National Review Online
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Fifteen years ago this week, John Boehner, the new
Republican House speaker at the time, laid down a gauntlet in the pitched
battle over raising the debt ceiling.
“To increase the debt limit without simultaneously
addressing the drivers of our debt — in defiance of the will of our people —
would be monumentally arrogant and massively irresponsible,” he told the Economic Club of New York on May 9, 2011. “It
would send a signal to investors and entrepreneurs everywhere that America
still is not serious about dealing with our spending addiction.”
Boehner’s demand in the same speech that any spending
cuts be in the “trillions, not just billions” set the stage for a standoff that
consumed Washington for months and rattled financial markets around the world.
Today, by any objective measure, the nation’s debt
challenges are far more daunting than they were back in 2011, when the Tea
Party generation of Republicans swept into power. In that year, in the wake of
a major recession and President Obama’s costly response to it, the value of the
debt held by the public had grown beyond $10 trillion for the first time ever.
As of the end of this March, it has more than tripled to over $31 trillion. In
2011, debt reached 66 percent of economic output (significantly higher than the
39 percent in 2008). It has now exceeded 100 percent of gross domestic product
for the first time since World War II. But there is really no parallel between
the fiscal situation then and now.
In the 1940s, the U.S. was facing the temporary costs of
responding to a short-term world-historical event. Once the war was over, the
economy boomed and military spending retreated to peacetime levels. As a
result, the debt was cut in half within a decade and continued to decline into
the 1970s. In contrast, the U.S. now has a growing retirement-age population
that is living longer and absorbing more benefits than ever before. On top of
this, instead of returning to pre-Covid levels once the pandemic subsided,
bloated spending has simply become baked into the budget. Thus, unlike the
post-war period, the U.S. is on track to maintain massive and growing deficits
for as far as the eye can see. For all the publicity surrounding them, Elon
Musk’s DOGE efforts did nothing to change this trajectory.
What is particularly worrisome is that even though the
debt crisis is much worse than it was in 2011 by any objective measure, the
issue of containing the federal debt is barely detectable on the nation’s
political radar. News of the latest dismal milestone of debt reaching World War
II levels barely garnered attention. A combination of the progressive pull in
Democratic politics and the populist transformation of Republican politics has
put us in a situation in which neither major party is interested in even
discussing containing the debt — let alone doing the heavy policy lifting
required to address it. These days, talk about reforming entitlements — by far
the biggest driver of our national debt — is likely to be greeted with as
little enthusiasm on the right as it is on the left. Radical proposals from
Democrats like the “wealth tax” would come nowhere near closing the fiscal gap
if directed solely toward that purpose, but are being pitched as a way to fund
vast expansions of the welfare state anyway.
For this reason, the problem is only going to grow worse.
At some point in the next several years, debt will exceed the World War II
record. By the time today’s newborns graduate college, it will reach 150
percent of GDP. The current elevated levels of inflation and interest rates
will pale in comparison to what Americans of that generation are likely to
experience.
Unfortunately, ignoring the problem won’t make it go
away.
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