In January, the Treasury Department announced that the federal government is on track to borrow almost $1 trillion this fiscal year. That’s almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017. According to documents, the U.S. Treasury is expecting to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, which is the highest amount of borrowing in six years. Last year, the federal government borrowed $519 billion. Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, stated,
We’re addicted to debt. Every time you feed your addiction, you grow your addiction.
The treasury attributed the increasing in borrowing on the “fiscal outlook,” but the Congressional Budget Office claimed in its report that the reason for the increase in borrowing is that tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law. The Treasury forecasts borrowing more than $1 trillion in 2019 and more than $1.1 trillion in 2020. According to Ernie Tedeschi, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury who is now head of fiscal analysis at Evercore ISI, this is the first time since Ronald Reagan was president that borrowing has jumped this much, as a share of GDP, in a non-recession time. Hopefully, the federal government is able to curb its spending so that the deficit does not continue to increase.
