US Government Debt Different - Finance Department - University of ...

150 Can the United States Achieve Fiscal Sustainability? Will We?for their defeat in the budget showdown with President Clinton; 64today, at least some party leaders have decided that a similar proposalhas political potential. Still, there have been numerous politicalrealignments in American history, and the specter of the nationaldebt could provide the motivating force for another one in the nextdecade or two. It is the contours of the American political systemthat will determine whether and how the United States deals with itslong-term debt problem.64 Iwan Morgan, The Age of Deficits: Presidents and Unbalanced Budgets from JimmyCarter to George W. Bush (University Press of Kansas, 2009), pp. 183–87.