House Veterans: Reducing the national debt has bipartisan support
Congressmen Cory Mills, R-Fla., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., joined “Fox News Sunday” to discuss future payments from the United States to Ukraine, balancing military spending with the national debt and the Pentagon's failure in its seventh straight audit.
The House voted to pass Wednesday's annual defense bill adds about another $1 trillion to the $36 trillion national debt.
The 1,800-page bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), details how $895.2 billion allocated for defense and national security will be spent.
On Wednesday, the bill passed by a vote of 281 to 140, with 16 Republicans voting no. Only 81 Democrats voted yes, while 124 voted no.
Legislation is now moving towards Senate To pass before heading to President Biden's office for his signature.
The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Szymanski)
The bill's passage comes at a time when the US national debt continues to rise at a rapid pace and shows no signs of slowing down.
As of December 11, the national debt, which measures what the United States owes to its creditors, had fallen to $36,163,442,396,226.61, according to the latest figures from the US Treasury Department. The debt represents a decrease of $8.8 billion from the figure released the previous day.
By comparison, forty years ago, the national debt was about $907 billion.
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The US Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., December 2, 2024. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Latest results from Congressional Budget Office Data indicate that the national debt will grow to a staggering $54 trillion in the next decade, as a result of an aging population and rising federal health care costs. High interest rates also exacerbate the pain of rising debt.
If this debt materializes, it may jeopardize America's economic standing in the world.
The spike in the national debt comes on the heels of a spending spree President Biden And Democratic legislators.
As of September 2022, Biden has already approved nearly $4.8 trillion in borrowing, including $1.85 trillion for a coronavirus relief measure dubbed the American Rescue Plan and $370 billion for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. (CRFB). It is a group calling for deficit reduction.
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President Biden visits members of the 82nd Airborne Division at G2A Arena on March 25, 2022, in Jaszowka, Poland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
While this represents about half of the $7.5 trillion that President-elect Trump added to the deficit while in office, it is far more than the $2.5 trillion approved by Trump at the same point during his first term.
Biden has repeatedly defended his administration's spending and bragged about reducing the deficit by $1.7 trillion.
“I might parenthetically point out: In my first two years, I reduced the debt by $1.7 trillion,” Biden said recently. “No president has ever done that before.”
However, this figure indicates a decline in the national deficit between fiscal years 2020 and 2022. To be sure, the deficit shrank during that period, although that was largely due to the expiration of emergency measures taken during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Despite the addition of the national debt, the National Defense Authorization Act had strong bipartisan support, but some Democratic lawmakers were against including a ban on transgender medical treatment for children of military personnel if such treatment might lead to sterilization.
The bill also included a 14.5% pay increase for entry-level service members and a 4.5% increase for others as key to improving the quality of life for those serving in the military.
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The Defense Law also includes strengthening measures Deterrence against China It calls for investing $15.6 billion to strengthen military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region. The Biden administration has requested only about $10 billion.
Eric Revell and Morgan Phillips of Fox News, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this report.
