CBO: Deficit would soar in coming decades despite Obama's health overhaul
By Lori Montgomery
WashPost
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
President Obama's overhaul of the health-care system has done little to improve the nation's budget outlook, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday. They also said the president's tax agenda -- including a pledge to extend an array of tax cuts for the middle class -- would only make things worse.
In its latest long-term forecast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the national debt, which has surged during the recession, would continue to rise in the coming decades despite cost-containment measures in the health-care overhaul that Obama signed earlier this year.
Government debt held by private investors is projected to hit 62 percent of annual economic output by the end of this year -- the highest since shortly after World War II. It would rise to 80 percent of GDP by 2035 under current law, the CBO said.
The health-care overhaul made "steps in the direction of a sustainable fiscal policy. But they are small steps relative to the journey that will be needed for fiscal sustainability," CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said Wednesday in testimony before Obama's bipartisan commission on the deficit.
(More here.)
WashPost
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
President Obama's overhaul of the health-care system has done little to improve the nation's budget outlook, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday. They also said the president's tax agenda -- including a pledge to extend an array of tax cuts for the middle class -- would only make things worse.
In its latest long-term forecast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the national debt, which has surged during the recession, would continue to rise in the coming decades despite cost-containment measures in the health-care overhaul that Obama signed earlier this year.
Government debt held by private investors is projected to hit 62 percent of annual economic output by the end of this year -- the highest since shortly after World War II. It would rise to 80 percent of GDP by 2035 under current law, the CBO said.
The health-care overhaul made "steps in the direction of a sustainable fiscal policy. But they are small steps relative to the journey that will be needed for fiscal sustainability," CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said Wednesday in testimony before Obama's bipartisan commission on the deficit.
(More here.)
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