How Does the National Debt Affect You? A Budget Expert Explains.
The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $2 trillion this year. And while that budget deficit is a major concern for many Americans, the specifics of how and why the government borrows so much money can often seem confusing.
That’s why Reason asked Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, to break it down into more manageable morsels.
So why does the federal government borrow so much? Because “it’s much easier for Congress to promise benefits to certain constituencies than to ask U.S. taxpayers to actually pay” for those benefits, explains Boccia, who also writes a Substack newsletter about federal fiscal issues.
The most expensive of those benefits are the so-called entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—which run on autopilot and are not subject to the regular appropriations process. “Most of the spending growth now, and most of the growth in
Article from Reason.com
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