Politics & Power Quote by Christina Romer

"If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that's going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward 20, 30 years is government spending on healthcare"

Christina Romer, Economist

About this Quote

Austerity arguments love a villain, and Romer hands one over with a technocrat’s scalpel: not “waste,” not “entitlements” in the abstract, but healthcare spending as the deficit’s slow-motion explosive. The phrase “blow a hole” is doing political work. It translates actuarial tables into a visceral image, making a long-run projection feel like an imminent breach. That urgency matters because budget politics is a competition between the immediate and the important; Romer is trying to smuggle the 20- to 30-year horizon into a system wired for the next election cycle.

Her appeal to the Congressional Budget Office is also strategic. “Studies coming out” signals a pipeline of impartial expertise, a way to preempt ideological pushback by borrowing credibility from an institution that, in Washington, functions as a kind of shared scoreboard. She’s not asking you to trust her; she’s asking you to trust the referee. The subtext: if you’re serious about deficits, you can’t keep treating healthcare as a sacred cow or a separate moral conversation. It is fiscal policy.

Contextually, this sits in the post-2008 world where stimulus, debt, and “long-term sustainability” became competing headlines. Romer, associated with evidence-driven macroeconomics and Democratic policymaking, is drawing a boundary around what counts as responsible budgeting: not indiscriminate cuts, but cost containment in the one sector where prices outpace everything else. The intent isn’t just diagnosis; it’s agenda-setting. Reframe the deficit debate away from pinching discretionary spending and toward the structurally hard fight: prices, incentives, and the political third rail of healthcare.

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About the Author

Christina Romer (born December 25, 1958) is a Economist from USA.

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