On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the non-partisan accounting arm for Congress, issued its Budget and Economic Outlook for 2016 to 2026. Key findings included that this year, 2016, the federal budget deficit (as opposed to debt which is essentially all the deficits added together) will increase, in relation to the size of the economy, for the first time since 2009. Although the deficits since then have certainly not been small. The deficit in 2009, thanks to dwindling recession-related tax revenues and the much vaunted stimulus, hit $1.4 trillion. The deficit declined in the following years but the CBO has said those years were the largest budget deficits in comparison to the economy since 1946.
The CBO projects that if laws remain unchanged, the deficit would grow over the next ten years and by 2026 “it would be considerably larger than its average over the past 50 years.” The 2016 deficit is estimated to be $544 billion, $105 billion more than last year. The CBO’s previous estimate for this year’s deficit, made in August, was $415 billion. The increase since then is largely due to the extension of some corporate and income tax provisions.
Georgia Senator David Perdue responded to the report that it should be a “wake-up call for Washington.” He noted particularly that the interest on the debt should be alarming. “With nearly $19 trillion in debt and over $100 trillion in future unfunded liabilities, each American family is responsible for nearly $1 million of this debt. Even more concerning, if interest rates were to rise to the 50-year average of 5.5 percent, the interest on the debt would amount to over $1 trillion annually, more than twice what is currently spent on national defense.”
Georgia Representative Tom Price (R- GA 6) put out a statement in regard to the CBO report. “Our nation has a choice to make, we can stay the course and watch CBO projections of slow growth and a rising mountain of debt become reality or we can take positive actions and implement policies that will heal our economy, promote greater growth, and job creation for more Americans.”
Price went on the Family Research Council’s radio program and its “Washington Watch” segment to discuss the CBO report. Price lamented that we have heard this all before. “The challenge that we have had is that last year we passed a balanced budget in the House and the Senate for the first time since 2001 that balanced within 10 years without raising taxes. The problem is that once you pass it, nobody wants to follow the budget. We end up passing bill after bill after bill that don’t adhere to the budget or they take savings that the budget identified to be utilized for deficit reduction or getting the budget in balance, we use it and spend it on something else.”
Price said he is working as hard as he can to bring the issue to the attention of the public so that they will demand their legislators address the budget.
As with almost everything related to Washington this year, Price stressed that the ultimate outcome on the budget relies on what happens at the ballot box in November.
Read more at the Congressional Budget Office here: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51129-2016_Outlook_Summary.pdf
