Sen. David Perdue warned this week that the United States is facing a full-blown debt crisis that will see the total national debt balloon to nearly $30 trillion by 2026, according to a Monday report from the Congressional Budget Office.
“The CBO report reveals a stark reality: We are simply out of time,” the Georgia Republican said on the Senate floor Thursday. “This debt crisis can no longer be ignored. It is here now. Washington must face up to that stark reality.”
Total national debt is nearly at $19 trillion today, and the CBO’s report said another $9.4 trillion would be added over the next 10 years. Perdue said today’s debt already puts every U.S. family on the hook for about $1 million, and said piling on addition debt would only make things worse.
“The nonpartisan study found that over the next decade, our country will grow to nearly $30 trillion in debt,” he said. “Folks, that is $30 trillion. This is unbelievable. It is unmanageable.”
“A number this large is nearly impossible to comprehend,” he said.
Perdue has said a combination of steps need to be taken, including reduced spending, tax reform, deregulation and improved economic growth in order to reduce the national debt. On the floor Thursday, he stressed that Congress can’t be afraid of considering spending cuts, and said record tax revenues show that the problem isn’t revenue, and instead is spending.
Just weeks ago, however, Republicans and Democrats agreed to ignore the sequester cuts required under the budget bill of 2011, and instead boosted spending by $80 billion over the next two years. The freshman senator said in his first year on the job, no one is talking about cuts.
“Having been in the business world for over 40 years, there are four words that I used to hear often and we used them frequently: ‘We cannot afford it,'” he said. “I personally have not heard these words once in Washington over this past year, my first year in the Senate.”
