This week in the Dallas Morning News, William McKenzie, Senior Editorial Advisor at the George W. Bush Institute, discusses what moderators should focus on in the upcoming presidential debate to create more substance and less partisanship.
What would they do in a second term to address the nation’s budget deficit and public debt?
Federal expenditures exceeded revenue by $1.7 trillion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023. At the same time, our overall public debt, which is the accumulation of all of America’s yearly deficits, totaled $26.2 trillion. Those figures are up from a $587 billion deficit and a $14.2 trillion public debt in fiscal year 2016.
We can’t erase those sums all at once. Nor should we. The economy would melt down. We instead need to think about carefully stairstepping those numbers down.
What would the candidates do to start that stairstepping? Would they reconsider previous objections to modernizing automatic spending programs like Social Security that require no congressional reauthorization? At the end of fiscal year 2023, such programs made up $3.8 trillion of the then-$6.1 trillion federal budget. If they are not on the table, how do the candidates imagine reducing the deficit and debt? And what role, if any, should tax reform play?
How would they lead the nation in developing information and technology policies that keep our democracy secure and our economy growing?
The creation, flow, and management of information and development of new technologies like artificial intelligence are essential to the world economy. The extent to which we can lead in these areas will shape the economy as much as our manufacturing and industrial prowess. In the right hands, for example, AI offers a new way to make services like health care work more efficiently.
