Without naming names or making political charges, the Congressional Budget Office last week issued a report titled "Federal Debt and the Risk of a Fiscal Crisis." The report's dry, measured words paint a painfully bleak picture of the long-run dangers from the current runaway government deficits. The CBO report points out that the national debt, which was 36 percent of the gross domestic product... [more]
Without naming names or making political charges, the Congressional Budget Office last week issued a report titled "Federal Debt and the Risk of a Fiscal Crisis." The report's dry, measured words paint a painfully bleak picture of the long-run dangers from the current runaway government deficits.
The CBO report points out that the national debt, which was 36 percent of the gross domestic product three years ago, is now projected to be 62 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal year 2010 -- and rising in future years.
Tracing the history of the national debt back to the beginning of the country, the CBO finds that the national debt did not exceed 50 percent of GDP, even when the country was fighting the Civil War, the First World War or any other war except World War II. Moreover, a graph in the CBO report shows the national debt going down sharply after World War II, as the nation began paying off its wartime debt when the war was over.
By contrast, our current national debt is still going up and may end up in "unfamiliar territory," according to the CBO, reaching "unsustainable levels." They spell out the economic consequences -- and it is not a pretty picture.
- Thomas Sowell
But steve says we should keep borrowing and spending!?!?!?
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