"means ought to be proportioned" - Rethinking state budgeting with Wendy Edelberg

Thank you again to our guest, Wendy.

That was a really, as always, I mean, we have great guests.

It was a great conversation.

Very timely and very thought-provoking too, I thought.

I jotted down a bunch of notes that I'm definitely going to come back to after this.

We ended up talking about the national debt, and that was one of the pieces that I pulled for this week's Ripped from the Headlines podcast.

The Washington Post had a kind of an interesting look back piece, an analysis, what we call a second day news story here in the journalism biz.

It was an analysis piece that came out this past weekend.

The headline is, after decades of free spending, Washington is facing some unpalatable

choices.

The story is written by David Lynch and Steve Thompson.

It adds a lot of layers and context to kind of the top line number that a lot of news outlets reported the 40 trillion in national debt.

And Wendy added some layers and context to that as well in our conversation.

But here's some more from this piece.

It notes that after that, at some point, lawmakers and they're referring to Washington lawmakers may soon be compelled to make some long deferred choices that will leave few Americans unscathed.

They start off talking about, okay, what is this doing to the bond market? The yield on the 30-year treasury top a little over 5.25%, and that is up a bit.

What does that signal? That signals that the bond market is going to have to make some choices that could hurt growth.

They quote Adam Abbas, who's a fund manager.

He says, we have two levers to do that, raise taxes or cut spending.

Either option is not politically popular and it will never be popular, but at some point we have to address the problem.

So that's what bond analysts are saying.

The story notes that as borrowing costs rise, debt does become more expensive.

That can create a vicious cycle.

They quote Mark Goldwyn, who's the senior policy director for a nonpartisan committee for a responsible federal budget.

Goldwyn says, what I worry about is we're on the verge of a real debt spiral.

Thank you again to our guest, Wendy.

That was a really, as always, I mean, we have great guests.

It was a great conversation.

Very timely and very thought-provoking too, I thought.

I jotted down a bunch of notes that I'm definitely going to come back to after this.

We ended up talking about the national debt, and that was one of the pieces that I pulled for this week's Ripped from the Headlines podcast.

The Washington Post had a kind of an interesting look back piece, an analysis, what we call a second day news story here in the journalism biz.

It was an analysis piece that came out this past weekend.

The headline is, after decades of free spending, Washington is facing some unpalatable

choices.

The story is written by David Lynch and Steve Thompson.

It adds a lot of layers and context to kind of the top line number that a lot of news outlets reported the 40 trillion in national debt.

And Wendy added some layers and context to that as well in our conversation.

But here's some more from this piece.

It notes that after that, at some point, lawmakers and they're referring to Washington lawmakers may soon be compelled to make some long deferred choices that will leave few Americans unscathed.

They start off talking about, okay, what is this doing to the bond market? The yield on the 30-year treasury top a little over 5.25%, and that is up a bit.

What does that signal? That signals that the bond market is going to have to make some choices that could hurt growth.

They quote Adam Abbas, who's a fund manager.

He says, we have two levers to do that, raise taxes or cut spending.

Either option is not politically popular and it will never be popular, but at some point we have to address the problem.

So that's what bond analysts are saying.

The story notes that as borrowing costs rise, debt does become more expensive.

That can create a vicious cycle.

They quote Mark Goldwyn, who's the senior policy director for a nonpartisan committee for a responsible federal budget.

Goldwyn says, what I worry about is we're on the verge of a real debt spiral.