dailymail | Coronavirus-related federal debt and deficit figures are pointing to government red ink unparalleled since World War II.
One
lasting worry is the further shrinking of revenues that already were
well below historic averages, even as the spending side of the federal
ledger climbs due to the retirement costs of the baby boomers to
Medicare and Social Security, record Pentagon spending and long-term
COVID-19 response costs.
Even
Washington's few remaining spending hawks say the flood of red ink
should not be a focus in the short term as the government takes
unprecedented steps to respond to a shrinking economy, unemployment
levels not seen since the Great Depression, and shutdown orders lasting
well into next month or beyond.
But
when policymakers inevitably are forced to take on deficits, virtually
none of them will have any experience in successfully doing so.
Congress has not passed a major attack on
the deficit since the hard-won 1997 law that capped a decade's worth of
politically-costly but ultimately effective reduction measures.
The
era of successful action to tackle debt and deficits ended more than
two decades ago. In the interim, a divisive brand of politics has taken
hold, making the kind of painful sacrifices required to even dent the
deficit virtually impossible to pull off.
What's
more, no one has even seriously tried since a failed effort by former
GOP Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Obama almost a decade ago.
There´s
no agreement on what levels of debt and deficits are sustainable. The
government has run large deficits for well over a decade without the
predicted increase in interest rates, economic stagnation, or a
European-style fiscal crisis.
