Category Archives: Debt and deficits

Surprise! Money did not grow on trees

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billionBy Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s nothing more annoying than someone saying, “I told you so,” and it gives me no pleasure to do so. Well, maybe a little, but I’d much rather be wrong.

This bittersweet moment is inspired by March’s wholly foreseeable news that the federal government’s February budget deficit was the biggest ever for that month – $234 billion.

For the year, the Trump administration projects the deficit will be $1.09 trillion, a number last seen in 2012. (The Congressional Budget Office earlier projected $897 billion.) One trillion is about $3,300 for each of us, and it all will be added to the $22 trillion national debt. Your share of that amount is a little more than $67,000 – and growing by the minute.

In fact, the Trump administration projects $1 trillion deficits for each of the next four years, but even that may be a rosy scenario. Now that we’ve reached this plateau, there’s no plan to bring us down.

Last year’s deficit was $779 billion, which was bad enough. So how’d we get from there to here? Continue reading →

We should have listened to George

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

With Presidents’ Day occurring last Monday, this is a good time to recall perhaps the greatest presidential address in American history: George Washington’s farewell address.

Printed in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser on Sept. 19, 1796, it started by explaining why he was not running for re-election – a decision that may have been his most important act. His willingness to give up power set a precedent that has largely guided American presidents and American politics ever since.

He expressed gratitude to his country and then offered what he called “the disinterested warnings of a parting friend.”

He urged the United States to remain united. North and South, East and West, we’re better off knitted together. Americans, he wrote, should be “indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest.” Continue reading →

What’s different about this $1 trillion?

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Winter has arrived, and squirrels everywhere have enough to eat because they stored up food when it was more available in the warmer months.

We could learn a lot from those little rodent-sized brains. Instead of squirreling away our savings, we pig out on today’s and tomorrow’s resources.

This year, the federal government will run a deficit of about $970 billion, or 4.6 percent of the gross domestic product, despite a warm-weather economy that has been expanding for almost a decade. As a recent headline by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told us, “The deficit has never been this high when the economy was this strong.” Continue reading →

Instead of gaining five yards, Congress takes a knee

Steve Womack

Steve Womack was co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform.

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

No, adopting a two-year budget cycle wasn’t going to restore fiscal sanity in Washington, much less make a dent in the $21.85 trillion national debt (your equal share as of 9:24 a.m. Tuesday: $66,389.76).

But as Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told me, when you can’t score a touchdown, at least try to gain five yards.

That comment came four days after a committee he co-chaired failed to advance the two-year budgeting idea.

Why two years? Because Congress can’t get the job done every year. As Womack told me, Congress is so bitterly divided and spends so little time in Washington (about 120 days a year) that it can’t complete the budget soon enough. And that’s if it completes it at all.  Continue reading →

Fort Smith college students Fix the Debt

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

At the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Friday, more than 220 college students, including sophomore Garrett Spain from Greenwood, tried to do what Congress is unwilling to do – get the government’s debt under control.

The students gathered at two dozen tables, each with a laptop, and worked together using the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s (CRFB) Debt Fixer tool. That’s an online resource that lets users see how the federal budget would be affected by selecting various spending cuts and tax increases.

The goal of Friday’s exercise was not to pay down the $21.6 trillion national debt. Instead, it was to get the red ink under control. The $15.8 trillion public debt (what the government owes everyone but itself) is 77 percent of the gross domestic product and growing rapidly. By 2028, it is projected to be 97 percent, meaning it will be the same size as the economy. The goal for the students was to stabilize it at 70 percent by 2028, and 40 percent by 2050. Continue reading →