Washington Examiner - Yep, the Deficit Crisis is Worse Than We Thought: CBO

Article by Tiana Lowe in Washington Examiner

While Washington wails about impeachment woes, the Congressional Budget Office issued a quiet reminder of the crisis both parties are happy to deny even exists. Once again, the nonpartisan office lowballed how bad this year's deficit actually would be.

The CBO overshot with its federal revenue projection by $28 billion, or 0.8%, and it underestimated its federal outlay projection by $3 billion, or 0.1%.

"Those outlay and revenue differences resulted in a deficit projection for 2019 that was $31 billion less than the actual amount: $972 billion rather than $1,004 billion," CBO reports.

This update doesn't demonstrate incompetence on CBO's part — in fact, its accuracy has only improved over the decades — but rather the deficiency of the model they must use, which assumes that tax laws and spending remain constant. Their update is a reminder that, however bad you're told our spending crisis is, it's actually worse.

In May, the CBO projected our deficit for the coming decade to be $11.4 trillion. In August, they updated that to $12.2 trillion, in large part because of the 2019 Bipartisan Budget Act.

The corrections almost always go in one direction, meaning that the date of Social Security insolvency will only come closer. The inevitable credit crisis that will come with our spending squeeze will only loom larger. The problem is only getting worse, and Washington just doesn't care.

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