U.S. Government Deficit Projection for Fiscal 2012-2021: $3.8 Trillion, Total. Ha!
Feb. 7, 2012
The Congressional Budget Office publishes a comprehensive annual report on its assessment of the state of the economy, with reference to the federal government's budget. Legally, the CBO is supposed to be nonpartisan. But, as you can imagine, good news on the budget deficit is considered nonpartisan.
Here is the relevant page from the 2012 volume.
Look at the projections of the annual deficits for 2013-21. See the deficit shrink! What would account for such a dramatic fall in the deficit? First, increased revenues. There will there will be an economic boom in 2013-21. No recessions. What great news! Revenues will pour into the Treasury because everyone will pay more taxes because of rising incomes.
What else could cause this? A dramatic reduction in government spending. This means that the automatic budget cuts that are scheduled to begin in 2013 will continue unabated until 2021. Congress will not decide to defer these politically tough spending cuts. At last, Congress will cease kicking the fiscal can down the road.
So, the $1.3 trillion-a-year deficits of 2009-11 will begin to melt, beginning next year. Not melt away entirely, of course. This is post-Clinton America. But shrink.
This is America. This is where dreams come true. This is where federal budgets never balance, yet the economy gets ever-better. This is where fairies come in the night and leave money under Congressional pillows.
The folks at CBO have been smoking some really primo stuff. And why not? This is an election year, with soaring rhetoric of dreams to be fulfilled, where there is no day of reckoning, where happy days are here again.