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If Congress won’t cut spending that has low-hanging fruit — subsidies for National Public Radio, for example, or mandatory cuts to the broader federal government — it’s time to try to warn voters about the national debt. There is no benefit. . If Congress and the president don’t care about the small stuff when it comes to controlling the national debt, why should voters believe that the debt is a problem that warrants entitlement reform? If you don’t lose five pounds, does anyone believe you’re going to lose 100 pounds?
Young people worry about the effects of climate change – a lot. Of course they do. How could they not provide media and elementary and secondary school curriculum? Some research shows that 60% or more of high school students will tell pollsters that they see climate change as “an existential threat.” Given how much time and attention is devoted to doomsday rhetoric about climate change, it’s surprising that number isn’t 95 percent.
What about the national debt? Five years ago, Brookings Institute scholar Stuart Butler expressed concern that too few millennials cared about the national debt despite predictions that the national debt “is growing rapidly and will reach 150% of GDP by 2050.” will be close to” and that tomorrow will “easily surpass the previous record set during World War II.”
Stop the madness. Our national debt is now over $35 trillion…
Butler – who is respected in the political arena – expressed considerable dismay among economists and policymakers about “an apparent unwillingness on the part of young Americans to appreciate the enormous risk posed by deficits and debt.”
“Predicting financial catastrophe and forcing action is a challenging line of work these days,” he concluded.
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – JANUARY 19: A screen shows the national debt clock as the United States hits its debt ceiling and the Treasury begins using extraordinary measures to avoid default on January 19, 2023. )
It won’t be easy because voters don’t care about the national debt. Even younger voters don’t care, though they’re going to be stuck with the tab as the last tranche of boomers bolt for retirement or the workforce forever.
Voters under 30 favored Vice President Harris by a few points in this month’s election, but it was a statistical tie in key states like Michigan. The gender gap that closed in 2024 was also present among young voters. The issues that mattered most to young voters who chose Harris over Trump were very different, but neither camp had anything to do with the national debt.
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The US national debt is about $36 trillion. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation continuously monitors total debt and the interest cost of that debt, which is currently about $2 billion a day, the interest-only portion of the federal budget that is expected to double over the next decade. .
All of the presidents and members of the House and Senate over the past 75 years are responsible for spending the $36 trillion that we have collectively taken in. But neither President-elect Trump nor his successor or his successor will be able to do much about the debt, even as it eats away at the future prosperity of every American. Because the voter just gets away with these numbers.
Because voters don’t care about the debt, the debt won’t be addressed in Trump’s first or second term budgets or in the legislation passed through the reconciliation process that opens the budget. By the 2026 election, the debt would have risen to more than $40 trillion before Congress could be replaced again. That’s because President-elect Trump and the Senate and House will agree to extend and revise (and hopefully make permanent) Trump’s tax cuts starting in 2018, and the confidence shock about tax rates. It will take a few years to be reflected in the total tax receipts. .
Debt tormentors are ignored anywhere and everywhere. New York Times reporters warned this week that “[b]Udget experts have warned that their plans could add up to $15 trillion to the national debt, along with rising inflation and slowing growth. It’s hard to know what to base such predictions on as we have no idea what the first budget will look like. But the story was a flashback to the rest of the left-leaning media that the left has decided that after four years of President Biden, annual federal budget deficits and total national debt matter. There will be more coverage of the debt because, with the GOP in control, the legacy media will want to blame Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill, but will the national debt go down as a result. Voters
No, no chance.
03 October 2024, USA, Washington: View of the White House. Photo: Valerie Plesch/dpa (Photo by Valerie Plesch/Image courtesy of Getty Images) (Valerie Plesch)
Inflation matters a lot in elections. So did the “wrong direction” number as the majority of Americans concluded that bidonomics was a disaster. The status quo was the return of President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election and the return of Vice President Harris on November 5. Americans want the economy to grow faster, not shrink or shrink. Making Trump’s tax cuts permanent could hit productivity again.
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But don’t expect spending cuts that matter or new revenue streams from any source until Congress at least hints at cutting federal government costs. Don’t blame the public for ignoring the alarm about the debt when Congress is still getting grants through the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. If Congress can’t get serious about sweeping cuts to agencies and subsidies that should never have started, don’t expect it to ax entitlements or kill new tax proposals.
If debt raises alarm bells for you, find a way to articulate that threat to future generations the way climate risk experts have convinced Millennials, Generation Z and Generation Aloha that the future is bleak because the planet is about to ripen. Young voters worry about getting jobs and buying their first home, or about the climate and abortion rights. Don’t expect them, much less beneficiaries of entitlements, to demand fiscal responsibility until Congress at least demonstrates clear fat removal.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh Woke America has more than 400 affiliates nationwide and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s News Roundtable hosted by Brett Baier on weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt started his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt appears frequently on every major national news television network, hosts television shows for PBS and MSNBC, writes for every major American newspaper, and has authored a dozen books. and has moderated a score of Republicans. candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debates in Miami and the four Republican presidential debates of the 2015–16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests over his 40 years, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and this column previews the main story that continues today on his Radio/T. V will run the show.
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