Tote Board Record
For decades, I’d watch the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association. They’d make a big show of a new number on the tote board, and you’d root to see it climb ever higher.
There’s a new tote board number coming out of Washington, D.C. – and it’s nothing to root for.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted yesterday that the gross national debt of the United States has now reached $39 trillion, according to figures from the U.S. Treasury. The previous milestone of $38 trillion was reached last October…in other words, we racked up $1 trillion in debt in only five months.
The CRFB folks call it an “embarrassing milestone that both parties have helped build over decades, and neither seems particularly interested in addressing it before we hit $40 trillion.”
The debt is bad enough, but now deficits are approaching $2 trillion…and deficits as a share of the economy are twice as large as the 3 percent goal many economists and bipartisan policymakers believe we ought to be targeting…again, according to CRFB.
Higher debt makes inflation worse, limits economic investment, and allows interest payments to dominate spending, even at the expense of national defense.
But it’s an election year. The chance to take real action on the issue was at this time last year…and you saw how little appetite there was to even discuss a reduction of spending even then.
Change is required, and fast. But rest assured we’ll have this same conversation in August, if not sooner—when our gross national debt hits a previously unheard of $40 trillion.
