Harry Truman said that “there is nothing new in the world except the history that you do not know.” With that in mind, I am reluctant to suggest that the 2020 election will be different from any other. Nonetheless, at least three things will make the contest both unusual and a challenge to analyze in an unemotional, nonpartisan way.

On April 7, in “This Bubble Too Shall Burst,” I shared my view, based on traditional economic thinking, that the mounting US debt is likely to become a serious economic problem for our children. What I didn’t do was address whether or not such borrowing is moral. Yes, I mean moral.

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With problems abounding here and now, it is hard to get excited about a problem that is in potential, in the future, hard to understand, and worst of all, requires current sacrifice to address. Fat chance of selling that. Ever. Nonetheless, here goes.

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Speaking to a congressional panel made up primarily of baby boomers, 17-year-old climate activist Jamie Margolis said, “The fact that you are staring at a panel of young people testifying before you today pleading for a livable earth should not fill you with pride, it should fill you with shame.” As one of the boomers, I admit that hurt. But we own this, don’t we? Let’s try to be fact-based and rational.

As we would expect during an election year, several candidates are proposing new government programs. So far, we have proposals for higher teacher salaries, an infrastructure bill, universal daycare, student debt forgiveness, free college education, and a tax credit for low income earners, to name a few. Some of them surely deserve consideration. When candidates are asked how they plan to pay for them, however, the universal response is to raise taxes. Warren would impose a wealth tax, while the rest of the candidates seem to coalesce around rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. By leaping immediately to tax increases, they leave us to conclude that they can find nothing in the current budget to cut. Is this sensible? Shouldn’t the current level of spending at least be discussed? Let’s try to be fact-based and rational.

Last week, when the federal deficit surpassed $22 trillion, there were several references in the media, most of which observed that no one seemed to care. It was just yesterday that the Republican party, led by Paul Ryan, criticized President Obama on what seemed like a daily basis over the “debt crisis staring us in the face” and for a national debt that was “out of control.” But now, no one seems to care. Larry Kudlow, the director of the President’s National Economic Council, dismissed it as not “a problem.” So what sense are we to make of this? Let’s try to be fact-based and rational.