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Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is urging Indiana businesses and lawmakers to start taking serious steps to tackle the nation’s growing debt crisis.
The national debt is now close to $39 trillion and is the total amount of outstanding borrowing the federal government has accumulated over time.
At a recent business roundtable discussion in Indianapolis hosted by Purdue University, Daniels told WFYI that the lack of political will and action from lawmakers has caused the national debt to balloon out of control.
“The issue that unfortunately our political class in both parties, refuses to talk about, which is the unconscionable debts were piling up, the burden we're leaving on younger people, the way we're spending the money on older people, as opposed to investing in the nation's future and in its young,” Daniels said.
Daniels has enlisted the help of finance expert and former Georgia congresswoman Carolyn Bourdeaux, as well as economics expert and Purdue Daniels School of Business distinguished fellow Doug Holtz-Eakin, to educate the public on the dangers of not addressing the national debt.
Bourdeaux says that the effects of the large national debt are already being felt by everyday people.
“Its making it much harder for young people to buy a home, to start a business, to expand their business, and that problem will get worse and worse and worse as we go into the future, if we don't start to tackle this problem,” Bourdeaux said.
Daniels says that solutions have been discussed for a long time. Some remedies could include raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare, or ensuring billionaires are not given Social Security.
Daniels says politicians are more worried about losing votes than trying to enact any of those changes.
“People know what's going to need to be done, they simply haven't had the gumption to tell the American people that it's necessary and that it's in everyone's interest that we get on with it,” Daniels said.
Bourdeaux and Holtz-Eakin say that the first step to address the issue is to educate lawmakers and the general public on the seriousness of continuing to disregard the national debt.
Bourdeaux, is also the executive director of the Concord Coalition, which advocates for fiscal responsibility and moves to balance the federal budget.
Bourdeaux also pointed to other solutions like passing something a “No budget, No pay” law, which would prevent members of congress from receiving their paychecks if they don’t pass the federal budget on time.
Indiana Sen. Todd Young’s “Fiscal Commission Act” is another potential solution that Bourdeaux sees promise in. The act would create a bicameral fiscal commission tasked with finding solutions to stabilize spending and decrease the national debt.
Holtz-Eakin says it is unrealistic to think that the federal budget can be balanced overnight but that doesn’t mean congress can’t start acting now to move towards a balanced budget.
“Let's get a realistic solution,” Holtz-Eakin says. “Let's stop having the debt grow faster than the economy, faster than our incomes, and then once we stop that, let's have it start to decline and move back toward a situation where it would be realistic to balance the budget.”
Contact Government Reporter Caroline Beck at cbeck@wfyi.org
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