It looks like the Biden-McCarthy “Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023” will rival the Inflation Reduction Act (Green New Deal) in its Orwellian meaning and outcome. Just five weeks after the deal was hatched, the Treasury has issued over $1 trillion in new debt!
This is simply astounding. It took from our founding until 1980 to accrue the amount of debt that we have now added in just over five weeks. It is truly hard to overstate the magnitude and impact of this spending. Unlike in recent years, when we were servicing this debt at 1%-2% interest rates, this new debt will be serviced with an over 5% interest rate! Our debt has increased almost 50% in just four years, topping out near $32.5 trillion, but now it will have a compounding effect with higher interest rates to service it. So this notion that inflation will decrease in the long run is absurd. This debt is not just a number on the government balance sheet. It represents why middle-income Americans will not be able to afford the American dream for the foreseeable future. So no, the debt ceiling deal did not “avoid default,” it accelerated it.