Facts about the federal debt you may not know, but which all politicians do

2013

Recently the Director of the Congressional Budget Office made a presentation on the federal debt and deficit. Here are some of the slides he used. I call your attention to the first slide below, the one stressing the implications for the middle class of resolving the debt problem. You don’t hear that very often from our elected representatives in Washington.

I also direct your attention to the third slide which talks about the debt being even larger if Congress did certain things. The problem is that Congress is very likely to do those things most detrimental to the debt, things like not allowing current cuts to continue and not allowing Medicare physician payment cuts to go into effect (which they have never allowed since the law was enacted). Then what?