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The United States entered its longest expansion on record in July and the jobless rate is at a 50-year low, yet the deficit has continued to widen.

The deficit is growing in large part because tax receipts are falling, as Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts continue to siphon revenue from the Treasury. The numbers reflect the fact that Mr. Trump’s most significant legislative achievement is not paying for itself, as Republicans have said it would.

“The biggest factor was the tax cuts, which gave a short-term sugar high but now are just contributing to a larger deficit,”

Fears of trillion-dollar deficits could renew the desire of Republicans in Congress to propose cuts to social programs, like food stamps, Social Security and other safety net benefits. Republicans have long pointed to swelling deficits as a reason to pursue their long-held vision of smaller government, including undoing many of the programs ushered in during the New Deal and Great Society to help the most disadvantaged Americans.

Senator Mike Enzi, a retiring Republican from Wyoming who leads the budget committee, called the country’s fiscal path unsustainable and said spending must come down.

Republicans, who have shut down the government in their quest to cut spending, have enabled the increases that are exacerbating the deficit.

With the deficit growing, it remains unclear how Mr. Trump and the Democrats will address the issue during the election. Democratic candidates such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have introduced broad expansions of social safety net programs and have proposed paying for them with big tax increases on the rich.

On Friday, before the deficit figures were released, Mr. Trump remained focused on recent increases in the stock market and the low jobless rate. “The economy is booming,” he said.

As the economic recovery continues, the deficit is expected to narrow even further next year. Based on current projections, the average deficit through President Obama’s second term will be smaller than it was through President Reagan’s second term.

These latest deficit numbers arrive while voters claim to be highly engaged by the federal budget. A recent Gallup poll shows that 73 percent of registered voters say that the federal budget deficit is either “very important” or “extremely important” to their vote for in next month’s midterm elections, and the share is even higher among Republican voters.

The harder question is not whether fiscal policy is relatively tight — it is — but rather whether tight fiscal policy is appropriate.

In terms of political implications, the Democrats may try to use the shrinking budget deficit as an argument to try to win support from fiscally conservative Republicans. But the reality of recent budget numbers is unlikely to win them much, because it stands so starkly at odds with the broader public perception that the deficit remains much larger than it really is.

It should have been obvious that the deficit would come down as the economy recovered. But this point was hard to get across until deficit reduction started appearing in the data.

Now it has — and reasonable forecasts, like those of Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, suggest that the federal deficit will be below 3 percent of G.D.P., a not very scary number, by 2015.

the third reason the deficit scolds have lost influence: the contrary doctrine, the claim that we need to practice fiscal austerity even in a depressed economy, has failed decisively in practice.

Consider, in particular, the case of Britain. In 2010, when the new government of Prime Minister David Cameron turned to austerity policies, it received fulsome praise from many people on this side of the Atlantic. For example, the late David Broder urged President Obama to “do a Cameron”; he particularly commended Mr. Cameron for “brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession.” Sure enough, the sudden, severe medicine cut short Britain’s economic recovery, and threw the nation back into recession.

there was also clearly a lot of bad faith involved, as the scolds tried to exploit an economic (not fiscal) crisis on behalf of a political agenda that had nothing to do with deficits. And the growing transparency of that agenda is the fourth reason the deficit scolds have lost their clout.

Thus Barack Obama got blamed for a recession and resulting budget deficits he had nothing to do with originating.

Of course, another reason for those deficits is that Republicans systematically decimated the federal government’s revenue-raising capacity during the George W Bush administration with one huge tax cut after another

The payoff for this orgy of tax-cutting came when Obama took office. All of a sudden, Republicans noticed that there were large deficits and insisted that Obama do something about them right this minute! They even made the nonsensical argument that spending cuts would stimulate growth by reducing the burden of government.

Grover Norquist, planned it this way. I doubt he has ever read Persson and Svensson, but understood intuitively that the tax pledge was guaranteed to ratchet down the size of government forever. It wouldn’t happen all at once, but over a period of decades. The history of fiscal policy since the pledge was originated in 1988 is, sadly, proof that it has worked exactly as he hoped.

I think Republicans remember better than Democrats the lesson of 1993 as well. Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 on an activist agenda. But once in office, he was persuaded to reverse course and put all his efforts into deficit reduction.

Its key element was a significant tax increase that every Republican in Congress voted against. They said it would crash the economy, but was instead followed by an economic boom. Unfortunately, the boom didn’t become apparent until after the 1994 election in which Democrats took heavy losses – in large part because of the tax increase. Republicans got control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

I believe that the same cycle will rerun over the next few years. Should Democrats get control of the House and/or Senate next year, Trump and his party will insist that deficit reduction be the only order of business. Automatic spending cuts resulting directly from the tax cut will start to bite, hurting the poor and middle class primarily, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and making them forget that they resulted from a huge tax give-away to the wealthy that increased the deficit by $1.5tn. Democrats will get much of the blame due to time-inconsistency.

Keep in mind that no matter how big the deficit gets from the tax cut Republicans are rushing to enact, none of them will ever vote to undo those cuts or raise taxes except, perhaps, in ways that further burden the poor, such as raising the gasoline tax. That is because they all signed a tax pledge promising never to raise taxes. Therefore, any deficit reduction will either consist solely of spending cuts or pass with only Democratic votes, as was the case in 1993.

Obama’s hands were tied by the deficit hawks in his own party as well and prevented from offering an economic stimulus adequate to offset the loss of aggregate demand resulting from the great recession that began in December 2007 on Bush’s watch. Obama even joined with Republicans to slash spending in the 2011 budget deal and put in place budget controls that made it virtually impossible to pursue any positive Democratic initiatives for the balance of his presidency. No wonder Trump won.

The Democrats’ only hope is to defeat the tax cut in its entirety and not be seduced by Republican efforts to tilt it more in favor of the middle class. Once the deficit is programmed to increase by another $1.5tn the Republican trap will be set and Democrats will again be on the path to cleaning up their fiscal mess. Just say no to tax cuts is my advice.

“This is an invitation. Show us how to balance the budget,” Mr. Ryan said. “If you don’t like the way we’re proposing to balance our budget, how do you propose to balance the budget?”

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. “It is important to bring our deficits down and to reduce our deficit-to-G.D.P. But they are part of — those goals are part of the broader purpose here, which is to grow the economy and strengthen the middle class.”

Economists offered more nuanced views. Closing the budget gap over the longer term could be vital to sustaining economic health, some stressed, by ensuring that the government did not crowd out private investment and by helping to keep interest rates low. But that does not make it an immediate necessity.

you suffer some short-run pain, and you don’t want to inflict that when the unemployment rate is already high, the economy is still recovering from the legacy of the Great Recession, and the Federal Reserve has used up most of what’s in its quiver.”

Other goals — including stabilizing debt as a proportion of economic output, rationalizing the tax code and tackling the long-term fiscal challenge posed by entitlement programs — might prove more important in the coming years, several experts said.

As sensible as a balanced budget might sound — much like a balanced checkbook for a family — countries are generally able to run modest deficits for years on end while still keeping debt stable as a share of economic output. One year’s deficit is effectively paid off by later economic growth,

The Senate Democratic proposal does not balance the budget, but it does reduce deficits to below 3 percent of economic output — a level that would stabilize the debt, economists said. During the 10-year budget window, the debt would start to shrink as a proportion of the economy.

A broader question, economists said, is the long-term effect the country’s debt load might impose on the economy. In the past few years, a number of broad-based studies have suggested that having government debt equivalent to or greater than about 85 or 90 percent of economic output might eventually cut into growth. Currently, public debt in the United States is about 76 percent of the size of the economy. Including debts the government owes itself, like in the Social Security Trust Fund, the total load is in fact bigger than a whole year’s economic output.

“The people who say the debt is irrelevant — that’s going too far,” said Mr. Rogoff, who along with Carmen Reinhart of Harvard produced a study of the interplay between debt and growth. “It’s a very rarefied air that we’re in already. And it could be a problem. You can’t turn your debt around in a year, and you cannot reduce debt quickly and easily.”

Now, how and whether to get back to a balanced budget seems to be a new fight between Democrats and Republicans. “It will generate a debate over the appropriate goal of long-term fiscal policy,” wrote William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution in an analysis of Mr. Ryan’s budget plan. “Is it to eliminate the deficit and the debt, to ensure that the debt does not rise as a share of G.D.P., or something in between?”

whenever anyone is brave enough to suggest that the government itself should provide useful services to Americans — whether big-ticket items like health care, child care and college education, or smaller things like an upgraded electric grid or a national broadband service — the first reaction from many on the right and the left is one of defeat and resignation. “How will you pay for it?” they ask. And, often, the whole conversation stops right there, because with a $26.5 trillion national debt, America looks hopelessly broke.

t is not. Kelton argues that our government’s inability to provide for citizens isn’t due to a lack for money; instead, our leaders lack political will.

Modern Monetary Theory, or M.M.T. The theory argues that because the government is in charge of its own currency, it cannot “run out” of money the way a household or a business can, and it therefore does not need to raise taxes to fund government spending.

Instead of being constrained by deficits, Kelton and other M.M.T.ers argue, policymakers should care about “real” measures of economic activity: unemployment and inflation.

Whatever the deficit, if unemployment is rife, it’s an indication that aggregate demand is low; to boost demand, the government can freely spend, spend, spend — and should stop spending only when there is a danger that it will lead to a rise in prices — that is, inflation

In practice, Kelton and other M.M.T.ers propose a federal jobs guarantee, in which the government would hire anyone who needs a job for a set wage. The policy, she argues, would promote full employment while keeping inflation stable.

in the 40 years since Ronald Reagan won the White House, both the left and the right have been unnecessarily obsessed with deficits, to the detriment of the well-being of citizens.

The cruelest example of this mind-set occurred after the Great Recession in 2008. At the time, many experts suggested that an adequate response to the downturn would require the government to spend a trillion dollars or more to boost demand. Instead, Obama and his aides, worried about sticker shock, lowballed their stimulus, and millions of people remained unemployed.

Keynesianism “is not so much a school of economic thought as a spirit of radical optimism, unjustified by most of human history and extremely difficult to conjure up precisely when it is most needed: during the depths of a depression or amid the fevers of war.”

German officials, as we’ve seen, respond to all of this with angry declarations that German policy has been impeccable. Sorry, but this (a) doesn’t matter and (b) isn’t true.

Why it doesn’t matter: Five years after the fall of Lehman, the world economy is still depressed, suffering from a persistent shortage of demand. In this environment, a country that runs a trade surplus is, to use the old phrase, beggaring its neighbors. It’s diverting spending away from their goods and services to its own, and thereby taking away jobs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s doing this maliciously or with the best of intentions, it’s doing it all the same.

Germany isn’t blameless. It shares a currency with its neighbors, greatly benefiting German exporters, who get to price their goods in a weak euro instead of what would surely have been a soaring Deutsche mark. Yet Germany has failed to deliver on its side of the bargain: To avoid a European depression, it needed to spend more as its neighbors were forced to spend less, and it hasn’t done that.

it’s not just the Germans. Germany’s trade surplus is damaging for the same reason cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits in America destroys jobs — and Republican politicians are about as receptive as German officials to anyone who tries to point out their error. In the sixth year of a global economic crisis whose essence is that there isn’t enough spending, many policy makers still don’t get it. And it looks as if they never will.

A time traveler from the Reagan era would no longer recognize the Republican Party, but most Republican politicians feel no embarrassment supporting policies they once condemned.

Since World War II, Republicans have styled themselves the party of national defense. Yet under President Trump, they have unsettled our alliances and professed a strange new respect for Vladimir Putin.

The Republicans were once the party of global free trade, a system with major flaws but one that requires reform, not ham-handed overthrow. Yet the president believes he can bully longtime allies and force them to accept bilateral trade deals on his terms.

An enduring caricature of the old-time Republican is the penny-pinching deficit hawk.

But the president’s high-decibel smear campaign against the professionals of the F.B.I. destroys the party’s pretense of being a friend of law enforcement

the deficit, thanks partly to the tax cut, is projected after years of decline to explode to a trillion dollars annually.

Tax cuts, regardless of the deficit, are an obsession with Republicans and a source of shameless hypocrisy.

Republicans were once the party of conservation and the environment: from Abraham Lincoln, who set aside Yosemite for what later became a national park, to Theodore Roosevelt, preserving 230 million acres of public land, to Richard Nixon, who signed the Clean Air Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now the E.P.A. is being systematically gutted. Its administrator, Scott Pruitt, has named as chairman of its science advisory board a person who criticizes the E.P.A.’s standards for exposure to mercury (a neurotoxin causing severe brain damage) and believes ozone pollution rules are unnecessary because Americans spend most of their time indoors.

Republicans always counted themselves as strong supporters of law and order.

Under Mr. Trump, who has extolled leveraging other people’s money while declaring that debt is good, the party is no longer even half pregnant. His tax act, passed exclusively with Republican votes in both the House and the Senate, increases the national debt by over a trillion dollars and awards 62 percent of its monetary benefits to the richest 1 percent of Americans.

So what do Republicans have left? The tax cut, the sole important legislation from the Republican Congress, shows that catering to its rich contributors is the party’s only policy. The rest of its agenda is simply tactics and trickery.

As the party has become unmoored from positive belief, it has grown manipulative, demagogic and contemptuous of truth.

It has culminated in the president’s counselor Kellyanne Conway’s appealing to “alternative facts,” meaning lies, on behalf of her boss, who has made an average of 5.6 false or misleading claims a day since his inauguration.

Today’s Republican Party is incapable of honest and coherent governance, with “right” or “wrong” reduced to a question of whether it helps the party.

A few Republicans protest the president’s disgraceful behavior, but never in a way that matters. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has become famous for sanctimonious speeches denouncing the latest outrage, but he votes with machine-like consistency in favor of the president’s destructive agenda and unqualified nominees.

Ultimately, the party’s spiritual sickness isn’t about Mr. Trump. Eight years ago, did Republican officeholders shut down the nonsense that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim? For that matter, a quarter-century ago, did they quash the idiotic charge that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster?

So we cannot and will not persuade these people to reconsider their views in the light of the evidence. All we can do is stop paying attention. It’s going to be difficult, because many members of the deficit cult seem highly respectable. But they’ve been hugely, absurdly wrong for years on end

The picture in the eurozone is worse: its economy expanded by 2 percent between 2009 and 2010. It is now forecast to expand by a mere 0.4 percent between 2010 and 2013. Austerity has put the crisis-hit countries through a wringer, with huge and ongoing recessions. Rates of unemployment are more than a quarter of the labor force in Greece and Spain (see figure 2).

it did not have to be this way.1. The creditor countries, particularly Germany, could have recognized that they were enjoying incredibly low interest rates on their own public debt partly because of the crises in the vulnerable countries. They could have shared some of this windfall they enjoyed with those under pressure. 2. The needed adjustment could have been made far more symmetrical, with strong action in creditor countries to expand demand. 3. The European Central Bank could have offered two years earlier the kind of open-ended support for debt of hard-pressed countries that it made available in the summer of 2012. 4. The funds made available to cushion the crisis could have been substantially larger. 5. The emphasis could then have been more on structural reforms, such as easing labor regulations and union protections that restrain hiring and firing and raise labor costs, and less on fiscal retrenchment in the form of reduced spending. Reduced labor costs could have made these nations’ export industries more competitive and encouraged domestic hiring.

You can see that readiness at work already in the internal Republican debates about the latest round of coronavirus relief. These debates are somewhat mystifying if you believe that the party has been remade in Trump’s populist image, or alternatively if you just believe that the G.O.P. is full of cynics who attack deficits under Democrats but happily spend whatever it takes to stay in power. Neither theory explains the Republican determination to dramatically underbid the Democrats on relief spending three months before an election, nor the emergence of a faction within the Senate Republicans that doesn’t want to spend more money on relief at all.

these developments are easier to understand if you see the Republican Senate, in what feels like the twilight of the Trump presidency, instinctively returning to its pre-Trump battle lines. The anti-relief faction, with its sudden warnings about deficits, is eager to revive the Tea Party spirit, and its would-be leaders are ur-Tea Partyers like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. The faction that wants to spend less than the Democrats but ultimately wants to strike a deal is playing the same beleaguered-establishmentarian role that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell played in the pre-Trump party — and of course McConnell is still leading it

the fact that neither approach seems responsive to the actual crisis unfolding in America right now doesn’t matter: The old Tea Party-establishment battle — a battle over whether to cut a deal at all, more than what should be in it — is still the Republican comfort zone, and the opportunity to slip back into that groove is just too tempting to resist.

Some of the Republicans rediscovering deficit hawkishness — including non-senators like Nikki Haley — are taking a Joe Biden presidency for granted and positioning themselves as the foes of a big-government liberalism before it even takes power, in the hopes of becoming the leaders of the post-2020 opposition

There is also that group my staffer friend mentioned, the senators who accept that Trumpism really happened, and who envision a different party on the other side.

You can identify the members of this group both by their willingness to spend money in the current crisis and by their interest in how it might be spent. That means Marco Rubio spearheading the small business relief bill. It means Josh Hawley pushing for the federal government to pre-empt layoffs by paying a chunk of worker salaries. It means Tom Cotton defending crisis spending against Cruz’s attack. It means Mitt Romney leading a push to put more of the federal stimulus payments in the hands of families with kids.

the trouble with both the Draper method and the “this happened, let’s learn from it” approaches to the Trump experience is that they assume not only that Trump will lose (a strong bet but of course not a certain one) but also that in defeat he will recede sufficiently to be willfully forgotten, or allow a more robust nationalism to supplant his ersatz, personalized version.

It is obvious that, with a deficit at 8 percent of gross domestic product, any solution to our budgetary problems has to involve both spending cuts and tax increases. Ronald Reagan agreed to tax increases when the deficit hit 4 percent of GDP; George H.W. Bush did so when the deficit was 3 percent of GDP. But today’s Republican Party is organized around the proposition that, no matter the circumstances, there must never be a tax increase of any kind.

The Republican Party has imposed a new kind of political correctness on its leaders. They cannot speak certain words (taxes) or speculate about certain ideas (immigration amnesty) because these are forbidden. Romney has tried to run a campaign while not running afoul of his party’s strictures. As a result, he has twisted himself into a pretzel, speaking vacuously, avoiding specifics and refusing to provide any serious plans for the most important issues of the day.

The answer is that an economy is not like an indebted family. Our debt is mostly money we owe to each other; even more important, our income mostly comes from selling things to each other. Your spending is my income, and my spending is your income.

So what happens if everyone simultaneously slashes spending in an attempt to pay down debt? The answer is that everyone’s income falls — my income falls because you’re spending less, and your income falls because I’m spending less. And, as our incomes plunge, our debt problem gets worse, not better.

The great American economist Irving Fisher explained it all the way back in 1933, summarizing what he called “debt deflation” with the pithy slogan “the more the debtors pay, the more they owe.

there’s a clear moral to this story: When the private sector is frantically trying to pay down debt, the public sector should do the opposite, spending when the private sector can’t or won’t. By all means, let’s balance our budget once the economy has recovered — but not now. The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.

when you push “austerians” on the badness of their metaphor, they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of: “But it’s essential that we shrink the size of the state.”

these assertions often go along with claims that the economic crisis itself demonstrates the need to shrink government. But that’s manifestly not true. Look at the countries in Europe that have weathered the storm best, and near the top of the list you’ll find big-government nations like Sweden and Austria.

So the austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has been happening in America.

The big question here is whether the evident failure of austerity to produce an economic recovery will lead to a “Plan B.” Maybe. But my guess is that even if such a plan is announced, it won’t amount to much. For economic recovery was never the point; the drive for austerity was about using the crisis, not solving it. And it still is.

“It’s throughout all the private schools here,” said DeAnsin Parker, a New York psychologist who treats many adolescents from affluent neighborhoods like the Upper East Side. “It’s not as if there is one school where this is the culture. This is the culture.”

The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine — because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a medical use.

The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals.

While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for you,”

But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young

the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids.

“Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it’s not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.

“Children have prefrontal cortexes that are not fully developed, and we’re changing the chemistry of the brain. That’s what these drugs do

merely giving a friend an Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be prosecuted as a felony.

Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.

“These are academic steroids. But usually, parents don’t get the steroids for you.”

“They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”

After 30 minutes, the buzz began, she said: laser focus, instant recall and the fortitude to crush any test in her path.

“It wasn’t that hard of a decision. Do I want only four hours of sleep and be a mess, and then underperform on the test and then in field hockey? Or make the teachers happy and the coach happy and get good grades, get into a good college and make my parents happy?”

Madeleine estimated that one-third of her classmates at her small school, most of whom she knew well, used stimulants without a prescription to boost their scholastic performance. Many students across the United States made similar estimates for their schools, all of them emphasizing that the drugs were used not to get high, but mostly by conscientious students to work harder and meet ever-rising academic expectations.

Every school identified in this article was contacted regarding statements by its students and stimulant abuse in general. Those that responded generally said that they were concerned about some teenagers turning to these drugs, but that their numbers were far smaller than the students said.

This is one of the more vexing problems with stimulants in high schools, experts said — the drugs enter the schools via students who get them legally, if not legitimately.

Newer long-lasting versions like Adderall XR and Vyvanse allow parents to give children a single dose in the morning, often unaware that the pills can go down a pants pocket as easily as the throat. Some students said they took their pills only during the week and gave their weekend pills to friends.

She said many parents could push as hard for prescriptions as their children did, telling her: “My child is not doing well in school. I understand there are meds he can take to make him smarter.”

“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,”

Asked if the improper use of stimulants was cheating, students were split. Some considered that the extra studying hours and the heightened focus during exams amounted to an unfair advantage. Many countered that the drugs “don’t give you the answers” and defended their use as a personal choice for test preparation, akin to tutoring.

One consensus was clear: users were becoming more common, they said, and some students who would rather not take the drugs would be compelled to join them because of the competition over class rank and colleges’ interest.

“Junior and senior year is a whole new ballgame,” the boy said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t take it, but that can easily, easily change. I can be convinced.”

The question is what on earth can be done to prevent the debt explosion. The CBO has a clear answer: "[B]ringing debt back down to 39 percent of GDP in 2038—as it was at the end of 2008—would require a combination of increases in revenues and cuts in noninterest spending (relative to current law) totaling 2 percent of GDP for the next 25 years. . . .

"If those changes came entirely from revenues, they would represent an increase of 11 percent relative to the amount of revenues projected for the 2014-2038 period; if the changes came entirely from spending, they would represent a cut of 10½ percent in noninterest spending from the amount projected for that period."

I want to believe this is not about race, but it sure looks that way.

The biggest slap at the president was the smear about his birth.

Mr. Li said the government’s policies could help create more than 10 million jobs in towns and cities this year, and more than 50 million by the end of 2020.

A growth rate of 6.5 percent a year is the minimum needed to achieve President Xi’s often-declared goal of doubling the size of the Chinese economy by 2020, relative to its size in 2010.

But such financial easing implies more debt, at a time when many Western economists and policy makers are already worried that total leverage in the Chinese economy has far outstripped economic output.

he increased debt may help the government achieve its target of 6.5 percent to 7 percent economic growth this year, but at the price of burdening banks with even more loans to struggling businesses, or even effectively insolvent ones. That policy may also water down leaders’ promises to shut companies that are producing unwanted industrial goods.

He did not specify how many workers could lose their jobs as part of the government’s plan to close, merge or restructure mines and factories weighed down by excess capacity.

The government will set aside $15.3 billion to support laid-off workers and hard-hit areas, he said.

To a surprising extent, the economic vision unveiled by Mr. Li echoed policies in the United States, the European Union and Japan, all of which have depended heavily on their central banks to expand money supply and keep growth aloft. The International Monetary Fund and many independent economists have strongly called for the world to shift from this reliance on monetary policy.

The government’s plan said the target for this year’s fiscal deficit at the national level would rise to 3 percent, from a target of 2.3 percent last year. But by most estimates, the actual deficit last year was already over 3 percent.

China’s central government has a fairly low debt by international standards; what are deeply indebted are the country’s corporate sector and local governments. But the Ministry of Finance has nonetheless been reluctant to allow a large, persistent deficit to form, particularly as China may yet face very heavy costs to help banks with the costs of large loans to nearly insolvent state-owned enterprises.

One of the most surprising was a proposal to expand China’s value-added tax to financial services. Banks would face a 6 percent tax on the interest that they collect on loans.

Since the global financial crisis, there have been many calls in the West for broadening value-added taxes to encompass financial services,