The increasing government debt is an issue for the US economy and policy makers in Washington have different views on how to deal with this problem.Please seethis chart(Links to an external site.)for the change in federal debt in the last 50 years.
The following charts show total federal spending and tax revenues respectively (Please seethis link(Links to an external site.)(Links to an external site.)for 2019 numbers). Notice that more than half of the government spending goes to Social Security and Medicare, which are the mandatory components of the federal budget. Medicare and Social Security spending is expected to increase due to the increased cost of Medicare and aging population in the future and take up more of the total budget.
Budget deficit is defined as the difference between government spending and tax revenues. As President Clinton once stated, dealing with the budget deficit is simple "arithmetic". We need to cut government spending and increase tax revenues to lower the deficit.
Please also see the links in this week's additional readings.
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