Absolutely. We've been advocating for a plan with concrete timelines to get the federal books back to balance.
I certainly understand the argument of debt-to-GDP as a fiscal anchor; I think it's often misunderstood. A lot of the arguments come from a fellow economist, Olivier Blanchard, who used to be the chief economist of the IMF. When it comes to the argument that deficits are not always a concern, I think his argument is that cyclical deficits are okay, and that if there's a downturn, engaging in counter-cyclical spending and running a deficit can be useful in stopping downturns from becoming as bad as they used to be in the Great Depression and in the panics in the 19th century.
But one of the issues with our current fiscal situation is that we have a structural deficit, which will impact our ability to run a cyclical deficit in the event of a downturn. I certainly understand the argument that when interest rates are low, it's a good time to borrow, but the economy doesn't exist in a vacuum, and interest rates aren't always low.
Similarly, if there's a downturn, then it's likely that governments will probably spend more, particularly since we don't have that much monetary policy room to cut interest rates even further, which can produce inflation. To get inflation under control, you need to raise interest rates. When that happens, what happens to our public sector debt? What happens to household debt? I think it's very important when we're talking about the fiscal situation and debt-to-GDP to think of it in a temporal context.