Tax cuts, spending helping push national debt to historic high, new report says

WASHINGTON – Get ready for the return of trillion-dollar budget deficits and record-high debt.

A report released Friday concludes that recent tax and spending legislation passed by Congress is helping to drive up the federal deficit and push the national debt to levels not seen since World War II.

Trillion-dollar deficits will return permanently by next year – three years earlier than projected – and debt will exceed the size of the economy within a decade, according to the analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“These projections show a fiscal situation that is clearly unsustainable,” concludes the report, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY.

The $1.5 trillion tax-cut package that Congress passed in December and the $400 billion budget bill approved last month aren’t the sole reasons for the increase but have “turned a dismal fiscal situation into a dire one,” the report says.

“Revenue is lower, spending is higher, deficits are larger and the national debt is rapidly headed toward a new record,” the report says.

The federal budget deficit – the annual amount by which government expenses exceed revenues — will climb to $1.1 trillion in 2019, up from $665 billion in 2017, and will hit $1.7 trillion by 2028, according to the report. Previous projections showed trillion-dollar deficits returning in 2022 and projected a $1.5 trillion deficit by 2028.


Source: usatoday