CBO Releases Trump’s National Deficit Projection & It Is Terrifying

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President Donald Trump has consistently claimed to be enacting a period of economic greatness for the United States — but in reality, the nation just keeps moving in the opposite direction he’s claiming. This week, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the federal deficit would continue to skyrocket, hitting about $900 billion this year and a full $1 trillion come 2022 and for the rest of the decade after that. Their estimates are down only slightly, which they contribute to a decrease in federal emergency spending.

The overall continually ballooning deficit and debt is running on the fumes of the massive business tax break that the Trump administration delivered in late 2017, sending collected corporate taxes to their lowest level in decades. While benefits to working class Americans proved moderate at best, the standard corporate tax rate plunged to 21 percent from what The New York Times reports was a high of 35 percent — and everyday Americans are expected to shoulder the burden left behind.

Thanks to the compounding deficits, federal debt will reach a full 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product just next year according to estimates, and by 2050, it will be an overwhelming 152 percent of the nation’s GDP unless the United States changes course. That’s the largest debt ever recorded — and would come as GDP itself continues to slow, according to CBO projections. Despite Trump’s promises of 4 percent economic growth or higher, they project it’ll top out at about 2.3 percent this year and an average of only 1.7 percent per year through 2023.

CBO Director Keith Hall asserted:

‘Debt is an unsustainable course in CBO’s projections. To put it on a sustainable one, lawmakers will have to make significant changes to tax policy and spending policies — making revenues larger than they would be under current law, making spending for large benefit programs smaller than it would be under current law, or some combination of those approaches.’

Whether such an effort will emerge anytime soon remains to be seen. As Hall indicates, while the Trump administration seeks to push down taxes for the rich, the cost of programs like Social Security and Medicare continue to go up. Social Security is estimated to become a net drag on the federal budget come 2020.

Ironically, just recently, new Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) floated the idea of setting a tax rate on income over $10 million of a full 70 percent — which for the record, isn’t the highest it’s ever been in American history, and also would only affect a tiny minority of Americans, despite the widespread Republican complaining.

High profile presumed 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren also has a plan to “tax the rich,” although her focus is on taxing assets and not income.

Interestingly enough, a Fox News poll of all things found that a majority of both major political parties supports the idea of hiking taxes on those earning above $10 million. Some 85 percent of Democrats were in favor of the idea, while 54 percent of Republicans were.

There’s a long way to go to get to the point of being able to enact such a policy — and to that end, the 2020 presidential field keeps growing.

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