt to spiral out of control."

"And if we don't change course soon, both the budget and the economy will continue to decline," it said.

"We need a plan that will provide for the nation's needs, that will allow families and job creators to rebuild the economy, and that will finally balance the budget," said this 2014 Budget Committee report. "That's exactly what this budget, the Path to Prosperity, will do."

When the House debated the committee's budget resolution in April 2014, Ryan explained why it was needed.

"Here is the problem," Ryan said in a floor speech. "We are spending money we don't have."

"We don't think we should take more money from hardworking taxpayers to spend it in Washington and then borrow from our children," he said. "We think we should balance the budget and pay off the debt."

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) was one of the liberals who condemned Ryan's plan for a balanced budget. "Budgets are moral documents," said McGovern in his own floor speech. "These annual documents are really statements of who we are as political parties and as groups and as people. They represent our values. They tell us a story about what we believe in and how we would govern."

"I had thought that I had come here today to say that this budget before us, the Ryan budget, is simply bad or that it is misguided," said McGovern.

"It is much worse than that," he said. "This is an awful budget. It takes our country in the fundamentally wrong direction."

It was, of course, the opponents of Ryan's resolution who took our country in the wrong direction.

On April 8, 2014 -- the day McGovern delivered his speech -- the federal debt closed at $17,567,074,702,635.03, according to the Treasury. On Sept. 30, 2026 -- the last day of fiscal 2026 -- it closed at $40,171,825,101,340.31.

That is an increase of approximately $22.6 trillion.

After Ryan's balanced budget resolution passed the Republican-controlled House, it went nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

In January 2023, when Republicans controlled the House but Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House, the federal debt hit what was then its statutory limit of $31.4 trillion. In May 2023, as Congress was debating how to deal with this statutory limit, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who then served as the Senate Republican whip, gave a floor speech on the issue.

"If a discussion over increasing our Nation's credit card limit isn't a good time to have a discussion about spending, I don't know what is," said Thune. "And if spending reform is just a Republican priority, then there is something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party because, with a national debt like ours, spending reform should be a priority for everyone.

"Our national debt currently stands at more than $31 trillion -- $31 trillion," said Thune. "Our debt has already exceeded the size of our economy. Within a few short years, we are going to be spending more just meeting the interest on our Nation's debt than we will on national defense.

"How do Democrats not realize that a national debt of that size has serious consequences?" Thune asked.

"We have to find a way to rein in Federal spending," Thune concluded, "otherwise, the size of our national debt is going to crush our economy and seriously limit the Federal Government's ability to meet even its most basic responsibilities, like funding Social Security and national defense."

In June of that year, Congress enacted the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act, which suspended the legal limit on the federal debt until January 2025 -- after the 2024 elections. Thune and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), who would become speaker of the House in October 2023, both voted for it.

In the 2024 elections, the Republicans won control of the House, the Senate and the White House. When the new Senate convened in January 2025, Thune became the Senate majority leader.

On July 3, 2025, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed the next day. Page 262 of that 331-page law included a provision that increased the debt limit by $5 trillion.

The debt that day was $36,215,869,297,299.75.

Fiscal year 2026, which began on Oct. 1, 2025, was a year when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. On Sept. 30, 2026, as previously mentioned, the debt closed at $40,171,825,101,340.31 -- up $3,955,955,804,040.56 since the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

On Oct. 8, the Congressional Budget Office published its Monthly Budget Review for September. "The federal budget deficit totaled $2.0 trillion in fiscal year 2026, the Congressional Budget Office estimates," it said. "Outlays in fiscal year 2026 were $7.4 trillion, CBO estimates, $386 billion (or 6 percent) more than in fiscal year 2025."

The CBO also estimated the net interest on the federal debt for fiscal 2026 was $1.143 trillion and that Department of Defense military spending (excluding "a small amount of spending by DoD on civil programs") was $916 billion.

This nation needs Republican leaders who are as concerned about the debt when they simultaneously control the House, the Senate and the White House as they are when they don't.

To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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