The Debt

How Congress Cheats with Our Money — and How We Can Stop It

By Marc Goldwein and Zach Moller

The U.S. is on course to top its record debt levels set after World War II, and permanent trillion-dollar deficits — meaning, forever — are likely to return within two years . And unlike after World...
April Is Financial Literacy Month. Someone Tell Congress.

By Joseph J. Minarik and Caroline L. Ferguson

February is Black History Month, March is National Women’s Month, and April? Well, it’s Financial Literacy Month, of course! The U.S. government gave financial literacy its own month in 2003. April...
Why All the Warnings About Unsustainable National Debt Could Be Wrong

By Michael Rainey

International economists are warning about rising global debt levels and deficit hawks in Washington are increasingly worried about what they see as unsustainable debt levels in the U.S., but a new...
The US Has an Exceptional Debt Outlook – and Not in a Good Way

By Michael Rainey

The International Money Fund’s latest global fiscal survey warns that in five years, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will be higher than Italy’s, a nation not generally known for its exemplary fiscal...
When the Budget Won’t Balance, Just Get Rid of the Budget Committee?

By Michael Rainey

It may sound like a joke — Erik Sherman of Forbes said it seemed like something “from The Onion or Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker, only with less humor and pith” — but Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), chair...

With Recent Laws, Congress Has Added $540 Billion to the 2019 Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

Spending hikes and tax cuts passed since 2015 under the Trump and Obama administrations account for $540 billion of next year’s projected $981 billion budget deficit, or 55 percent, according to...
Extending the Individual Tax Cuts Would Reduce Economic Growth: Penn Wharton Budget Model

By Michael Rainey

Most of the individual tax cuts in the GOP tax overhaul that became law in December are scheduled to expire after 2025, but Republican lawmakers are expected to try to make them permanent well before...
Why Trillion-Dollar Deficits Matter

By Yuval Rosenberg

The Congressional Budget Office confirmed this week that the deficit is on pace to surpass $1 trillion in 2020 and climb higher from there barring action by leaders in Washington, potentially...
Paul Ryan's Fiscal Legacy: Lots of Red Ink

By Yuval Rosenberg

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Wednesday that he won’t seek re-election this year and will retire at the end of his term in January, becoming the most prominent in a wave of Republican lawmakers...
Yellen, Democratic Economists Say Fixing Debt Crisis Isn’t All About Entitlements

By Yuval Rosenberg

Late last month, a quintet of big-name Hoover Institution economists warned in a Washington Post op-ed that a coming “string of perpetually rising trillion-dollar-plus deficits” could soon lead to a...

Will the US Be Ready for the Next Economic Downturn?

By Yuval Rosenberg

We told you yesterday about a new study detailing the importance of fiscal space in determining policy responses to economic downturns. To recap: The paper by economists Christina and David Romer...
Climate Change Could Raise the Cost of Debt

By The Fiscal Times Staff

“Bond rating agencies such as Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings are looking at whether they should be including more disaster forecasting in calculating the grades they give to...
Trump’s Infrastructure Push Could Face a Bumpy Road

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump will host House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at Camp David this weekend to plan the GOP’s 2018 agenda — and he’ll be pushing for a long-promised...
Democrats Are Right, the Tax Bill Is a Disaster — but They're Wrong About Why

By Marc Joffe

No, Nancy Pelosi , the recently enacted tax bill does not “raise taxes on a breathtaking 86 million middle class households.” By focusing on the distributional effects of the GOP tax plan — in an...
Final JCT Analysis of the GOP Tax Bill: Big Cost, Modest Growth

By Michael Rainey

The fiscal hawks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget updated their charts to include the analysis of the final tax bill made by the Joint Committee on Taxation in late December. Unlike...