Imagine in 2028 when the United States goes to sell bonds to finance its debt, instead of motivated buyers it finds investors wary of a nation drowning in red ink, leading to higher interest rates, inflation and ultimately a financial crash. Compounding the problem, lawmakers on Capitol Hill in this imagined future are too busy fighting each other to do anything about the growing financial crisis.
This is the scenario at the center of No Labels’ new report, “Nightmare on Main Street,” which offers a look at what could happen if the U.S. continues to ignore its growing debt.
The report includes fictionalized narratives of how a debt crisis could impact families, national security and the nation’s political system. It imagines the nation spiraling into fiscal ruin and political extremism amid the crisis.
The report quotes Abraham Lincoln, who said, “if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
In the 2024 election, No Labels hoped to run a third candidate in the presidential election, but was not able to get on the ballot in many states. The group also struggled to recruit candidates, including then-Sen. Mitt Romney, who rebuffed their pitch to run.
Now No Labels is pivoting back to policy, hoping to find consensus on issues instead of candidates.
What could a debt crisis trigger?
The U.S. debt is over $39 trillion and continues to tick up. Historic spending during the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing cost of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, as well as interest payments on the debt, continue to put pressure on government spending.
No Labels wants individuals to know about it — and to explain how Americans could be impacted in potentially catastrophic ways.
“The debt is this classic issue where everybody’s been talking about it forever, but nobody — lately, at least — wins or loses an election based on what they have to say about the debt, so it’s this issue that everybody knows is a problem, but it always seems like there’s other problems that you’d rather talk about, and other messages that are more politically salient,” Ryan Clancy, No Labels chief strategist, said in an interview with the Deseret News. “But the worse this problem has gotten, the more urgent it has gotten.”
Clancy and the team at No Labels compiled a report over several months, which is a fictional but “unfortunately not far-fetched” look at what could happen to the American public because of the nation’s massive debt. The report was compiled after researchers spoke with Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, economists and others.
“The purpose of ‘Nightmare on Main Street’ is to help wake up the public and a leadership class that acts as if our country can indefinitely run astronomical deficits without consequence,” No Labels says.
Modeled after the Netflix show “House of Dynamite” the No Labels report details how the country would look if, in a fictional scenario, the public continues on this path of accumulating debt.
It includes fictional characters like Lydia and Jose Garcia, a working family, David and Linda Williams, a couple of retirees, a bank CEO, Caleb Kim, who is a recent college graduate, and others.
Clancy and No Labels thought, what if they examined all the ways a debt crisis would “cascade through our society” both politically and economically. The report includes characters loosely based on far-right influencer Nick Fuentes and accused murderer Luigi Mangione to show how the extremes of either party could play out in a crisis situation.
Clancy said while headlines explain that the U.S. debt as a share of the economy is the highest it’s been since World War II, “World War II ended.” But the factors driving the increasing debt nowadays are “projected to increase as far as the eye can see,” he said, pointing to Social Security and Medicaid spending.
“People are getting older, they’re living longer, that’s only going to grow over time,” Clancy said.
The report has been sent to Congress and members of the media, and No Labels has also held a series of webinars breaking down things from spending at the Pentagon, healthcare fraud, Social Security and what the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was trying to tackle.
Why should the debt matter to voters?
Clancy said the webinars are meant to educate the public about what the federal government is spending money on and how important the debt crisis is. He said he hopes the report, in addition to the webinars, shows the American public “how this connects to their personal life.”
“Part of the reason I think the debt just doesn’t tend to drive home for people is it’s such a distant concern. If you think about the things people care about the most, and understandably so, it’s ‘what am I paying for groceries? Is my neighborhood safe? Can I send my kid to a good school?’” Clancy said. “That’s the most immediate stuff that matters. The debt is something that you don’t think about.”
“But the problem with the debt is this, you can go along for a long time where the debt is an issue that most people don’t need to worry about, and then overnight, it becomes the only issue that matters,” he added.
The report also closes with a line from Lincoln, speaking before Congress in 1862. It argues that Americans — and particularly elected officials — must rise to the occasion during a crisis.
“The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion,” Lincoln said. “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”
