Congress Raises the Roof on Debt

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The national debt is currently $8.3 trillion , and Congress just approved a $781 billion increase in the government’s debt limit, raising the ceiling for the fourth time in Bush’s presidency. Previous increases of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004 have all contributed to the statutory debt limit rising more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

Senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, insists that Congress’ latest approval should be a wake-up call to everyone in the House, Senate as well as the President. “The question is: Are we staying on this course to keep running up the debt, debt on top of debt, increasingly financed by foreigners, or are we going to change course?”

Can the U.S. keep up this type of spending? Economists believe the national debt is more ominous today than it was in the 80’s, when hitting the one-trillion mark gave rise to national apprehension about deficits. According to Alice Rivlin, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve, “the situation now is really very different from the 1980s. As the costs of programs such as Medicare rise, we can’t go on into the next decade … still running deficits as our major way of coping… In the next decade the upward pressure on federal spending is going to be very, very large.”

While the Bush administration has acknowledged that it won’t come anywhere close to meeting its goals of reducing the defiict, it has no plans to let up on defense and national security spending, putting Congress in a difficult position. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) is fully aware of the astronomical pace at which the deficit continues to move. But “without an increase in the debt limit, our government will face a choice that we shouldn’t make and we wouldn’t want to make, a choice between breaking the law by exceeding the statutory debt limit or, on the other hand, breaking faith with the public by defaulting on our debt.”

Ironically, Canada’s net worth just hit $4.5 trillion, making it worth exactly half on the U.S. national debt.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate