An honest question: When was the last time you heard diddly-squat about the national debt? It was probably back when Obama was president, because you certainly didn't hear anything about it when Republicans were shoving $1.5 trillion worth of tax cuts to corporations and the very rich. That blew a considerable and immediate hole in the next decade's worth of budgets, but nobody cared, because we were assured magic would happen that would turn the U.S. into a vibrant, cash-rich utopia.
We didn't get a utopia. Instead we got the former head of Starbucks announcing his own run for the presidency.
Anyhoo, the national debt is back in the news today because it just rolled over to a new record number: $22 trillion. That's over $2 trillion added since Trump's inaugural parade. That seems like a lot!
Donald Trump, however, is unconcerned. Which is odd, because back when Barack Obama was president, Donald was extremely animated about the dangers of the thing no Republican now gives a flying damn about.
He really does lie about everything, eh?
That was then; this is now.
The friction came to a head in early 2017 when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office.
“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.
For the record, most economists are currently not particularly concerned with the extant national debt themselves; low interest rates and continued high worldwide confidence in the U.S. currency suggests that investors aren't either. Political debates over the debt are, as the dramatic but mockingly predictable Republican flip-flops demonstrate, almost entirely disingenuous. What matters more is what the nation is getting in return for its debt. If it is an upgraded transportation infrastructure or increased public safety, those things can be expected to boost the economy by considerably more than their cost; if it is a tax cut encouraging stock buybacks that serve little purpose but to temporarily siphon money to shareholders, the public benefit is harder to calculate.
But no, nobody in Washington cares about the national debt. It's not actually a thing. And it's not going to be a thing in the next few days, as conservatives trundle forward to say that we can't take action to curb climate change that threatens to fundamentally alter our ability to grow food on this planet because we already spent that money on ... tax cuts.