The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates that, this year, 2024, the U.S. federal government will spend more on interest on the national debt than on national defense. Or Medicare.

You read that correctly.

The CBO says that the federal government will spend $850 billion on defense, as opposed to $870 billion on debt interest. Moreover, interest payments on the national debt are the fastest-growing part of the preposterously bloated yet still fast-growing federal budget … and are projected to reach a mind-blowing $5.4 trillion by 2053.

So, effectively, taxpayers are going to have their hard-earned money confiscated to pay $870 billion for nothing.

Less than nothing, actually.

In a better world, Americans would be able to collectively sue their government for swindling or malfeasance, if not treason. It’s one thing to spend one’s own money like a drunken sailor on shore leave, quite another to spend other people’s money in the same profligate manner. To endlessly spend even more of other people’s money because you’ve already spent too much of their money should be a crime. In a saner world, those responsible would at least be held accountable and be removed from office.

Yet many — if not most — of us, not to mention illegally present foreigners, are on the take. This lends more power to those in government. Therefore, only a literal handful of politicians in Washington have the courage and integrity to face the debt … and talk honestly about it. Any politician, typically a conservative Republican, who does appear to speak seriously of cutting spending, especially entitlement spending, is immediately portrayed by Democrats and their sycophants in the mainstream media as being “heartless,” or, bizarrely, even “greedy.”

About that characterization, Thomas Sowell, as usual, was spot on in noting, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

Another Thomas, Jefferson, in this case, perfectly summed up our choices nearly 250 years ago: “To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”

Sadly, at this point, servitude seems the likely winner.

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