OPINION:
The debt of the U.S. government will reach 107 percent of the gross domestic product by 2040 as Baby Boomers crush the entitlement programs and health care costs skyrocket.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Americans will be on the hook for so much debt that interest payments will balloon with the debt, which is already at 74 percent of the economy today.
“The long-term outlook for the federal budget has worsened dramatically over the past several years, in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession and slow recovery,” the Congressional Budget Office said in its 2015 released Tuesday.
Not surprisingly, the CBO said on the debt that “further sustained increases could be especially harmful to economic growth.”
“To put the federal budget on a sustainable path for the long term, lawmakers would have to make major changes to tax policies, spending policies, or both.”
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is promising numerous government programs, from gree pre-school and college to paid sice days and an expansion of Obamacare, but neither have said how they will pay for the programs.
But the CBO said growth of the U.S. economy, which has been dismal for President Obama’s six years in office, will not rise dramatically in the near future.
In fact, the deficit projected this year, at 2.7 percent of the current percentage of GDP, will widen to 3.8 percent in 2025 and 6.6 percent in 2040, the CBO said.
The debt will top 100 percent of the nation’s economy by 2039.
Spending on entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies — will jump from 6.5 percent of GDP to 14.2 percent of GDP by 2040.
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