From $14 trillion to $40 trillion in 15 years: Sen Budget Chair Johnson ready to stare down crisis

Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson stepped into the role of Senate Budget Committee chairman in the most trying of times – he was replacing close friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, who had suddenly passed in July, and about a month into the job he was thrust into the task of trying to rein in a record federal debt of $40 trillion. 

"It's wrong. It's immoral. It's got to stop," he said Tuesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast about the rising debt.

The debt has climbed from $14 trillion to more than $40 trillion in just 15 years, and projections put average annual deficits at $2.6 trillion over the next decade, which would drive the total past $60 trillion in the next decade.

The $26 trillion increase in the national debt has taken place in just the time Johnson has been in office.

"We were 14 trillion dollars in debt back then," Johnson continued. "Now we're 40 trillion. People like me are vastly outnumbered.

The next sessions' heavy debt load

While mourning the loss of Graham, he still said in August after being named to the post: "Lindsey Graham. He was a true American patriot, and he will be sorely missed. As chairman for the remainder of the year, I intend to maximize this opportunity to define the fiscal challenge we face."

Johnson has long sounded the alarm when it comes to America's debt. He told Just The News that his parents bought their first home for $11,000, but that's unfathomable in today's economy. 

"One dollar you held in 1998 is only worth half as much, less than 50 cents today. 2019 one dollar you held back then, it's like 79 cents last time I looked. It keeps devaluing every month, and so that's what I always call the chronic debt crisis," Johnson warned.

Each political party has its own ideas about how to fix the debt crisis, with varying versions of those solutions within each party. However, the two sides generally agree that cutting spending would take the biggest slice out of the current $40.1 trillion in national debt. 

Stabilizing the debt at current levels would require about $9.5 trillion to $10 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates, through slower growth in Social Security and Medicare, tighter discretionary caps, and higher revenues. 

The Congressional Budget Office projects deficits averaging more than $2 trillion a year without those changes. The GAO (Government Accountability Office) says delay only increases the eventual tax hikes or benefit cuts needed. That would demand a bipartisan package of specific, scored policies rather than general promises.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Johnson has an idea to force a spending decrease using plain financial figures to convince his peers – limiting federal spending to a percentage of Gross Domestic Product to where it matches revenue. 

"The only thing I can think of is what I've been proposing since I got here," he said

"For the last 70 years, no matter how much we try and punish success with top marginal tax rates as high as 90%, our average revenue we collect is about 17.3%. So you have to recognize that's the reality. That's all that income earners are going to subject their income to is 17, 18% tax, which means you had better bring spending under control down to 18% as well."

Republicans and Democrats, different sides of the big-spending coin

The national debt remained under $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 but more than doubled during his two terms amid tax cuts and higher defense outlays, Treasury historical figures show. 

Republicans have long billed themselves as the party of fiscal restraint, from Reagan-era “starve the beast” rhetoric through the Tea Party. Yet the debt also jumped from about $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion under George W. Bush on tax cuts and two wars and rose nearly $8 trillion in Donald Trump’s first term. 

Democrats produced comparable increases under their presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, including stimulus and COVID-19 pandemic spending, so both parties share responsibility for the climb past $14 trillion in the early 2010s to more than $40 trillion today.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Amanda Head is the White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.