On March 5, 2024, the Millennial Debt Foundation gathered with policy experts, Hill staff, and current and former lawmakers to discuss and honor the legacy of Senator Tom Coburn and its relevance for America’s fiscal challenges today.
The first of several DC events entitled The Debt Bomb (an homage to Senator Coburn) issued a tough verdict: we’re in trouble.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
MDF founder Weston Wamp moderated a panel featuring former Senator Mark Pryor and Congressman William Timmons, in which the latter pointed out that every 100 days, the US adds a trillion dollars – that’s trillion, with a T – to its deficit.
The idea that this can go on and on without consequences is a fiction perpetuated by people who have their own interests at heart rather than those of Americans, especially millennials, who will pay the bill for their predecessors’ negligence and denialism.
Former Congressman Reid Ribble offered a scathing rebuke to the gridlock that he experienced as he drafted landmark legislation to ensure a future for Social Security and saw it wither in a drawer. CRFB’s Mark Goldwein pointed warned of a debt death spiral in which interest on the debt becomes a primary driver of new debt. At that point, the debt will spin away from us, and a crisis will ensue – and nobody knows when the bomb will go off.
Gradually and then suddenly.
Watch the recap video below, and be sure to reach out to us at william@millennialdebt.org to be placed on the priority list for our next The Debt Bomb event.
