The newly adopted 2024 Democratic Platform states that the policies of former President Donald Trump “added more to our national debt than has ever been added in a presidential term.
It is true that in 2020, the federal deficit leaped by an extraordinary $2 trillion. Indeed, Republicans are not taking the national debt as seriously as they once did, eliminating any mention of it from their platform this year. But, most importantly, it is clear that a Kamala Harris presidency would be far, far worse.
Consider what happened during the pandemic in 2020: The economy came skidding to a halt at the hands of the virus, state mandates and public fear. Tax revenues dried up as a result. There were also substantial amounts of emergency COVID-19 spending (supported by Harris). There is no denying it: Stifling the economy and hiking spending is the textbook recipe for a debt crisis.
Whatever we make of the need for government intervention in 2020, former President Donald Trump ultimately bears responsibility for these actions. But the problem with this line of criticism in the Democratic platform is that Vice President Harris has made it clear that Trump did not do nearly enough (because he was too “fixated on the stock market”). Under a Harris presidency, there would have been far more spending and shutdowns. A more honest Democratic platform would read: “Harris’ policies would have added even more to our national debt.”
It is not just the pandemic, either. Harris’ record shows that she has a history of supporting big-government spending: Medicare for all, Social Security expansion, a $10-trillion climate plan, welfare programs that pay Americans not to work and costly homebuyer credits — to name just a few. She would also like nothing more than to regulate the economy to a standstill with electric vehicle mandates, bans on fracking, price controls and other policies cribbed from Communist Russia.
The United States is on a dangerous path. It took about 200 years for the U.S. to accumulate two trillion dollars in debt, but now we add that much every year. As of this summer, the United States carried over $35 trillion in federal debt, more than twice as much as any other country (including the entire 27-member European Union). While the United States is large, with several states boasting economies larger than entire developed nations, our situation is bad even when accounting for the size of our economy. Only Japan, Greece, Venezuela and Italy have a worse debt-to-GDP ratio than the U.S.
2025 will be extremely precarious as we face what some experts are calling the “Debt Olympics.” Next year, elected officials will need to clear a number of hurdles: the approaching debt limit, reconciliation, looming tax hikes, expiring budget caps and funding the government.
Driving the majority of the debt crisis are so-called “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare that make up two-thirds of the annual federal budget. In the next decade, the trust funds that support them will go insolvent as “Social Security and Medicare face a combined $124 trillion cash deficit over the next 30 years,” according to one report.
While it is disappointing that Trump has pledged not to try to reform them and wrest them away from insolvency so that future generations of Americans can depend on them, it is disconcerting beyond belief that Harris wants to supercharge them. Rather than prepare for the necessary task of budgeting and belt-tightening, Harris has decided to put her foot on the gas, crash through the hurdles, and send the country careening off a cliff.
Sadly, there are many debt deniers on the left who say that we can just keep on printing more money. But the debt interest alone is at crisis levels, surpassing even what we spent on national defense this year. If entitlement insolvency truly does multiply the debt fivefold in the coming decades, debt interest could skyrocket even further as interest rates climb to find willing purchasers of U.S. debt.
Sooner or later, someone must be the adult in the room, start paying down the debt and address the spending issue. Harris’ plan amounts to that of a teenager getting her hands on a credit card for the first time and promising her friends, “It’s on me,” when really, the cost is on our children and grandchildren.
It is morally irresponsible to push our debt crisis onto the backs of our children and future generations. And at some point, it will become impossible to manage the crisis, as investors refuse to buy the debt of a fiscally irresponsible nation. Unfortunately, when that time comes, we will be so deep in debt, it is unclear how we could ever claw our way back up again.
How much better would it be for our leadership to tackle the problem in 2025 when the opportunity presents itself? Instead, we have to choose between the candidate who promises not to do anything about the problem and the candidate who promises to make it far worse. Another President Calvin Coolidge, the last president to leave office with less debt than when he started, is nowhere to be seen.
John Shelton is the policy director for Advancing American Freedom.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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