According to the latest CBO report , by 2021 publicly held Federal debt will exceed GDP. By 2035, it could go as high as 190% of GDP. That is just the publicly held debt.
There is also "intragovernmental debt" such as the money that was stolen, I mean borrowed, from the SSTF. Today it totals $4.6 Trillion.
Then there is "implicit debt". This is the money that Social Security and Medicare owe in excess of the amount of payroll taxes they will take in. According to the trustees of the Social Security system, that program has an unfunded liability of $18 Trillion. Medicare owes almost $37 Trillion more than it is expected to pay for.
And that number ASSUMES that ALL the projected savings from Obamacare actually come into being. Show of hands : Who seriously expects THAT to ever happen ? Medicare's actuaries have testified to Congress that they don't believe it. When those "savings" are tossed onto the junk heap of reality, the total Medicare debt climbs as high as $90 Trillion.
Add up all the foregoing and the total is $120 Trillion.
According to the CBO these numbers are the result of " increases in spending on several large mandatory programs : Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid " plus insurance subsidies provided through Obamacare. The CBO also makes it clear that revenue increases will do NOTHING to solve this problem. If the economy just returns to a "normal" , average growth rate, federal revenue is projected to rise by 2020 to a higher percentage of GDP than the post W.W.II average. It will be that high even if Bush The Dumber's Tax Cuts are extended and the AMT continues to be patched. Clearly, the revenue side of the equation is almost irrelevant. The problem is money going out; not the money coming in.
More than one respected economist is seriously advocating that we actually promote inflation as a way to manage this mess. They point to the post W.W. II inflation that radically discounted the value of War Bonds and used bracket creep to impose higher tax rates on the American taxpayer.



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