It’s been more than twenty years since we last had a balanced federal budget during the tenure of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Will we ever see a balanced budget again?
It’s theoretically possible, but it would take tremendous cuts in spending.
According to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “In order to achieve balance within a decade, all spending would need to be cut by roughly one-quarter… the necessary cuts would grow to 85 percent if defense, veterans, Social Security, and Medicare spending were off the table.”
“These cuts would be so large that it would require the equivalent of ending all nondefense appropriations and eliminating the entire Medicaid program just to get to balance,” the analysis found.
Related: What’s in and What’s Out in the $858 Billion Defense Budget
So, yeah, the outlook doesn’t look good. Such projections are all academic at this point without budget projections for the next ten years or knowing what policies will be proposed. Despite having had four years of balanced budgets under Newt Gingrich, government spending skyrocketed after 9/11. Spending did decline over the course of the Bush administration but skyrocketed again in the wake of the financial crisis and historically high spending under Barack Obama. Joe Biden continued the trend of excessive spending. In his first year in office, he proposed a massive $6 trillion budget for 2022—the largest in history—fueled mostly by spending for left-wing social programs.
Is there enough desire in Congress to cut spending and get the nation back in the black? I’m not convinced.
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