20-Nov (USAGOLD) — In the three short weeks since the debt ceiling was suspended once again, the U.S. national debt has risen dramatically to more than $18.6 trillion. That’s an additional half-a-trillion dollars in debt since early-November. Much of it — $339.1 billion — came on a single day; a new record one-day rise.
The budget deal that allowed the debt ceiling to rise was yet another Washington compromise, where a higher level of spending is allowed with some promise of slowed or reduced spending down the road. If past budget deals — including the most recent one in 2013 — are any indication, those promises of future fiscal restraint aren’t worth a hill of beans.
When the debt ceiling is reinstated in March of 2017, conveniently well after the 2016 elections, the national debt is likely to be around $21 trillion. That will leave us with a debt/GDP ratio around 120%.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact it only tells about a third of the story, according to David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general and former head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO):
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