Looming Budget Catastrophe in Pictures So Simple Even Congress Can Understand

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many detailed economic warnings does it equal? Or maybe there's just one word that matters, and that word is "Unsustainable," which is how the Congressional Budget Office has long described the federal government's spending habits.

Through years of failing to draw the attention of presidents and lawmakers with its publications, the CBO has now clearly illustrated the looming fiscal catastrophe with pretty pictures that even elected officials poised to double down on their extended spending spree might understand.

Shows, in colored charts and graphs, the massive gap between what the United States government can afford to spend, and what it actually spends.

Spending more than you make, year after year, and running up debt would seem to be unsustainable.

"[F]inancing a large and permanent increase in government spending through perpetual borrowing without any corresponding adjustment in spending or revenues at some point in the future is unsustainable," CBO warned in March.

"[E]ven with federal spending for all programs other than Social Security and the major health care programs on track to reach its smallest share of GDP since at least 1940, federal debt remains on an unsustainable path," then-CBO Director Doug Elmendorf cautioned a macroeconomic policy conference.

The federal government hasn't deviated from its spending habits through all of these years, holding to an unsustainable.

https://reason.com/2021/05/05/looming-budget-catastrophe-in-pictures-so-simple-even-congress-can-understand/