Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that he believes the US can grow its way out of debt if it can achieve annual economic growth of 3%.
"We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," Bessent said during a Q&A at SMU Cox School of Business in Dallas. He said if the US tries to contain spending coupled with 3% growth, "we [can] grow our way out of this."
The total US national debt recently surpassed $40 trillion, and the annual fiscal deficit is projected to top $2 trillion by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Read more: How the soaring federal debt affects you personally
"We'll get to the other side of this Iran conflict and the underlying economy is very, very strong, and I think reaccelerating," he added, pointing to how incentives in the big tax law passed last year are leading to new construction of manufacturing plants, pointing to Pepsi (PEP) expanding a Frito-Lay plant in Arizona, Winnebago (WGO) buying a battery plant, and Boeing (BA) increasing capacity of its Dreamliner.