The old saying goes, “You gotta spend money to make money.” But, how much spending is too much?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released deficit projections on Thursday - which is different from the national debt, but each still affects the other - and the CBO has projected that 2019’s federal deficit would reach $896 billion, "only $1 billion smaller than the deficit it projected in January."
According to the Washington Examiner:
Thursday's projections assume that Congress and the Trump administration do nothing to increase spending between now and Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. But that's unlikely. Senior senators expect to hash out an emergency disaster aid package with the president in the near-term, and in the long-term negotiations to prevent a government shutdown could raise spending on defense and domestic programs.
That assessment doesn’t bode well considering the U.S. would have to refrain from any further spending than is planned in order for that $896 billion number to stay where it is.
The actual CBO report states that things don’t look like they’ll be getting any cheaper and avoid putting the U.S. any more in the hole as the years go by:
Revenues and outlays are both projected to rise through 2029, but the gap between them is projected to persist, resulting in large deficits and rising debt. According to CBO’s estimates, the deficit now projected for 2019, $896 billion, would grow to $1.3 trillion by 2029. However, outlays for 2029 are affected by shifts in the timing of certain federal payments. Without those shifts, the projected deficit in 2029 would be $1.4 trillion.
Relative to the size of the economy, the deficits that CBO projects would average 4.3 percent of GDP over the 2020–2029 period. Other than the period immediately after World War II, the only other time the average deficit has been so large over so many years was after the 2007–2009 recession. Over the past 50 years, deficits have averaged 2.9 percent of GDP.
The Washington Examiner also reported that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney “all but conceded defeat on keeping spending down” during an interview at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Los Angeles this past Tuesday.
“We’re probably not capable of balancing the budget right now,” Mulvaney said. “Washington does not have the ability to do that. Yes there will be a head-to-head battle over spending, it happens every year, and the fight will be over how much we increase spending.”
Instead of having the elites in Congress “battle” over “how much we increase spending,” shouldn’t somebody, anybody be attempting to wage a “battle” over how much we should decrease spending?