2025-07-03
25 分钟This is Planet Money from NPR.
The year is 2000.
The world has just survived Y2K, parents are lining up to buy Sony's new PlayStation 2,
and the hottest songs on the radio are from Destiny's Child and Christina Aguilera.
And nobody knows this yet, but it is the end of an era.
for the US economy and for the US government.
Because between 2000 and 2001,
this will be the last time that the federal government ever runs a budget surplus.
The last time the government ever collects more money in a year than it spends.
Ever since then, for the last 25 years, the U.S. has been adding to the national debt.
Borrowing money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
to bail out the banks and other industries during the global financial crisis,
then borrowing even more money to pay for more tax cuts,
to pay for the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare,
and more recently, to pay for more economic stimulus during COVID.
That is how, over these past 25 years,
the amount of money the federal government has borrowed from the public,
the national debt, went from about $3 trillion to almost $30 trillion.
And right now,
Congress is wrestling over a new budget that's expected to add another $2-3 trillion to that debt over the next decade.