There might be 7 of us left in this country who are concerned about annual deficits and the national debt, and it's strange to see CNN publish an article about the topic:
If it feels like we’re dedicating a lot of recent What Matters editions to the national debt, we are.
It’s a top political story as Republicans and Democrats square off over raising the debt limit and paying the nation’s bills.
But the larger issue of the government spending more than it collects in tax revenue – and whether or when that will become an existential threat to the way Americans live today – should not be so quickly bypassed.
In recent weeks, we’ve:
- Talked to an academic who argues the debt is not as much of a problem as we presume.
- Looked at the looming insolvency of key Medicare and Social Security trust funds.
There’s more this week:
- The annual bottom-line financial report of the US released Thursday by the Treasury Department showed the country’s current path to be “unsustainable.”
- A separate Congressional Budget Office report released Wednesday confirms interest rate hikes will make the ballooning national debt much more expensive to finance. In a matter of years, just paying interest on debt will eat up a significant portion of tax revenue.
More plainly put, that means the portion of every tax dollar going to interest on the debt will grow from:
- 13 cents of every tax dollar spent on interest in 2023 to
- 20 cents of every tax dollar spent on interest in 2033.
I talked to Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that tries to raise awareness about the debt and spur Congress to act to fix the problem.
Excerpts of our phone conversation are below....
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