Published 8:01 am Monday, October 26, 2026

The federal government is drowning itself in red ink, caused by its spending far more than the revenues it collects. Economists agree that the debt explosion raises Americans’ borrowing costs, inhibits economic growth, and makes us all poorer. Yet our citizenry is rarely provided with detailed information about what drives this problem and what laws must be changed to correct it.

To answer these questions, in 2013, I began quantifying the leading contributors to the federal fiscal imbalance, periodically updating the findings. This year’s update shows that nearly three-quarters of the problem is caused by spending growth in just a few areas of the budget: Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace subsidies, and Social Security. This is roughly consistent with previous results.

Until recently, the problem was almost entirely on the spending side, but that has since changed.…