The U.S. Government’s Repair Bills Are Coming Due

The U.S. Government’s Repair Bills Are Coming Due

Decades of accumulated technical debt have hollowed out state capacity.

About a dozen people stand on a low stone-brick wall with red-white-and-blue protest signs and flags as they demonstrate outside a brutalist concrete building with a sign reading the "Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building." October 29, 2025, 4:49 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

In 2019, journalist David Klion described the United States as “the sick man of the 21st century,” a country suffering from elite stagnation and institutional fatigue. Six years later, the diagnosis remains accurate. The problem is less ideological than infrastructural—a form of technical debt. In software, “technical debt” is the cost of deferred maintenance: Each quick f