The United States just passed a 1.3 Trillion dollar spending bill over the objections of many budget hawks in Congress who despised and vehemently opposed the bill due to the amount of dangerously high red ink. Unfortunately the only way the country will avoid a financial and economic collapse is for three key people to sacrifice their political careers and do everything possible to balance the budget before it is too late.
President Trump, Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan and Senate Majority (Leader?) Mitch McConnell are key to getting any kind of budget reform passed. President Trump promised to balance the budget while he was running for office, stating that he could balance the budget, “fairly quickly”. Unfortunately,once elected, Trump blew a gaping hole through that promise by signing budgets that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, “The projected rise in deficits would be the result of rapid growth in spending for federal retirement and health care programs targeted to older people and to rising interest payments on the government’s debt, accompanied by only moderate growth in revenue collections. Those accumulating deficits would drive up debt held by the public from its already high level to its highest percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) since shortly after World War II.”
CBO makes an even more alarming statement in it’s Analysis of the President’s 2018 Budget, stating, “By the end of the coming decade, debt held by the public would total 80 percent of GDP.”
Paul Ryan has expressed an interest in reigning in entitlement spending, programs such as Social Security benefits, Medicare, and Medicaid, that are mentioned by CBO as the “cause of rapid growth in spending for federal retirement and health care programs targeted to older people.” These programs are called, “entitlements” because individuals satisfying given eligibility requirements set by past legislation are entitled to Federal government benefits or services. However, according to Politico, the Speaker is running into resistance from both Mitch McConnell and his own party.
What is needed is a bipartisan plan that steadily reduces the deficits to zero, backed by President Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan and both Mitch McConnel and the Minority leaders of the House and Senate. The plan would have to reduce the deficit in a way that does not destroy economic growth. Maintaining economic stability is key to keeping deficits from rising due to lack of tax revenue and that is what is so tricky for the United States. Any plan to balance the budget cannot cut spending too much as that would lead to a downward cycle of lost jobs and tax revenue. At the same time however, not balancing the budget quickly enough, allows the growth of the debt to slowly eat away at the economic stability of the country to a point at which the whole system collapses under the weight of the debt. To avoid such a collapse, the plan must not just maintain zero deficits, but must generate a surplus to steadily pay down the accumulated debt.
Doing nothing is simply not an option. The U.S. is running out of time and if President Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are really interested in making America Great Again, then they better start acting like it and DO what is needed to stop an economic catastrophe.