The CBO put out a new report on the long-term budget today. Money graph:
Don Taylor sighs:
The scary thing about the Alternative Fiscal Scenario is how politically plausible are the big picture assumptions that define this scenario that shows our cumulative debt being over 175% of the GDP in 2035.
Len Burman delivers more bad news:
[The Alternative Fiscal] scenario, as dreadful as it is, is wildly over-optimistic, because it doesn’t account for the effect of rising debt levels on interest rates and the economy.
Ezra Klein highlights a political sleight of hand:
This is a good time to remind everyone that when you hear politicians telling you that their plan cuts taxes or balances the budget, you always need to ask what baseline they’re using. Almost all the plans on the table, for instance, do less to balance the budget than simply doing nothing. But since they use a version of the “alternative fiscal scenario” as their baseline, they don’t have to admit that before they make the deficit somewhat better, they’re first planning to make it much, much worse.
The Dish 