defeating domville. jared bernstein joins us and josh bauer row, a columnist for the bloomberg view. mr. penny does not seem to advocate the cutting of government services. jared, if you were mr. penny s adviser would you by telling him the biggest threat is debt? is that economically true? it s not the case, though i m not sure what i would be telling mr. penny, because i ve never advised a coin before, but, no, the the debt is in the mid 70s, around 75%, a share of gdp. that s a lot higher than a few years ago. but there s a reason for that, because we had the great recession, and we needed to engage in some deficit spending to offset that demand
contraction. historically the debt goes up in periods like this. in world war ii, it breached 100%, then a few years later it was 50%. the debt is expected to start coming down within a few years. over the long term, there are real pressures on the debt through health care costs. that s what i would tell mr. penny. excellent. that s very helpful. josh, the president last week was secured on the right for suggesting there was no dead crisis in american. later in the week this is what speaker boehner and paul ryan had to say. take a listen. is he right, that we don t have an immediate crisis. we do not have an immediate debt crisis. we do not have a debt crisis right now, but we see it s coming. it s irrefutably happening. what are they doing by repeatedly fanning into flame the notion of a debt crisis, when they themselves when asked directly say exactly what jared said. in the immediate short term, it