Congressional Budget Office Reveals Expected 2020 Federal Deficit & It Is Totally Insane

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The going line from the president and his allies is that they’re the fiscally conservative ones and the rest of us are lost in a wonderland of wasteful government spending fantasies. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office, however, stands in direct contrast to that claim.

According to the report, which is the first of its kind since the president signed a tax reform package into law late last year, the federal deficit is set to hit $1 trillion in 2020, which is, of course, just a little ways down the road. It’s the last year of Donald Trump’s first term, meaning that when facing the 2020 election — which he’s already started campaigning for — the president is going to have to answer for himself, if we stay on the path that we’re on now.

The New York Times describes the situation nicely, writing that it’s become “difficult for Republicans to continue blaming President Barack Obama and Democrats for the government’s fiscal condition.” This situation has arisen thanks not only to the tax cuts that the president signed into law late last year but also thanks to the massive spending bill that he signed into law relatively recently.

Trump threatened to veto that bill in protest that focused not on its massive size but rather on the lack of funding included in it for the border wall that he’s long dreamed of in between us and Mexico.

Besides the already mentioned prediction about the level that the federal deficit is expected to hit come 2020, the CBO also estimates that it will hit $804 billion this fiscal year, which comes to a close on September 30. Further down the road, in 2028, the deficit is expected to top $1.5 trillion.

Concurrent to these predictions, the CBO expects the federal debt to hit $33 trillion come ten years down the road, at which time it will equal about 96 percent of the size of the nation’s entire economy.

The president and his allies have in the past sought to discredit the legitimacy of Congressional Budget Office predictions, so that gives them an easy out here, although it’s not as though that’s going to make the issues pointed out by the latest report from the body go away.

The context where the president and his team last butted heads with the CBO was that of their plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Although they’ve since taken other steps to undercut the ACA, they were unable to get it fully repealed concurrent to concerns raised in part by the CBO about the massive human cost of such a move.

The president has long taken to touting the supposed positive effects of his policies seen in the economy, routinely pointing to increases in the stock market, for instance — although it’s not as though he’s rushed to take credit for times when the state of the stock market has soured.

In addition, it’s not as though he’s rushed to social media to address the latest report from the CBO, and it’s likely to prove unable to stop the administration on its path forward towards an even bigger deficit and debt.

Featured Image via Al Drago/ Bloomberg via Getty Images