Report: America's Deficit Will Be Back over $1,000,000,000,000 in Just 8 Years

Michael Sargent

economy,

Are we headed towards a crisis? 

Congress left town this August for an extended recess without passing a budget or any required spending bills, and spending has largely been ignored as a major issue in the presidential election. But just because the politicians and media are distracted doesn’t mean the nation’s most critical problems are going away.

Case in point: The Congressional Budget Office just released its updated budget projections, and the unrelenting deluge of spending, debt, and deficits continues to grow larger by the year.

Deficits are back on the rise in 2016, no matter how much the president and others may claim that they’re no longer a problem. And they’re growing faster than expected: The CBO had to increase its deficit projection by $50 billion for this year, up from $540 billion in March to $590 billion in the updated data.

In total, that’s a whopping $150 billion (35 percent) increase in the deficit compared to 2015, amounting to the largest annual increase in the deficit since 2009. Indeed, the CBO estimates that deficits will return to trillion-dollar levels in 2024, just eight years from now.

These deficits are projected to feed the rapid expansion in federal debt, which is expected to climb to $28 trillion within 10 years. That’s up from $19 trillion today and almost triple the level of debt held when President Barack Obama took office in 2009. The public debt (the portion of debt traded in credit markets) will continue its worrisome climb, hitting 86 percent of gross domestic product within a decade.

The CBO takes care to note, however, that overall debt projections are slightly lower than the March projections.