As Social Security, health, and interest spending rise over the next decade, combined investments in infrastructure, energy, and education will fall under current law. Under Trump, they would fall even faster. Under Clinton, they would grow only modestly.
Similarly, under current law, defense spending would grow only slightly in real dollars over the next decade. Even under Trump’s plan to repeal the defense sequester and increase the size of the armed forces, defense spending would grow far more slowly than the autopilot programs, and its share of GDP would fall. With little real-dollar budget increases while average wages rise, this means ever fewer military personnel.
CONCLUSION
No government, business, or household can operate well or set a comprehensive agenda when it precommits more than all expected revenue growth and borrows more than its ability to pay. Dealing with this problem will require reducing future spending commitments, further increasing revenue, or some combination of the two.
If the next president tolerates the long-term consequences of significantly rising debt and accepts all commitments ordained from the past, he or she will be left with almost no ability to do anything new, much less respond to an unexpected economic, environmental, or defensechallenge. Other policy goals (e.g., universal prekindergarten, leaner government, or lower taxes) will be much harder to realize if there is no room in the budget left for them.
The excesses of the past have put the next president in danger of being a lame duck almost from the start of the next administration. Without significant reforms to the nation’s spending and tax policies, the next president’s agenda will depart little from the path we have increasingly followed over recent decades. This path is dominated by growing health and retirement spending, increasing interest costs, an unsustainably rising national debt, and little room to invest in basic government services or tomorrow’s priorities. Such a path threatens the nation’s future prosperity.