Big bill, bigger debt, no plan

To the Editor:

In the debate about the budget bill recently passed by Congress, an essential point got lost.

Estimates are that the tax and spending bill will add $3.5 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. Missing from the discussion is that this amount is on top of the huge deficits already being rung up each year.

The national debt now stands at some $36 trillion, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. That amounts to about $106,000 for every man, woman and child. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office projects the 2025 budget deficit — the amount to be added to the debt this year alone — at $1.9 trillion.

So let’s do the arithmetic. If annual deficits remain at roughly the current level for the next decade — and there is no reason to assume otherwise — then the debt increases by $20 trillion. If we add $3.5 trillion for the budget bill’s impact, the decade’s total debt increase is $23.5 trillion. Add that to the existing debt and the total by 2035 is close to $60 trillion.

Under the new budget bill, the tax breaks being given to high-income individuals, tipped workers, people who work overtime, and senior citizens like me, will essentially go onto a credit card bill to be paid, with interest, by our children and grandchildren.

To be fair, both political parties are to blame for the fiscal train wreck toward which this country is headed. For the present, knowing full well the current debt situation, a responsible Congress would have at least tried to address it. This Congress took an unsustainable situation and made it markedly worse.

Somewhere along the line, as a country, we lost sight of a fundamental fiscal principle: That things we want from government at some point have to be paid for. We will rue the day when the bill for decades of financial recklessness finally comes due. 

Ted J. Rulseh

Harshaw