Debt: $35T

Alan Rappeport at NYT: America’s gross national debt topped $35 trillion for the first time on Monday, a reminder of the nation’s grim fiscal predicament as legislative fights over taxes and spending initiatives loom in Washington. The Treasury Department noted the...

The Politics of Federal Debt

Brian Riedl nails it at Reason: Paradoxically, the faster government debt escalates toward an inevitable debt crisis, the less politicians and voters seem to care. In the 1980s and 1990s, more modest deficits dominated economic policy debates and prompted six...

Failed State Update: Unemployment Insurance

Don Lee at LAT: California’s massive budget deficit, coupled with the state’s relatively high level of joblessness, has become a major barrier to reducing the billions of dollars of debt it has incurred to pay unemployment benefits. The surge in unemployment brought...

The Fiscal Future

Mark J. Warshawsky at AEI: Last week, the Treasury Department released, with no fanfare, the massive Financial Report (FR) of the US Government. Using an accrual accounting basis, rather than a cash basis, the FR shows a much poorer picture of the current finances of...

Debt and Interest Payments

CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034 Debt held by the public rises each year in relation to the size of the economy, reaching 116 percent of GDP in 2034—an amount greater than at any point in the nation’s history. From 2024 to 2034, increases in...

Deficits and the Federal Debt

 From CBO: Each year, the Congressional Budget Office publishes a report presenting its projections of what the federal budget and the economy would look like over the next 30 years if current laws generally remained unchanged. The long-term budget projections...