Partial Credit: Networks Cover, Express Horror at National Debt, But Skip Real Drivers

Since President Trump is in the White House and Republicans control Congress, it was only a matter of time until the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC noticed the national debt, and Wednesday’s grim milestone that the debt had crossed $40 trillion gave them the perfect hook. While it’s admirable the press suddenly care about the national debt, they still failed Wednesday night and Thursday morning to acknowledge the lead driver of it: entitlements.

Back on May 29, the Tax Foundation wrote that the Social Security, Medicare, and other government health care programs “now comprise almost half of the federal budget” and are likely to “continue growing faster than the economy” as Baby Boomers further age (click “expand”):

The major entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and other major health care programs, are the core drivers of higher spending levels. After growing faster than the economy for decades, they now comprise almost half of the federal budget. Social Security and Medicare are projected to continue growing faster than the economy, together exceeding 10 percent of GDP within the next decade, driven by the aging of the population and rising healthcare costs. 

The only major category of spending growing faster than the major entitlement programs is net interest on the debt, which is now at a record high of 3.3 percent of GDP and headed to 6.9 percent in 30 years, when it will be a quarter of the federal budget. Spending on entitlements and interest on the debt is crowding out other federal spending, including defense and nondefense discretionary spending, and putting upward pressure on deficits and debt.

It was only this second point they raised — interest on the debt — that the networks took notice of, starting with Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News.

“Now to breaking news and a stunning number. The U.S. debt now topping $40 trillion in counting. Garrett Haake joins me from the White House. And Garrett, the debt has exploded over the last decade,” boomed anchor Tom Llamas.

Haake declared “[t]he debt is more than doubled in the last 10 years now, passing that $40 trillion threshold for the first time” with “President Biden and President Trump in his first term each accounted for roughly $8 trillion in new debt, largely for borrowing to spend big on pandemic response, but also to pay for things like infrastructure investments and for tax cuts.”

While it’s certainly true those things have added to the debt, Haake conveniently ignored the welfare programs. As we’ll see with ABC and CBS, it’s as if these people don’t want to be fully transparent with viewers!

He then concluded this means the federal government now “spend[s] more taxpayer money paying interest on our national debt than on Medicare or on the Pentagon budget” and, in less than a minute since the segment started, “it’s gone up by more than $3 million.”

Moving to Thursday, Haake twice brought it up in passing during a story about the latest with the war on Iran, including a mention blaming the debt on “pandemic response spending,” Trump “tax cuts,” and “the Iran war” (click “expand”):

But the President’s plate also includes new concerns about the state of our own economy, with U.S. debt hitting an almost inconceivable $40 trillion[.]

(....)

Iran’s foreign minister labeling the move, “a diversion from America’s own crisis: unprecedented debt and surging interest costs.” It comes after the news yesterday that America’s national debt passed the $40 trillion mark for the first time in history. The debt has doubled in the last decade, exploding in both President Trump’s first term and under President Biden, largely due to pandemic response spending. While the Trump administration says it’s working to drive down the debt, it’s also spending big on tax cuts and the Iran war.

Once again, slightly misleading.

ABC’s Good Morning America teased it twice and touted the Iranian foreign minister using the headline to thumb its nose at the U.S. military.

“The national debt hits a record $40 trillion. Rebecca Jarvis breaks down the shocking milestone and the impacts on credit cards, mortgages and more,” said co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos, expressing more concern about it than he probably ever has.

ABC’s report led off the second hour with chief business and economics correspondent Rebeca Jarvis arguing “it impacts everyone who is watching” because “it makes borrowing more expensive,” “it fuels inflation,” and “makes it harder for the government to spend on things like health care, education, our roads, and our defense[.]”

Jarvis should receive kudos for explaining why it ripples down to the public’s ability to function.

And yet, she skipped entitlements.

She too hit the note about interest on debt and both parties being to blame (click “expand”):

You can think of our national debt like your own credit card. When you spend and you can’t pay for it, those interest payments, they surge. And that is exactly what is happening right now. The U.S. is paying more than $1 trillion just in interest on that debt. That is more than what we spend on things like Medicare, veterans benefits, and defense, and this didn’t happen overnight under both Republicans and Democrats.

The government has been spending more than it makes in taxes for 26 years on everything from health care to stimulus benefits to tax cuts and spending, and just like those credit card bills, the longer you ignore it, the worse it gets, the tougher the choices become.

CBS Mornings had a segment in the first hour, starting with Saturday co-host and Moneywatch correspondent Kelly O’Grady leading the discussion with the national debt graphic from USDebtClock.org.

“[Y]ou hear $40 trillion, and you think, okay, that’s big. But how big? It is bigger than the largest economy in the world, which is the U.S. economy. We are roughly $33 trillion when it comes to GDP, but the thing is that the national debt has doubled since 2017, so this problem is becoming worse,” O’Grady explained, correctly putting it in numerical perspective.

O’Grady also deserves positive marks for the reality that “if you think about it, though, there’s plenty of — of blame to go around, because this has a bipartisan problem, right?”

Featured co-host and former Wall Street man Vladimir Duthiers concurred, adding the interest piece: “It sounds like a big number, and it is a staggering number, but the real concern, of course, Kelly, is the trajectory, right? The trajectory is right now, we’re running huge deficits just in a relatively strong economy, and the interest...is an insane amount.”

Somehow, co-host Gayle King wasn’t paying attention: “So, who do we blame? There’s always somebody[.]”

Duthiers reiterated: “Neither party has shown any appetite to rein in spending.”

O’Grady briefly touched on what it means for the country, but she too footnoted the bipartisan blame to a few sentences, skipping entitlements, other than what she and Duthiers vaguely asserted (albeit correctly) was neither party’s desire to seriously cut spending (click “expand”):

O’GRADY: Republicans willing to do tax cuts that they had to borrow for. Democrats have increased spending. There has [sic] been wars. There has been COVID. There’s been the interest rate. When you think about that $40 trillion, it is an accumulation over decades of the government spending more —

DUTHIERS: That’s right.

O’GRADY: — than it had and not being willing to cut. What does it mean for us at home?

KING: Yes.

O’GRADY: Your mortgage rates can go up.

DUTHIERS: Right.

O’GRADY: And we look at potentially default as a country, which there’s plenty of people in the administration that are worried about that. You hear Bessent working with Japan. I know we kind of hear these headlines, or what does it mean? It’s that they’re worried about the debt.

DUTHIERS: Yeah.

KING: And that’s a good reason.

O’GRADY: Mmhmm.

DUTHIERS: They’re not — they’re not trying to rein in the spending or bring in higher revenues to change that number.

As we’ve shown in the past, the flagship network newscasts certainly weren’t interested when the national debt hit $35 trillion in July 2024, $33 trillion in September 2023, $31 trillion in October 2022, and $30 trillion in February 2022 to name a few sad mile markers.

NewsBusters has also shown that, when (some) Republicans demand serious changes to spending (such as entitlements), these same networks go berserk. In May 2023, CBS and NBC sided with the left on the “cruel” GOP ask for changes to work requirements on entitlements. Our Rich Noyes had a May 30, 2023 study on the entire spending fight, finding there wasn’t one statement on network evening newscasts to that point that blamed Democrats refusing to cut spending.

A similar Noyes study published the same month found that, between March 2018 and December 2022, only 20 evaluative statements on ABC, CBS, and NBC evening shows tagged government spending bills as too big, whereas 63 statements criticized them for not being big enough.

And when Republicans tried to repeal and replace ObamaCare in 2017, they were denounced as ghoulish by these liberal, elitist networks.

Before this, the last stand-alone report on the national debt came on October 28, 2024, thanks to the short-lived CBS Mornings Plus, with particular interest taken by co-host Tony Dokoupil (who now anchors the Evening News).

To see the relevant NBC transcript from August 19, click here. To see the relevant transcripts from August 20, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).