The national debt has blown past $40 trillion, the U.S. is bogged down in a six-month war with Iran that has sent oil prices surging more than 30 percent, and the only thing both parties can agree on is forcing ordinary Americans to foot the bill.
The math is brutal and the stakes are direct: every dollar borrowed by Washington competes with your mortgage rate, your grocery bill, and your children's future. Yields on some U.S. bonds have hit their highest levels in nearly two decades, meaning the government is paying more just to service its debt — and those costs track straight to your interest rates.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it plainly: "There is no scenario in which one could look at the record of President Trump in both this term and the previous term, and declare it a fiscal success." HuffPost, which carried the Reuters report, framed the debt as primarily Trump's failure. NPR buried the fiscal angle entirely, focusing instead on battlefield dynamics and Iranian retaliation strikes on Gulf states. POLITICO ignored the debt altogether, zeroing in on Republican infighting over data centers.
Here is what actually connects the dots: Trump's first-term tax cuts added $8.4 trillion in debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. His second-term tax and immigration law added another $4.7 trillion, per the Congressional Budget Office. The six-month Iran war has become what NPR described as "an expensive stalemate," with Brent crude oil climbing to roughly $95 a barrel — up more than 30 percent since the war started. Iran's currency is collapsing; the rial hit another record low. Neither side can sustain this indefinitely, analysts say, but neither side is backing down.
Meanwhile, the bipartisan spending machine keeps humming. The White House insists Trump is the "first president to seriously take on pervasive waste, fraud, and abuse," citing federal worker firings and eliminated programs. But the annual deficit shrank only marginally in 2025, and the overall debt kept climbing.
Both parties built this. Tax cuts under Reagan and Bush widened deficits. Bush-era wars added trillions. Obama and Biden ran up stimulus spending. Clinton is the only recent president to post a surplus — and that required a Republican Congress and a booming economy.
Then there is the corporate welfare. POLITICO reported that Trump took to Truth Social to declare that anyone who doesn't want data centers in their community "want to end up being backwards and poor." Vulnerable House Republicans pushed back hard in a closed-door meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson. Rep. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, fighting for re-election, said his communities "know what they want to live next to." Rep. Brett Guthrie is pushing the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require data centers to cover the grid upgrades they demand. Johnson is noncommittal. Majority Leader Steve Scalise suggested opposition to data centers might be "fueled by China" — a convenient way to dismiss constituents watching their utility rates climb.
Budget experts warn the fiscal crunch will eventually force politically painful choices: raise taxes or cut Social Security and Medicare. The trust funds are already running thin as baby boomers retire. HuffPost noted that possibility; NPR and POLITICO didn't mention it.
The permanent class in Washington — the lobbyists, the consultants, the think-tank voices — has no incentive to fix this. They profit from the spending. The revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street ensures that today's committee staffer is tomorrow's corporate lobbyist, and nobody is ever held to account for the bill they're leaving your grandchildren.
November's midterms will test whether voters have had enough. The question is whether either party will offer anything beyond the same promises they've already broken.
