The national debt, currently at $36.3 trillion and growing, is a boulder weighing on economic prosperity. The money lent to the government with every purchase of a note, bill, or bond, as investors collect their guaranteed interest payments, could otherwise fund private, innovative activities that would raise living standards nationwide.
This week, Donald Trump re-entered the Oval Office armed with his team of small-government warriors in the self-styled Department of Government Efficiency, seeking to reduce the untenable size of the federal government through executive action. However, Elon Musk, who will help lead DOGE, just walked back the commission’s goal of finding $2 trillion in spending cuts.
The reality, which Musk seems now to be grasping, is that the executive branch cannot tame the national debt on its own. President Trump and his team need Congress, too, and the federal judiciary. To rein in the national debt, Congress and the judiciary must recommit themselves to the text of our founding document, and particularly to the original meaning of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
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Ilan Wurman, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Benjamin Ayanian is a student at the University of Minnesota Law School.
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