National Debt a Critical Election Issue for Swing State Voters

Oct 22, 2024

As we enter the final stretch of the 2024 election, Vice President Harris and former President Trump are tied across swing states – and new polling shows that the national debt is a critical issue for voters in these decisive states. More than 9-in-10 voters across seven key states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — say it’s important for candidates to have a plan for the debt, including 95% of Harris voters, 97% of Trump voters and 95% of undecided voters.

Additionally, 3-in-4 voters in these battleground states say they want candidates to talk more about the debt and their plans to address it – outpacing the percentages of voters who say the same for other hot button election issues including immigration, abortion, climate change and foreign policy.

Thus far neither candidate has put forward a plan to address our $35 trillion national debt. A recent analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that Harris’s campaign plan would increase the debt by $3.5 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.5 trillion. But there’s still time for candidates to put forward plans, and there are many policy options to choose from.

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Swing state voters care about the national debt.

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Tweet: So far, neither Presidential candidate has put forward a plan to address our $35 trillion national debt. https://ctt.ec/KMVOW+ via @pgpfoundation

Tweet: Battleground state voters want a plan for the national debt even if it means spending cuts and/or tax increases. https://ctt.ec/Vj57l+ via @pgpfoundation

Tweet: Three in four swing state voters want to hear more from Presidential candidates about addressing the national debt. That’s more than say the same for other hot button election issues. https://ctt.ec/H6Lez+ via @pgpfoundation

Tweet: Swing state voters want Presidential candidates to address the national debt because they know it affects other key economic issues. https://ctt.ec/QzKoL+ via @pgpfoundation

National Debt a Critical Election Issue for Swing State Voters

Oct 22, 2024

Download as PDF

Swing state voters care about the national debt.

Want to share this image on your site? Copy and paste the embed code below:

Feel free to share this infographic on Twitter.

Tweet: So far, neither Presidential candidate has put forward a plan to address our $35 trillion national debt. https://ctt.ec/KMVOW+ via @pgpfoundation

Tweet: Battleground state voters want a plan for the national debt even if it means spending cuts and/or tax increases. https://ctt.ec/Vj57l+ via @pgpfoundation

Tweet: Swing state voters want Presidential candidates to address the national debt because they know it affects other key economic issues. https://ctt.ec/QzKoL+ via @pgpfoundation

In a healthy economy, production and consumption communicate constantly. If a company builds something useful, customers respond by buying it. If they overbuild, inventories pile up and prices fall, sending a signal to slow down.

AI infrastructure, by contrast, is being built largely on faith. Companies are scaling up compute power without clear signs of sustainable demand. Unlike oil and gas, where prices adjust second-by-second, AI companies operate in a fog. They release tools, collect usage stats, and hope that paid conversions will follow.

But hope is not a business model.

Six months ago — before the GENIUS Act was signed and before Washington put a nameplate on what had already begun — we were describing a slow rewiring of money.

For better or worse, we called it Dollar 2.0: the quiet migration of finance from paper promises and batch settlement to tokens, smart contracts, and ledgers that never sleep.

The name Dollar 2.0 is derived from the way Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been touting the stablecoin environment’s promise to create a larger global market for U.S. dollars and Treasurys.

The last 30 days have seen sharks (those with 100-1,000 BTC) and whales (1,000 BTC+) pick up over $23.3 billion in bitcoin.

If our Dollar 2.0 thesis is correct, it’s not actually easy to see why.

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The dollar-centric system and its bubbles may have given the U.S. economy a form of Dutch disease. This system has many rarely debated costs that go along with its benefits.

Deficit spending and stimulus inflated prices for stocks, real estate, and consumer goods. Trillions in savings remain in accounts from stimulus bills.

Without this spending, prices would be lower, a point lost on the Biden administration’s hyper-Keynesian economists, who never met a spending bill they did not cheer.