The Treasury Recently Declared the United States Insolvent (and Nobody Is Talking About It)

This should have been a much, much bigger story.

Frankly, headlines should have been screaming this. It should have been the major news item on pretty much every news broadcast and news or political show for at least a day or two.

Instead, it just kind of came and went, with hardly a blip on the news radar screen, in most cases.

The United States is on an unsustainable path, spending far more than it is earning. For all intents and purposes, we have borrowed so much - our national debt is $39 trillion - that the outlook for paying that off is very grim.

Here is a summary from a recent Fortune article by Steve H. Hanke and David M. Walker (see link below):

The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the conclusion drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, released last week to near-total media silence. The numbers: $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025.

Now, numbers in the trillions might indeed be difficult for most people to wrap their heads around. So the authors of this same article broke it down. They took the numbers and shrank them, to make this applicable to the financial outlook might appear to be if a household ran it's finances the way that the American government has been doing. Here it is:

That household earns $52,446 and spends $73,378 — running a $20,932 annual deficit. Its total liabilities and unfunded promises amount to $1,361,788 against just $60,554 in assets, leaving it $1.3 million in the hole. Uncle Sam, by any accounting standard, is insolvent. 

In short, they sum it up like this:

Congress has clearly lost control of the nation’s finances. America is facing a fiscal catastrophe. The reckoning, long deferred, is becoming impossible to ignore.

Then the authors of this article go into the Op/Ed mode, suggesting specific bills which could at least alleviate this frankly disastrous situation:

Addressing this crisis — and preventing recurrence — requires two specific legislative actions.  

First, Congress should pass the bipartisan H.R. 3289 — Fiscal Commission Act, sponsored by Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), and 41 co-sponsors. Such a commission would force a public reckoning with the facts, the trade-offs, and the hard choices that restoring fiscal health requires.  

Second, Congress should call an Article V Convention limited to proposing a fiscal responsibility amendment to the U.S. Constitution. H.Con.Res. 15, sponsored by Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX), would do exactly that.   

Modeled on Switzerland’s Debt Brake, such an amendment would mandate a balanced budget over the business cycle and prohibit federal spending from growing faster than the U.S. economy.  

These two bills represent the most credible path forward — if Congress has the will to act.

Whether or not Congress can or will act is a good question. After all, part of the reason that nobody seemed to notice this story was because nobody made a big deal of it. Including members of Congress which, frankly, seems puzzling. I mean, this is actually huge news, is it not? 

Does it not say something significant and, frankly, revealing about the United States presently that a story like this does not even make it to most people's newsfeed? In fact, it feels like that might be a story in and of itself. Probably it underscores how we as a nation got to this point to begin with, truth be told. 

Below are the links to the articles which I used in writing this particular blog entry, and from which all of the quotes or specific numbers are taken:

The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it By Steve H. Hanke and David M. Walker March 23, 2026:

https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/us-government-insolvent-fiscal-crisis-fix/

The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it | Fortune

‘A fiscal catastrophe’: The US Treasury just declared America insolvent, say famed economists. Are your finances ready?  Jing Pan Thu, March 26, 2026:

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/fiscal-catastrophe-us-treasury-just-182700432.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAN4JlM7J5bjNK4wAPT2EvTQ7EnoDVRU1EsnHhMV2ySmmvhmyCFtlwi9CJiQEQgzBTbvzVDk8AZgAb_Y2RaQQgsPqGutun7wPOqdNXgZJaLhqDrl_w6k8uLRkFkCZa1u0w7E44EXbUzSz_dH-ZzZNY4F7vaiIYNqxs6t2pu6S6KIf

‘A fiscal catastrophe’: The US Treasury just declared America insolvent, say famed economists. Are your finances ready?