Where We Stand:
Plenty of blame for budget fiasco.
When Gov. Rick Scott came to Orlando this week to reveal one of the worst-kept secrets in Florida — his campaign for U.S. Senate — he took advantage of the spotlight to blast politics in the nation’s capital. “We have to all acknowledge that Washington is a disaster,” the governor said. “It’s dysfunctional.”
Although Scott’s salvo was clearly aimed at his Democratic opponent, three-term incumbent Bill Nelson, it would have been well directed as a broadside at members of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the president, Republican Donald Trump. This bipartisan wrecking crew shares blame for the disastrous state of federal finances.
The latest outlook on the budget, issued this week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, projects a deficit of $804 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. That’s an increase of almost $140 billion from 2017, and the third straight increase since 2015, when the annual gap between federal revenues and spending was $439 billion.
The CBO’s projections for the future are more alarming. The deficit is on track to exceed $1 trillion by 2020, and reach an all-time nominal record of $1.53 trillion by 2028. During the next 10 years, the federal government would pile another $12.4 trillion on the nation’s $21 trillion national debt.
Even those projections might be too optimistic. Under an alternative, more politically realistic scenario from the CBO, the nation will experience its first $2 trillion deficit in 2028, and accumulate more like $15 trillion in debt over the coming decade.
A year ago, Trump vowed to eliminate the national debt “over a period of eight years.” But then in December, Congressional Republicans, at his urging, passed a package of individual and business tax cuts conservatively projected to add at least $1.3 trillion to deficits over the following decade, even when accounting for economic growth. While no Democrats voted for the tax-cut bill, many of them joined with Republicans in February to cut a two-year, $320 billion budget deal that could add another $2 trillion to deficits if its spending levels are maintained over the next decade.
So what’s the impact of rising deficits and debt on ordinary Americans outside of Washington, including Florida? The CBO projects all the borrowing necessary to make up the budget gaps will push the bill for annual interest payments on the national debt to more than $900 billion by 2028, almost three times its current cost. Those payments will tighten the squeeze on other parts of the federal budget, putting more pressure for cuts on programs that benefit millions of Floridians. That group includes Social Security and Medicare, as well as defense programs, which are important to the state’s economy.
Escalating debt payments will leave fewer dollars available for other non-mandatory, non-military programs in the budget that are also important to Florida. Less money for NASA. Less for Everglades restoration. Less for programs that provide affordable housing, a growing need in Central Florida and across the state. Less for roads and mass transit, another priority in fast-growing areas of the country such as Florida.
On Thursday, a proposed balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution failed on a mostly party-line vote, with Republicans backing it but Democrats opposed. On the heels of the deficitfinanced tax cut and spending deal, the vote was a farce.
Members who truly believe in fiscal responsibility need to show it when it counts — in tax and spending bills — not in empty gestures like Thursday’s vote. Otherwise, the disaster in Washington will go on, no matter who represents Florida in the U.S. Senate.
Huge deficits are coming, thanks to President Trump and Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Only restraint on taxes and spending will avoid fiscal disaster.