I'll take the leg meat with the side of treasury bonds from Marketplace. I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio.

Happy Thanksgiving. Whilst we gorge on Turkey, the U.S. government gorges on debt. The U.S. national debt has reached just over $36 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. Most people would agree there's

probably something in that to cut. The question is how? Marketplaces, Nancy Marshall Genser,

joins us now. Good morning, Nancy. Good morning. Why is it so hard to cut government spending?

Well, Subri, part of the problem is the way the federal government spends its money.

About two-thirds of the federal budget is mandatory spending, and that's for things like

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Henrietta Trays is co-founder and director of economic policy at Veda Partners, and she told me no lawmaker

wants to risk losing votes from seniors. Cutting from senior citizens is a big problem for

politicians because senior citizens vote the most. So even raising the retirement age is something

that's very difficult to even broach the subject, even if that were to be phased in over 10 or even 20 years.

And only about a quarter of the budget is for discretionary spending, and that's things that could be cut.

The rest goes to interest payments on the debt, which, of course, are also mandatory.

Oi, okay, so let's talk about the sliver of discretionary spending that, in theory,

could actually be trimmed. What types of programs are we talking about there? So these are expenditures

Congress votes on in the spending bills they're supposed to pass and send on to the White

House each year for the president to sign.

These bills fund government agencies like the education and agriculture departments and the FAA.

But almost half of this discretionary spending goes to the Defense Department,

and that's according to the Peterson Foundation.

Pentagon spending is really hard to cut because it provides jobs in many congressional districts on military bases and in factories producing parts for planes and weapons.

Well, President Elect Trump has talked about rolling back spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, which would be for green

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