Spending spree
Federal debts hits $23 trillion
Our nation’s concern with federal deficits appears to have died with Ross Perot.
The Texas billionaire, whose 1992 presidential campaign helped spur some fiscal sanity in Washington, died at age 89 in July 2019. That’s right around when Congress and President Donald Trump decided to dispense with the fig leaf of spending caps.
The agreement, meant to buy budgetary peace through the 2020 elections, officially suspended the Budget Control Act of 2011 through its expiration in 2021. The Tea Party -inspired law that died last summer imposed automatic spending cuts if Congress didn’t reduce spending or raise revenue.
Presidents and congressional members of both parties had been waiving the law’s caps since 2014, but its continued existence was at least a bow to keeping an eye on federal red ink.
The disappearance of the Budget Control Act, and Washington’s attendant desire to stop any fussing over deficits, is notable in the degree to which deficit spending has exploded since its early death.
The two spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2019, include the nation’s costliest annual appropriation for the Pentagon at $738 billion, with $1.375 billion for Mr. Trump’s border wall; $555 billion for domestic programs favored by Democrats, including $25 million for gun violence research; and tax breaks for special interests. Federal debt, which recently hit $23 trillion, up from just under $20 trillion when Mr. Trump took office, is only likely to grow.
Amid a booming economy and 4% growth in federal tax revenues, this year’s budget is likely to spill nearly $1 trillion in red ink.
And the writing — when it comes to any worries about deficits — is more than on the wall.
Larry Summers, treasury secretary to former President Bill Cinton, the last president to see a balanced budget during his time in office, coauthored a column last year with the headline “Who’s afraid of budget deficits?” Its key argument was that “Politicians and policymakers should focus on urgent social problems, not deficits.”
He’s not alone. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has argued, also in 2019, that low-interest rates mean “debt is just not a serious problem for the United States currently.”
Mr. Summers, to his credit, acknowledges something our current deficit spenders in Washington ignore — that our nation’s “debt cannot be allowed to grow forever.”
The bill for spending today will have to be paid, and interest rates won’t stay low indefinitely.
And now, with the economy humming and unemployment low, is the time to make some payments to reduce the burden on future generations. The budget situation in Washington today is political gluttony. Our children and grandchildren deserve better.
The giant sucking sound, as Ross Perot used to put it, coming from Washington as the budget bills were passed and signed was the last gasp of fiscal responsibility fleeing our nation’s capital. It’s time to restore it.