Treasury's Malpass Says Rising U.S. Debt, Deficit Troubling

(Bloomberg) -- 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 Wednesday during an interview with Maria Bartiromo 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 the 700-page Economic Report of the President, which he said will lay out White House priorities for the coming year on growing the U.S. economy. 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.

To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Derek Wallbank at dwallbank@bloomberg.net, Brendan Murray, Elizabeth Wasserman

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