WASHINGTON – Senators from both parties raised concern over both Iran war spending and how future generations will be impacted by the national debt in a Finance subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.
Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called out past Democratic and Republican administrations for increasing the rate of the climbing debt. He said he was not satisfied with tax cuts in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, calling the current deficit an “aberration” enabled from both sides of the aisle.
“We still have not taken the first step in solving the problem, which is admit we have one,” Johnson said.
The Congressional Budget Office’s Feb. 11 report predicted that the budget deficit for the 2026 fiscal year would be $1.9 trillion with debt held by the public as 101% of GDP, which is about equal to the value of annual economic output. By 2036, the nonpartisan research office predicted the annual deficit to be $3.1 trillion with debt rising to 120% of GDP.
These projections were based on the assumption that the government would not take legislative action to dramatically cut taxes or reduce spending.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized how the Department of War’s spending in Iran is contributing to the national debt. In the first week of the war alone, the Pentagon spent more than $11.3 billion, according to the New York Times.
“It seems to me, that when we’re talking about money here, that the way we can save the most money would be to stop bombing Iran now,” she said. “Just as a side benefit, we could save a lot of lives.”
The rising deficit should cause significant concern to government leaders, considering the relative strength of the economy, Dr. Phillip Swagel, Congressional Budget Office director, said. His office projects the unemployment rate will remain below 5% over the next 10 years, which signals a healthy economy.
Ultimately, Swagel said today’s young generation will not be able to avoid making hard economic choices to sustain programs like Social Security, and may also face more difficult economic conditions.
“Future generations will bear the burden of the deficit that will have to come in the future,” he said.
Meanwhile, the mounting national debt exacerbates the affordability crisis, according to Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit advocacy group.
She said the spiralling deficit raises inflation and costs, stifles economic opportunity and makes it harder to take out loans for mortgages and start-ups since interest rates remain high.
The U.S. has been able to spend at such a rate despite its debt by relying on other countries, which have historically borrowed against the U.S. because it has the largest economy. However, in the future, when it becomes commonplace for other countries to borrow against each other rather than the U.S., national markets will collapse, predicted Martha Gimbel, executive director of Yale University’s Budget Lab.
Gimbel compared the U.S. to a boyfriend at the beginning of a Hallmark movie, who only exists as a precursor to when the main character finds a better alternative.
“The girlfriend is still going out with him even though she knows it is wrong,” Gimbel said. “But, at some point she’s going to go home to the small town and find the nice firefighter and realize that there is another option.”