Dear editor,<\/p>\n
$3 billion per day.<\/p>\n
That is how much interest our $40 trillion national debt costs taxpayers, according to the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Interest payments do not repair roads, fund healthcare, care for veterans, educate our young, or fund national defense. Interest simply piles on the already historically high national debt, costing us even more interest than ever.\u00a0We get nothing in return. Interest is now one of the largest federal budget categories, larger than our national defense budget.<\/p>\n
In January 2025, total national debt was approximately $36 trillion.\u00a0As of Aug. 13, 2026, it reached $39,934,816,207,844.37, according to Debt to the Penny,\u00a0fiscaldata.treasury.gov<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n We do not have to be economists to know we are headed in the wrong direction.\u00a0Why?\u00a0Because the majority in Congress voted for a federal budget that collects less in tax revenue than it spends, causing a significant annual deficit that it finances by borrowing money.<\/p>\n This structural deficit was built into the budget, with some calling this \u201cbudget\u201d a fraud perpetrated on the American people.\u00a0The budget defies commonsense.\u00a0 It is unsustainable.<\/p>\n Any congressman who approved this arrangement deserves to be out of office and cannot be trusted again.<\/p>\n Does anyone want their tax dollars to go to paying billions in interest on unsustainable debt?\u00a0Or to pay the salaries of the officials who cooked up this scheme?\u00a0Taxpayers have an obligation to vote against any candidate who failed to reject this preposterous debt exploding budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n Coleen Kennedy of Wausau<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note: Wausau Pilot & Review gladly publishes commentary from readers, residents and candidates for local offices. The views of readers and columnists are independent of this newspaper and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wausau Pilot & Review. To submit, email [email\u00a0protected]<\/a> or mail to 500 N. Third St., Suite 208-8, Wausau, Wis. 54403.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear editor, $3 billion per day. That is how much interest our $40 trillion national debt costs taxpayers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,346651,59478,3,1767,346652,346653,30046,21,19,22,20,25,24,346654],"class_list":["post-817045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-coleen-kennedy","tag-letter-to-the-editor","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-u-s-budget","tag-u-s-congress-joint-economic-committee","tag-u-s-debt","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-your-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817045","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=817045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}