What if I told you our national debt is the tab for the mass looting of the American economy and the mass theft of the American dream?
This was Nosferatu Cosplay enthusiast Stephen Miller's tweet this morning. It's a... bold claim. Yes, the National Debt is exploding, and that is beginning to have a negative effect on our economy. We are returning to something like the early '90s when government borrowing was driving up interest rates. In 1990, a 30 year mortgage carried around 10% interest. By 2000, it had dropped to 8% and the budget was balanced. At the beginning of the Great Recession, it had fallen to 6%.
One of the real problems with the economy right now is a frozen housing market, despite the 30 year rate being around 6.5%. In 2016, as Obama left office, the national debt was $19.6 trillion. In 2020, as Trump left office, the debt had swelled to $26.9 trillion. After the pandemic and by the time Biden left office, it was up to $34T. In one year, Trump has added another $2T to the debt, despite not facing any significant headwinds, like a pandemic or recession.
All of this means that we are headed for a debt crunch, and Miller seems to have gotten that message.
The problem is that we know what has driven the spike in debt: government spending exceeds revenues. As we are seeing and will continue to see, the reason why this happens is that we refuse to tax the very rich at levels that we see in other advanced economies. We still fund a massive national defense and a welfare state that - however patchy and insufficient - still provides a lot of benefits to millions of people.
Yes, we have a debt crisis looming, but it's not because of immigrants. It's because of Republicans.
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