By ELISE NIESHALLA
Indiana Comptroller
“$36 trillion and growing, what can we do?”
That was the question Indiana legislators asked after I shared the work of the National Debt Crisis Task Force, a group of state financial officers who are committed to building support for President Trump and Congress to tackle the $36 trillion debt and restore the country’s fiscal solvency.
My response – “You could pass a resolution modeled after U.S. Senate Resolution 600, authored by our governor, then-U.S. Senator Mike Braun, which received a unanimous vote and declared the national debt a national security threat.”
That was all it took. Daryl Schmitt (R-Jasper) and Brett Clark (R-Avon) ran with it as their own “mission possible.”
Indiana Senate Resolution (SR) 51 gained additional co-authors and passed overwhelmingly with support from both Republicans and Democrats this last session. It recognizes “the seriousness of the national debt and it’s threat to national security.” The resolution also detailed the malpractice of deficit spending, and how Social Security and Medicare will become insolvent within the next decade.
The national debt now stands at $107,000 per citizen, with the debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio exceeding 100 percent. Only once before – after World War II – has the debt-to-GDP ratio reached this level.
Today, we face soaring debt with little to show for it beyond a pandemic in the rearview mirror, continued growth in spending and no financial recovery in sight. As a “national security threat,” the debt poses a serious challenge to funding a future war (or our future in general) without risking bankruptcy. At $36 trillion, the national debt has become public enemy No. 1.
Quoted in SR 51 is Indiana’s own, the Honorable Dan Coats, who, as Director of National Intelligence in 2018, warned, “Our continued plunge into debt is unsustainable and represents a dire threat to our economy and to our national security.”
For additional perspective, it took 205 years for our nation to accumulate its first $1 trillion in debt. Today, we add another $1 trillion every six months. Of the $36 trillion total, $8 trillion is owned by foreign entities, including China, raising further concerns about America’s long-term financial stability.
In 2026, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence – a milestone that should be defined not by fiscal distress, but by a renewed resolve to “Make America’s Finances Great Again” – and President Trump is the one who can get this done. But how can we fully celebrate our political independence when our financial independence is in serious jeopardy?
In that spirit, may Indiana’s transformational journey from fiscal instability to being a model of financial responsibility serve as inspiration for our federal government. Indiana’s governors, starting with Mitch Daniels, and in partnership with state lawmakers, took us from having cash-flow problems, a huge debt burden, and delayed payments to now being the fourth-lowest debt per capita state in the nation with balanced budgets, healthy cash reserves, well-funded pensions, and a AAA credit rating.
We as Hoosiers speak both from a position of internal strength as a state and of external vulnerability as one of the 50. Through SR 51, Indiana is calling on the President and Congress to take immediate action, emphasizing that “the national debt is a major concern across the Hoosier State and around the country.”
For the sake of our states, our country, and our children, let’s build monumental support, the Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It!” kind of support, to restore America’s fiscal solvency and independence.
The time is now.
The need is urgent.
Nieshalla is the chair of the National Debt Crisis Task Force of State Financial Officers which sent this letter from 37 Financial Officers from 27 states calling on President Trump and Congress to deal with the national debt by significantly cutting costs, balancing the budget, growing the economy to empower debt reduction and protecting future generations from inheriting a seismic national catastrophe called bankruptcy.