House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington just delivered a wake-up call that should terrify every American.
The Texas Republican pulled back the curtain on America’s financial nightmare during a recent interview.
And House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington revealed one brutal truth about America’s debt that Democrats don’t want to hear.
America is drowning in debt at a catastrophic pace
The numbers are staggering and they paint a picture of a country racing toward financial collapse.
America is now borrowing $6 billion every single day just to keep the lights on.
That crushing debt burden will double in the next decade if nothing changes.
Arrington spelled out the harsh reality during a Friday interview on the RealClearPolitics podcast from the first annual Reagan Economic Forum.
"I know we’re borrowing $6 billion a day, and that will double in 10 years," Arrington stated. "I know we’re spending more to service the debt than we are for national defense."
Think about that for a moment.
The United States government is now spending more money just paying interest on what it owes than it spends protecting the country from foreign enemies.
This is the direct result of decades of reckless spending by politicians in both parties who refused to make the hard choices.
Trump’s reconciliation bill is just the beginning
President Donald Trump promised to tackle America’s debt crisis head-on with what he calls "One Big, Beautiful" bill.
The reconciliation bill that Republicans are pushing through Congress represents the largest spending cut in American history.
But Arrington was brutally honest about what it will take to fix this mess.
"To achieve almost $1.7 trillion, which is twice the largest spending cut in the history of our country, is a start," Arrington explained. "We won’t crawl out of this debt hole in one reconciliation bill. We’re going to have to rinse and repeat this process for years and decades to come."
The Budget Chairman called it "the most challenging endeavor of my political career."
And no wonder.
Getting Republicans to agree on massive spending cuts while keeping the government running is like trying to thread a needle in a hurricane.
Every faction and caucus wants something different.
Arrington admitted he’s a "budget hawk" who believes "you can’t cut enough spending for me."
But he also recognizes the political reality that compromise is necessary to get anything done.
The debt-to-GDP ratio has reached World War II levels
The scope of America’s debt problem becomes clear when you look at the debt-to-GDP ratio.
This measures how much the country owes compared to how much it produces economically.
Right now, that ratio has reached World War II levels.
The difference is that during World War II, America was fighting for its very survival against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Today, the country is drowning in debt because politicians can’t say no to special interests and wasteful spending programs.
"You’ve got to work on both the numerator and denominator when it comes to our nation’s fiscal health," Arrington said. "I’m talking about debt-to-GDP, which is at World War II levels right now."
The reconciliation bill focuses primarily on spurring economic growth rather than just cutting spending.
"The major focus of this bill was on growth, with a minor focus on fiscal reforms," Arrington said.
The theory is that if the economy grows faster than the debt, the debt-to-GDP ratio will improve over time.
"If Trump does the job I believe he will and holds discretionary spending at least flat, that’s another $1.5 trillion in spending reduction," Arrington projected. "We are bending the curve on the deficit, overall with the reconciliation bill, absent tariff revenue, we bring the debt-to-GDP down by 10%, mainly because we’re going to be growing faster than we’re taking on debt or inflation."
Seniors face automatic 20% benefit cuts without action
Perhaps the most alarming revelation from Arrington was his warning about what happens if Congress fails to act.
Social Security and Medicare are on a collision course with insolvency.
The trust funds that support these programs are running out of money.
"We have eight years before our seniors in this country take a 20% cut, automatically," Arrington warned. "It’s going to happen if we don’t do something."
This isn’t some distant theoretical problem.
Current retirees and people nearing retirement are facing the very real prospect of having their benefits slashed by one-fifth.
That would be devastating for millions of Americans who have paid into these systems their entire working lives.
The only way to prevent this catastrophe is to reform these programs now while there’s still time.
But Democrats have shown zero interest in having an honest conversation about entitlement reform.
They would rather use scare tactics and demagoguery than work on real solutions.
Bipartisan cooperation used to be possible
When RealClearPolitics’ Carl Cannon asked about the shift toward strictly partisan votes on budgets, Arrington acknowledged the problem.
Cannon pointed out the "whipsaw effect when the House changes hands" and asked if it would be better to get bipartisan agreement from "40 or 50 people from each party."
"I love that question," Arrington responded.
He noted that budget reconciliation wasn’t always the partisan weapon it has become today.
"In the 50 years we’ve had this tool called budget reconciliation (which gives us a simple majority vote in the Senate, that’s the magic here), it has given the Democrats unilateral control to make decisions around budget matters. Now it gives us unilateral control," Arrington explained.
For the first half of reconciliation’s existence, it was often done on a bipartisan basis.
"Reconciliation, for the first half of the 50 years that it’s been in existence, was done on a bipartisan basis," Arrington said. "It was focused not on broad policy changes like Obamacare or sweeping tax reform, but was used to reconcile the House budget and the Senate budget in a way that reduced the deficit."
He acknowledged that both revenue increases and spending cuts were used back then.
"And they did it with revenue, to the chagrin of my Republican predecessors, and with spending cuts, to the chagrin of Democrat colleagues," Arrington noted.
But he also defended the current partisan approach as necessary.
"There’s a lot of probably partisan work that needs to be done, quite frankly, to reverse the trillions of dollars in spending from the previous administration. I make no apologies for that," he stated.
Arrington expressed hope that the country could return to bipartisan cooperation on fiscal issues.
"You’re right—we need to return to that, both in reconciliation and on these big deficits and unfunded liabilities within these very important entitlements that will not be sustainable if we don’t address them," he said.
The clock is ticking
When RealClearPolitics’ Tom Bevan asked the big question with a request for a "one-word answer: is the bill going to get done?" Arrington was confident.
"Yes," he answered. "By July 4."
But passing one bill, even a historic one, won’t solve America’s debt problem overnight.
As Arrington made clear, this is just the beginning of a long process that will take "years and decades" to complete.
The question is whether America’s political system has the will to make the tough choices necessary to avoid fiscal catastrophe.
Time is running out and the consequences of inaction are becoming more severe with each passing day.
