The United States is currently experiencing one of its sharpest economic crises in modern history as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to minimize contagion. Both the economic crisis itself and the federal government’s aggressive response have massively expanded deficits. This borrowing is largely appropriate as deficit spending can help offset the negative economic effects of a recession and spread the costs of emergencies over time.
However, the United States entered the current crisis facing trillion-dollar deficits and an unsustainable debt trajectory during a period of strong economic growth. Now, the long-term fiscal outlook is even worse. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released an interim economic baseline through 2030 and fiscal projections through 2021. Based on these estimates, we have produced our own medium- and long-term budget projections, which Committee senior vice president and senior policy director Marc Goldwein presented in a webinar.
You can view a video of the webinar below, as well as look through the corresponding slide deck.
