A view of a bus shelter at Pennsylvania Avenue and 22nd Street NW where an electronic billboard and a poster display the current U.S. National debt per person and as a nation at 38 trillion dollars, in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 28, 2025. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation
The president’s fiscal 2027 budget is out, and I have two reactions. The first will sound familiar: Like so many budgets before it, this is not a serious effort to put America’s government on a sustainable path. The second is more important: It would be a mistake to dismiss it as just another unserious document. That is exactly how we got here.
Veronique de Rugy, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She has testified numerous times in front of Congress on the effects of fiscal stimulus, debt, deficits, and regulation on the economy. Previously, de Rugy has been a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.
