Spend, borrow, repeat will be the ‘debt’ of us

When the COVID-19 pandemic eventually recedes, its global costs will become clearer. Paradoxically, that accounting begins with hardships that cannot be calculated: the suffering of so many families, communities, nations.

Those human losses are paramount. Yet they aren’t the pandemic’s only lethal legacies. National governments worldwide — ours in the forefront — have fought the pandemic and its side effects with borrowed money. Much of this new debt will fall not only on today’s children and grandchildren, but also on our descendants not yet born.

So we were concerned if not surprised by a Wall Street Journal news story headlined “Governments world-wide gorge on record debt, testing news limits.” The Journal reports: “The pandemic has pushed global government debt to the highest level since World War II, surpassing the world’s annual economic output. … The U.S. government is on course for a budget deficit of $3 trillion for the second year in a row.”

We mention this as our government’s Internal Revenue Service delivers the first of several child tax credit payments to single parents earning up to $95,000, and to couples earning up to $170,000.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats say they intend to pass a sweeping social, educational and environmental package they price at $3.5 trillion. That’s not to be confused with previous COVID-19 relief spending, or a separate and not yet approved outlay on infrastructure.

As our national debt rises daily toward $29 trillion, the government’s perpetual printing of new dollars threatens to cheapen the currency. In short, we — or our progeny — have to repay every dollar now being lent to Washington by China and other buyers of U.S. bonds.

Which raises a question: When does necessary spending on pandemic relief mutate into optional spending on the desirable but unaffordable?

We argue that unchecked cycles of spend-borrow-repeat eventually enfeeble any nation. That may not happen while interest rates are as low as today’s. But those rates — the relentless cost to taxpayers of carrying so much debt — now are likelier to rise than to fall.

When America’s debt inevitably grows too onerous for taxpayers to bear or global investors to tolerate, expect a furious blame game: Why did our politicians let this happen?

That’s easy: We voters didn’t demand that spending not exceed revenue, that debt not be allowed to pile up like snow atop a mountain. A long line of presidents and Congresses have talked about preventing the avalanche. But we voters have let them get by on that lip service alone.

Their greatest sin thus far is abject failure to reform the debt-manufacturing entitlement programs such as Medicare (whose hospital coverage trust fund is projected by its trustees to run dry in 2026) and the Social Security retirement fund (projected as empty in 2034).

So as members of Congress and President Joe Biden ponder a massive expansion of social, educational and environmental spending, we have a request:

Whatever the final shape of your package, pay for it rather than borrow for it. Because given how you’ve behaved — especially since the pandemic struck — your binge of spendborrow-repeat will be the debt of us.