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    A Nation in Debt: How Can We Pay the Bills?
    A Nation in Debt: How Can We Pay the Bills?
    A Nation in Debt: How Can We Pay the Bills?
    Ebook58 pages24 minutes

    A Nation in Debt: How Can We Pay the Bills?

    By Sutton Stokes

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    About this ebook

    It is not unusual—and not necessarily a problem—for a government to have at least some debt. But how much is too much? Many Americans think the US national debt is too large and want to try to get it under control. By the end of fiscal year 2018, the US government owed around $21.7 trillion in gross federal debt ($15.8 trillion in public debt and $5.9 trillion in intragovernmental debt—money that is owed by one part of the government to another part). It was $10 trillion just ten years ago and is projected to rise to $34 trillion in another decade.

    This issue book asks: What should we do to shrink the national debt? In addressing it, we have many things to con- sider and weigh. This guide lays out three ways of approaching the national debt. Some deal with reducing the debt more directly, while others would increase the debt in the short term with no long-term guarantee that the national debt would be reduced. Each suggests actions that we might take, but every action has trade-offs we should consider. By working through each option, we can come to our own individual and collective decisions about what we would support and under what conditions.


    About National Issues Forum


    The National Issues Forums (NIF) is a network of organizations that brings together citizens around the nation to talk about pressing social and political issues of the day. Thousands of community organizations, including schools, libraries, churches, civic groups, and others, have sponsored forums designed to give people a public voice in the affairs of their communities and their nation. For more information about NIF and for additional publications, see NIF’s website at www.nifi.org.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNIFI/National Issues Forum Institute
    Release dateFeb 13, 2019
    ISBN9781946206350
    A Nation in Debt: How Can We Pay the Bills?

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      Book preview

      A Nation in Debt - Sutton Stokes

      One Way to Hold a Deliberative Forum

      Ground Rules for a Forum

      ■ Focus on the options.

      ■ All options should be considered fairly.

      ■ No one or two individuals should dominate.

      ■ Maintain an open and respectful atmosphere.

      ■ Everyone is encouraged to participate.

      ■ Listen to each other.

       About This

      Issue Guide

      Our nation’s debt has never been larger, and it has the potential to affect not only each of us, but future generations. This issue guide is designed to support people deliberating together about how we should approach the issue. There is no perfect solution but, by considering three different approaches for dealing with the debt, we can try to understand the viewpoints of others and reflect on what is most important to us. Each option sees the debt from a different perspective, and not all options address reducing the national debt equally.

      There are difficult questions we need to think about—questions without easy answers:

      ■ Should all of us have to tighten our belts, or should we ask more from larger corporations or wealthier citizens?

      ■ Should we take drastic action to shrink the debt, or would that upend the economy?

      ■ What’s the right direction for tax rates to go—up, to cover our spending, or down, to encourage investment and growth that might expand the economy?

      ■ Are we willing to live with a much smaller federal government—and if so, what benefits and services are we willing to live without?

      Some of the worst problems with the debt lie in the future, so it’s easy to procrastinate. But the effects are becoming more visible now. By 2020—not that far away—the government will spend more on interest on the national debt than on Medicaid. By 2023, we’ll spend more on interest on the national debt than on the Department of Defense.

      The research involved in developing this guide includes conversations with Americans from a variety of backgrounds, surveys of nonpartisan public-opinion research, consideration of many people’s ideas

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