Budget impasses are now routine. Fixes are within reach.

In the time it takes to read this sentence, the U.S. national debt will have increased by more than $100,000. It’s now a record $34 trillion. Within just three years, the United States is on track to be spending more on interest than on its entire military.  

Yet Congress, which holds America’s purse strings, remains gridlocked over how to address the nation’s finances. Budget discussions have become prolonged messaging affairs, with Democrats calling for higher taxes on rich people and Republicans proposing deep spending cuts – and real compromise increasingly elusive. Congress hasn’t approved a budget on time in a quarter of a century. And it’s been nearly that long since the U.S. could show a surplus; , the country has spent more than it brought in, though increasingly there is a sense in some quarters that running deficits isn’t as bad as it was once feared.