Most Americans have heard that we currently have a national debt of about $39 trillion and that we are continually adding about $2 trillion in budget deficits per year to that debt.

However, many Americans don’t realize that this is just the tip of the iceberg of our financial problems.

We also have about $97 trillion in committed but currently unfunded future liabilities, according to long-term projections.

If these commitments are honored, the total of our debt and future liabilities is about $136 trillion. The primary components of the massive future liability are unfunded federal employee pensions and benefits and unfunded Medicare and Social Security benefit payments. These commitments are due over a relatively long time frame, but because we continually run large yearly budget deficits, very limited funds are actually directed toward covering these future liabilities.

We just continue to borrow at record levels and “kick the debt can down the road.”

A major contributing issue to the yearly budget deficits is that America continues to squander a major portion of its wealth (and the lives of its young people) on countless foreign wars and on wasteful spending for the powerful U.S. military-industrial complex. The U.S. defense industry essentially controls many politicians and spends millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep the trillions flowing from Washington, D.C., to it.

During the past few decades, we have spent much of our money on wars and military hardware and not on our own people and our domestic issues.

President Donald Trump said he would put an end to this wasteful cycle and put America first, but, like the other recent presidents before him, he lied.

Charles Painter

West Lampeter Township

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