We need to grow or we’re going to go bankrupt
We. Can easily grow our way out of Debt
RE: We. Can easily grow our way out of Debt
Not at the rate we are spending. Spending is outpacing GDP growth and revenue, percentage-wise.
Do we have a revenue problem? No. As the CBO points out, we’ve taken in record revenue thanks in part to a recovering job market.
Receipts totaled $3,314 billion in fiscal year 2017, $47 billion more than in FY 2016.
Thus, all the deficit problems were on the spending side of the ledger, which was $130 billion more than last year, totaling almost $4 trillion.
And it was not a problem of increased defense spending. Expenditures for the DOD rose by just one percent.
The single biggest increase was from the Department of Education. Spending rose by $35 billion, a whopping 45 percent increase from last year. Most of that was from increases in student loan subsidies. Hence, much like with health care, the federal government distorts the market, creates an asset bubble for the higher education cartel, which raises prices, and in turn, requires an infinite amount of subsidies.
HUD was also a big budget-buster, increasing spending by $31 billion or 117 percent.
An extra $35 billion was spent on health care programs this past year relative to 2016, as part of the inexorable trend of endless price inflation that creates the “need” for even greater subsidies. Which is why we will never get our fiscal house in order until we end federal market distortions of health care.
And of course, with the increasing debt, interest payments on the debt continue to climb. They rose by $28 billion, or 10 percent from last year. Unless the runaway train is halted, interest on the debt will become the fastest-growing part of the budget, rising from 7 percent of federal spending to 21 percent by 2047.
In short, the failed cycle of government is working as well as it does under any Democrat administration. Welcome to the unibrow party of Republicans and Democrats.