The Congressional Budget Office painted a sober picture of the nation's long-term fiscal path in its 2014 Long-Term Budget Outlook, released Tuesday.
If current laws remain generally unchanged, the nonpartisan CBO projects that the total amount of federal debt held by the public — already one of the highest percentages in U.S. history at 74% of the gross domestic product — would exceed 100% of GDP by 2039, 25 years from now.
"Beyond the next 25 years, the pressures caused by rising budget deficits and debt would become even greater unless laws governing taxes and spending were changed," the CBO says. "With deficits as big as the ones that CBO projects, federal debt would be growing faster than GDP, a path that would ultimately be unsustainable."
The CBO attributes this rising debt to growing budget deficits, caused by spending for Social Security and health care entitlements.
"The combination of three factors — the aging of the population, growth in per capita spending on health care, and an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance — is expected to significantly boost the government's spending for Social Security and major health care programs," the CBO reports. "Barring changes to current law, that additional spending would contribute to larger budget deficits toward the end of the 10-year period that runs from 2015 to 2024, causing federal debt, which is already quite large relative to the size of the economy, to swell even more."
The report shows federal spending, under current law, increasing to 26% of the size of our economy by 2029, compared with 21% in 2015 and an average of 20.5% over the past 40 years. According to the report, federal spending for "Social Security and the government's major health care programs—Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and subsidies for health insurance purchased through the exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act — would rise sharply, to a total of 14% of GDP by 2039, twice the 7% average seen over the past 40 years."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the CBO report a "stark reminder of the urgent need for entitlement reform."
"As CBO says, our current spending path is unsustainable," Hatch, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.
The short-term budget view is a little more positive. For the second quarter, the government posted its first quarterly surplus since 2007, and it is on track to post the smallest annual deficit since 2008, according to a recent Treasury report.
