Economists reconsider how much governments can borrow

IN THE LAST three months of 2018 America’s federal government borrowed $317bn, or about 6% of quarterly GDP. The deficit was 1.5 percentage points higher than in the same quarter the year earlier, despite the fact that the unemployment rate fell below 4% in the intervening period. In cash terms America borrowed in a single quarter as much as it did in all of 2006, towards the peak of the previous economic cycle.

Such figures might once have sent the country’s deficit scolds into conniptions. But scolds are in short supply, at least within the halls of Congress. Republicans were the architects of President Donald Trump’s budget-busting tax plan. Some Democrats are less content than ever to tie their hands with the fiscal rules that Republicans routinely flout. Early this year progressive Democrats urged Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to abandon “PAYGO” rules, which require that new spending be paid for with matching tax...