Amazing disgrace of our $20 trillion in debt

A disgraceful milestone was reached this week when US government debt busted through the $20 trillion level and quickly went over $20.1 trillion.

Can $21 trillion, or $25 trillion, be far ahead? Why not $40 trillion, so our grandkids and their grandkids can be even more indebted to the Chinese and other countries that buy our debt but aren’t very nice to us?

This isn’t the kind of milestone you celebrate or even want noticed. So you didn’t hear a peep about it from the White House or from Congress, which is responsible for our wanton spending.

Wall Street ignored it, too, and that’s a good thing — for now — because the financial markets are likely to panic when they start paying attention.

And there was virtually nothing in the media, which is surprising since the $20.1 trillion is something that would be perfect, and perfectly unfair, to hang on President Trump. And, heaven knows, the press loves its Trump-gotcha moments.

It’s also funny in a nauseating way how we broke through the $20 trillion mark, because Washington was supposed to be sticking to a strict spending limit. But suddenly, our debt — in one quick stroke of the pen on Monday — rose by $318 billion.

And all that new debt was rung up right after Trump cut a deal with the Democrats on raising the nation’s debt ceiling — a deal that enough of Trump’s double-crossed Republicans quickly agreed to.

And as if $20.1 trillion isn’t enough, now Trump is proposing that there be no US debt limit at all. The government — our untrustworthy elected officials — would be able to spend however much it wants. What a disgraceful idea. But it shouldn’t be a surprise: The real estate and casino mogul part of Trump’s brain is used to borrowing loads of money.

The only problem is that borrowing when you’re president is different from doing so to put up a commercial building.

The American people — not some bank — are now on the hook.

This jump in the debt also comes at a time when Trump wants to overhaul the tax laws so that people pay less.

Everyone, naturally, wants to pay less in taxes. But unless there is an increase in economic growth as a result, a tax cut is guaranteed to increase our country’s annual deficit and cause a leap in debt.

Add to this the ginormous amount Trump wants to spend — billions on infrastructure, billions for hurricane reconstruction and billions for his Mexican wall — and we have a mess ahead of us.

Let me go on the record to say this is frightening for both Americans living today and future generations. The US dollar, which is the premier currency in the world, is in jeopardy of losing that status.

Before Democrats take a holierthan-thou attitude on all this, remember two things: They went along with Trump on raising the debt ceiling. And the debt during the Obama administration rose by an astounding $9 trillion.

And while government spending like that is supposed to help the economy, this time it didn’t. And that is exactly what might happen when Trump cuts taxes — there might be little or no benefit to the economy.

There’s one other thing that has been going on. While Washington was allowing US debt to explode over the past 10 years, the Federal Re- serve was experimenting with quantitative easing, the practice of printing extra money that was used to purchase US debt.

So trillions of dollars of debt being accumulated by Washington was being purchased not by legitimate buyers but rather by the Fed. The US government was essentially buying its own debt.

The Fed will soon be undoing those bond purchases, at a time when disgraceful milestones are ignored and crossed.

As I’ve been proposing g for years, a better way to help the economy without running up debt would be to change restrictions on personal retirement plans.

In fact, doing this would increase tax revenue rather than cut it as Trump’s plan will do.

Allow people to take some of the trillions they have in IRAs, 401(k)s and other retirement plans, and invest the money in real estate and other economy-boosting projects. You can even let people invest in the infrastructure projects that Washington keeps talking about.

These withdrawals can be taxed at a lower rate. That’ll make them at- tractive to investors and bring money into the Treasury Department. It’s good to see that the grown-ups are finally speaking out on some of the nonsense going on in the financial world. Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase, this week called bitcoin “a fraud.” And he was quoted as saying that “any trader trading bitcoin [will be] fired for being stupid.” Dimon’s remarks came soon after the Chinese government reportedly cracked down on trading of bitcoin and other fake “currencies.” I’ve been calling bitcoin a confidence game. It only has value because those advocating the cryptocurrency have convinced enough people of the notion that it has value. Bitcoin and its imitators are backed by nothing of any real value. So call it a fraud, a confidence game or a joke. But it’s about time that someone spoke up about it. Maybe the media will soon start doing their job on this subject as well.