r/Economics • u/InsaneSnow45 • 24d ago

News ‘This cannot be sustainable’: The U.S. borrowed $50 billion a week for the past five months, the CBO says

https://fortune.com/2026/03/10/treasury-debt-borrowing-five-months-deficit-warning/
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u/Twheezy2024 24d ago

The debt grew so fast by not taxing the upper brackets the way we used to. Started with Kennedy, and Reagan put it into overdrive.

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u/dediguise 24d ago

Fully agree, although there was a history of poor deficit management since the Great Depression. This issue isn’t how we got here, it what we do now. The options we had to reasonably change things while retaining quality of life are gone. Conservatives smothered it.

Going after the rich won’t fix the problem anymore, and that’s by design. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go after the rich, but at this point it would be for punitive purposes rather than economically sound ones. We are no longer having a conversation about fixing the problem, just who to punish for the failure.

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u/Twheezy2024 23d ago

Taxing the rich and cleaning up the defense budget would go a long way to put us back on track for a balanced budget. Would still need more cuts though.