The OMB has just issued its mid-season report on the budget, based on more gloomy predictions about unemployment and growth. Here’s some highlights.
- The national debt is expected to grow by $11 trillion over the next decade. This means that the national debt accrued between 2008 and 2019 is expected to be greater than the entire national debt acquired between 1776 and 2008
- The OMB expects the deficit in 2019 to still be twice what it was in 2008
- Interest payments on debts over the next ten years will alone be bigger than the money spent on Medicaid and TARP
- To pay back just the debt that is expected to be acquired between 2008 and 2019 (i.e. to get back to the level of debt the US had in 2008), tax receipts will have to rise by roughly 30 percent.
- And the real kicker: these assumptions already include expected savings from health care reform, tax reform, and a tax hike for high earners, an estimated $15bn annually in revenues from 2012 onwards for climate change technologies, and nearly $300 billion total from closing loopholes and other measures.
