Last Updated on July 14, 2026 by Van Phillips
Three years ago I wrote this piece thinking I was breaking down something simple — how the government gets its money and where it goes. Man, was I naive. Back in 2023 I was talking taxes, spending, and debt like they were three separate lanes on the same highway. In 2026, they done merged into one traffic jam, and everybody’s stuck in it whether they know the terminology or not.
I’m still that same brother who believes you can’t build wealth for yourself while ignoring what the government’s doing with the collective pot. So let’s update this conversation — because the numbers moved, the politics moved, and the stakes moved right along with them.
What Public Finance Actually Is (Still)
Public finance is still the study of how governments raise and spend money — that part ain’t changed. What’s changed is the scale. We’re not talking abstract textbook numbers anymore. We’re talking about a national debt that crossed $39 trillion this year, with debt held relative to the size of our whole economy sitting around 123% of GDP as of the end of 2025. That’s not a rounding error. That’s the whole country owing more than it produces in a year and a quarter. USAFacts
I still believe this topic gets overlooked because it sounds dry. But dry topics still cut the lights off if you ignore the bill long enough.
The SNAP Story — Still True, But the Ground Shifted
I told this story back in 2023, and I’m keeping it, because it’s real and it still matters:
A friend of mine was in college, working part-time and going to school full-time, barely covering rent and food. Someone put her onto SNAP. She applied, got approved, and it kept her fed while she got her footing.
That story is still beautiful. But if that same friend needed help today, the door she walked through in 2023 looks different now. In July 2025, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and it made the deepest cuts to SNAP in the program’s history, reducing funding by $186 billion. Work requirements that used to stop at age 54 now extend all the way to age 64, and protections that used to shield veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young folks aging out of foster care have been eliminated entirely. aol + 2
The Congressional Budget Office projects these changes will reduce SNAP participation by roughly 2.4 million people per month on average. That’s not benefit amounts shrinking for the people who keep their coverage — the monthly allotment actually ticked up slightly with this year’s cost-of-living adjustment. It’s the door getting narrower. Fewer people making it through. Snap Calculator
If public finance is the foundation of government, safety net programs are the load-bearing walls. Weaken enough of them, and the whole structure starts to lean.
Taxes, Spending, and Debt — The 2026 Numbers
Here’s where the article needs the biggest glow-up. In 2023 I explained these categories in the abstract. Now let’s put real weight behind them.
| Category | Where We Stood (2023 article) | Where We Stand (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| National Debt | ~$32 trillion | $39.2 trillion as of May 2026 USAFacts |
| Debt as % of GDP | ~120% | 123% as of Q4 2025 USAFacts |
| Annual Deficit | ~$1.7 trillion | Trending toward roughly $2 trillion for FY2026 Fox Business |
| Net Interest as % of Federal Outlays | ~10% | 13.85% in FY2026, projected to climb to 14.52% by FY2028 senate |
| Tariff/Customs Revenue | Minor line item | Customs duties up 132% year-over-year, an $107 billion increase Bipartisan Policy Center |
Taxes are still the primary engine, but there’s a new player in the mix that wasn’t part of the 2023 conversation in any serious way: tariffs. The current administration leaned hard into tariff policy, and for a stretch of this fiscal year customs duties collections shot up dramatically. But that revenue stream turned out to be shakier than advertised — a Supreme Court ruling declared some of those tariffs illegal, forcing a wave of refund payments that widened the federal deficit gap in the back half of the fiscal year. That’s a real lesson in public finance right there: revenue you can’t count on ain’t revenue, it’s a loan from your future self. Bloomberg
Spending is still split between discretionary and mandatory, but mandatory spending — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt itself — is doing more of the heavy lifting than ever. National debt interest and entitlement spending are the primary drivers pushing this year’s deficit higher than last year’s. Fox Business
Debt is still debt, but the conversation around it got a lot less theoretical. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s own budget analysts are now saying plainly that the average interest rate paid on the national debt could exceed the economic growth rate starting in 2031, and if that happens on a sustained basis, we’re looking at what’s called a debt spiral — rising interest costs pushing rates higher and depressing growth, which then drives interest costs even higher. CBO’s long-range projections have debt held by the public swelling from 100% of GDP today to 175% of GDP by 2056 if nothing changes. Bipartisan Policy Center + 2
That ain’t fear-mongering. That’s the Congressional Budget Office doing math.
How This Hits You, Me, and Everybody We Know
For individuals, that debt load and those interest payments translate directly into the borrowing costs on your credit card, your mortgage, your car note. Even with the Fed cutting rates multiple times, 10-year Treasury yields have actually risen because bond investors are pricing in persistent fiscal deficits — meaning the market itself is nervous about how the government’s spending its money, and that nervousness shows up in your monthly bills. PrimeRates
For families relying on programs like SNAP, it means recertification interviews that used to be a formality are now a gate that can shut on you. For anyone watching the trading side of this like I do, it means the bond market and the fiscal picture are talking to each other constantly — you can’t analyze rate futures without understanding what Congress and Treasury are doing on the spending side.
Bottom Line — Updated for 2026
Public finance is still complex, still important, and still something too many of us tune out because it feels like somebody else’s problem. It’s not. Taxes, spending, debt, tariffs, and safety-net policy are one interconnected system, and in 2026 that system is under more visible strain than it was three years ago.
My friend’s SNAP story from 2023 still holds — a government program caught somebody before they hit the ground. I want that door to stay open for the next person who needs it. That means paying attention to what’s happening in Washington, not just to the headlines but to the actual numbers behind them.
Thank you for reading.
