With inflation still at 40-year-highs, rising interest rates and continued out-of-control federal spending, Americans are just starting to feel the pain of our government’s irresponsible decisions.
During a rare television interview this week with CNN, President Joe Biden had difficulty pinpointing just how much the misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act would contribute to fighting climate change.
He said it would spur something around “a billion a trillion $750 million dollars billion dollars off the sidelines in investment.”
A bit of a head scratcher.
Yet that confusion is reminiscent of what I feel when I (a humble English major) try to wrap my head around a number as large as $31 trillion.
That’s what our gross national debt topped last week, a record high for the country, and one we should all be concerned about.
Here’s why.
Economy keeps tanking
With inflation still at 40-year-highs, rising interest rates and continued out-of-control federal spending, Americans are just starting to feel the pain of our government’s years of irresponsible decisions.
High inflation is sticking around. In September, consumer prices rose 8.2% from the year before – a slight decrease from August but higher than predicted. The scarier figure is the annual increase in core prices (which excludes more volatile food and energy costs). They hit a 40-year high of 6.6%.
To combat this trend, the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates – and is expected to raise them even higher in the coming months.
That doesn’t affect only our pocketbooks. Higher rates also make our national debt much harder to keep in check.
Since January, the debt has risen by $1 trillion. In the past five years, it has grown nearly $7 trillion. Since Biden took office, he has approved nearly $5 trillion in new deficits. Those numbers are hard to comprehend.
