Wednesday, May 14, 2014

CBO Projects Federal Debt On Unsustainable Path: Government Debt To Increase To Much Larger Share Of GDP: Rising Cost Of Health Care A Significant Contributor

From Congressional Budget Office, Presentation by Doug Elmendorf, CBO Director, to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, May 14, 2014, "Shifting Priorities in the Federal Budget:"
Under current law, the future of the federal budget will
be strikingly different from its past in two key ways:

Federal debt will be much larger relative to the size of
the economy than it has been in almost all of our
history.

A much larger share of federal spending will go to
benefits for older Americans and for health care, and a
much smaller share will go to other activities.
***
The largest federal programs are becoming much more
expensive because of the retirement of the baby boomers
and the rising costs of health care. As a result, even with
federal spending for all programs other than Social Security
and the major health care programs on track to reach its
smallest share of GDP in at least 70 years, federal debt
remains on an unsustainable path.
[Emphasis added.]

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