The Congressional Budget Office has published its latest forecast of deficits and debt over the next decade. Here it is:
As the CBO notes, this steady rise in the debt is pretty much inevitable given an aging population and a Republican Congress unwilling to properly fund our spending commitments. Still, I’m not a huge debt alarmist, and this projection doesn’t bother me a lot. It would be nice to see the national debt decline during economic expansions like our current one, though. After all, economic expansions don’t last forever, even with the galaxy’s best businessman in charge of the country.
Still, it’s worth putting this up as a baseline. This is the debt projection at the end of the Obama era. In 2020, after four years1 of total Republican rule, we can compare and see just what the projected debt looks like in the hands of folks who claim to be devoted to balanced budgets and low deficits. My guess is that it will be somewhere north of 120 percent of GDP.
Of course, I might be wrong. Maybe the economy will grow at 4 or 5 percent per year under GOP stewardship and the resulting boom will cause tax revenue to skyrocket and the debt to come down. Anything is possible, I suppose. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
1Probably.
