For the last several weeks, the national dialog in the presidential campaign has been filled with stories about whether or not Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating residents’ pets.
But there is hardly an utterance about how the national debt is eating our lunch.
The federal government and its enabling politicians spend money in ways that make drunken sailors look prudent. The debt is over $35 trillion and growing by about $100,000 every five seconds.
And the speed at which the debt is adding up is expanding. Washington will spend almost $2 trillion more than it receives in revenue this fiscal year. In 2000, the government had a slight surplus, but the size of the annual deficit has been steadily increasing.
Social Security and Medicare are rapidly approaching insolvency. Social Security’s reserves will run out by 2033 and Medicare will fall short by 2036. If nothing is done, the government will have to reduce benefits.
So, our political leaders are planning for that, right?
No, they are not. In fact, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris pledge to not touch the popular entitlement programs. That plays well on the campaign trail, but it is fiscally irresponsible. We are at a stage where the country needs truth telling on the approaching debt disaster.
That is risky because we are mostly comfortable in America. We don’t like to be told that tough decisions have to made. We don’t want to hear that some sacrifice may be necessary. And as long as all this red ink has no direct impact on our lives, why worry?
William Galston, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former advisor to the Clinton administration, explained it this way in the Wall Street Journal recently:
“Perhaps because a national-debt crisis seems distant and intangible to the average American, voters are focused on more urgent matters, such as high prices, immigration and abortion. But it’s the duty of public officials—especially candidates for high office—to tell people what they need to know, not only what they want to hear.”
Here is one part of the debt story that people should hear, and it would resonate; the interest alone on the debt this fiscal year is nearly $900 billion and will rise to $1 trillion next fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2051, interest on the debt will be the largest category of federal spending.
What must be done?
Galston suggest that “Politicians should, at a minimum, stabilize the national debt as a share of GDP so that the burden of interest payments and debt refinancing grows no faster than economy.” But again, that will require our political leaders to confront uncomfortable fiscal realities. And that has consequences.
Remember when former Republican Congressman and Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan tried to tighten down spending and opponents ran a TV ad showing someone perceived to be Ryan pushing a grandmother in wheelchair off a cliff?
So, don’t count on any substantive discussions for the rest of this presidential campaign about the debt. However, at least we will be reassured that our pets are safe.