AMERICA'S PERFECT BUDGET STORM

Ralph Bristol

by Ralph Bristol, independent write-in candidate for Congress in Tennessee's 4th District - The tax and spending plans in today’s U.S. law would be sustainable, were it not for our perfect storm: Interest on past borrowing + the tax gap + fraud and overpayments.  A perfect storm can’t be stopped, but it can be survived.

In recent days, I have written columns and recorded videos describing and documenting, as closely as possible with the most reliable sources available, the tax gap in the U.S., the cost of fraud and over-payments, and the cost of servicing our debt.

• The latest documented tax gap was $696 billion

• Fraud and overpayments added up to $530 billion

• The latest year’s interest on the debt was $970 billion. (We’ve paid $827 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year. It will be over $1 trillion by the end of the year.

Together, the three elements of our perfect storm are as large as this year’s deficit, which will top $2 trillion. You can’t defeat a perfect storm. You have to survive it. 

Even the most heroic efforts will make only a small dent in the tax gap, fraud, and over-payments
(waste).  Every politician swears to fight against fraud and deficits, and everyone loses that fight. The war on crime, the war on drugs and the war on fraud and waste are all noble, but their victories always have been and shall always be shallow.

To survive this perfect storm that is slowly at first, and one day, suddenly, destroying our nation’s fiscal house, we all must make some sacrifices, and the sooner we start, the smaller those sacrifices need be.  If we wait until the fiscal house crumbles, the cost will be much higher. 

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

That means we have to accept less, not more, help from the government, especially in the areas of health care and income security.  

The plans offered by Democrats, and especially the insurgent DSA wing of the Democratic Party, would rapidly accelerate the rate of destruction of our fiscal house. Piling the cost of everyone’s healthcare, childcare, college education and housing to the already huge deficit would be more weight than the borrowing power of even the richest country in the world would be able to bear. 

The only Republican plan is to stop Democrats from being elected, but in order to do that, they are also offering more, not less, help from the government. Both parties give lip-service to the deficit from time to time, but the solutions they offer are whimsical, nonsensical, or both, and even they are sparce, compared to the expensive things they promise, and often deliver. 

It will be extremely unpopular to inform the general population about the nature of U.S. government finances and the only plausible deterrent to a debt crisis, but somebody’s got to do it.  The perfect storm has formed. There is no stopping it, but we can survive it. 

It will require a fairly extended period of austerity, which will impact some people more than others, but Americans are still fairly philanthropic and will help those who need it most, especially those who need it through no fault of their own.  

Voluntary austerity will necessitate Congress and the president first admitting to and clearly explaining the need, and then implementing moderate reductions in the financial help the federal government gives us, partly through the tax code but mostly with direct spending on healthcare and income security, by far the largest elements of government spending. 

Noone wants to do that. Politicians don’t want to do it because they know you will hate and/or fear it. Some of you will protest, some may even riot.  Many politicians who vote for austerity will be voted out of office. That scenario has played out, and is playing out, in many other countries. Those countries have already experienced the debt crisis looming over us, and are still trying to recover. Those countries all waited until the world would no longer loan them money before they acted, making the recovery much more difficult.

The U.S. needs to act before that happens.  U.S. debt is no longer the most secure debt in the world. The U.S. no longer holds a top-tier rating from any of the three major agencies — a handful of other countries (Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, a few others) still carry AAA/Aaa ratings from all three.

Our Treasury Department will have refinanced about $9.7 trillion in maturing securities during fiscal year 2026. That's up from $9.1 trillion refinanced in FY2025. Because our debt has become less secure, the bond market has raised interest rates, even though the Fed has delayed raising the one short-term rate it controls.  As the government finances that nearly $10 trillion in debt this year, it is doing so at higher interest rates than the 2% it was able to enjoy while it was piling up most of the debt in the early part of the 21st century. 

Sooner or later, our government will issue some austerity measures, the least popular thing for any government to do.  It usually involves both spending cuts on healthcare and income security, and tax increases on most middle and upper-income earners. Tax increases produce more layoffs, so most of the austerity must come on the spending side, from healthcare and income security, to have any chance of fixing the fiscal house.

We can do that voluntarily, before the debt crisis, or we can be forced to do it by a debt crisis. With the latter, the austerity measures will have to cut deeper than if we do it voluntarily before a debt crisis. 

WRITE-IN RALPH

I am offering myself as an independent write-in candidate for Congress in the 4th district of Tennessee, as a way to try to introduce this unpopular truth into the campaign in at least one of the nation’s 435 congressional districts, in hopes that more people running for Congress will be asked to discuss it, and challenged to discuss it honestly. 

I was tempted to call it an “inconvenient truth,” but it’s more than inconvenient. The sacrifices necessary to put our federal government back on a sustainable fiscal track will require more than a little inconvenience for a lot of people. Inconvenience is substituting McDonald’s coffee for Starbucks. Sacrifice is giving up both and brewing coffee at home, stocking up when it’s half-price, or maybe even giving up coffee altogether. 

Nobody wants austerity. I don’t want austerity, but our federal budget – borrowing nearly 30 cents of every dollar we spend – running up a $40 trillion debt with just interest on the debt topping $1 trillion this year - forces me to prescribe it to defend against something worse.  

When our government is forced, either by the belated admission of the advancing perfect storm or by the arrival of the storm, nearly every person and business in America will have less buying power. I suggest you prepare for that, best you can.

The irresponsible budgeting that has taken place in the first quarter of the 21st century has left us with a problem that far too few people will be willing to face until the storm arrives.  Multiple forecasters have warned us that the storm is arriving, although no-one can say when. So, the vast majority of Americans will ignore the warning, and the most likely outcome is that a debt crisis will do what politicians refused to do -- force a much fiercer form of austerity, in the form of either deep spending cuts, tax increases, runaway inflation that shrinks buying power, or all of the above, and while the storm is building slowly, when it hits, it will be nearly instant, leaving you no time to prepare.

The time to cut spending, moderately, on healthcare and income security, is now – in all government programs, regardless of their clientele, from the richest to the poorest, the oldest to the youngest. That’s not a popular message on which to run a campaign for Congress, but like I said, somebody’s got to do it, so I am. 

If you believe this is an important truth that needs wider distribution, please follow me on Facebook or X.  Please share or repost some of my videos or essays, and if you live in the 4th Congressional district, please write in my name, Ralph Bristol, instead of voting for one of the major party candidates.  Every vote counts for something, and if you vote for me, it will count for truth about our federal budgeting. 

Thank you.

Ralph Bristol is the former long-time morning talk radio host broadcasting on Supertalk 99.7 WTN. He was one of the less provocative and bombastic of conservative radio personalities, more thoughtful and grounded in conservative ideas. He left talk radio in 2018 and retired. He lives in Nashville. 

Top Stories