The U.S. Government’s Debt: Federalism Unbalanced

On May 5, 2025, the debt of the U.S. Government stood at $36.21 trillion, $28.9 trillion being held by the public and $7.31 trillion being intragovernmental. That total is $1.66 trillion more than the total federal public debt on May 5, 2024. Projected interest payments of $952 billion in fiscal year 2025 would be 8 percent higher than the interest payments made in 2024. By comparison, the U.S. budget for national defense in fiscal year 2025 totaled $892.6 billion. Whether going to investors of treasury bonds or defense contractors and other corporations, the combined $1.85 trillion for fiscal 2025 represents a transfer payment to the wealthy from American taxpayers rich, middle-class, and poor. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in May, 2025 that would subject Medicaid and food assistance to significantly less money and subject the States with having to spend more on the administration of those programs. Principles of political ideology reside just below the surface. My task here is to flush them out and relate them to each other, rather than to impose my own ideology.

The full essay is at "The U.S. Government's Debt."

On the U.S. Government’s Budget Deficits and Debt: American Democracy Unhinged

It is true that a government’s budget can be read as a blueprint of priorities in terms of what is valued, and what is not so highly valued. The blueprint itself, as a whole, also evinces a priority in terms of values. As the big-ticket items, such as large spending categories and massive tax-cuts, get the most attention, whether a budget is in balance can go by the wayside, and what that says about the electorate (and thus the state of democracy) can easily be missed. Ultimately, public policy and even the votes of the elected representatives point back to the popular sovereign, the People—more specifically, the electorate, and its values. By 2024, the deficit and accumulated debt of the U.S. Government had reached such gigantic numbers that something could be said to be amiss concerning those values. The underlying culprit, which can be said to be an illness that is human, all too human, had by then infected American democracy beyond the wherewithal of virtually any elected federal representative to enunciate well enough that the electorate could look clearly at itself, and thus size itself up beyond the partial diagnoses that can be found in partisan attacks.

The full essay is at "U.S. Government Deficits and Debt."

The European Union at Risk: The German High Court Undercuts the European Court of Justice on the Role of the European Central Bank

If a dispute between an E.U. state and the European Central Bank (ECB) on one of its programmes could come to challenge the European Court of Justice (ECJ) itself and the very sustainability of the E.U.’s federal system, then that system itself could be said to be severely impaired, and thus facing a high risk of being destroyed.  Yet in the Judgment of the Second Senate of May 5, 2020, the constitutional court of Germany did exactly that in throwing out an earlier ruling of the E.U.’s supreme court (ECJ) on the legality under E.U. law of an ECB programme.[1]

(Source: Politico)

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1. BVerfG, Judgment of the Second Senate of 05 May 2020 – 2 BvR 859/15-, paras. (1-237).

On the Role of Socialism in American Political Polarization

In a stunning upset in the 2012 Republican U.S. Senate primary in Indiana, Indiana's Treasurer, Richard Mourdock, beat incumbant veteran Richard Lugar by 22 percent (61-39%). Even though Lugar's 36 years of experience in the Senate had seasoned him into a statesman in foreign policy, the Tea-Party-backed Mourdock was able to portray the aged senator as out of touch and too willing to compromise with Democrats. Mourdock had no intention of extending any hand across the aisle. Is such polarization worth the loss of experience in international relations? Moreover, what role ave worries of socialism perpetuated the polarization?

See: "On the Role of Socialism on Polarization."

The Payroll Tax Cut: A Luxury?

As U.S. deficits and thus the federal government's debt had been increasing since the Clinton Administration in the late 1990s, proposals for a payroll tax-cut entailed risking the financial condition of the U.S. Government. To be sure, increasing government spending above inflation was risky too. Here, though, tax policy as it relates to deficits, and thus debt, is analyzed. 

The full essay is at "The Payroll Tax Cut."

The Debt-Ceiling Disaster Flick, Hollywood-Style

During the last two weeks of July 2011, the American media was focused on the debt-ceiling negotiations. In the midst of a summer with plenty of natural distractions, an increasing number of Americans were cluing in to find their federal government at a stalemate as the clock ticked to a possible economic catastrophe said to begin on 12:01am on August 3, 2011. The U.S. Treasury department had estimated that it would run out of ways to make up for the lack of additional borrowing authority on August 2^nd.  To the media, that meant a clock ticking down to 12 midnight. In actuality, tax revenues were up so the actual date was said to be around August 10^th. In any case, the U.S. would not implode at precisely 12:01am on August 3^rd by any account, yet that made better drama, which in turn increased viewership.

The full essay is at "The Debt-Ceiling."

In Defense of the Tea Party

In the wake of the U.S. House’s “Tea Party” caucus in the Republican caucus on July 28, 2011, which effectively delayed the Speaker’s bill for raising the debt ceiling, it might be useful to row against the current for a moment if only to present a defense of the Tea Party’s agenda. To be sure, problems exist in it, but a defense can be made. I submit that the media has not been particularly accurate, or fair, concerning the movement or its involvement in the U.S. Government.

The full essay is at "In Defense of the Tea Party."

Presiding over a Debt Precipice: President Obama of the U.S.

In the context of a rapidly approaching deadline on increasing the ceiling on U.S. Government debt, Barak Obama found himself rebuffing pressure from anti-tax “Tea Party” Republicans in the U.S. House while needing enough non-partisan credibility for his warning of an impending economic catastrophe to be believed by the citizenry and Congress. That is to say, Obama’s failure to stand back as the Democrats and Republicans in Congress duked it out on spending cuts and tax increases mitigated his stature or credibility as Presider in Chief. An editorial in the New York Times refers to this role of the president as "the utimate guardian of the constitutional order."[1] To preside is to be oriented to the viability of the whole. This means stepping in when the system itself is at risk. Partisan involvement compromises the ability to function in a failsafe capacity, as the "ultimate guardian."

The full essay is at "Presiding over a Debt Precipice."

1, Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule, "Obama Should Raise the Debt Ceiling on His Own," New York Times (July 22, 2011). 

Risking Default of the U.S. Government: Other Priorities

In mid July 2011, as several of the American states were in the midst of a heat-wave, the showdown on the debt-ceiling was becoming hot in Washington, D.C. The “heat index” on default was steadily rising with no end in sight. The refusal of republican representatives in the U.S. House to automatically increase the debt-ceiling had prompted unprecedented attention on what had been treated hitherto as a “housekeeping matter” of the U.S. Government. The attention can be referred to as a “fiscal moment.” Whereas a “constitutional moment” is one in which a citizenry’s attention is momentarily galvanized on a particular constitutional question, a “fiscal moment” is a window wherein heightened popular attention of the citizenry enables a societal recognition of what had been vaguely understood and recognized as a long-standing fiscal tendency or pattern.

The full essay is at "Risking Default: The U.S. Government."

Amid Record Bonuses Goldman Sachs Enabled Greek Debt

The person who has the gold makes the rules.  I suspect this is the operating mantra at Goldman Sachs even after the bank’s near-death experience (when Solomon Bros stock was taking a hit, Blankfein knew his bank could be next).  As it turns out, the bank was involved in enabling Greece to stealthily spend beyond its means. Just after Greece had been admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means. Additionally, in late November, 2009— three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in Athens with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting. The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.[1]

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.  

1. Louise Story, Landon Thomas, Jr., and Nelson D. Schartz, “Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis,” The New York Times, February 13, 2010.