Donald Trump and Kamala Harris seem to agree that one of the nation’s most important challenges should remain unaddressed — a problem that has been slowly eroding the foundations of economic prosperity for decades.
That problem? The national debt.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports that federal debt held by the public averaged 48.3 per cent of GDP for the half century ending in 2023. The debt is currently far above its historic average. The CBO projects that next year, 2025, the national debt will be larger than annual economic output for the first time since the US military build-up in the second world war. In 1946, the ratio of debt to annual GDP was 106.1 per cent. The CBO projects that the debt will top that amount in 2027 and will rise to 122.4 per cent in 2034. It is expected to be on a steady climb thereafter.