The Federal Budget Deficit Is Getting Bigger As Spending Grows

[TheCount]

Congressional budget forecasters are predicting more red ink — nearly $1 trillion this year — as a result of the bipartisan spending agreement lawmakers struck this summer.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now says the federal deficit will hit $960 billion in fiscal 2019 and average $1.2 trillion in each of the next 10 years.

The CBO raised its forecast for this year's deficit by $63 billion after lawmakers agreed to boost spending on both defense and domestic programs.

"The nation's fiscal outlook is challenging," CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in a statement. "To put it on a sustainable course, lawmakers will have to make significant changes to tax and spending policies" by boosting revenues, cutting spending or adopting some combination of the two, he said.

As a share of the economy, the deficit is expected to range from 4.4% to 4.8% over the next decade, well above the average for the past half-century. The deficit would have been even bigger, but the CBO reduced its forecast for interest rates, lowering the government's anticipated borrowing costs.

By 2029, the accumulated federal debt is projected to exceed $29 trillion, or 95% of GDP — the highest ratio since just after World War II, the CBO said.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/75311...t=nprml&f=1001

[Zippyjuan]

Let's make it the biggest and best deficit ever! If we get that recession going, maybe we can get it up to $2 trillion a year!

[Occam's Banana]

There is a point at which numbers get so big that they don't really mean anything anymore.

At that point, you have to resort to other ways of pretending that you can comprehend what they represent.

All we can do now is use analogies that begin like, "If the federal budget deficit was the size of a basketball, then the Earth would be ..."

[invisible]

How else are we going to pay for things like NSA spying, foreign aid, and abusing people in concentration camps?