No individual, corporation, or government ever gets to choose how much money to borrow. Only in academic and pundit circles is such a fanciful notion accepted as realistic.
A recent op-ed penned for a think tank purported with alarm that “Congress Knows It Has a Spending Problem, But Won’t Fix It.” And at Fox News last week, Ted Jenkin published an opinion piece in which he predicted a $50 trillion national debt by 2030 alongside the expected rhetorical flourish about how “America has a serious promises problem and is writing checks that it won’t be able to cash.” More realistically, the $50 trillion national debt that Jenkin predicts in 2030 is evidence that the U.S. may or may not have many problems in 2030, but none of them will involve the nominal level of debt. And that’s not a defense of government spending or borrowing, but it is a comment that those focused on the debt have little understanding of why there’s debt.
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