And the place to start is with the 30-year CBO projections—expressed as the dollar increase from the current $29 trillion level of publicly held US Treasury debt.
To wit, if Washington does nothing except leave current tax, spending and structural deficit policies in place (i.e. baseline policy), the publicly-held debt will grow by $102 trillion over the next three decades, reaching a staggering 154% of what would be $85 trillion of GDP by 2054.
Moreover, that outcome assumes that Rosy Scenario does not loose her footing for even a moment through the middle of the century. Stated differently, the underlying CBO projections presume that there will be no recession during the 34 year span from 2020 to 2054, and that, in fact, there will be perpetual full-employment at about 4% from here on out.
Of course, during the last 30 years there have been three recessions (shaded area) and no such full-employment perfection was even remotely achieved. The short spells of 4% unemployment or under, in fact, were few and far between—in stark contrast to the CBO baseline which presumes 4% unemployment year after year until 2054.
The CBO projections also assumes that inflation stays strictly in its Fed-prescribed lane at around 2.0% for the next 30 years, as well. That hasn’t remotely happened during the last 30 years, when the inflation rate has exceeded the 2.0% mark during 17 years, and frequently by substantial amounts.
Needless to say, with a baseline projection of $102 trillion of new debt ridding on the back of a veritable Rosy Scenario, you would think that Washington might be forming a fiscal bucket brigade to beginning bailing out the sinking budgetary ship. And most especially that it would be lead by the GOP—the once and former party of balance budgets and fiscal rectitude.
In any event, on a 30 years basis, the OBBBA will add $117 trillion to the public debt, which figure would rise to an additional +$133 trillion when you price-out OBBBA without the accounting gimmicks. Now, how anyone thinks that quintupling the public debt from $29 trillion to $162 trillion over the next three decades is a plausible route to the Golden Age of Prosperity actually extends well beyond our powers of imagination.
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