Race for the White House: America on the road to poverty

Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris is saying much about some of the nation’s greatest challenges. Picture: AFP

The 2024 election will be one of America’s most consequential. The presidential candidates are offering our country strikingly different paths. But neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris is saying much about some of the nation’s greatest challenges.

The first is America’s national debt, now $US35.7 trillion ($53.3 trillion). That’s larger than our entire economic output for a year. For the first time in history, the US is spending more on the debt’s interest payments than on defence.

The Committee for a Responsible federal budget says Mr Trump added $US8.8 trillion to the debt during his term, offset by $US443bn of deficit reduction. As of June, the Biden-Harris administration had added a further $US6.2 trillion to the debt, offset by $US1.9 trillion of deficit reduction. The debt will grow when Biden signs the fiscal 2025 budget. The Congressional Budget Office projects that absent any significant changes, the debt will reach nearly $US50.7 trillion by the end of 2034. Without presidential leadership, we’ll be on a road that ends with our children and grandchildren much less prosperous.

Yet neither candidate seems interested enough to offer voters a plan to do something about it. Instead, both are offering subsets of voters financial goodies. Harris would give first-time homeowners $US25,000 for a down payment and small business start-ups a $US50,000 deduction. Both candidates want tip income to be tax-free. Trump would raise the cap on the state and local tax deduction.

These proposals won’t increase economic growth. They’ll add to the debt while warping the tax code. When did tips become a more worthy income source than an hourly wage or monthly salary? Why give wealthy blue-state homeowners preferential tax treatment?

The second significant issue the candidates are ignoring is the coming bankruptcy of the US social safety net. According to their actuaries, Social Security’s trust fund will be depleted in 2035 while Medicare’s hospital trust fund will go bust in 2036.

Studies suggest about half of Americans 65 or older live in households that get at least 50 per cent of their income from Social Security. About 25 per cent rely on the program for at least 90 per cent of their income.

Both candidates are silent on these coming bankruptcies. Perhaps that’s politically wise, but a reckoning still looms for the many Americans who depend on those programs. Addressing it now is the responsible thing to do.

Sadly, what the candidates have said about the safety net would put it in greater peril. Trump would end taxes on benefits of wealthier Social Security recipients, causing the program to go bankrupt two years earlier. Harris wants to add an expensive home-healthcare benefit to Medicare but won’t say what it’ll cost or how she’d pay for it. She seems to think drug companies will just cough up the money.

Then there’s the third dire issue: the country’s faltering security. The July report from the Commission on the National Defence Strategy concluded that “the threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging” since World War II and could result in a “near-term major war”. But the US “is not prepared” for a global conflict if it erupts. America “lacks both the capabilities and capacity” for the military “to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”

Neither candidate can dismiss this disturbing warning as political spin. We should all take seriously the commission’s urging that the US cannot “wait for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11”. Yet here again, both candidates are mostly mute. Trump occasionally asserts he alone can keep the peace – a claim so vague as to be silly. Harris ignores the issue, thereby raising doubts about her as a prospective commander in chief. These challenges won’t go away, whoever is elected. Without the benefit of a national discussion amid the campaign, no consensus can emerge on what to do. America is headed for trouble on multiple fronts.

Karl Rove twice masterminded the election of George W Bush.