January 26, 2010 by Donald Marron
Today the Congressional Budget Office released its much-anticipated projections for the budget. As usual, the headline figure is CBO’s estimate of the budget deficit, now projected to be $1.35 trillion for the fiscal year, about 9.2% of GDP.
That’s slightly better than last year–when $1.4 trillion deficits amounted to 9.9% of GDP–but is still the second-worst since World War II. And, as CBO notes, new legislation could easily lift the 2010 figure higher. For example, Congress will likely consider further extensions to unemployment benefits and more war spending, not to mention a possible jobs bill.
CBO also projected deficits for the next decade. They are large and persistent:
The blue line shows CBO’s official budget baseline. That baseline shows persistent deficits over the next decade. They fall below 3% of GDP by 2014 and then increase somewhat in later years. I would characterize that trajectory as unwelcome but not a crisis.
It’s also completely unrealistic given Washington’s current policy predilections.
The official baseline is built upon two key assumptions: that existing laws execute exactly as written and that discretionary spending increases with inflation in future years. Those assumptions make sense for constructing a baseline that will be used to score the budget impacts of new legislation. But, as CBO itself notes, they are unrealistic if your goal to make predictions of where current policy is leading:
To help outside analysts construct alternative baselines that better show existing policy, rather than existing law, CBO provides estimates for several policy alternatives. Analysts differ on which of these alternatives they use to build a policy alternative (and, given more time, they may also use other estimates).
As rough justice I made the following assumptions for the chart above: (1) that regular discretionary spending grows at the same pace as nominal GDP in coming years (closer to recent history than the baseline assumption of growth with inflation), (2) that spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan moderates somewhat in coming years (CBO’s 60,000 troop scenario), (3) that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are permanently extended, and (4) that the AMT is indexed for inflation.
Under these assumptions, the budget picture is much scarier: deficits never get lower than 5.5% of GDP and they are 7.5% by 2020.
Bottom line: Current policy is unsustainable.
Note: You should view my adjusted baseline as a quick-and-dirty, back-of-the-envelope of existing policy. For example, it doesn’t include any adjustments for other expiring tax provisions (which are substantial) or the infamous Medicare doctor payment problem; if you made adjustments for those, the deficit outlook would look worse. On the other hand, many political leaders, including President Obama, want to scale back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts; if you did that, the deficit outlook would look better.
Bad news, although not unexpected. Senate rejected the Gregg-Conrad commission. Vote was in favor 53-46, but needed 60. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-26/senate-rejects-conrad-plan-to-create-deficit-cutting-commission.html
Unless a decent version of such a commission is created with a mandatory up-or-down vote (or with fiscally neutral amendments) in Congress on its recommendation (if it reaches agreement on one), I think today should stand as a notable day in the history of the nation when the most gutless, most self-serving, most irresponsible politicians sacrificed the nation's future for the sake of their own political careers, and shamelessly lied while doing it. I say they lied because those Senators are politically sophisticated enough to know that it is simply not politically feasible to get anywhere close to solving our long-term fiscal imbalance problem either solely via reductions in projected spending or solely via taxing "the rich" (or that plus cuts in Defense plus supposed savings from healthcare "reform"), but they nevertheless opposed the commission on the basis that it would lead to tax increases or that it would lead to reductions in social spending or some component thereof (Social Security and/or Medicare). Anyone who thinks either ideologically pure approach is politically feasible is either delusional, ignorant, an idiot or a liar, and those Senators are the latter. GRRRRRR!! Tough to resist profanity when writing about those … .
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