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Alan Clayton-Matthews
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy; Director, PhD Program in Law and Public Policy; Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center

Alan Clayton-Matthews in the Press

Alan Clayton-Matthews for Northeastern Global News

The federal deficit is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020. Here’s what that means.
Lights illuminate the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, 2018. The budget deficit—the gap between what the government spends and what it takes in through taxes and other sources of revenue—is expected to reach $960 billion for this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. The deficit will widen to $1 trillion by fiscal year 2020. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The federal deficit is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020. Here’s what that means.

The good news, says Alan Clayton-Matthews, an associate professor of economics and public policy at Northeastern, is that the growing national debt “never has to be paid off.” The bad news? The federal government is running out of tools it can deploy to bolster the economy when it dips into a recession.