A senior U.S. Treasury official said he wants to see a multiyear effort to narrow the federal budget deficit, as he warned the nation’s mounting debt is "troubling."
"I am troubled by the deficit; and troubled by the national debt, and I think we need a three-year program to deal with it," David Malpass, the Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, said during a recent interview on Fox Business Network. "It’s a very challenging environment."
Malpass said President Donald Trump’s administration doesn’t anticipate another government shutdown next month when the current short-term spending measure expires. He said there are government programs that "simply aren’t needed" and cited a "challenging" budget process on Capitol Hill.
He was speaking ahead of the release of a 700-page report that he said would focus on growing the U.S. economy, though he declined to "get ahead of the president" by laying out its specifics.
"What we will see, I think, is spending that sprawls too widely," he said.