AS U.S. SEES DEBT PILE UP, EVEN USUAL CRITICS CHEER

The U.S. government has opened the spigots and let loose nearly $3 trillion to try to rescue the economy from the coronavirus outbreak — a river of debt that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago.

And yet the response, even from people who built careers as skeptics of federal debt, speaks to the gravity of the crisis: Almost no one has blinked.

With the U.S. economy in a frightening free-fall, they say, the government has no choice but to pour trillions into an emergency operation. Doing less would risk a catastrophe — a recession that could devolve into a full-fledged depression. And if that were to happen, the government’s fiscal health would end up far worse.

What’s more, the lessons of World War II and the 2008 financial crisis suggest to many that a combination of ultra-low interest rates and eventual economic growth can keep government debts manageable and prevent a budget crisis.

In a sign that investors worry more about a deep recession than about whether the government might eventually struggle to repay its escalating debt, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note remains well below 1 percent. Many analysts say that while soaring federal debt may end up slowing an eventual recovery, there won’t be any recovery if the government doesn’t borrow and spend aggressively now.

“Like most folks, I’m not especially concerned about deficit and debt now,” said Donald Marron, director of the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. “Interest rates remain low. Immediate health and economic concerns must take precedence.”

Nonetheless, the numbers are shocking. After Congress passed four programs to sustain the economy through the COVID-19 crisis, the budget deficit — the gap between what the government spends and what it collects in taxes — will hit a record $3.7 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

On Monday, the Treasury Department announced that it will borrow $2.99 trillion in the April-June quarter, blowing away the previous quarterly record of $569 billion, set in the recession year of 2008, and eclipsing the $1.28 trillion it borrowed in the bond market in all of 2019. By the time the budget year ends in September, the government’s debt — its accumulated annual deficits — will equal 101 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the CBO.

Associated Press A man in a mask waits to cross the street as a digital sign displays groups of people walking above another sign displaying the size of the national debt along an empty K Street in Washington on April 29.