EDITORIAL: Time is ripe to change the nation’s fiscal course

David Walker ran the Government Accountability Office for a decade, under both a Republican and Democratic president. Elected officials should take him seriously when he warns that the nation is headed for fiscal blowup.

“The fuse has been lit on our debt bomb,” Walker, who led the GAO from 1998 until 2008, told members of the House Budget Committee last week, “and there are many indications that our time to defuse it is getting short. For example, there is an increasing gap between the amount of debt we need to issue to finance our huge deficits and refinance maturing debt and the appetite of traditional purchasers of Treasury debt.”

He went on to say, “The federal government has grown too big, promised too much, subsidized too many, undercut states’ rights and lost control of the budget.”

Mr. Walker states the obvious. Unfortunately, the obvious doesn’t always align with the short-term objectives of senators and members of the House. But as the nation spills more and more red ink — the debt now approaches $37 trillion and has doubled in less than a decade — further congressional dithering on the subject could have disastrous consequences.

Mr. Walker told the House panel that there is a 70 percent chance of a major debt crisis by 2030 that would trigger “serious adverse economic security, national security, diplomatic and domestic tranquility consequences,” he said. “This is not just a fiscal challenge, it is a generational imperative.” Middle-class households would be particularly hard hit, he observed.

During testimony, he endorsed Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative and advocated for the creation of a fiscal sustainability commission to recommend a better course forward. Both are fine ideas. But it ultimately remains up to elected officials to make the difficult choices necessary to hit the brakes before overshooting the cliff.

“We’ve got major fiscal problems and a completely unsustainable fiscal trajectory,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, the Texas Republican who chairs the committee. “I haven’t heard anyone, Democrat or Republican, witness or member, that doesn’t accept that fact. We won’t know when the dominoes fall on us in a sovereign debt crisis, it’s going to be difficult to put the pieces back together and maintain our global leadership.”

In the meantime, interest payments on the debt overwhelm budgets and threaten to crowd out other spending.

Donald Trump’s previous term wasn’t noted for austerity. But after the disastrous Biden administration spending binge, conditions are ripe for Congress and the incoming administration to reverse decades of inaction and take measures to ensure the country turns back from the fast-approaching fiscal cliff.