The Congressional Budget Office has released new projections for federal spending and revenues through to 2030.

In his State of the Union address, President Trump proposed new spending on infrastructure, health research, border security, and paid family leave.

The U.S. Treasury reports that the federal budget deficit was $779 billion in fiscal 2018.

Where government debt is concerned, advanced economies should be fixing the roof while the sun shines.

The experiences of Chile, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom with explicit fiscal rules offer lessons on how the United States can contain the growth in federal government debt.

As federal policymakers gear up to battle over federal spending and the budget sequester this Fall, it is interesting to consider past efforts at restraint. President Calvin Coolidge, for example, held the federal budget down to about $3 billion seven years in a row, while cutting taxes and bringing the federal debt down from $22 billion to $17 billion.

It’s not quite on a par with 9/11 truthers or Obama birthers, but recently a number of liberal commentators have descended into the fever swamps of denialism by rejecting the most basic facts about our debt and deficit. Mind you, they are not arguing about the best policies to reduce the debt — taxe hikes vs. spending cuts — but actually denying that the problem exists at all.