Editor’s note: Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 20 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.

Congress has funded most but probably not all of the government. Four members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation secured hundreds of millions of dollars for highways and other state projects. Meanwhile, a nonpartisan group is warning of the consequences of ever-increasing government debt.

That paragraph pretty much sums up the federal budget news from the past couple of weeks, with more to come. 

As you may not have noticed, there was another government shutdown last week, though only a partial, brief one. It ended when President Trump on Feb. 3 passed the second of two bills that funded government operations through September – all except for the Department of Homeland Security, which got funding for only two weeks until Feb. 13.

Democrats balked at funding that agency because they want major reforms to its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. As of Tuesday, the question had not been resolved. So we may be in another partial government shutdown by the time you read this.

The package signed Feb. 3 was the second of two funding the rest of the government. Trump signed the first into law Jan. 23. As part of those packages, four of Arkansas’ six members of Congress secured $446.6 million for state projects, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Alex Thomas reported last week.

Sen. John Boozman and Reps. Rick Crawford, Steve Womack and Bruce Westerman obtained that money through the earmarks process. That’s where members of Congress secure specific dollars for projects back home. Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. French Hill oppose earmarks and did not seek any funding. 

Members of Congress who defend the earmarks process often say they know their districts’ needs. Crawford told the Democrat-Gazette the money would go somewhere else if Arkansas didn’t seek its share. Furthermore, earmarks grease the legislative process. A reluctant lawmaker can be persuaded to vote for a bill if it directly benefits their district.

Womack was in an advantageous spot as he chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee. 

All those capital-letter words mean he leads the subcommittee in charge of highway funding. That position helped him secure $59 million to help construct the Springdale Northern Bypass to relieve traffic congestion. 

Boozman sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and is also a subcommittee chairman over military construction and veterans affairs. He secured $30 million to create the Agriculture Center of Excellence in Food Science at the University of Arkansas, and another $20 million to build a workforce training building at the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College. He also obtained $9 million for an Arkansas State University maternal health program. Boozman and Crawford also secured $6.5 million to expand Osceola Harbor to support barges transporting steel and agricultural products. 

Critics have described earmarks as wasteful “pork barrel spending.” Congress suspended the practice from 2011 before bringing it back in 2021.

While earmarks sometimes do waste money, they represent only a tiny fraction of the federal budget. The bulk of government spending goes to five areas: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the military, and interest payments on the $38.6 trillion national debt. (Your share of that $38.6 trillion is $113,000.) Interest payments have ballooned to $1 trillion annually and gone from consuming less than 10% of federal revenues in 2021 to 18% in 2025.

The national debt is the elephant in the room that members of the entire political establishment, regardless of party, are ignoring.

But ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently released a report describing six potential consequences that could result from the debt.  

Those consequences, which could occur individually or in concert, include a financial crisis with a spike in interest rates and a failure of financial institutions; rampant inflation; painful tax increases and spending cuts; a collapse of the dollar; defaulting on the debt; and/or a damaging, gradual erosion in American living standards.

In other words, the time is coming when policymakers and the American people will no longer be able to pretend that a country can keep spending money it doesn’t have. An election season would be the perfect time to have a mature conversation about that reality. Instead, there’s silence. 

At least most of the government got funded this time. And at least Arkansas got a chunk of the money – borrowed as much of it may be.