Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections provide valuable insights into how a big chunk of your income is being spent and reveal the long-term consequences of our government's current fiscal policies—you may endure them, and your children most certainly will. Yet, like most other projections looking into our future, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. So should claims that CBO projections validate anyone's fiscal track record.

So much can and likely will happen to make projections moot and our fiscal outlook much grimmer. Unforeseen events, economic changes, and policy decisions render them less accurate over time. The CBO knows this and recently released alternative scenarios based on different sets of assumptions, and it doesn't look good. It remains a wonder that more politicians, now given a more realistic range of possibilities, aren't behaving like it.

First, let's recap what the situation looks like under the usual rosy growth, inflation, and interest rate assumptions. Due to continued overspending, this year's deficit will be at least $1.6 trillion, rising to $2.6 trillion by 2034. Debt held by the public equals roughly 99 percent of our economy—measured by gross domestic product (GDP)—annually, heading to 116 percent in 2034.

The only reason these numbers won't be as high as projected last year is that a few House Republicans fought hard to impose some spending caps during the debt ceiling debate. The long-term outlook is even scarier, with public debt reaching 166 percent of GDP in 30 years and all federal debt reaching 180 percent.

No one should be surprised. To be sure, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession made things worse, but we've been on this path for decades.

Unfortunately, if any of the assumptions underlying these projections change again, things will get a lot worse. That's where the CBO's alternative paths help. Policymakers and the public can better see the potential risks and opportunities associated with various fiscal policy choices, enabling them to make more informed decisions.

For instance, the CBO highlights that if the labor force grows annually by just 0.1 fewer percentage points than originally projected—even if the unemployment rate stays the same—slower economic growth will lead to a deficit $142 billion larger than baseline projections between 2025 and 2034. A similarly small slowdown in the productivity rate would lead to an added deficit of $304 billion over that period.

Back in 2020, the prevalent theory among those who claimed we shouldn't worry about debt was that interest rates were remarkably low and would stay low forever. As if. These guys have since learned what many of us have known for years: that interest rates can and will go up when the situation gets bad enough. So, what happens if rates continue to rise above and beyond those CBO used in its projections? Even a minuscule 0.1-point rise above the baseline would produce an additional $324 billion on the deficit over the 2025-2034 period.

The same is true with inflation, which, as every shopper can see, has yet to be defeated. If inflation, as I fear, doesn't go away as fast as predicted by CBO—largely because debt accumulation is continuing unabated—it will slow growth, increase interest rates, and massively expand the deficit. To be precise, an increase in overall prices of just 0.1 points over the CBO baseline would result in higher interest rates and a deficit of $263 billion more than projected.

Now, imagine all these variations from the current projections happening simultaneously. It's a real possibility. The deficit hike would be enormous, which could then trigger even more inflation and higher interest rates. The question that remains is: Why aren't politicians on both sides more worried than they seem to be?

What needs to happen before they finally decide to treat our fiscal situation as a real threat? President Joe Biden doesn't want to tackle the debt issue. In fact, he's actively adding to the debt with student loan forgiveness, subsidies to big businesses, and other nonsense. Meanwhile, some Republicans pay lip service to our financial crisis, but few are willing to tackle the real problem of entitlement spending.

The time for political posturing is over. The longer we wait to address these issues, the more severe the consequences will be for future generations. It's time for our leaders to prioritize the nation's long-term economic health over short-term political gains and take bold steps toward fiscal responsibility. Only then can we hope to secure a stable and prosperous future for all Americans.

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Enlarge / Packaging for Wegovy, manufactured by Novo Nordisk, is seen in this illustration photo. (credit: Getty | Jakub Porzycki)

With the debut of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, America's high obesity rate and its uniquely astronomical prescription drug pricing appear to be set on a catastrophic collision course—one that threatens to "bankrupt our entire health care system," according to a new Senate report that modeled the economic impact of the drugs in different uptake scenarios.

If just half of the adults in the US with obesity start taking a new weight-loss drug, such as Wegovy, the collective cost would total an estimated $411 billion per year, the analysis found. That's more than the $406 billion Americans spent in 2022 on all prescription drugs combined.

While the bulk of the spending on weight-loss drugs will occur in the commercial market—which could easily lead to spikes in health insurance premiums—taxpayer-funded Medicare and Medicaid programs will also see an extraordinary financial burden. In the scenario that half of adults with obesity go on the drug, the cost to those federal programs would total $166 billion per year, rivaling the programs' total 2022 drug costs of $175 billion.

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The Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee made news recently by announcing that if his party is serious about changing the fiscal path we are on, they'll have to consider raising taxes. Politics is about compromise, so the chairman is right. Every side must give a little. However, "putting taxes on the table" is not as simple a fix to our debt problems as some think.

Looking at recent Congressional Budget Office reports, one can have no doubts about the fiscal mess. Annual deficits of $2 trillion will soon be the norm. Interest payments on the debt will exceed both defense and Medicare spending this year and become the government's largest budget item. With no extra revenue available, the Treasury will have to borrow money to cover these expenses. Meanwhile, we're speeding toward a Social-Security-and-Medicare fiscal cliff that we've known of for decades, and we'll reach it in only a few years.

Talking about the need for a fiscal commission to address Washington's mountain of debt, the committee chair, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R–Texas), told Semafor, "The last time there was a fix to Social Security that addressed the solvency for 75 years, it was Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill, and it was bipartisan. It had revenue measures and it had program reforms. That's just the reality." He made these comments after some people warned that a fiscal commission is a gateway only to raising taxes.

I understand the worry. That's what the most recent deficit reduction commission tried to do. And while I don't believe this is what Arrington is planning, I offer a warning to the chair and to the future commission: If the goal is truly to improve our fiscal situation, as defined by reducing the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) or reducing projected gaps between revenue and spending, increasing tax revenue should be limited to the minimum politically possible.

For one thing, our deficits are the result of excessive promises made to special interests—mostly seniors in the form of entitlement spending—without any real plans to pay. The problem is constantly growing spending, not the lack of revenue and taxes. The common talking point from the left that rich people don't pay their fair share of taxes is a distraction. Not only is our tax system remarkably progressive, but there are not enough rich people to fleece to significantly reduce our future deficits.

Furthermore, the work of the late Harvard economist Alberto Alesina has established that the best way to successfully reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio is to implement a fiscal-adjustment package based mostly on spending reforms. A reform mostly geared toward tax increases will backfire as the move will slow the economy in the short and longer terms, causing it to ultimately fail to raise enough revenue to reduce the debt relative to GDP. Legislators, unfortunately, have made this mistake many times without learning any lesson—at least until the deal that was cut in 1997.

As a 2011 New York Times column by Catherine Rampell reminded us, until then, all deficit-reduction deals were very tax-heavy. What the article didn't mention is that they failed to reduce the deficit. What distinguishes the 1997 deal is that it cut both spending and taxes. The result was the first budget surplus in decades helped by a fast-growing economy. Now, this lesson doesn't mean that a fiscal commission must cut taxes, but it does caution against attempting to reduce the debt largely by raising taxes.

Another risk looms in the idea of a tax-and-spending compromise; that the tax increases will be implemented while the spending cuts won't. We have many examples of this pattern, but I'll recount just one: In 1982, President Ronald Reagan made a deal with Congress (the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act) which would have raised $1 in revenue for every $3 in spending cuts.

There were tax hikes, indeed. But instead of spending cuts, Reagan got lots of spending increases. Remembering the story years later in Commentary magazine, Steven Hayward wrote, "By one calculation, the 1982 budget deal actually resulted in $1.14 of new spending for each extra tax dollar."

The moral of this story is that putting revenue on the table to reduce the debt has a bad track record. As such, the chairman, who I believe is serious about putting the U.S. on a better fiscal path, will have to be careful about whatever deal is made.

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The post A Bipartisan Tax Hike Won't Fix This Deficit appeared first on Reason.com.