Lost: fiscal discipline

Lost: fiscal discipline

Chicago Tribune: Decades or centuries from now, scholars will examine U.S. government documents from our time and notice something strange: In four consecutive years around the close of the 20th century, the federal budget was recorded as having a surplus. That hadn’t happened since 1969, it hasn’t happened since, and the way things are going, it may never happen again.

Recent years have seen the collapse of all federal fiscal discipline. At the end of the 2001 fiscal year, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. Today, it’s over $12 trillion. With the population at roughly 300 million, your share is, oh, about $40,000. And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In the next decade, according to the Obama administration’s own estimates, Washington will pile up another $9 trillion in deficits. ...

It’s a crisis that grew gradually for years and is now growing rapidly. It’s one that will force Americans to choose between getting our fiscal house in order or inviting an economic decline of the sort we associate with banana republics.