Jonathan Nicholson covers Capitol Hill and campaigns for HuffPost. His Twitter is @JNicholsonInDC.
Late Friday, the White House said it would run up an additional $1.1 trillion in new debt if all its plans were carried out over the next 10 years. That would be on top of the $16.3 trillion in debt it had already planned to incur and would bring government debt to $54.5 trillion.
Government debt, which is the accumulation of past annual budget shortfalls, stands just under $35 trillion, more than 10 times what the 1974 figure would be, even adjusted for inflation. The government routinely risks shutting down because lawmakers haggle over the total amount of the annual operating budget for most federal agencies and programs aside from Social Security and Medicare. That amount is supposed to be set in a budget resolution each year by Congress.
House Speaker Mike Johnson made restoring regular legislative order, including passing a budget resolution in the House at least, part of his promises when he took the gavel in October. He has since given up on the idea. The resolutions have little inherent power themselves. But their political value had resided in forcing lawmakers to put on record how much in taxes, spending and deficits they wanted. Dodging them means getting to avoid those tough votes.
The CBO was created so Congress wouldn’t have to rely on the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for those kinds of estimates, and has carved out a niche in Washington as the closest thing to a neutral fiscal umpire the city has.
Debt Congressional Budget Office
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