First debate this week in Atlanta | Notice

Georgia is already in focus this presidential election year. But the eyes of the nation will be on us this week as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump hold their first debate in Atlanta.

The stakes are always high in such confrontations, but this one seems particularly crucial. So far, the candidates have only agreed to one other debate. In a recent appearance on CNN, which will moderate the debate, Democratic political analyst Van Jones went so far as to call it “the whole election.”

“Because if Biden goes out there and makes a mistake, it’s game over,” Jones explained. “If he leaves and a week later he’s down in the polls, there’s panic within the party. But if he goes there and he can hold his own against Donald Trump – a runaway train, a locomotive, a raging bull – then this guy deserves another chance to be president, because it’s hard.”

Some of this talk is standard political play: set expectations low for your man and high for the opponent, so that even a mediocre performance can be turned into a victory. But Jones’ comments also underscore the angst with which many Democrats view Biden’s candidacy.

I would like to tell you that such high stakes will yield a lot of content. But I doubt it.

Consider the most important long-term problem facing our country: the national debt. Our ability to solve all the other problems we face – from our porous southern border to our many enemies around the world to our diverse domestic challenges – depends on our financial wherewithal. And after decades of pretending that we were financially invincible, we are facing something akin to our fiscal mortality.

When this year’s budget closes on September 30, with an annual deficit approaching $2 trillion, we will have added more than $10 trillion in debt over the two men’s eight years on the government stage. debate.

That’s about the same amount as we added – in total – between 1923 and 2001. And yes, it’s adjusted for inflation.

The two men are therefore probably reluctant to discuss this subject. The political precariousness is also explained by an analysis of federal spending released by the Cato Institute earlier this year.

“The largest type of spending in 2023,” according to Cato’s analysis, “was transfers ($3.19 trillion), followed by aid to states ($1.15 trillion), interest ($0). .95 trillion), procurement ($0.84 trillion), and workers’ compensation ($0.56 trillion).

Transfers include Social Security, Medicare and welfare benefits such as food stamps, while aid to states includes grants for Medicaid, public schools and highway construction. Together, they constitute what Cato calls “the redistribution part of the budget.” Purchases and offsets make up what Cato calls “the production part of the budget”: real-world operations such as national defense and national parks.

When paying interest on debt costs more than buying things for what the government does or paying people to do those things, we face a major problem. When redistribution eclipses both, we face an intractable problem.

That’s why it’s ridiculous to talk about balancing the federal budget by cutting purchases or cutting staff. Washington could have gone the entire year without buying anything or paying any employees, and it still would have run a larger budget deficit than in any year between the end of World War II and the start of the Great Recession.

It’s all about redistribution. And the redistribution budget is important because it is popular. Social Security could run out of money and require drastic, mandatory cuts to beneficiaries in less than a decade, but neither Biden nor Trump will propose reforms because it would hurt them politically.

To some extent, it’s up to them: leaders are supposed to tell people the truth, even if it hurts. Perhaps, to a greater extent, it is our responsibility. We should want leaders to tell us the truth, even if we don’t like it.

Whatever the politics, the facts are stubborn. We will have to face it sooner or later.