Deficit Without End? – USA Gov Policy

The U.S. debt currently exceeds an unprecedented $28 Trillion. It’s about to get worse.

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projection, there will be a federal budget deficit of $2.3 trillion in 2021. At 10.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), that deficit would be the second largest since 1945. Deficits, which were already projected to be large by historical standards before the onset of the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic, have widened significantly as a result of the economic disruption caused by the pandemic and the enactment of legislation in response. In CBO’s projections, annual deficits will average $1.2 trillion a year from 2022 to 2031 and exceed their 50-year average of 3.3 percent of GDP in each of those years. They may decline to 4.0 percent of GDP or less from 2023 to 2027 before increasing again, reaching 5.7 percent of GDP in 2031. By the end of the period, both primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) and interest outlays are rising.

Clearly, this is not a time to be tolerant of unnecessary spending. The Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has released their 2021 Congressional Pig Book, which they believe demonstrates that legislators continue to pack the 12 spending bills that fund the federal government with pork.

According to their findings, For the fourth year in a row, members of Congress have set a record for the cost of earmarks during the supposed earmark moratorium. An earmark is a provision inserted into a discretionary spending appropriations bill that directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or competitive funds allocation process.

CAGW notes that The United States is facing an imminent fiscal reckoning. The current national debt is going to grow at a record pace over the next decade.

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CAGW reviewed 285 earmarks, which is an increase of 4 percent from the 274 in FY 2020, at a cost of $16.8 billion, an increase of 5.7 percent from the $15.9 billion in earmarks in FY 2020. The cost of the FY 2021 earmarks is 1.8 percent higher than the $16.5 billion in FY 2010, the last year prior to the moratorium. Since FY 1991, CAGW has identified111,702 earmarks costing $392.5 billion.

The $16.8 billion in FY 2021 is an increase of 147.1 percent from the $6.8 billion in FY 2017. The number of earmarks has also risen sharply. The 285 earmarks in FY 2021 are a 74.8 percent increase from the 163 in FY 2017.

CAGW states that “This explosion of earmarks has apparently not been sufficient for members of Congress. House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have agreed to restore earmarks for FY 2022, for which CAGW named them both March 2021 Porkers of the Month. On March 17, 2021, the House Republican Conference agreed to go along with this plan by a vote of 102-84, while Senate Republicans, who became the first group of members of Congress to agree to a permanent ban on earmarks on May 23, 2019, by a vote of 28-12, have yet to undo their policy.”

The new earmarks, despite a futile attempt to cover them up by designating them as “Community Project Funding,” will be similar to the old earmarks that were included in the appropriations bills passed by Congress during fiscal years 2008-2010, which required that the names of the members who received earmarks be listed in each bill. According to Chair DeLauro, each member may request up to 10 community projects; requests must be posted in an online searchable website; a list of projects funded must be published when the subcommittee or committee is marking up a bill; for-profit entities are not eligible, and members must certify that they, their spouse, and their family have no financial interest in the project. But there is no prohibition on making a campaign contribution in exchange for an earmark.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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