Rep. Blake Moore says mandatory spending has grown from roughly a quarter of the federal budget fifty years ago to more than seventy-seven percent today, and he argues that a two trillion dollar annual deficit leaves Washington unable to invest in areas of national competitiveness.
"We can't continue with a $2 trillion deficit," Moore wrote in a post to his congressional account, @RepBlakeMoore. "Our mandatory spending has increased from 25% of our budget fifty years ago to over 77% today."
The Utah Republican expanded on the figure in a video posted with the message. In the transcript, he walks through a pie chart of the federal budget as it looked five decades ago.
"Fifty years ago, seventy-five percent of that budget was discretionary spending, defense spending, things like that that you chose each year and you could put money in different areas, and only twenty-five percent was mandatory spending, because it was just mostly Social Security, some interest on the debt, and Medicare was just sort of kicking off," Moore said.
He said the shares have since inverted.
"That has now eclipsed from twenty-five percent, it now consumes over seventy-seven percent," he said.
Interest costs and the deficit-to-GDP target
Moore pointed to interest on the debt as a component of the mandatory side of the ledger, and framed the deficit itself as the constraint on everything else.
"Of course, interest on the debt is a big part of that budget as well," he said. "So being able to constrain our deficit so we can get to close to a three percent deficit-to-GDP, that would be a healthier spot to be than we are right now. And then, you know, we can continue to thrive."
He also described trade-offs ahead for programs that have historically drawn bipartisan support, naming the National Institutes of Health as an example.
"NIH funding has been held at a moderate level, still investing in it for the most part. But it has to get constrained, and now there's going to be having the trade-offs and doing stuff like that," Moore said.
His central argument was that borrowing at the current pace forecloses other priorities.
"By running a two trillion dollar deficit every year, we are not able to truly invest in areas of competitiveness in a lot of ways, because we're spending so much on our mandatory budget," he said.
Coverage of the same fiscal picture
The numbers Moore cites track with reporting elsewhere on the federal balance sheet, though the framing differs.
Fortune reported on America's budget, the bond market and the national debt, describing a debt rising by the trillion while Congress refuses to face the bill. Separate coverage noted that the federal government ran up a two trillion dollar deficit in 2026, and that Congress has not balanced the budget in twenty-five years, with lawmakers described as having abdicated their fiscal responsibilities and no end in sight.
Reporting on the bond market put the national debt above forty trillion dollars, with roughly one trillion added in only five months. The Economic Times reported that a ten-year Treasury yield of 5.04 percent has made new borrowing more expensive, while net interest payments reached nine hundred seventy billion dollars in fiscal 2025, about one hundred fifty billion dollars above defense spending.
Another piece, "The Fiscal Shell Game: Deficit Spending and the ATR Tax Pledge," examined the Americans for Tax Reform Taxpayer Protection Pledge as a conflict between revenue restriction and total federal spending. It noted that signers who vote for massive spending packages, including high defense spending, Great Recession bailouts and pandemic relief, can find themselves squeezed between the two commitments.
What was said, and what was not
Moore's post and video present the spending composition as a matter of arithmetic: a quarter of the budget fifty years ago, more than three-quarters today. Whether mandatory spending is precisely at that share, and what combination of tax increases, entitlement changes or discretionary cuts would close a two trillion dollar gap, are separate questions his remarks do not settle.
His stated target is a deficit near three percent of gross domestic product, a level he describes as healthier than the current one. He did not, in the video, attach a timeline to that goal or name which programs would absorb the constraint beyond his general reference to NIH funding and to trade-offs.
The post was published to his congressional account, @RepBlakeMoore. It is one lawmaker's description of the federal budget's composition and his argument about what the deficit prevents, not a budget document or a scored estimate.
Our Take
Moore is right about the shape of the problem and right to say it out loud. The discretionary-versus-mandatory ratio he describes is not a partisan talking point, it is the arithmetic that both parties have spent decades avoiding. When three-quarters of the federal budget runs on autopilot, the annual appropriations fight that consumes Washington's attention is a debate about the small remainder. The real spending decisions were made years ago and renew themselves.
Where conservatives should be careful is in treating the diagnosis as the whole argument. The deficit is two trillion dollars a year, and the interest line alone has passed defense spending. That is a genuine emergency for a party that claims to care about fiscal restraint. But a Congress that will not touch Social Security, Medicare or the interest on its own past borrowing is not going to be saved by another chart. Moore's own hedge on NIH, that it "has to get constrained," is the tell. Every member has a program that must be constrained, and every member has one that must be protected.
The test for Republicans is whether they will attach specifics to the three percent target, or whether this becomes another round of describing the problem while voting for the spending. Moore has named the disease. The cure requires naming the patients.
