LEFT: President Donald J. Trump participates in a Sinclair Broadcast Group town hall event Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) RIGHT: Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a moderated conversation on reproductive rights with model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, Thursday, June 20, 2024, in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe)
Whether you’re supporting Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, if you’re worried about the national debt (and you should be) you’re somewhat disappointed in how little either is talking about the problem. Richard Rubin reports in The Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. isn’t fighting a war, a crisis or a recession. Yet the federal government is borrowing as if it were.
This year’s budget deficit is on track to top $1.9 trillion, or more than 6% of economic output, a threshold reached only around World War II, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. Publicly held federal debt—the sum of all deficits—just passed $28 trillion or almost 100% of GDP.
If Congress does nothing, the total debt will climb by another $22 trillion through 2034. Interest costs alone are poised to exceed annual defense spending.
But the country’s fiscal trajectory merits only sporadic mentions by the major-party presidential nominees, let alone a serious plan to address it. Instead, the candidates are tripping over each other to make expensive promises to voters.
Economists and policymakers already worry that the growing debt pile could put upward pressure on interest rates, restraining economic growth, crowding out other priorities and potentially impairing Washington’s ability to borrow in case of a war or another crisis. There have been scattered warning signs already, including downgrades to the U.S. credit rating and lackluster demand for Treasury debt at some auctions.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and GOP rival Donald Trump aren’t the same on fiscal policy. She has outlined or endorsed enough fiscal measures—tax increases or spending cuts—to plausibly pay for much of her agenda. He has not.
Still, both Harris and Trump were parts of administrations that helped produce those deficits. Both have promised to protect the biggest drivers of rising spending—Social Security and Medicare. And both want to extend trillions of dollars in tax cuts set to lapse at the end of 2025, amid bipartisan agreement that federal income taxes shouldn’t rise for at least 97% of households.
Read more here.
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