Dan Coats, the top US intelligence official, urged Congress to tackle the ballooning national debt, saying it posed a “dire threat” to economic and national security.

美国最高情报官员丹•科茨(Dan Coats)敦促国会解决不断膨胀的国家债务，称这对经济和国家安全构成“严重威胁”。

In presenting Congress with the US intelligence community’s annual global threat assessment — which ranged from the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula to Russian interference in US elections — Mr Coats called for action to prevent a “fiscal crisis . . . that truly undermines our ability to ensure our national security”.

在向国会呈递美国情报部门的年度全球威胁评估报告时，科茨呼吁为防止“将真正削弱我们确保国家安全的能力的……财政危机”采取行动。报告列举出了从朝鲜半岛核危机到俄罗斯干预美国大选等各项威胁。

“The failure to address our long-term fiscal situation has increased the national debt to over $20tn,” Mr Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate intelligence committee. “This situation is unsustainable . . . and represents a dire threat to our economic and national security.”

“由于未能处置好我们的长期财政状况，国家的债务已增长到20万亿美元以上。”美国国家情报总监丹•科茨对参议院情报委员会说，“这种状况是不可持续的……对我们的经济和国家安全构成严重威胁。”

His warning came a day after President Donald Trump released his budget proposal for fiscal 2019, which jettisoned a pledge from a year ago to eliminate the budget deficit over 10 years. Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director, on Monday said Mr Trump had been hampered by Congress because lawmakers had not accepted most of his proposals for cuts across the government.

科茨发出警告的一天前，美国总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)发布了2019财政年度的预算案，该预算案放弃了1年前做出的在未来10年消灭预算赤字的承诺。特朗普的预算主管米克•马瓦尼(Mick Mulvaney)周一表示，特朗普受到国会的阻碍，因为其提议的削减政府各部门开支的方案大多未被议员们接受。