Thirty-three years ago in September of 1992, The Concord Coalition was founded with a clear mission: to educate the public and build a grassroots movement for fiscal responsibility. Our early efforts helped contribute to a balanced federal budget by 1998—a major milestone. But that progress was short-lived. Since 2001, debt held by the public has grown every year, and The Concord Coalition has continued to sound the alarm on unsustainable policy choices and the urgent need for reform.
Now, with the stakes higher than ever, it’s a good time to reflect on Concord’s journey. In the fight for fiscal responsibility, we have learned key lessons that can guide our movement going forward. Here are some of the most important ones:
The Fiscal Trajectory Remains Unsustainable
Since the surpluses at the turn of the century, the federal budget has been structurally imbalanced. The gap between spending and revenues is growing rapidly, much of which can be attributed to mandatory spending, which grows on autopilot outside of the congressional appropriations process. Add in defense spending to fund military conflicts, the 2008 global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and numerous large tax cuts, and our trajectory has only worsened. In 2002, debt held by the public was less than one third of the gross domestic product (GDP). Today, it stands at 100 percent of GDP – the highest level since the end of World War II. Put simply, if all of our economic output went to paying down the debt today, we still would fall short.
Yet, the greater concern is not where the debt is today, but where the debt is headed. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), debt held by the public will reach more than 150% of GDP by 2055. These projections don’t take into account unexpected borrowing that would dig the nation deeper into debt like future military engagements, recessions, or other national emergencies.
These projections are not just numbers – they will have real consequences for each and every American. Rising federal borrowing competes with the private sector for available capital, draining the savings needed to invest in the economy, slowing workers’ productivity, and hampering long-term growth.
There is also a direct fiscal cost to rising debt. As the national debt grows, interest payments on the debt consume a larger share of the budget and there is less funding available to advance policy priorities. That is money that can’t be spent on national security, investments in the nation’s future, or lower taxes – it’s spent merely to cover past borrowing.
We are already experiencing the consequences of high debt. Interest costs as a share of federal revenues have more than doubled over the past decade, from 7% to now approaching 20%. For the first time, interest costs are greater than everything we spend on the military. This fiscal inflexibility could intensify if market conditions shift, which should come as no surprise. As early as 1995 it was apparent that growing deficits combined with rising interest rates would lead to sharply rising interest costs.
In the long run, economic growth depends on fiscal stability. To create a sustainable economy lawmakers must also develop sound fiscal policy. Stabilizing the nation’s debt as a percentage of GDP and putting it on a downward trajectory must be a top priority as our situation becomes more alarming. The status quo cannot continue in perpetuity.
Cutting ‘Waste, Fraud, and Abuse’ or Growing the Economy Are Not Enough
Through proposals to achieve greater efficiency and economic growth, politicians seek to simultaneously receive credit for addressing the debt problem and avoid making tough decisions about the budget. These supposedly easy options have been tried in the past and were not sufficient to narrow the spending and revenue gap in any meaningful way.
There is no line item in the budget labeled “waste, fraud, and abuse.” If there were, defining what may fit into that category would be a tricky political task. Even substantial savings from cutting waste, fraud, and abuse would mostly provide one-time gains that would not alter the underlying structural nature of our projected deficits.
Locating savings from waste, fraud, and abuse is challenging. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) originally hoped to find and save $2 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse, according to Elon Musk. However, the project has fallen woefully short of that goal, perhaps even shorter than it has publicized.
Growing our way out of the debt would prove similarly difficult. Advocates for such a plan have suggested yearly GDP growth goals in excess of 3% adjusted for inflation while simultaneously shrinking deficits. History shows that such growth is challenging to achieve, much less sustain. Since The Concord Coalition’s founding in 1992, real GDP growth has exceeded 5 percent only once, immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the same period, growth has averaged a modest 2.6 percent per year. Relying on overly optimistic economic growth assumptions to excuse the absence of hard policy decisions clearly does not align with recent history.
There are simply no easy solutions for our long-term fiscal challenges. Federal policymakers will instead need to confront difficult trade-offs on taxes and popular spending programs.
The Independence and Credibility of the Congressional Budget Office Are Essential
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides a critical service for policymakers and the public: projecting the budgetary and economic impacts of proposed legislation. Since its inception in 1974, CBO has established an unparalleled track record for objectivity and analytical rigor. CBO’s reputation is the result of five decades of consistently impartial analysis. As former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin observed on Facing the Future, “It’s not nonpartisan because it’s in the law. It’s nonpartisan because it’s in their DNA…It’s the only way they know how to do the work.” Directors of the CBO, from both parties, have worked tirelessly to establish practices and procedures that ensure credibility, objectivity, and transparency.
Policymakers have frequently criticized CBO when it does not provide their preferred score for policies they support or oppose. Democrats criticized the CBO during the crafting of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Republicans attempted to undermine its credibility throughout the development of the 2025 reconciliation law, commonly referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Attacks on the integrity of CBO risk a source of truth and consensus in an era of bitter partisanship.
CBO’s projections serve as the closest thing to a common set of facts for policy debates in Congress and among the American public. Its baseline of current law informs debates on Capitol Hill and is critical for policymakers in understanding the fiscal impact of their work. The independence and credibility of CBO must be respected, even if policymakers disagree with their analysis, so that it can continue to serve its vital role as the impartial scorekeeper of proposed legislation and a trusted source of information for the public.
Demographics Drive Our Long Term Fiscal Challenges
There is an ongoing fundamental transformation in our society: lower birth rates and the aging of our population. This shifting demographic landscape is at the heart of the nation’s long term fiscal challenge. Over the next three decades, adults age 65 and older will be the fastest growing age group in the United States. In 1960 five workers were paying taxes for each Social Security beneficiary. That worker to beneficiary ratio is now sinking below 3-to-1. A dramatically smaller workforce will make Social Security and Medicare unsustainable in their current forms. As a result, both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are projected to become insolvent by 2032 and 2033, respectively.
The Concord Coalition advocated for Social Security and Medicare reform nearly thirty years ago based on long-term demographic and fiscal projections. Throughout the 1990s and in a 2001 testimony to the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security our experts highlighted that the programs were becoming demographically unsustainable. The retirement of the Baby Boomer generation—long anticipated—has now arrived, and the consequences are unfolding. Concord has consistently urged policymakers to act sooner rather than later, warning that delay only makes the necessary reforms more difficult.
When combined with rising health care costs, the rapidly aging population will cause federal spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare to dramatically rise, but income and payroll tax revenues from a proportionately smaller workforce will fail to keep pace. Compounding the problem is that care for older beneficiaries tends to be more expensive, pushing up federal spending on old-age health care programs as the retired population grows.
The growing shortfalls in entitlement programs are simply not sustainable and threaten to crowd out other federal priorities if unaddressed. The CBO projects that by 2035 Social Security and Medicare will consume more than half of the nation’s revenues. To secure these programs for future generations of beneficiaries, policymakers will need to increase revenues paid by working-age Americans, reduce payments to beneficiaries, or some combination of the two. Reform will become more painful the longer we wait, and we’ve already waited too long.
Lessons Learned for the Future
Thirty-three years after The Concord Coalition’s founding, the federal government treks along a familiar, unsustainable path. Today, advocating for change while using history as our guide is more important than ever. Our experts and field team have spent decades sharing these key lessons across the country at hundreds of public engagement events to build a consensus around the challenges facing the nation – not in the distant future, but today.
Perhaps the most important lesson learned has been that the American people are ready, able, and willing to participate in a meaningful dialogue about solutions. When presented with credible and understandable information, they can make tough fiscal policy trade-offs. Despite the ideological and demographic diversity of participants in our Principles & Priorities budget exercise, most grasp the magnitude of the nation’s fiscal challenges and are able to reach agreement on solutions that would generate progress. Non-partisan conversations on the real issues facing America are compelling to constituents, and lawmakers should take note.
These lessons and the immediacy of our challenges make the educational, grassroots mission of The Concord Coalition is now more urgent than ever. On this Concord Coalition birthday, we renew our commitment to responsibility, accountability, and a better future. We hope you will join us in this movement.
