ICYMI: As National Debt Surpasses $40 Trillion, Budget Committee Ranking Member Merkley Calls on Congress to Curb Growing Deficit And Lays Out Deficit Reduction Plan

ICYMI: As National Debt Surpasses $40 Trillion, Budget Committee Ranking Member Merkley Calls on Congress to Curb Growing Deficit And Lays Out Deficit Reduction Plan

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In Case You Missed It, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, published an MS Now opinion essay detailing how the U.S. Government has reached unprecedented levels in our national debt while allowing federal deficits to continue to grow, even during a period of relative peace and prosperity. Merkley goes on to explain steps that Congress could take to reduce the deficit and curtail the skyrocketing national debt.

Merkley breaks down how Republican tax bills over the past quarter century have overwhelmingly favored the rich and have been the core driver of our deficit. While Republicans have attempted to use smoke-and-mirror tactics to portray these tax bills as deficit reducers, data and analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office prove that the bills have added trillions to the debt.

"Our debt is now more than 100% of our GDP and rising. Halting that climb means acknowledging how America grew a huge debt: deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a series of revenue-reducing tax bills that mostly enriched the wealthiest Americans. Republicans passed four of these bills in the past quarter century, two under President George W. Bush and two under President Donald Trump. Every time, Republicans have pretended that lowering taxes for the rich will supercharge growth and decrease deficits. And every time, they've been wrong.

"The last of these bills, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, passed on a party line vote last year and cut Medicaid and nutrition programs as well as provided massive tax breaks for America's best-off. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will increase the national debt by $30 trillion over the next 30 years. In a single bill, Republicans added more to the debt than was added during President Joe Biden's entire term.

"As a result, our revenues are 17% of our GDP while our expenditures are 23%. In short, our debt is growing at 6% per year, while our economy is only growing at 2% to 3% per year. So the hole keeps getting deeper. We have to quit digging," Merkley wrote.

Merkley goes on to detail that reducing the federal deficit and aligning it with the level that the economy grows each year can prevent the national debt from continuing to grow to a level that will soon become impossible to rein in-creating a debt vortex that will make funding the basic necessities that Americans rely on exceedingly difficult.

"We can stabilize our debt as a share of our economy by cutting our annual deficit in half, from 6% to 3% of GDP. Sounds impossible? Wrong. Imagine we raise revenue to 20% of GDP, the same level it was at the end of the Clinton administration, when the economy was growing at over 4% a year. Problem solved. Or we can cut spending by 1.5% of GDP while increasing revenue by the same amount. Again, problem solved.

"Here is a more detailed path. First, eliminate the cap on income subject to Social Security premiums and apply the premiums to all forms of income for the wealthy. Eliminating the cap would reduce the 6% gap to 4.5%. Second, reverse the mega-giveaways to the wealthiest Americans to raise another 0.75% of GDP in revenue. Currently, the wealthiest Americans are able to structure their income to avoid taxes on the vast majority of it, while middle-income Americans are unable to do so.

"Finally, achieving the remaining 0.75% necessary to stabilize our debt means a bit of belt tightening. The CBO has shown that we could achieve substantial, sustained savings by comprehensively shrinking the size of the Pentagon's budget, while still maintaining an effective deterrent that does not compromise national security. And we can produce significant savings in healthcare, without cutting benefits, by negotiating lower prices of more prescription drugs and cracking down on insurers who overcharge Medicare in the Medicare Advantage program," Merkley concludes.

Merkley's full opinion piece can be found HERE.

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