via nytimes:
The run-up in borrowing costs is a one-two punch brought on by the need to finance a fast-growing budget deficit, worsened by tax cuts and steadily rising interest rates that will make the debt more expensive.
With less money coming in and more going toward interest, political leaders will find it harder to address pressing needs like fixing crumbling roads and bridges or to make emergency moves like pulling the economy out of future recessions.
Within a decade, more than $900 billion in interest payments will be due annually, easily outpacing spending on myriad other programs. Already the fastest-growing major government expense, the cost of interest is on track to hit $390 billion next year, nearly 50 percent more than in 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Tax cuts are the least of our debt problem given that Washington still enjoys record revenues, year after year. What Washington has is a spending problem, and zero appetite for addressing it.
I’D LIKE TO SEE THAT: List: $3 trillion in budget cuts waiting for Trump.
The Trump administration on Wednesday was urged to move on a list of massive federal budget cuts already identified by federal authorities that could save over $3 trillion and cut the deficit by nearly 15 percent.
The taxpayer’s watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste listed 636 recommendations in its new “Prime Cuts 2018” report that would save $429.8 billion in the first year and $3.1 trillion over five years.
“As the U.S. budget hurdles toward trillion-dollar deficits and with the national debt exceeding $21 trillion, Prime Cuts 2018 is needed now, more than ever. The only way to put our country on a path toward fiscal sanity is for leaders to make bold decisions to reduce waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.
h/t SG