For most of the history of the United States, the federal government was a relatively small entity, and there was a time when it had no debt whatever. It’s been since around 1979, 1980 that we’ve seen a sustained upward shift in the federal debt and that’s come about I think because of politics more than economics. Increasingly, Democrats became committed to public spending and Republicans became committed to to cutting taxes. And this unholy alliance, if you like, between tax cutters and public spenders created a fundamental imbalance between what was being spent by the federal government and what was being raised in taxation. And now we find ourselves in a situation where a structural deficit has been combined with a cyclical deficit due to the financial crisis. And we are now looking at a very acute fiscal crisis — the worst in American history.
— Niall Ferguson U.S. debt not sustainable | Marketplace From American Public Media
