11 July 2023
The many dire things that fiscal hawks said would happen if we did not shrink the debt a decade ago have not come to pass. And neither party seems to have much interest in the country’s long-term fiscal trajectory; Democrats and Republicans recently walked away from debt-ceiling negotiations without doing much of anything. Yet the country’s fiscal situation has changed dramatically, if quietly, in the past few years. Medicare and Social Security spending is climbing as the Baby Boomers age. The country’s borrowing costs, measured as a share of GDP, are at their highest level in two decades and rising. Despite strong growth, Washington is running as large a deficit as it was during the worst of the Great Recession. And the debt now stands at $32 trillion.