Warning! Low balance alert . . . you have $286 billion in checks outstanding.

Photo above - newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent smiles enigmatically as reporters ask what he has in mind for the US economy. Apparently, nothing good. America just had the worst in history Treasury results in March . . .

Wait . . . what? The US Treasury spent more this month that at ANY TIME in US history? $286 billion. And technically, March isn’t even over yet. (see link below)

You need to go back to the Covid 19 pandemic, or the last government debt ceiling crisis, to find anything even approaching this. March 2025 was the most disastrous month in history.

I’m going to blame the new Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Homer Bessent, for this development. Scott was a hedge fund manager on Wall Street for most of his life, and he does NOT like to be called Homer. Quick question: Have you ever met a hedge fund manager you liked? Me neither.

Wait . . . it gets worse. Scott Homer Bessent worked for George Soros his ENTIRE LIFE since graduating from college. Possible conflict of interest here? I won’t go into ALL the financial crimes George Soros has been accused of, but at one point there were arrest warrants for him in 3 separate nations for currency manipulation. You can make a bundle by causing a nation’s currency to crash. Who knew?

Is that possibly what’s happening here? The end of the dollar as we know it? Probably not. But if anyone was counting on the last-minute income tax filings to bail us out, please see yesterday's column. The one where the Treasury Department is predicting that there will be $500 billion in unpaid taxes this year. Because people are trying to see what they can get away with, now that we have a downsized IRS. I am NOT suggesting that George Soros might be thinking about tax fraud, so please, no black helicopters or swatting, okay?

How is the Treasury Department's $286 billion low balance problem going to be fixed? Well, President Trump IS demanding this highest ever increase in the federal debt limit. Democrats who've been shouting "deficits don't matter” during the Biden presidency will now immediately pivot to “Trump's deficits are ruining the nation!” And yes, huge federal budget deficits can ruin nations, no matter which political party temporarily occupies the oval office.

If anyone from the Federal Reserve or Treasury Department is reading today’s column, please reply to this thread and remind everyone that the USA can simply issue more Treasury Bills. Like we’ve been doing non-stop since . . . well, since 1929. When the stock market crash announced the arrival of the Great Depression. Since that time the national debt – the amount of Treasury Bills issued by the government - has only climbed higher. It was never paid in full. It never even went down in any year.

So, this isn’t just a Trump or Biden or Obama problem. For 100 years we've been applauding while congress spends money it doesn’t have. I’m sure some people are cheering right now. Speak up if you’re a fan of 800+ military bases around the world; if you approve of public schools which spend $30,000 a year per pupil and have dropout rates approaching 50%. And if you want manned missions to Mars, and free public housing, and basic guaranteed income, and free healthcare, and college loan forgiveness, and rooftop solar subsidies, and . . .

Uh oh . . . there’s not enough money to do all those things, even if the government could offload a gazillion dollars in Treasury Bills to gullible buyers. But the problem is, there’s a shortage of buyers. Nobody wants to stash more Treasury Bills in their vaults. Not China, not India, not Saudi Arabia, and certainly not the bank where you keep your checking account or 401K.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when federal borrowing hits the wall, stay tuned. We could find out sooner rather than later.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Treasury burned through $286BN of its cash balance in the past month | Daily Mail Online

ElwoodBlues · M

Democrats who've been shouting "deficits don't matter” during the Biden presidency

Can you name even one? I'll wait.

UPDATE (24 later)
Your silence has been deafening!

ElwoodBlues · M

@SusanInFlorida Here are some quotes from your links. What they demonstrate is that you just googled a couple words without bothering to read the articles.

NONE of them say what you attribute to them. NONE of them say "deficits don't matter.” QED

AOC, Larry Summers et al

deficits don’t matter as much at the moment ...

Furman and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers argued in a joint article last week that deficits don’t matter as much at the moment, since interest rates are low, making borrowing cheap, and because investors still have considerable appetite for U.S. debt.

“But [budgeters] should ensure that, except during downturns, when fiscal stimulus is required, new spending and tax cuts do not add to the debt,” they wrote. “This middle course would tolerate large and growing deficits without making a major effort to reduce them — at least for the foreseeable future.”

Yellen

“But we are in a very low-interest rate environment, which has been true a very long time and um, is likely to true going forward. And an alternative — and I think better measure of fiscal sustainability — is to look at the real net-interest cost of the debt, what is it in real terms costing to service the outstanding debt,” Yellen said.

Sorry, WashPost is behind a paywall; you'll have to supply the actual quote in context.

WGBH

The US deficit is big — but does it matter? We asked an economist
Yet this massive sum should be considered in context, Jonathan Gruber, the chair of MIT’s economic department, told Boston Public Radio on Thursday. “Absolute dollars don't matter,” he said. “What matters is deficits and debt, relative to the size of the economy.”

"Reason" is a libertarian outlet; here's what they say

Why are we no longer responding to soaring debt and its economic consequences? While there are many factors, the three most important are these: 1) We've convinced ourselves that deficits do not matter; 2) partisan politics and the collapse of lawmaking have turned deficits into a weapon to be politicized rather than a problem to be solved; and 3) few of us are willing to face the unpopular reality that this issue cannot be resolved without fundamentally reforming Social Security, Medicare, and middle-class taxes.