Kerby Anderson

The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not just the opinion of two economists writing in Fortune. This is what is on the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025. They lament that the numbers were released to near-total media silence.

Here are the numbers: $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025. Then the authors add that the liabilities number doesn’t even include the unfunded obligations of social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. If you add the $88.4 trillion in 75-year off-balance-sheet obligations, the total now exceeds $136.2 trillion. That is roughly five times the annual GDP of this country.

They realize that such large numbers are hard to understand, so they do something I often do on radio. Divide every number by 100 million (essentially drop eight zeros) so you can compare it to your household budget.

Imagine where a household earns $52,446 and spends $73,378 so that it runs an annual deficit of $20,932. The total liabilities and unfunded promises amount of $1,361,788 against just $60,554 in assets. That leaves a $1.3 million hole.

They end their article by recommending two bills in Congress that they say could change everything. But you know that Congress won’t pass those bills because most members of Congress act as if the government is living within its means.

Our government is insolvent, and we can’t get the media to report it, and we can’t get Congress to accept it.