Opinion | Why Democrats Should Care About the National Debt

After his election as House speaker, Mike Johnson said one of his top priorities was the creation of a bipartisan commission to tackle the national debt. It’s a good idea that nearly 70% of voters in both parties support. In September, Reps. Scott Peters (D., Calif.) and Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.) introduced the Fiscal Commission Act of 2023, and 198 House Republicans voted for it as part of a government funding bill. Here’s why Democratic congressional leaders and the Biden administration should join the push:

• Deficits are undermining the Biden economy. In the past year, the real federal budget deficit more than doubled, from $933 billion to $2 trillion. Democrats rightly argued that spending borrowed money was a critical economic support during the Covid pandemic. But the unemployment rate the over past year has been consistently lower than any point since the 1950s.