The government faces a fourth year of trillion-plus deficits in 2012, according to new projections released Tuesday—numbers which also show little relief in the future unless Washington comes to grips with needed changes in its tax and spending policies.
Like Aunt Cassandra coming down from the attic, the Congressional Budget Office steps square into the 2012 campaign season with the 147-page report which might have been subtitled “It’s not just the economy stupid, it’s also the debt.”
The $1.079 trillion deficit now projected for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is actually worse than what CBO had predicted in August. And to punch home its message, the non-partisan agency outlines an especially grim scenario in which Congress not only extends all the current tax cuts but pulls the plug on the $1.2 trillion in sequester set in motion by the Budget Control Act last summer.
Under this scenario—which can’t be ruled out politically—deficits would stubbornly hover just under $1 trillion through 2017 adding another $4.7 trillion altogether to the mounting federal debt.
Under the more prudent—and many would say unrealistic scenario of ending tax breaks and implementing cuts—the cumulative deficits would be $1.72 trillion or $3 trillion less from 2013-2017. But even this path comes with a warning from CBO: that debt service costs are already on the rise and will command a ever greater share of the annual budget.
“The federal budget remains out of balance throughout the decade,” the report reads. “The resulting accumulation of debt, along with rising interest rates, drives up the cost of financing that debt; in CBO’s projections, net interest costs grow significantly from 1.4 percent of GDP this year to 2.5 percent in 2022.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72205.html#ixzz1l3DXNY6r
Approaching 16 trillion now and Congress just gave him the go ahead on another trillion. It is time to start replacing congressmen come 2012
I am so sick of this congress if anyone of these low lifes gets voted back in, then we are doomed again. This is such b/s so tired of it. Perhaps they should GIVE half their salaries to the cause. Instead of robbing from hard working people. Worst President – because of the worse congress ever.
As you know every time he opens his mouth he lies, he actually believes every thing he says is gospel