America’s Debt Crisis: “Two Minutes to Midnight”

The stewardship of a single life is not the only stewardship at stake in Washington right now — so, increasingly, is the stewardship of the nation’s finances. The Debt Default Clock, a public fiscal-warning gauge modeled on the famous Doomsday Clock, was just moved to two minutes to midnight — the closest it has ever stood to the point its review committee defines as a national fiscal crisis.

The number driving the move is simple enough to grasp without an economics degree: for every new dollar the federal government borrows, roughly 66 cents now goes straight to paying interest on debt it has already run up. Interest costs are now one of the largest line items in the federal budget, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, and are on pace to exceed defense spending.

“When two-thirds of every new dollar borrowed disappears into interest payments, you are no longer financing the future — you are financing the past,” said Baker Spring, who chairs the committee behind the Clock. The committee’s assessment is built on twelve objective fiscal tests; the country is now failing eight of the twelve, and a ninth is expected to fall soon. The committee was careful to note the trajectory isn’t locked in — slower spending growth, stronger economic growth, and reined-in borrowing could still move the Clock back from the brink.

That warning echoes a much older one. “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender,” Proverbs 22:7 tells us — a caution that applies to nations as much as households. And Proverbs 13:22 describes a good man as one who “leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children,” the very opposite of a government financing yesterday’s spending at the expense of generations not yet born. This isn’t a call for despair; it’s a call to watchfulness and intercession — praying for wisdom and courage among our leaders as they face hard fiscal choices, and remembering that faithful citizenship means holding our elected officials accountable for the kind of nation we hand down to those who come after us.

Find out more at: debtdefaultclock.us