George Will nailed it when he said we are sleepwalking into a debt crisis. A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Debt Crisis aims to be a key source of the ideas that will be considered once the already-declared crisis is taken seriously. The unsustainable, and still rapidly growing, U.S. Federal Government debt is a classic case of ”in denial.
Indeed, we are no closer to a solution to the debt crisis than we were ten years ago when the Simpson-Bowles Commission issued a report with recommendations to address the nation’s debt crisis. The bipartisan Commission fell short of the supermajority vote required to submit their recommendations to Congress. President Trump declared a debt crisis, but didn’t act like it. Various commissions and think tanks have made numerous recommendations. In 2019, a Congressional Committee was appointed to recommend budget process reforms, but that Committee could not agree on any recommendations to submit to Congress. While the dominant sentiment is that maybe if we ignore it, it will just go away, the debt crisis will not just vanish. And we have a glimmer of hope to nurture. The Trump Administration has been hinting that a re-elected President Trump will begin to take serious action to address the debt crisis he declared in 2017. Indeed, the first year of a second presidential term is the most favorable time for difficult action to reign-in spending and debt growth. A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Debt Crisis is a timely addition to a critical policy discussion–