The Grand Junction City Council is currently in the middle of budget discussions for the 2025 fiscal year. My fellow city council members and I are making difficult and challenging spending decisions, and as mayor I recognize the importance of allocating our resources to best provide for Grand Junction’s citizens.

Unfortunately, balancing current budget needs with long-term fiscal responsibility is only happening at the local level. Unlike the federal government, we have to actually present a balanced budget that doesn’t include unsustainable amounts of debt. The national debt is a serious fiscal problem Washington must address now. Year after year, Washington’s leaders continuously run up the national debt with short-sighted fiscal decisions, and very soon those bills will come due.

The nation’s gross debt recently surpassed the $35 trillion threshold, yet neither candidate for the White House, and few in Congress, have proposed policies to address the looming crisis.

Meanwhile, our debt continues to compound. From 2019 to today, debt held by the public has grown from 79% to 99% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the measure of the country’s economic output. And this number is only going to grow. It is projected that, within three years, publicly-owned debt will exceed the economy in size. Shortly thereafter, we will eclipse our record high debt-to-GDP ratio of 106%, achieved after spending hundreds of billions of dollars making the world safe for democracy in World War II. By 2034, the ratio is projected to reach a staggering 122%. The inevitable results of this unsustainable national burden are slower economic growth and higher inflation and interest rates than we’d see without such levels of debt.

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Like any borrower, the federal government is not immune from the shock of the generationally-high interest rates we’ve experienced. Interest on the debt is now the fastest growing item in the national budget, topping nearly $900 billion this year. Money spent servicing our debt limits the government’s ability to respond to national emergencies and invest in the modern technologies required to ensure our national security in an increasingly dangerous world.

Simultaneously, the vital Social Security program is facing insolvency within the decade as it struggles to cover the increasing number of retirees from the Baby Boomer generation. If nothing is done to shore up its finances, the program will be unable to pay full benefits as of 2033, according to its trustees. This would trigger an across-the-board cut in benefits of 21%. Under such a scenario, the average two-earner couple retiring in 2033 would face an annual decrease in benefits of roughly $16,500. Clearly something needs to be done to reshape the program, as not doing so will guarantee its insolvency.

This alarming fiscal dilemma we have found ourselves in cannot be attributed to one president or political party. Since 2001, 80% of legislation which added to the debt was passed via a bipartisan vote. Debt and deficits have continued to skyrocket under both Democrat and Republican administrations and with Congress in the hands of both parties throughout the last two decades. It seems one thing policymakers in Washington can agree on is the right to spend beyond our means and not bother how we’ll pay for it.

The last time our federal budget ran a surplus was 2001, under the Clinton administration. During that time the government brought in more money than it spent, with much of the difference going toward slowly paying off the national debt. However, a combination of tax cuts, increased spending and the allocation of emergency funds for crises like the Great Recession and COVID have pushed the debt to near record heights. To begin to set the debt on a negative path, fiscal policy must be focused on stabilizing the debt by ensuring it doesn’t grow faster than the economy as a whole. Then we can begin the hard work of actually paying off the debt in the long term.

Fiscal issues will be on the agenda for President-elect Donald Trump, and he should start with a simple pledge to pay for the cost of new spending or tax cuts without increasing overall outlays. This would signal a seriousness about the threat our exploding national debt poses to the future of the country.

Abram Herman is mayor of Grand Junction.