The soaring national debt has reached a symbolic tipping point: It's now as big as the entire U.S. economy.
The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion.
That's roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year: $15.17 trillion as of September, the latest estimate. Private projections show the economy likely grew to about $15.3 trillion by December -- a level the debt should surpass this month.
"The 100% mark means that your entire debt is as big as everything you're producing in your country," says Steve Bell of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which has proposed cutting nearly $6 trillion in red ink over 10 years. "Clearly, that can't continue." Read more...
Repairing Washington’s Broken Budget Process A Comprehensive Approach to Strengthen Spending Controls, Enhance Accountability, and Increase Transparency in the Federal Budget Process
The federal budget process is broken; Washington stumbles from budget crisis to budget crisis, with little to no oversight of how government spends hardworking taxpayers’ money.
The incentives currently favor those who seek to increase government spending, and the result is a crushing burden of debt that is hurting economic growth today and threatening economic prosperity tomorrow.
The legislative action items detailed in this report would help lawmakers confront this crisis by:
Creating new tools to cut wasteful spending while strengthening caps on borrowing and spending;
Enhancing oversight while curbing practices that assume automatic spending increases; and
Increasing transparency by forcing government to account more fully for all taxpayer liabilities. Continued.....