The United States government debt runs presently to $34.8 trillion — and gallops by the second, by the minute, by the hour, by the day. Dr.
Paul Krugman believes he holds the solution. He believes it would bring an overall stability to the predicament. In the good doctor’s telling: Congress need merely nick deficits 2.
1% each year for the following 30 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the United States debt-to-GDP will scale an economy-sapping 166% by 2054. Yet if Congress takes aboard his guidance, 2054’s debt-to-GDP ratio would equal today’s debt-to-GDP ratio — a manageable menace.
Fat Chance Yet will Congress execute even a modest budget nicking? We are far from convinced that it will. Nor is Mr. Andrew Wilford of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
From whom: [Krugman’s proposal] translates to reductions of over $45 trillion, or more than 40 percent of the projected deficit over that period. This year alone, Congress would have to cut $782 billion from the deficit — just slightly less than our entire national defense budget. Congress struggles just to avoid increasing the deficit every year, imagining that it can easily find the willpower to cut the equivalent of the military budget on a permanent basis is ludicrous.
And even if such willpower existed, it would do nothing to reduce our debt-to-GDP ratio or leave us any room to respond to unexpected fiscal challenges or crises. Former colleague David Stockman directed the Office of Man.
