CBO Blows Up Obama's Latest Debt Lie

The latest Congressional Budget Office calls the lie on President Obama's claim that the nation's debt crisis can be solved with just a few trims to spending and a bit more taxes on the rich.

Obama lately has acted as though most of the work has already been done to get the debt problem under control. At a recent press conference, he claimed that he's already cut long-term deficits by $2.5 trillion and that "closing some additional loopholes (and) doing some additional cuts" are all that's needed to cross the finish line.

But the latest CBO report shows that the country is far from out of the woods. In fact, despite the supposed budget cuts and the $620 billion in tax hikes Obama brags about, deficits start climbing every year after 2015, reaching back up to $978 billion by 2023.

Debt, too, starts expanding again as a share of GDP, climbing to 77% by 2023, with no end in sight.

Even that grim outlook is unrealistically optimistic. The CBO's forecast assumes, for example, that Congress will let scheduled huge cuts in Medicare payments to doctors go through, even though they haven't done so for years.

It assumes ObamaCare's costs don't explode, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. And it assumes there's no recession anytime in the next decade and that interest rates remain reasonably low.

The CBO also makes it abundantly clear that the cause of this crisis is out-of-control spending, not insufficient tax revenues.

Indeed, while taxes are slated to climb to 19% of GDP—well above the historic average of 18% — spending is set to rise to 23% of GDP and to continue climbing well above the average 19.5% of GDP from 1948 to 2008.

The report is also clear that entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and now ObamaCare — are to blame for the continued growth in spending. "The aging of the population, increasing health-care costs, and a significant expansion of eligibility for federal subsidies for health insurance will substantially boost spending for Social Security and for major health-care programs relative to the size of the economy," it says.

The report also makes clear that ObamaCare will only exacerbate this problem, pointing out that spending on federal health-care programs "is projected to grow rapidly when provisions of the Affordable Care Act are fully implemented by mid-decade."

The CBO adds that "unless the laws governing those programs are changed, debt will rise sharply relative to GDP after 2023."

So what is Obama doing in the face of this still-looming crisis? Instead of confronting spending and entitlements, he's focused on meaningless side issues like gun control and scoring short-term political points against Republicans.

Given the scale of the nation's fiscal crisis, this is hardly the leadership we need right now. But unless something changes, it's the leadership we're stuck with for the next four years.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-edito...udget-congress-president-federal-spending.htm

 

They don't call him Obama Bin Lyin' for nothing.

 

Who you gonna believe, a bunch of lame ass white guys (CBO) or a black man who knows his way around guns. (skeeter sotero)?

 

The debt is currently at 105% of GDP. Excluding SS obligations and intragovernmental holdings (Federal and State pension funds) from the tally, is a joke. Shall we confiscate retirement accounts of dependent seniors and retired government workers?

The deficit was well over a trillion in 2012, despite CBO projections of it being under. We are Greece in FOUR YEARS <. Four years.