Russia! Blackouts! Ukraine! Epstein! FISA! Climate Crisis! Quid Pro Joe! Wildfires! Giuliani! Steele! Stormy! Putin! Emoluments! Guns! Deep State! Me Too! Whistleblowers! Burisma! Trump!
Gosh, can we discuss something important for once?
According to The Hill political news site, as of last Tuesday “Congress has failed to finish work on any of the dozen regular appropriations bills for fiscal 2020, which began on October 1.”
Not one?
Also on last Tuesday, the Treasury Department put out a “Daily Treasury Statement,” which included a line item for “Total Public Debt Outstanding:” $23,008,410 millions. Did you know that Treasury doesn’t actually print the extra six zeroes because it would take twice as many pages to print?
So, America is now 23 million millions in debt, adding another million millions in 10 months. Nice work, and even nicer, with the “deal” President Donald Trump made with congressional Democrats, there’s no debt ceiling to “worry” about, at least not until July 31, 2021.
Yet the braniacs that some genius voters keep sending to Congress are now unable to figure out how to dig a trillion dollars deeper for FY 2020. How hard can it be to decide what to put on the plastic with no credit limit, kids? And with that reality, I guess it’s just a little premature for the peasants to ask if there’s any chance in holy Hades that Congress will ever, not just in my waning lifetime, match income with outgo? Or, while Ol’ Sol still shines, EVER act to pay down the national debt?
Does it matter anymore? Some of us remember reports of then-Vice President Dick Cheney snarking to then-but-soon-to-be-sacked Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, that the Reagan years had “proved that deficits don’t matter.” O’Neill’s crime was objecting to projected $500 billion annual deficits in 2002 – when the Global War on Terror was spooling up. Oh, those were the good old days, right?
Keep in mind America’s national debt never exceeded $1 trillion until Ronald Reagan was president. In 1982, after 206 years of the Republic, he (and Congress) cut taxes. Boom. A debt that was 20 percent of U.S. annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the start of the Depression, had bloated to 114 percent of GDP after both the New Deal and World War II (hey, it’s OK to borrow to save mankind), then shrunk back down to 31 percent by 1982, was on the way up both in dollar and GDP terms, hitting $2 trillion (doubling) by 1986 (another Reagan tax cut).
In 2000, the last surplus year, debt was 55 percent of GDP at $5 trillion, quintupling in just 18 years. The $10 trillion line was crossed in bailout year 2008, and that was doubled AGAIN in 2017 at a screaming 103 percent of GDP – percentages last seen during what was an existential crisis, not “good times” of a supposedly expanding economy, with the stock market hitting a record high!
How bad is this, really? Off the charts, completely off the map into the unknown, yet nobody seems to care. The media doesn’t, or can’t, and the same apparently goes for the attention hogs in Congress AND the White House.
Just imagine if it were you, individually – and in a way, the national debt is yours – over $65,000 per capita, meaning your family of four is already roughly $260,000 in the hole.
But lucky you … on $23 trillion, interest charges now are a lousy $383 billion, a paltry 1.66 percent.
So, total up your 2019 numbers: $4.45 trillion spending, $3.46 trillion income. Let’s get rid of some zeroes, so, you owe $230,000, are spending $44,500, taking in $34,600. How long do you think you could keep up spending $9,900 a year more than you took in? How long do you think your lenders (you’re in the hole already, remember?) would give you “full faith and credit” and on that debt you already have and are piling up, charge you just 1.66 percent?
The honest answer is, none of us individually could ever get away with crazy-stupid cash flow numbers like that. Yet we as the American electorate are letting Congress set us up for a fall that will make the Weimar collapse (and its aftermath) look tame.