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Charlotte Gartenberg: Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, July 28th. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg.
夏洛特·加滕伯格：嘿，新闻听众们。今天是 7 月 28 日，星期日。我是夏洛特·加滕伯格。

Luke Vargas: And I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news, by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world.
卢克·巴尔加斯：我是《华尔街日报》的卢克·巴尔加斯。这就是《周日新闻》，在这个节目中，我们通过联系新闻编辑室的同事来帮助解释我们世界上正在发生的事情，从而解决有关新闻中最大新闻的重大问题。

Charlotte Gartenberg: This week we're talking about U.S. national debt. According to the Treasury Department, the national debt is approaching $35 trillion. What does that mean for the country, its citizens and the future? You've got questions. Let's get to it. The federal government has run a deficit every year since 2001. Two years ago, the U.S. hit a landmark $30 trillion in debt. And for the last several years, debt has been higher than the GDP. A Congressional Budget Office estimate from earlier this year found that the U.S. government is expected to pay an additional $1.1 trillion in interest over the coming decade. Interest costs now surpass defense spending. Only social security and Medicare are forecast to be bigger burdens in the coming years. The increase is reviving long-standing worries on Wall Street that the acceleration in government borrowing could eventually weigh on economic growth and asset prices. But so far, markets have shown few signs of distress. Meanwhile, even as the presidential race heats up, neither former President Trump nor President Biden has said much about it. As of yet, likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has said little on the matter. So what does all this debt mean for the country, for the election, for the future? We got a lot of questions from you about this. Here to help us answer some of those is WSJ's former executive Washington editor, Jerry Seib. Okay, Jerry. So before we get into detail on the good, the bad and the ugly, of accumulating national debt here in the U.S., Kevin Dowling of Arlington. Virginia called in with this question.
夏洛特·加滕伯格：本周我们讨论的是美国国债。根据财政部的数据，国家债务接近 35 万亿美元。这对国家、公民和未来意味着什么？你有问题。让我们开始吧。自2001年以来，联邦政府每年都出现赤字​​。两年前，美国的债务达到了里程碑式的30万亿美元。过去几年，债务一直高于GDP。美国国会预算办公室今年早些时候的一项估计发现，美国政府预计在未来十年内将额外支付 1.1 万亿美元的利息。利息成本现在超过了国防开支。预计未来几年只有社会保障和医疗保险将成为更大的负担。这一增长再次引发了华尔街长期以来的担忧，即政府借贷的加速最终可能会拖累经济增长和资产价格。但到目前为止，市场几乎没有表现出陷入困境的迹象。与此同时，尽管总统竞选愈演愈烈，但前总统特朗普和总统拜登都没有对此发表太多言论。到目前为止，可能的民主党候选人卡马拉·哈里斯(Kamala Harris)对此事还没有发表任何言论。那么，所有这些债务对国家、选举和未来意味着什么呢？我们收到了您关于此的很多问题。 《华尔街日报》前华盛顿执行编辑杰里·塞布（Jerry Seib）将在这里帮助我们回答其中一些问题。好吧，杰瑞。因此，在我们详细讨论美国累积国债的好处、坏处和丑陋之处之前，阿灵顿的凯文·道林 (Kevin Dowling) 说道。弗吉尼亚打电话来提出了这个问题。

Kevin Dowling: What's the relationship in plain English between the deficit, congress enacts the deficit, which then drives the debt, and then Treasury has to sell bonds, and somehow the Federal Reserve's involved buying the bonds, printing the money, etc.
凯文·道林：用简单的英语来说，赤字之间的关系是什么？国会制定赤字，然后推高债务，然后财政部必须出售债券，美联储以某种方式参与购买债券、印钞等等。

Jerry Seib: The first thing to remember is that the deficit is the amount of money that the Federal Government is spending this year that exceeds the revenues it receives. The deficit is an annual thing. That's how much you're in the hole. You're in the red for this year. The debt is the accumulated debt of the government over time. And on a monthly basis, the Treasury finances that deficit by issuing bonds, which are long-term debt, and Treasury bills which are short-term debt, to basically bring in the money to the government to pay the bills at the end of the month, the same way people would in their households. And then at the end of the year, the accumulated debt, whatever the difference has been, that's what is added to the accumulated debt.
Jerry Seib：首先要记住的是，赤字是联邦政府今年支出超过其收入的金额。赤字是每年都会发生的事情。这就是你在坑里的程度。你今年是亏损的。债务是政府随着时间的推移积累的债务。财政部每月通过发行债券（长期债务）和国库券（短期债务）来为赤字融资，基本上是在年底向政府带来资金来支付账单。月，就像人们在家里一样。然后到了年底，累积的债务，无论差额如何，都会被添加到累积债务中。

Charlotte Gartenberg: You recently wrote an essay titled "Will Debt Sink the American Empire?" And that includes an almost historical point of view. Why is national debt a problem from that sort of zoomed out view?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：你最近写了一篇题为“债务会让美帝国沉没吗？”的文章。这包括几乎历史的观点。从这种狭隘的角度来看，为什么国家债务是一个问题呢？

Jerry Seib: There's always been debt. Why do we care now? For starters, it's just bigger now than it's ever been. Why does that matter? Well, there are several reasons. The first one and the most immediate one is that government debt crowds out other investments that might be used to make more useful contributions to the economy. Investments by the government, if the government is spending money to pay interest on the accumulated debt, which it is, then it's not using that money to do something more useful to build infrastructure, for example, or to help people with their healthcare costs. It's also sucking out money out of the private sector that stops investments being made there. Because money that goes to pay interest on the debt, it often goes overseas to China or Japan or India. It's not being used to invest in the U.S. economy. So there's a cumulative damaging effect to that. That's the first reason to worry. Second reason to worry about the debt is that it pushes up interest rates for all of us. Because if the government is in the financial marketplace seeking money to finance its debt, it's taking money and driving up interest rates because of the law of supply and demand, which suppresses economic growth. There is an estimate that the Congressional Budget Office has put forward that over the next decade or so, the debt as a problem in the economy, will suppress economic growth by 12 or 13 percentage points. In the long run, the reason to worry about debt is that it does raise questions about a potential catastrophe down the line. If the U.S. can't repay its debt, if the government can't make the interest payments, it has a crisis of confidence, the dollar becomes weaker and maybe is no longer seen as this strong currency you can rely on. That's a problem down the road. We're not near that point now, and some people think that point is never likely to come, but that's the catastrophic scenario that you have to worry about.
Jerry Seib：债务一直存在。为什么我们现在关心？首先，它现在比以往任何时候都更大。为什么这很重要？嗯，有几个原因。第一个也是最直接的一个是政府债务挤出了可能用于为经济做出更有用贡献的其他投资。政府投资，如果政府花钱支付累积债务的利息（事实确实如此），那么它就不会用这笔钱来做更有用的事情，例如建设基础设施，或者帮助人们支付医疗费用。它还从私营部门吸走资金，从而阻止了在那里的投资。因为用于支付债务利息的资金通常流向海外，流向中国、日本或印度。它没有被用来投资美国经济。因此，这会产生累积的破坏性影响。这是第一个令人担忧的原因。担心债务的第二个原因是它推高了我们所有人的利率。因为如果政府在金融市场上寻求资金来为其债务融资，那么由于供求规律，它就会吸收资金并推高利率，从而抑制经济增长。据国会预算办公室估计，未来十年左右，债务作为经济问题，将抑制经济增长12或13个百分点。从长远来看，担心债务的原因是它确实引发了人们对未来潜在灾难的疑问。如果美国无法偿还债务，如果政府无法支付利息，就会出现信任危机，美元就会变得更弱，也许不再被视为可以依赖的强势货币。 这是未来的一个问题。我们现在还没有接近这一点，有些人认为这一点永远不可能到来，但这是你必须担心的灾难性场景。

Charlotte Gartenberg: Who owns U.S. debt and what does that mean for the United States?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：谁拥有美国债务，这对美国意味着什么？

Jerry Seib: Well, that's an interesting question. About a third of it is owed to foreign countries. (inaudible) you have about 30 different countries that own some piece of America's foreign debt, the biggest ones being China and Japan and the United Kingdom. The larger part of the debt though, and a growing part of it, is held by people in the U.S. It's held by individuals, it's held by mutual funds or banks or pension funds or state and local governments, people in the U.S. who are investors in the U.S. economy, who use some of their investment money to simply buy up U.S. government debt because it's safe.
Jerry Seib：嗯，这是一个有趣的问题。其中大约三分之一是欠外国的。 （听不清）大约有 30 个不同的国家拥有美国的部分外债，其中最大的是中国、日本和英国。不过，大部分债务，而且越来越多的部分，是由美国人民持有的。它是由个人持有的，由共同基金、银行、养老基金、州和地方政府、美国投资者持有的。在美国经济中，他们用一些投资资金简单地购买美国政府债务，因为它是安全的。

Charlotte Gartenberg: What happens if the U.S. doesn't pay its debt, both to its foreign debtors, but then also to our own citizens?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：如果美国既不偿还其外国债务人的债务，也不偿还其本国公民的债务，会发生什么？

Jerry Seib: Well, so the first thing to say is there is a theory now, well, it's been a while, but now it has a name, it's called Modern Monetary Theory, which says, don't worry about that. Because the U.S. can print money, it will always be able to finance its deficit and it's debt, and so therefore it will never have a crisis. Because if it lacks dollars to pay for its interest payments, it just prints more dollars. So therefore don't worry about it.
Jerry Seib：嗯，首先要说的是，现在有一个理论，嗯，已经有一段时间了，但现在它有了一个名字，叫做现代货币理论，它说，不要担心这个。因为美国可以印钞，它永远能够为其赤字和债务融资，因此永远不会发生危机。因为如果它缺乏美元来支付利息，它就会印制更多美元。所以不用担心。

Charlotte Gartenberg: That doesn't weaken our currency?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：这不会削弱我们的货币吗？

Jerry Seib: It does weaken our currency and it adds to inflation. Printing more money has its own damaging effects on the economy. So what are the more immediate worries that you should have? Well, one is that more and more borrowing, as I said, simply drives up interest rates and that hurts the economy in other ways. The other crisis could come if foreign debt holders simply decide they're not going to buy anymore and they want their money back. And you think principally about the Chinese here, who have a lot of treasury debt that they hold, that's served them very well, they're making money. But if they decide they want to damage the US economy, stop buying debt, pull their money out of treasury bills and bonds, that would have a very damaging effect and the U.S. would have a hard time finding other people to buy those bills and bonds, because the Chinese would be seen as a leading indicator of something bad, and you then could have a crisis. That's right now not likely, because the Chinese would hurt the world economy if they did that. Hurting the world economy hurts the Chinese economy. They would shoot themselves in the foot. But it is not implausible over time, to think things could head in that direction and sometime down the road, that would be the nightmare scenario.
Jerry Seib：它确实削弱了我们的货币并加剧了通货膨胀。印更多的钱对经济有其自身的破坏性影响。那么，您应该有哪些更直接的担忧呢？嗯，其中之一是，正如我所说，越来越多的借贷只会推高利率，并以其他方式损害经济。如果外债持有人决定不再购买并希望收回资金，另一场危机可能就会到来。你主要想到这里的中国人，他们持有大量国债，这对他们很有好处，他们正在赚钱。但如果他们决定损害美国经济，停止购买债务，将资金从国库券和债券中撤出，这将产生非常破坏性的影响，美国将很难找到其他人购买这些票据和债券，因为中国人会被视为坏事的先行指标，然后你可能会遇到危机。现在这是不可能的，因为如果中国这样做，就会损害世界经济。损害世界经济也就损害了中国经济。他们会搬起石头砸自己的脚。但随着时间的推移，事情可能朝这个方向发展，并且在未来的某个时候，这将是噩梦般的场景，这并非难以置信。

Charlotte Gartenberg: So our conversation so far has kind of tended towards the negative, debt is bad, we have a lot of debt. But national debt might not be a problem for certain reasons.
夏洛特·加滕伯格：到目前为止，我们的谈话有点消极，债务很糟糕，我们有很多债务。但由于某些原因，国家债务可能不是问题。

Jerry Seib: Yes. Think about Covid. There was an agreement in the political system that spending a lot of money that wasn't covered by revenue, was worth doing to help the country cope with Covid. To help the healthcare system get up to speed, to give people income support payments because they had lost their jobs. To keep the economy afloat, it was worth, the system decided, running a bigger deficit to make sure the country got through the covid crisis smoothly. And you could make an argument, I think it's a perfectly good argument, that that was good deficit spending. It accomplished a greater good, which is it got the economy and the country through the Covid crisis, and it saved many thousands of lives.
杰里·塞布：是的。想想新冠病毒吧。政治体系一致认为，花费大量收入未涵盖的资金来帮助国家应对新冠疫情是值得的。帮助医疗保健系统加快步伐，为失业的人们提供收入补助。该系统认为，为了保持经济发展，值得增加赤字，以确保该国顺利度过新冠危机。你可以提出一个论点，我认为这是一个非常好的论点，那就是赤字支出很好。它实现了更大的利益，那就是让经济和国家度过了新冠危机，并拯救了成千上万的生命。

Charlotte Gartenberg: The federal deficit has long been a political football. More on that after the break. Okay, so in some cases it probably behooves the country to pay off its debt, but can we pay it off? We've had at least two listeners call in with that question. This is Josh Musa of Crown Point, Indiana, and he asks ...
夏洛特·加滕伯格：联邦赤字长期以来一直是一场政治足球。休息后会有更多内容。好吧，在某些情况下，国家可能应该偿还债务，但我们能偿还吗？至少有两位听众打电话来询问这个问题。我是印第安纳州克朗波因特的乔什·穆萨，他问……

Josh Musa: What is the US doing to help reduce the national debt? Could this debt ever be eliminated?
乔什·穆萨：美国正在采取哪些措施来帮助减少国家债务？这笔债务可以消除吗？

Charlotte Gartenberg: Well, Jerry, can it be done? Can you get your crystal ball? Let me know. No, but really can it be done? Does it need to be done?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：嗯，杰瑞，可以吗？你能拿到你的水晶球吗？让我知道。不可以，但是真的可以做到吗？有必要做吗？

Jerry Seib: Not in your lifetime or mine. There was a period of several years in the late 1990s in which, people forget this, U.S. government was running a surplus. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and Newt Gingrich, a Republican, got together and for a brief happy period, they produced budgets that were not in the red, but in the black. Right now, the accumulated debt is so large that nobody realistically thinks it can be paid off.
Jerry Seib：在你我的一生中都不会。人们忘记了，20 世纪 90 年代末的一段时间里，美国政府一直处于盈余状态。民主党人比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)和共和党人纽特·金里奇(Newt Gingrich)聚在一起，度过了一段短暂的幸福时光，他们制定的预算不是亏损，而是盈利。目前，累积的债务如此之大，以至于没有人真正认为可以偿还。

Charlotte Gartenberg: How did we do that in the nineties?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：九十年代我们是如何做到这一点的？

Jerry Seib: It was a sort of happy scenario combination of large economic growth, not as much defense spending, and an actual bipartisan agreement to raise some taxes and cut some spending in a way that actually made these numbers come together. So you had a kind of happy convergence of multiple forces. Those forces don't seem to be at play now. You have a Republican Party that wants to cut taxes more. You have a Democratic Party that says, under the Biden administration we won't raise taxes on anybody with an income below $400,000. So to the extent you think tax increases are part of the solution here, a lot of those potential tax increases are basically off the table. And you have growth that, it's okay, but not great, which doesn't produce as much revenue for the government. It means more borrowing is necessary. So this is not a scenario in which the federal government accumulates budget surpluses and can start paying down the debt.
杰里·塞布（Jerry Seib）：这是一种幸福的场景，经济大幅增长，国防支出减少，两党实际上达成了提高税收和削减支出的协议，从而使这些数字真正结合在一起。所以你有一种多种力量的愉快融合。这些力量现在似乎不再发挥作用。共和党想要更多减税。民主党表示，在拜登政府领导下，我们不会对收入低于 40 万美元的任何人加税。因此，如果您认为增税是解决方案的一部分，那么许多潜在的增税基本上都是不可能的。而且增长还不错，但不是很好，这不会为政府带来那么多收入。这意味着需要更多借贷。因此，这并不是联邦政府积累预算盈余并可以开始偿还债务的情况。

Charlotte Gartenberg: So we don't seem to currently be moving in the direction of paying off our debt. I'm glad we have moved towards politics because I think that's the big question right now. Our listener, Russ Porter of Ridgefield, Connecticut asks ...
夏洛特·加滕伯格：所以我们目前似乎并没有朝着偿还债务的方向前进。我很高兴我们已经转向政治，因为我认为这是现在的大问题。我们的听众、康涅狄格州里奇菲尔德的拉斯·波特问道……

Russ Porter: Is anyone in a decision-making role really interested in this topic? Neither party seems to consider this a problem when defining their tax or their spending plans. What incentive does anybody in Congress have, to take action on this, given that it's a long-term problem?
拉斯·波特：担任决策角色的人真的对这个话题感兴趣吗？双方在制定税收或支出计划时似乎都不认为这是一个问题。鉴于这是一个长期问题，国会中的任何人有什么动力对此采取行动？

Charlotte Gartenberg: We've talked a lot about how it has in the past taken bipartisan muscle to bring down the debt. Is there any political incentive to address this now?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：我们已经谈论了很多过去如何通过两党的力量来降低债务。现在是否有任何政治动机来解决这个问题？

Jerry Seib: The answer is basically no. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he sort of said in Trumpian fashion, "I will pay off the debt in eight years." Well, he added $7 trillion to the debt in four years. So that's kind of the direction the political system is taking things. And by the way, Joe Biden's administration has added about the same amount of money in three-and-a-half years. There's just no impetus in the political system right now, to take it seriously and to do much about it. It's not a big subject in the presidential campaign. It's not a subject of much debate in Congress. People will occasionally rise up and say, "We have to do something about this." And then they will go away and things remain on the path that they're on right now. So it was different, for example, in the 1980s, the last time there was a big push to do something to reduce deficits in debt in a meaningful way, because Republicans and Democrats both thought it was getting out of hand then. Happened again in the 1990s. There was a bipartisan push to do something about it. There have been some smaller efforts in the 2000s to come up with bipartisan packages to deal with this. But right now there's just no conversation along those lines. And I think the reason is, the key word I used in describing those earlier efforts, was really bipartisan. The only way this happens is if both parties decide to do the tough things, the unpopular things, that are necessary, and jump off the bridge arm-in-arm. That's just not the way Washington works right now.
Jerry Seib：答案基本上是否定的。 2016 年唐纳德·特朗普当选时，他有点像特朗普式的说：“我将在八年内还清债务。”嗯，他在四年内增加了 7 万亿美元的债务。这就是政治体系正在采取的方向。顺便说一句，乔·拜登政府在三年半的时间里增加了大约相同数量的资金。目前政治体系没有动力认真对待它并采取很多措施。这在总统竞选中并不是一个大话题。这不是国会争论的话题。人们偶尔会站起来说：“我们必须对此采取行动。”然后他们就会离开，事情会继续沿着现在的道路发展。所以情况有所不同，例如，在 20 世纪 80 年代，上一次大力推动采取有意义的方式减少债务赤字，因为共和党和民主党都认为当时情况已经失控。 20世纪90年代再次发生。两党都在推动对此采取行动。 2000 年代，两党做出了一些较小的努力来提出解决这个问题的方案。但现在还没有这样的对话。我认为原因是，我在描述这些早期努力时使用的关键词是真正的两党合作。发生这种情况的唯一方法是，双方都决定做必要的艰难的事情、不受欢迎的事情，然后手挽着手从桥上跳下去。这不是华盛顿现在的运作方式。

Charlotte Gartenberg: All right, Jerry, what do you see happening now that's already being done to perhaps curb our debt and how well is it working?
夏洛特·加滕伯格：好吧，杰里，你认为现在正在发生什么，也许是为了遏制我们的债务，效果如何？

Jerry Seib: Well, so a couple of things that you can look at as signs of hope. The first is that we've been through a very rough period here, particularly because of Covid, in which the debt has risen faster than it would have normally. So maybe if we can just get back on the path we were on, that would slow things down. That's the first reason to have some hope. The second is there are some voices out there who are raising concerns about this. When you get to the point where you're spending as much on interest payments on the accumulated debt as you are on defense, that's the sort of thing that people can understand and it makes their eyes open and maybe down the road, that will create some movement for action. And I think the third thing is that if the U.S. Gets in a position in which people are confident there's going to be economic growth that will be big enough to sustain more government spending, then perhaps there'll be less concern, less worry about the economic path the U.S. is on and maybe more of a willingness to have a look at this. And I guess the last reason for hope is there's still time. There's still plenty of time to deal with this before we get into crisis mode, but it has to start somewhere. If you end up after 2024, and you will, with a new president and a new Congress, that's a fresh start scenario. And maybe that's when this starts to become less hypothetical and more real in terms of the way Washington's going to deal with it.
Jerry Seib：嗯，有几件事你可以看作是希望的迹象。首先，我们经历了一段非常艰难的时期，特别是由于新冠疫情，债务增长速度比正常情况下更快。因此，如果我们能够回到原来的道路上，也许事情就会慢下来。这是抱有希望的第一个原因。第二是外界有一些声音对此表示担忧。当你达到这样的地步，你在累积债务的利息支付上的支出与你在国防上的支出一样多时，这是人们可以理解的事情，它让他们睁开眼睛，也许在未来，这将创造采取一些行动。我认为第三件事是，如果美国处于这样一个位置，人们相信经济增长足以维持更多的政府支出，那么也许人们对经济的担忧就会减少。美国正在走的经济道路，或许更愿意关注这一点。我想最后的希望是还有时间。在我们进入危机模式之前，还有足够的时间来处理这个问题，但它必须从某个地方开始。如果你在 2024 年之后结束，并且会有新总统和新国会，那将是一个新的开始。也许从那时起，就华盛顿处理此事的方式而言，这开始变得不那么假设，而更加真实。

Charlotte Gartenberg: Hopefully we can check in with you when that happens. I've been speaking with the Wall Street Journal's, former Executive Washington editor, Jerry Seib. Jerry Seib, thank you so much for coming to talk to me.
夏洛特·加滕伯格：希望我们能在这种情况发生时与您联系。我一直在与《华尔街日报》华盛顿执行主编杰里·塞布（Jerry Seib）进行交谈。杰里·塞布（Jerry Seib），非常感谢你来接受我的采访。

Jerry Seib: Thanks. My pleasure.
杰里·塞布：谢谢。我的荣幸。

Charlotte Gartenberg: And that's it for What's News Sunday for July 28th. Today's show is produced by me, Charlotte Gartenberg and Anthony Bansie, with supervising producer Michael Kosmides. Our deputy editors are Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsli. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg. We'll be back on Monday morning with a new show. Thanks for listening.
夏洛特·加滕伯格：这就是 7 月 28 日周日新闻。今天的节目由我、夏洛特·加滕伯格和安东尼·班西制作，监制迈克尔·科斯米德斯担任制作人。我们的副编辑是 Scott Saloway 和 Chris Zinsli。我是夏洛特·加滕伯格。我们将于周一早上带着新节目回来。感谢收听。