Public Debt

The tax bill passed in 2017 reduced tax rates and increased standard deductions for many. Some claim that the primary benefits went to the wealthy, and that moderate-income taxpayers saw little or no reduction in their tax bills. I can't claim to know enough to address this. As well, the economy has seen many favorable positive statistics that are possibly attributable to the effects of the tax bill. Finally, it also seems to be the case that government tax revenues are at record high levels.

Yet, in the midst of this, the government is spending more than it is taking in, and that discrepancy is higher than under any previous administration. Consequently, our national debt is increasing at a higher rate than at any time previously.

President Trump did not create the debt problem our country faces -- it was inherited from multiple previous administrations -- but he aggravated it, thus increasing our speed along the path to financial doom. As in previous administrations, so in this one, no one seems to be able to actually deal with the problem. But the problem won't go away by ignoring it; it will one day have its bite, and the longer we wait, the worse the bite will be.

The President's tax records were released last week and revealed ten years of red ink in his taxes, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised that the same approach is being applied to national governance.

Just today on CNN, hardly a place for financial doom-saying, we find:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/11/politics/congress-debt-ceiling/index.html

I'm just one more person worrying about this and don't know if I'll live to see the crisis hit. But hit us it will, at some point, unless major changes are made.