{"id":291018,"date":"2025-11-14T11:32:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T11:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/291018\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T11:32:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T11:32:23","slug":"legendary-dc-diplomat-feels-like-paul-revere-about-the-38-trillion-national-debt-the-crisis-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/291018\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary DC diplomat feels ‘like Paul Revere’ about the $38 trillion national debt: ‘The crisis is coming!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Haass has spent<\/a> four decades in Washington advising presidents, representing the U.S. abroad, and warning Congress about global threats. But these days, the veteran diplomat says the most dangerous crisis facing America isn\u2019t coming from Russia, China, or the Middle East.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s coming from inside the country: the ugly, festering $38 trillion national debt he says is undermining U.S. strength.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou feel a little bit like Paul Revere\u2014except instead of the British coming, the crisis is coming,\u201d Haass told Fortune in an exclusive interview. \u201cIt\u2019s a slow-motion crisis. We\u2019re already paying a significant price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a longtime national security official, is one of several experts contributing to a new series of debt-focused essays<\/a> published by the Peterson Foundation. His argument is simple: America\u2019s debt is no longer just an economic challenge. It is a national security problem, and one Washington is refusing to confront.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the paper<\/a>, Haass and coauthor Carolyn Kissane<\/a> lay out numbers that are hard to look away from: The U.S. now carries $38 trillion in federal debt, equal to roughly 125% of GDP. Annual deficits hover near $2 trillion. And interest costs have exploded, hitting roughly $1 trillion last year, more than the country spent on its military.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already a national security crisis,\u201d Haass told Fortune. \u201cServicing the debt crowds out more productive uses of national resources. You don\u2019t need a bond market collapse to have a crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those pressures, he argues, are constraining U.S. strategy. With Russia advancing, China modernizing, and conflicts simmering across the Middle East, Haass says defense spending may need to rise, not fall\u2014and soon. Yet, the political appetite for military investments is shrinking as debt dominates the fiscal picture and populist tendencies make $2,000 revenue checks <\/a>or rent control<\/a> more popular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt becomes very hard to drum up support for what\u2019s needed globally when people say, \u2018We\u2019re already deeply in debt. We can\u2019t afford it,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThe debt is already limiting American options.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u2018slow-motion\u2019 crisis that could still become a sudden one<\/p>\n

Haass described two possible futures. The first is dramatic: he calls it the \u201ccliff\u201d scenario, a sudden loss of market confidence like the UK\u2019s 2022 meltdown<\/a>, when unfunded tax cuts triggered a massive bond-market selloff and led to the resignation of PM Liz Truss. In the U.S., he warns, that could be sparked by a failed Treasury auction, political chaos, or even geopolitical coercion, such as Beijing dumping U.S. debt to pressure Washington during a Taiwan crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think China could weaponize its Treasuries,\u201d he said. \u201cThey would pay a financial price. But if you\u2019re Xi Jinping and your legacy is Taiwan, I think he\u2019d pay that price.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second scenario\u2014the one Haass believes we\u2019re living in now\u2014is quieter but still dangerous. Debt rises year after year, crowding out domestic investment, squeezing defense budgets, and thus weakening U.S. leverage abroad. Federal agencies responsible for cybersecurity, infrastructure, public health, and counterextremism face pressure to cut costs\u2014as they did during DOGE, which experts estimate<\/a> could cost taxpayers $135 billion this year in lost tax collections and productivity\u2013while interest costs consume more of the budget.<\/p>\n

\u201c[W]e are guilty of spending our rainy-day fund in sunny weather,\u201d Haass and Kissane wrote in the paper.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The political problem nobody wants to touch<\/p>\n

Like other economists<\/a>, Haas believes the obstacle isn\u2019t some economic reform; it\u2019s political.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be extraordinarily difficult\u201d to do what needs to be done to reduce the debt, he admits. Entitlement reform\u2014in other words, making changes to Social Security or Medicare\u2014is politically toxic. Tax increases are radioactive. And Washington remains locked in shutdown brinkmanship, just coming off the longest government shutdown in history,<\/a> a testament to how polarized the nation is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, he argues a feasible package exists: means-testing Social Security, gradually raising the retirement age, adjusting the COLA formula that informs those entitlement benefits, restoring IRS staffing, and lifting the corporate tax rate modestly. The aim isn\u2019t to eliminate the debt, he says, but to bend the curve so debt grows more slowly than GDP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s required is not unrealistic,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just need to change the trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes a bipartisan commission may ultimately be the only workable path.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCommissions exist to insulate the process from the politics,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may take a coalition of the willing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Haass has spent four decades in Washington advising presidents, representing the U.S. abroad, and warning Congress about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4592,28,144,3055,12,2421,119997,2928,733,3998,26483],"class_list":["post-291018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bonds","tag-business","tag-china","tag-debt","tag-donald-trump","tag-federal-government","tag-federal-government-shutdown","tag-national-debt","tag-social-security","tag-taiwan","tag-taiwan-semiconductor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}