I’m testifying tomorrow to the Joint Economic Committee about “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship.”
I won’t give away what I’m going to say (though you can probably figure out my views rather easily by reading this, this, and this), but I do want to share a chart from my testimony.
It shows that it is remarkably simple to balance the budget with a modest amount of spending restraint.
Based on Congressional Budget Office data, we can balance the budget in just three years if spending grows by “only” 1 percent per year.
The chart also shows that you can balance the budget in just four years if spending is allowed to grow “just” two percent annually.
And if you for some reason think that the burden of government spending should rise faster than inflation, then we can balance the budget in seven years by restraining spending so that it grows 3 percent each year.
Here are a couple of relevant observations.