Usually around the middle of February each year, the US Treasury Department releases an annual report of the federal government’s financial condition.
It’s called the Financial Report of the US Government… and it looks a lot like an annual report that you might see filed by a big company like Apple or Facebook.
Except that, unlike Apple and Facebook, the US government’s annual report is absolutely gruesome.
This year’s report is no exception, save for one humorous anecdote: they -just- released it. In other words, they’re a month and a half LATE (given that the report is typically released in mid-February).
I actually CALLED the Treasury Department myself in early March, asking when they would publish the report.
The bewildered individual on the other end of the line said that he had no earthly idea, given that the government had been shut down for so long earlier this year.
Anyhow, if you want to see the report for yourself, you can download it here[1].
But I thought I would take the liberty of providing a few highlights–
In Fiscal Year 2018, the government’s total net loss was $1.16 TRILLION.
Uncle Sam collected $3.4 trillion in tax revenue in FY18. But they spent over $4.5 trillion.
Of that $4.5 trillion spent, nearly HALF went to Social Security and Medicare. (They also spent a record $523 billion just on interest payments on the national debt!)
This is extraordinary given that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are set to run out of money within the next 15 years.
In other words, despite spending almost HALF the federal budget on Social Security and Medicare, both programs are effectively insolvent.
As a...