In the latest Fortune, Becky Quick offers a ?can?t we all just get along? plea to fiscal hawks and doves who are battling over the best way to handle the federal budget crisis.
You don?t have to share Quick?s faith in the power of a ?Kumbaya? moment to appreciate the severity of the crisis she depicts:
The federal government is currently spending $3 for every $2 it collects in revenue. That’s a big deal when you consider how much money Washington lays out: We’re now ratcheting up a deficit that’s growing at the breakneck speed of about $100 billion a month.
Our national debt as a percentage of the economy is more than 61%, breaching the 60% line for only the second time in the nation’s history. (The last time was during World War II.) In 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, we will be spending more on interest payments to service that debt than we will for all nondefense discretionary spending, which includes education and infrastructure. And that’s assuming interest rates don’t go up from where they are now, at virtually zero.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in mathematics to realize that those numbers add up to a bleak future for America.
