By Joe Penland
Monday, 17 November 2025 03:43 PM EST
The recent government shutdown inflicted a great deal of hardship nationally. Federal workers — including military personnel, air traffic controllers, and law enforcement officers — went unpaid. Millions of Americans relying on SNAP benefits faced the prospect of not having food, and small businesses that depend on federal contracts struggled with economic losses. Yet, as disruptive as the shutdown was, it was the tip of the iceberg when compared to the long-term fiscal crisis looming over the United States. We have a national debt exceeding $38 trillion and a Social Security Trust Fund on track to be depleted in the 2032-2033 timeframe. The shutdown, although painful, was temporary. A debt crisis would be long-lasting and could trigger a global depression far worse than the Great Depression that began in 1929, and didn’t begin to end until 1941. According to economists, the shutdown costs the U.S. economy up to $16 billion per week. It can only be hoped that many of these effects will be reversed now that workers are receiving back pay and economic activity begins to rebound.
Unlike the shutdown, the national debt threat continues to worsen. In 2024, interest payments on the debt surpassed the entire defense budget. They have already approached almost $1 trillion annually, consuming more federal resources than any discretionary budget item. This is not a temporary disruption — it’s a structural threat. As interest payments grow, they crowd out funding for essential programs like Social Security, Medicare, and national defense. The government becomes less able to respond to emergencies, invest in infrastructure, or support vulnerable populations.
The Social Security Trust Fund is another ticking time bomb. Without reform, it’s projected to be depleted within the next decade. When that happens, benefits could be slashed by up to 23%, affecting 80 million retirees, disabled Americans, and survivors. The pain of a missed SNAP payment during a shutdown is severe, but the pain of a retiree potentially losing a fourth of their retirement income would be devastating. For many, Social Security is the primary or sole source of income in old age, and its collapse would plunge millions into poverty and destabilize entire communities.
The political theater surrounding the shutdown was a distraction from this deeper crisis. Some argue the shutdown was a tactic to obstruct President Trump’s agenda. Others saw it as a failure of bipartisan cooperation. Regardless of motive, the focus on short-term brinkmanship always obscures the long-term danger. As Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, recently warned, “It’s not a lack of ideas, it’s just a lack of political will to move on these things, because nobody seems to care about what is now a $38 trillion debt.”
If the U.S. ever reaches a point where it cannot make interest payments on its debt, the consequences would be dire. Credit markets would panic. The dollar could lose its status as the world’s reserve currency. Federal payments (including salaries, benefits, and contracts) could be delayed or default. The ripple effects would devastate global markets and erode trust in American institutions. This is not just a hypothetical scenario, but a trajectory we’re already on. The debt has nearly doubled in the past decade, rising $15 trillion since 2020. It’s increasing by $1 trillion every few months, and unlike a shutdown, which ended with a single vote, a debt spiral is much harder to reverse. The question is, what can be done about this? My friend, former comptroller general of the United States, Dave Walker, has put forth several ideas. One of these is a fiscal responsibility amendment to the Constitution which would limit the growth of federal spending and debt relative to our GDP under ordinary circumstances. This would force both current and future Congresses to face spending realities as they work on the budget each year.
We must also fix Social Security, so the main trust fund doesn’t become depleted. To do this, we must all push Congress and President Trump to follow a precedent set by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Reagan established a bipartisan commission that made recommendations to extend the solvency of Social Security. These recommendations were ultimately adopted by Congress and resulted in extending the solvency of the program by over half a century.
