The United States House of Representatives passed a Republican budget resolution on February 25 calling for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years. The Senate has not yet approved this resolution. If adopted, it would boost border and defense spending while slashing Medicare, Medicaid and welfare spending. The resolution would also increase the debt ceiling by $4 trillion to compensate for the fact that its tax cuts are $2.5 trillion greater than its spending cuts.

Every House Democrat opposed this resolution, mainly because they did not want to see Medicare, Medicaid and welfare cut. Meanwhile, one lone Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, opposed the resolution because he did not want to see taxes cut so dramatically. In a post on X, Massie said, “The gop budget extends the five-year tax holiday we’ve been enjoying, but because it doesn’t cut spending much, it increases the deficit by over $300 billion per year compared to letting tax cuts expire. Over 10 years, this budget will add $20 trillion to U.S. debt.”

Representative Massie wears a lapel pin displaying the total federal debt constantly ticking up. He is a lone voice in the House of Representatives taking the threat of U.S. bankruptcy seriously. Many Republicans support the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to cut government waste only so they can simultaneously cut taxes and boost military spending. These Republicans are not taking the national debt seriously.

The U.S. government has run only five budget surpluses in the past 60 years, so balancing the federal budget should be one of Congress’s highest priorities. This means Republicans must not cut taxes more than they cut spending. If the nation keeps running trillion-dollar deficits, it may go bankrupt within five years.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this month, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, warned that the U.S. would suffer a financial “heart attack” if its debt problem was not tackled soon. Specifically, Ray Dalio told Tucker that “debt accumulates like plaque” in a financial system. Therefore, the government will go into cardiac arrest if it does not cut its deficit in half in the next few years.

This is an apt analogy. If credit is the lifeblood of the economy, debt is indeed like plaque in the arteries. Once this layer of plaque gets thick enough, every new dollar the U.S. borrows will go toward paying interest on the national debt.

Consider America’s current situation. Last year, $8.9 trillion in government debt came due. So the federal government borrowed another $10.7 trillion. It used $8.9 trillion of this borrowed money to pay the minimum balance on its $36 trillion debt and had $1.8 trillion left over to cover its 2024 budget deficit. This refinancing process went smoothly, but another $9.2 trillion in government debt will come due this year.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that America’s deficit in 2025 will be $1.9 trillion. So the government will need to sell $11.1 trillion worth of treasury bonds this year to pay the minimum balance on its debt and finance its new deficit. This cycle of debt can only go on for so long before disaster strikes.

In 2024, total interest costs on the national debt totaled $881 billion. That accounts for 48 percent of the government’s $1.8 trillion deficit. If debt is plaque in the arteries, America’s superior vena cava is half-clogged.

This is why Dalio says the nation is at risk of a financial heart attack. If the U.S. doesn’t cut its deficit, the supply of government bonds will outstrip demand, interest rates will spike, and every new dollar America borrows will go toward interest. No one wants to buy treasury bonds from a nation as indebted as America.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has provided America with a way to reduce its deficit and avoid cardiac arrest, but Republican lawmakers are squandering this once-in-a-lifetime chance on tax cuts.

After years of Bidenflation, many Americans desperately want tax cuts, but any budget that adds $300 billion to the annual deficit is an existential threat to America. Many people do not want to hear this truth, but even if Musk can slash $1 trillion in spending from the government’s annual budget, Congress would still need to raise taxes by $1 trillion to balance its budget. America must start paying off the principal on its debt.

The Bible says, “The wicked borrows, and cannot pay back …” (Psalm 37:21; Revised Standard Version). It also says, “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children …” (Proverbs 13:22). This means America’s national debt is not just unsustainable. It is sinful. American leaders are enriching themselves and their constituents by saddling the next generation with debt and robbing them of their inheritance.

To learn more, read “Why the Trumpet Watches America’s Economic Collapse.”