And It Really Shouldn’t Be This Way
The Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest projections of the Federal budget deficit and its contributions to the national debt. And the news isn’t good, not good at all. The deficit will start rising again soon enough and thus so will the debt. And the truth is that it really shouldn’t be this way at all. Right about now that budget should be roughly in balance and in the next few years, barring any extraordinary events, it should be in surplus with the national debt falling as a result.
The reason this isn’t happening is simply that the political class as a whole (and yes, here R can be quite as bad as D) are simply spendthrifts.
Federal deficits are expected to rise for the first time in nearly a decade, driving up the federal debt to almost unprecedented levels, according to an analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
While the federal deficit is projected to drop in 2017 and 2018, CBO projects it will rise to $601 billion in 2019 thanks to rising Social Security and Medicare costs.
Note that the phrasing there doesn’t quite describe the total reality. Of course, the deficit was rather larger a few years back than it is now, they’re saying it’s going to rise again, not that it’s going to be bigger again. Quite why the deficit is going to rise again doesn’t in fact matter for my point:
After seven years of fitful declines, the federal budget deficit is projected to begin swelling again this decade, adding $8.6 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that reveal the strain that the government’s debt will have on the economy as President Trump embarks on plans to slash taxes and ramp up spending.
No, not good news:
The growing debt, expected to rise from 77 percent of the nation’s annual economic output today to 89 percent in 2027, or nearly $25 trillion, reflects “the weighty long-term budgetary challenges facing the nation,” according to the office.
Read the rest at Forbes.
