Chief executives hate going to Washington. No one person can say yes, everyone can say no, and it takes 100 people to get anything done. When there is a national issue that does not directly affect their company, CEOs generally follow the advice of their government relations chief, who says “stay away from it, don’t antagonise anyone, just focus on the specific issue we need to talk about for our company; we don’t want to put ourselves in a bad position”. In general, this is safe advice. However, sometimes there is an issue so important it requires us to speak up.

The rapidly increasing US national debt is one of those issues.

While the national total public debt is worrisome today at over $11tn (73 per cent of gross domestic product), it will become an unconscionable $21tn (about 85 per cent of GDP) in 10 years, according to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.