Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Home – National Debt News – You May Not Care About the National Debt, but the Debt Cares About You

You May Not Care About the National Debt, but the Debt Cares About You

The national debt just crossed $40 trillion, months ahead of schedule. For many Americans, though, that sentence lands with a thud rather than a jolt. That’s unfortunate because the debt matters far more than people understand, and it’s already helping fuel today’s cost-of-living crisis. Things will only get worse if we ignore the problem.

Six months ago, the Congressional Budget Office figured federal borrowing would top out near $39.4 trillion this fiscal year. Washington blew through that before summer ended, and the $41.1 trillion debt limit Congress set last year now feels ominously close.

But Americans are desensitized to this news in part because, for 40 years, fiscal conservatives have warned that the debt was about to bury us—at $1 trillion, at $5 trillion, at $20 trillion. Then there was talk about debt-to-GDP ratios and points of no return.

But as the language grew more apocalyptic, the deadline kept moving, and the bomb never went off. Folks cried wolf so often that Americans stopped worrying about the debt almost entirely. This didn’t mean the debt was harmless, but rather that Americans didn’t recognize the harm when it arrived.

Since 2019, consumer prices have risen more than 30%. From the Treasury’s side of the ledger, a dollar borrowed in 2020 is repaid today in money worth about 70 cents compared to just a few years ago. The real........

© The Daily Signal