“How do you come up with 7.7 percent of GDP annually in extra taxes? One way is to immediately and permanently raise all federal taxes by 41.3 percent! Another is to immediately and permanently cut all federal spending, apart from interest payments on official debt, by 35.3 percent! These adjustments are miles beyond what anyone in Congress realizes is needed. The reason is they are looking at the wrong number — the official debt, not the fiscal gap. If I’m Speaker McCarthy, I start by passing THE INFORM ACT — the bipartisan Intergenerational Financial Obligations Reform Act introduced by Senators Thune and Kaine in 2013. (FYI, I helped write the bill.) This bill compels the CBO, OMB, and GAO to do fiscal gap accounting on a routine basis. Again, this accounting puts all our off-the-books debts on the book.”