This year's budget deficit of "only" $500 billion has brought some complacency on federal spending and deficits. It shouldn't. The Congressional Budget Office's long-term budget outlook released on July 15 shows a $40 trillion increase in debt over the next two decades.
While a $500 billion deficit is welcome compared with the $1.4 trillion peak in 2009, the decline is temporary. The CBO's other, more realistic "alternative baseline," which assumes Congress continues current policies, projects new debt of $10 trillion over the next decade, followed by $100 trillion over the subsequent two decades. Consequently, the CBO simply stops calculating the national debt after 36 years. Apparently its models cannot conceive of a functioning economy.
Rob Portman: Heading Off the Entitlement Meltdown - WSJ
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