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Legend holds that Chuck Norris counted to infinity—twice. But even the Norris of Internet myth would have a hard time surveying the scale of Washington’s current fiscal disaster. Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke and former U.S. Comptroller David Walker take a crack in Fortune: The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the conclusion drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements
for fiscal year 2025, released last week to near-total media silence. The numbers: $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025. In releasing Uncle Sam’s financials last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described “an unsustainable fiscal trajectory. Whether we now rise to that challenge is, in no small part, a test of our national character.” First comes a test of the mind’s ability to conceive of Washington’s level of political irresponsibility. Messrs. Hanke and Walker write that the fiscal picture is far worse even than it
appears on the ghastly federal balance sheet: Importantly, 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, total federal obligations would now exceed $136.2 trillion — roughly five times U.S. annual GDP.
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