The dust has barely settled from the contentious midterms, and the battle lines are already being drawn for the next legislative fight in Washington: The debt ceiling. With the nation at unprecedented levels of indebtedness, the choice in this fight is a stark one: A path toward stability or fiscal Armageddon.
EJ Antoni, a research fellow for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., acknowledges that might sound like hyperbole to some, but he has facts to back up his contention, including:
Federal spending, which was already growing before COVID-19, accelerated at the outbreak of the pandemic. The debt has ballooned to almost $31.5 trillion, increasing $8 trillion in less than three years.
The national debt is now more than 120% of the nation’s entire economy — a threshold that did not even happen in World War II.
In fiscal year 2019, federal spending was $4.4 trillion. That grew to $6.6 trillion,
$6.8 trillion, and $5.3 trillion in fiscal
years 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Tax receipts are at a record high by any measure — in nominal terms, in real terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product. The federal government has never collected more money. So, the nation’s financial woes are not a revenue problem.
Despite those extremely worrisome statistics, President Joe Biden’s Treasury Department wants to borrow even more than its $31.5 trillion limit and claims that a failure to raise this ceiling will result in a fiscal crisis.
That assessment could not be more backwards. Excessive borrowing is what got us here, and more of the same cannot get us out.
As Mr. Antoni recently wrote, “The claims about disastrous consequences from failing to authorize more borrowing are unfounded. There is no reason why the government cannot cut spending and live within its means, especially in a time of record tax revenue.”
He argues — and we agree — that under no circumstances should conservatives in Congress agree to raise the debt ceiling. This is a line in the sand.
The short-term effect of raising the debt ceiling to accommodate more federal spending and borrowing would be more inflation — a hidden tax that has been robbing Americans of thousands of dollars annually for the last two years. To continue on that path is not only fiscally irresponsible, but also fundamentally immoral.
And the long-term impact of the irresponsible financial status quo is even worse. Every nation that has gone down the path of perpetually escalating its borrowing has met the same end: total collapse.
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