An analysis by Truth in Accounting on which The Center Square reported in the Feb. 10 edition of the Sun-Gazette finds that Philadelphia will overspend in the 2025/26 budget year by about $17,000 per taxpayer.

As we note that this sort of budgeting is unsustainable, we do not want to single out Pennsylvania’s largest city. The budget proposal by Gov. Josh Shapiro, as we’ve repeatedly criticized in editorials the past two weeks, uses assumptions about future laws and the state’s “rainy day fund” to ramp up government spending — despite our Legislature’s clear and understandable resistance to such an approach a year ago. And our federal government is, most alarmingly yet, operating at a $1.85 trillion deficit for this year so far and with a national debt of $38.5 trillion.

We were concerned when we wrote our editorial for April 7, 2025, when the national debt was “only” $34 trillion. We remain concerned — and believe every American should — with its trajectory.

As the debt and deficits climb, it becomes more and more clear that what Americans need is a cultural or philosophical shift: We need to reconsider what we expect the government to do and how we pay for it.

Our inclination, rooted in the principles our region has cherished, is that our expectations for government must be tempered. Communities and the free market can address many problems without the ballooning fiscal hole.

Barring that — if we continue to allow government to be more and more responsible for every facet and nuance of life — is a government funded with considerably higher taxes.

We doubt that our region would find that trade-off acceptable. We can only urge families across Pennsylvania to consider how unacceptable we will find the future when we’re paying back all that borrowed money, with the public services or public investment to show for it long in the past.