Loading ...How Washington Learned to Love Debt and Deficits
Political support for taming federal debt has melted away, and the U.S. is testing just how much it can borrow
William Hoagland has engaged in nearly every Washington budget-deficit battle for four decades. A longtime analyst and onetime senior Republican congressional budget aide, he brought a sensibility learned growing up on an Indiana farm: You’ve got to balance the books over time.
He feels like a voice in the wilderness now.
The theories about debt and deficits and whether they matter—once widely shared in Washington, on Wall Street and in academia—have fundamentally changed.