Thanks to the coronavirus and underlying fiscal irresponsibility, the federal government will spend $6.6 trillion in 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office, or more than double what the government is expected to collect in revenue.
As a result, the CBO is now projecting the deficit will exceed $3.3 trillion in 2020.
Adding this deficit to the underlying debt caused by the failure to contain entitlement spending will push public debt as a share of the economy to 104% in 2021, according to the CBO. By 2023, the CBO says public debt will “rise to 107 percent in 2023, the highest in the nation’s history. The previous peak occurred in 1946 following the large deficits incurred during World War II.”
The problem is that unlike World War II, the current debt is not due to a one-off event, and it will not recede in the decades to come. That’s because the retirement age population is continuing to grow even as healthcare costs go up. The CBO anticipates that starting in 2021 and through 2030, the debt will be larger than the gross domestic product every single year.
It’s also worth noting that the CBO estimates for 2021 are almost certainly going to be worse due to the likelihood of an additional massive bill responding to the coronavirus. Not to mention if Joe Biden becomes president with a congressional majority, he has promised trillions of dollars in new spending without detailing how he would offset that new spending.
