The Debt

The US in Decline: What Americans Fear for the Future

By Yuval Rosenberg

A Pew Research Center report published Thursday shows how staggeringly pessimistic Americans are about where the country is heading. “When Americans peer 30 years into the future, they see a country...
60% of This Year’s Deficit Is the Result of Tax Cuts and Other Recent Legislation: CRFB

By Yuval Rosenberg

The federal deficit for fiscal 2019 is projected to climb to around $900 billion, or $118 billion more than last year, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office . Most of that total...
Pay Off the Debt? Trump Is Adding Trillions to It

By Yuval Rosenberg

Time after time in recent years, Republican budget writers have tried harder than Olympic gymnasts to achieve balance. In a sometimes quixotic-seeming quest to wipe out the federal deficit within 10...
Seven Takeaways from Trump's 2020 Budget Proposal

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump unveiled his 2020 budget blueprint on Monday, proposing to spend a record $4.75 trillion next year while also cutting $2.7 trillion is spending over 10 years. Here's the big picture...
Unchecked Federal Spending Is Leading Us to Fiscal Calamity

By Alison Acosta Winters

President Trump cheered the strong economy in his State of the Union address and proposed big ideas from border security to curing cancer. What he did not mention was the deteriorating fiscal health...

Why Trump, the 'King of Debt,' Is Set to Change His Tune on the Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump “is about to get religion” on the deficit, Politico’s Andrew Restuccia and Nancy Cook reported in a Politico piece Friday evening: “[A]fter mostly brushing off deficit concerns while...
What Americans Want to Do with Money Raised by Taxing the Rich

By Yuval Rosenberg

Voters support higher taxes on the rich. But what do they want done with the revenue those taxes would raise? A new Morning Consult-Politico poll asked about a range of options. First, we should note...
Fed Chair Jerome Powell Says ‘We Need to Stabilize Debt to GDP’

By Yuval Rosenberg

Fed Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned lawmakers Tuesday that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path, with debt as a percentage of GDP growing quickly: “We need to stabilize...
The Debt Ceiling Is Back: Congress Will Face Fall Deadline to Raise It Again

By Yuval Rosenberg

Fresh off one fiscal showdown, Congress could soon face another, with the U.S. debt ceiling set to take effect again on March 2. The debt ceiling is a statutory cap on federal borrowing. Raising it...
Chart of the Day: High Tax, High Service

By Michael Rainey

Can the U.S. afford to dramatically increase public spending on a whole host of new programs, potentially including Medicare for All, expanded Social Security and a massive Green New Deal? That...

Moody’s Warns of Declining US Fiscal Strength

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Trump’s tax cuts combined with a slowing economy will diminish the United States’ “fiscal strength” over the next 10 years, Moody’s Investor Service said Wednesday. The gradual decline could pressure...
Trump Says National Debt Is Not His Problem: Report

By Michael Rainey and Yuval Rosenberg

As a candidate, Donald Trump said he could eliminate the national debt in eight years, largely by focusing on better trade deals. But in office, Trump has presided over a considerable increase in red...
Paul Ryan Says the National Debt Is His Biggest Regret. See How It Grew Under His Watch.

By Yuval Rosenberg

Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that the ballooning national debt is his biggest regret. In an interview with The Washington Post , Ryan named the debt and immigration as the two...
Flood of US Debt Overwhelms Bond Funds

By Michael Rainey

The U.S. government will issue $129 billion of debt this week, a 28 percent increase over the same time last year, and the surge in borrowing is so great that it’s “beginning to warp bond indexes,”...
Is Trump Serious About Tackling the Deficit? Obviously Not

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump is demanding that his advisers come up with a plan to reduce the deficit, The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey and Damian Paletta report . Oh, and President Trump is also pushing new...