Deficit to rise to 90 percent of GDP

According to a report from the Congressional Budget Office (cbo) released on Thursday, the United States 2011 fiscal budget will amass $10 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years. This will raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation’s estimated economic output in the year 2020.

The estimate is more than a trillion dollars over the Obama administration’s projections, which estimated a 10-year deficit total of $8.53 trillion. Brian Riedl, a budget analyst, said, “An additional $1.2 trillion in debt dumped on [gdp] to our children makes a huge difference. That represents an additional debt of $10,000 per household above and beyond the federal debt they are already carrying.”

The federal public debt currently stands at $8.2 trillion—having surged from $6.3 trillion when Obama entered office. According to the cbo’s estimates, it will reach $20.3 trillion by 2020—which is more than $170,000 per household.

Maya MacGuiness, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that such a high level of debt would be “extremely problematic, particularly given the upward debt path beyond the 10-year budget window.”

Part of the reason the cbo’s figure is different from the Obama administration’s is that the government assumes gdp and incomes will be higher at that time. President Obama’s stated goal is to balance the budget by 2015, but according to Ms. MacGuiness, “the proposed budget is woefully insufficient to achieve the president’s goal or the important fiscal goal of stabilizing the debt at a reasonable level in the medium and long term.”

The debt for fiscal 2010 is expected to exceed 10 percent of gross domestic product—the first time that threshold has been reached since World War ii, according to the Washington Times.