If America was a family or a business, its present debt situation would be considered a crisis.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the current national debt held by the public is $29 trillion. This is 98 percent of our gross domestic product. The CBO expects it to climb to almost $52 trillion by fiscal year 2035. This includes intragovernmental debt such as the Social Security Trust Fund, which we eventually must pay (118 percent of that year’s projected GDP).  

Servicing debt this size will cost about $1 trillion this year. CBO estimates total payments of interest on the debt through fiscal year 2035 will be almost $14 trillion. Of that $14 trillion, over 30 percent will go to foreign bond holders. It is projected that the largest foreign recipients of American tax money for interest on our government bonds will be Japan, the United Kingdom, Communist China, and the Cayman Islands. 

These projections suggest that some $4.2 trillion will be sent overseas to bondholders. In the case of the Cayman Islands, it will include a lot of deeply wealthy people who bank there — and we do not know for sure who they are or where they are from.

There are about 340.1 million Americans. As of right now, each American’s share of the debt is $85,269. Statista estimates the American population will reach 370.34 million in 2035. If the current debt pattern continues to $52 trillion as CBO projects, each American in principle will owe $140,412 as his or her share of the national debt. And in the intervening years (assuming the current average interest rate on the federal debt of 3.325 percent) they will have paid $36,669 in interest on the debt (that is $146,676 for a family of four). 

The current system of congressional overspending, vast federal deficits, and a huge federal debt will result in an absurd amount of money being sent to foreign bondholders. This is a classic example of taxing working Americans and transferring the fruits of their hard work to rich bondholders and foreign governments.

When we balanced the budget for four consecutive years in the 1990s (the only time in the last century) we set the stage to pay off the federal debt. In fact, the Federal Reserve chairman at the time, Alan Greenspan, testified that they were projecting all the national debt would be paid off by 2009. 

This would have meant paying zero taxes to bondholders and foreign countries, because there would have been no bonds to hold. 

Imagine that we could divert that trillion dollars from bondholders to a combination of stabilizing the Social Security system in perpetuity and cutting taxes for working Americans.

Imagine that Congress, with enormous support from the American people, overhauled the federal government to eliminate waste, fraud, and obsolete systems to get back to a balanced budget.

We know we can achieve a balanced budget because we did so in the 1990s. A combination of strong economic growth (which the Trump program is going to produce), major reforms, and methodical efforts to identify and eliminate waste and corruption can lead to a balanced budget much faster than people think. 

Furthermore, every step along that path of controlled spending and smaller government will be immediately rewarded by a decline in interest on the debt, because there will be less debt.

In the 1990s, we thought it would take seven years to balance the budget — but we achieved it in four years. Welfare reform put able-bodied people to work. This helped the deficit by reducing spending and increasing tax revenues. 

Medicare modernization invented Medicare Advantage and a host of other reforms. This brought down the cost of government. Our telecommunications reform paved the way for emerging internet technology, which led to an explosion of growth.

Applying artificial intelligence to government could bring costs down dramatically. Yet it will be fought at every step by bureaucrats, unions, and armies of big government contractor lobbyists. Congress must be convinced that achieving a balanced budget and saving trillions in interest payments (thousands of extra dollars for every working American) is worth taking on the special interests and obsolete systems.

In the 1990s, we could balance the budget because the American people were demanding reform. The support for welfare reform was so strong that half the House Democrats broke rank and voted for workfare. They split 98-98, because their constituents were demanding it.

If the American people learn how much the Congressional spending disease is costing them, they will demand profound changes. This will lead to Congress balancing budgets, ultimately paying off the national debt and reducing annual interest payments by a substantial amount.

Every American should let his or her House and Senate members know they want spending controlled — and they want it controlled now.