The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has updated its deficit projections to conclude that deficits will rise to over $800 billion for this year (ending September 30) to a trillion dollars next year increasing to $1.5 trillion by 2028. The analysis was delayed from January due to Congress’s passage of the December tax package and the budget agreement in February.
The CBO does calculate the positive growth of those packages but the tax reduction fails to make up for the deficits that supporters claim as a result of the stimulus effect. The CBO report also indicates that:
“As deficits accumulate in CBO’s projections, debt held by the public rises from 78 percent of GDP (or $16 trillion) at the end of 2018 to 96 percent of GDP (or $29 trillion) by 2028. That percentage would be the largest since 1946 [end of World War II] and well more than twice the average over the past five decades”
As if on cue the House of Representatives voted 233 to 184 to pass a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constriction. As an amendment to the Constitution it failed because the vote must reach two-thirds of the House. If it were to get out of the House, the proposal would have to pass the Senate by a two-thirds vote and then be approved by two-thirds of the state legislatures.
