(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

A report in Fortune Magazine this week by Steve Hanke and David Walker begins with the sentence “The U.S. government is insolvent.” According to the Treasury Department’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, the federal government had $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of the end of September (federal government fiscal years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30).

“Importantly,” wrote Hanke and Walker, “the $47.78 trillion in reported liabilities does not include the unfunded obligations of social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare — those are disclosed separately in the off-balance-sheet Statement of Social Insurance (SOSI).”

“If the $88.4 trillion in 75-year off-balance-sheet obligations were added to the $47.8 trillion in official balance sheet liabilities,” the authors of the Fortune piece wrote, “total federal obligations would now exceed $136.2 trillion — roughly five times the U.S. annual GDP [GDP = Gross Domestic Product].”

Hanke and Walker help break this down in terms most of us can better understand:

“Most people cannot relate to trillion-dollar figures on a government ledger. So consider this: divide every number by 100 million — drop eight zeros — and federal finances look like a household budget in freefall. That household earns $52,446 and spends $73,378 — running a $20,932 annual deficit. Its total liabilities and unfunded promises amount to $1,361,788 against just $60,554 in assets, leaving it $1.3 million in the hole. Uncle Sam, by any accounting standard, is insolvent.”

How are those trillion dollar “defense” budgets looking now? How about we look at the effective tax rates paid by the top two quintiles of the wealth and income ladder and actual corporate taxation paid and actual capital gains rates paid by the wealthiest investors? Who am I kidding, we won’t do any of this. Not with a POTUS who bankrupted a casino (and made out like a bandit doing it) and who loves to deprive the federal government of all the revenue he can, even while using the Office of President to greatly expand his and his family’s wealth. Not with a regime like the one this POTUS put together and Republicans in charge of Congress. Not with the current SCOTUS, where the six Justices in the majority should wear corporate sponsorship logos on their robes.

No, the Republican answer will be to, once again, blame and punish the poor and working classes and the most vulnerable. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Republicans passed last summer mandates cuts to SNAP and Medicaid over the next 10 years totaling $120 billion and over $1 trillion, respectively, and triggers significant automatic Medicare cuts of up to $536 billion due to debt increases. The cap on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax for 2026 is set at $184,500, meaning every dollar someone makes in wages and salaries above that is not subjected to the 6.2% employee or 12.4% self-employed tax. How about we change that regressive tax setup by either dramatically raising or eliminating that cap? Again, not with the GOP in charge.

The government’s insolvent but Trump’s focus is on a Putinesque ballroom, a $12 billion-a-week (conservative estimate) undeclared (aka unlawful) war in Iran at the behest of Israel and Saudi Arabia and on passing massive voter suppression legislation (SAVE Act) so Republicans stand a better chance of avoiding total electoral annihilation come November. Just in case MAGA sycophants like Shelley Moore Capito can’t deliver this antidemocratic abomination in the Senate, Trump is already testing the waters for deploying ICE to the polls by paying ICE agents to watch TSA agents (who aren’t getting paid) do their jobs at airports.

By the way, Senate Democrats have attempted seven (7) times to fund the TSA and much of the rest of the Department of Homeland Security, excluding ICE, only to see those efforts voted down by Republicans like Capito and Jim Justice. Going back to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” again, the bill provided $75 billion to $170 billion in funding for ICE ($75 billion for core ICE functions, $170 billion if you include total immigration enforcement spending) from FY2025-2029, making ICE the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency.

Senate Democrats are in this current DHS funding fight to try to force concessions from ICE, including removing the masks, showing their ID as federal agents during operations and following due process for any and all arrests and detentions. It’s obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that these demands absolutely must be met. ICE should actually be abolished but that’s not a realistic goal any time soon.

Getting back to the SAVE Act for a moment, the right-wing zealots at the Heritage Foundation (authors of Project 2025) manage a database that shows that between 1999-2023, there were 77 cases of noncitizens who successfully cast a ballot and only 10 cases of actual undocumented immigrants who voted out of more than 1 billion ballots cast, which constitutes 0.0000074% of all those votes. When even the Heritage Foundation shows voter fraud is statistically miniscule and insignificant, I’d say elections are pretty secure. Trump likes to say mail-in voting is insecure and unfair but he just voted by mail in a Florida special election. How about that?

The day this column is published I’ll be attending the next No Kings Rally in Marietta. This nation is in peril but it’s not too late to speak out, organize for change and vote for better, while collectively preparing as best we can for the potential horrors to come.

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Eric Engle is a Parkersburg resident.