Op-Ed: A Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity

This article originally appeared in Daily Caller on April 25, 2023

This summer, the U.S. Treasury will exhaust the money in its checking account. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal government will run a budget deficit of $1.4 trillion this year, requiring Treasury to engage in additional borrowing to fund spending in excess of receipts.

However, under the current debt limit of $31.4 trillion, it is unable to borrow any additional money to cover the deficit. There is no prospect of Congress balancing the budget this year, and a default on the national debt would be both financially catastrophic and a source of national embarrassment. The debt ceiling must be raised.

At the same time, the federal government has a spending problem. As a share of the economy, discretionary spending has grown by nearly 20% from its pre-coronavirus levels while inflation has eaten away at workers’ paychecks. CBO further projects that annual deficits will rise to $2.7 trillion in 2033, with total debt hitting $52 trillion at the end of 2033, an increase of $19.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Even Treasury Secretary Yellen’s department acknowledges that this path is “unsustainable.”

Read full op-ed in Daily Caller