The US Is Locked in a State of Debt Denial
Pre-election partisan warfare and delusional official accounting are blinding Americans to the country’s most existential economic-policy challenge.
Crickets on America’s growing debt crisis.
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images North AmericaPerhaps it’s unsurprising that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are saying nothing about the country’s biggest economic-policy challenge – namely, how to rein in public borrowing. With an election to win, they’d rather emphasize lower taxes and/or higher public spending. In a deeply divided country, where everybody has chosen sides and defeating the enemy is all that counts, there’s no place for budget hand-wringing and hard choices involving trade-offs and compromise.
Yet rest assured difficult choices are coming, one way or another. Asked how he went bankrupt, one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters famously said, “Gradually and then suddenly.” It’s the same with governments. American fiscal policy is firmly on course for default – and every delay in confronting this prospect makes it harder to avoid.