BREAKING: Congressional Budget Office says coronavirus aid, likely recession to cause deficit to reach $3.7 trillion this year.
The 2020 budget deficit will explode after four coronavirus response bills passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump promise to pile more than $2 trillion onto the $24.6 trillion national debt in just the remaining six months of the current fiscal year, according to the CBO’s report.The CBO said lawmakers eventually will be forced to tackle the government’s chronic financial woes, if for no other reason than the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare.
Coronavirus-related federal debt and deficit figures are pointing to government red ink unparalleled since World War II. One lasting worry is the further shrinking of revenues that already were well below historic averages, even as the spending side of the federal ledger climbs due to the retirement costs of the baby boomers to Medicare and Social Security, record Pentagon spending and long-term COVID-19 response costs.
But when policymakers inevitably are forced to take on deficits, virtually none of them will have any experience in successfully doing so. Congress has not passed a major attack on the deficit since the hard-won 1997 law that capped a decade’s worth of politically costly but ultimately effective reduction measures.
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