CBO Dire Debt Warnings Show Nation's Democrat Future
Big Government: The Congressional Budget Office warns of a terrifying, unprecedented level of national debt in the coming decade. That fits nicely with Democrats' objectives, but not with our nation's founding principles.
Andrew Jackson, who in 1835 succeeded in paying off the national debt, was famous for considering debt slavery. The current fiscal path the U.S. is on does indeed lead to slavery, but the slave masters of the future will be well-heeled politicians and federal bureaucrats, not plantation owners.
The CBO's new budget projections contain an eerie warning that we are on path from today's already unfathomable $17.7 trillion in gross federal government debt to more than $27 trillion in 2024. This in spite of finger-crossing projections of tax revenue over the next decade exceeding its 40-year average as a share of GDP.
Debt will reach 78% of GDP by 2024, CBO warns, which is double the 39% average of the past 40 years.
The consequences will include big hikes in spending on interest payments on the debt when interest rates go back up. That, in turn, would increase the cost of investment and "the capital stock would be smaller, and productivity and wages lower, than if federal borrowing was more limited," the CBO warns.
It also means "less flexibility" for future Congresses "to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected challenges" and, most chillingly, such a massive debt "increases the risk of a fiscal crisis in which investors would lose so much confidence in the government's ability to manage its budget that the government would be unable to borrow at affordable rates."
The CBO baseline assumes political paralysis on entitlement spending, with mandatory outlays "steady at 13.7% of GDP from 2022 through 2024." But that would change for the better with a strong dose of statesmanship, like House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's recent "Path to Prosperity" plan.
Ryan cuts $5 trillion while saving Medicare for future generations, who could choose from a list of guaranteed-coverage health plans based on need. And he jump starts the economy with a tax reform aimed at generating jobs and moving away from class warfare.
But for proposing real solutions to America's coming fiscal train wreck, all Ryan and his fellow Republicans get from their in-denial foes are insults and slanders.
What exactly do President Obama and Washington's other engineers for never-ending government expansion think when they see a $27 trillion national debt facing their children and grandchildren? Like Jackson, do they behold impending slavery?
They apparently see themselves and their political heirs as benevolent slave masters in a new era of nanny government and an emasculated private sector.
A Republican party that extols personal economic freedom won't fit into that future very well, which must sound great to Democrats.
It has little to do, however, with the society of free people our Founding Fathers sought to secure, under a Constitution established for the express purpose of restraining government.
