As you have learned in this module, fiscal policy is the intentional use of government spending and tax policy to either stimulate the economy with expansionary fiscal policy if it is heading into a recession or constrain the economy with contractionary fiscal policy to avoid an inflationary period. These policy decisions directly impact the size of the U.S. government's budget deficit and therefore affect the size of the U.S. government's debt.

Instructions

With everything that happened with the pandemic, Congress has had to step in and provide relief funding. There has also been several large bills funding infrastructure and providing resources to Ukraine. Consider the current size of the U.S. debt by checking thisU.S. National Debt ClockLinks to an external site.and post your answers to some or all of these questions. This is a group discussion so you will only see a smaller subset of students' posts.

• Does the size of this U.S. debt concern you?
• Why or why not? Use concepts from the chapters to inform your answer.
• Do some research withdata on central government debt from the World BankLinks to an external site.and compare how the size of the U.S. debt compares to other country's debt.
• Select a country to investigate on the World Bank website and explain why this comparison makes sense or is surprising.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS?view=chart