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US national debt to reach $30 trillion in 10 years: Report

Tuesday, 26 January 2016 2:47 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 26 January 2016 2:48 PM ]

The accumulation of US government budget deficits will deepen the gross public debt from $18.1 trillion at the end of 2015 to $29.3 trillion in 2026, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Monday.

The US government will owe $30 trillion in national debt within a decade if the country’s budget deficit continues to grow at the same rate and current tax laws remain in place, according to a new federal report.

The federal deficit will increase in 2016 for the first time since the end of the financial crisis in 2009, and the accompanying public debt could reach crisis-levels in the decades to come, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Monday.

The CBO is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the US government that provides budget and economic information to Congress.

Government budget deficits will continue to rise over the next 10 years, topping $1 trillion again in 2022 and reaching $1.4 trillion in 2026, CBO analysts said.

The accumulation of those deficits will deepen the gross public debt from $18.1 trillion at the end of 2015 to $29.3 trillion in 2026.

By contrast, the debt stood at $10.6 trillion when President Barack Obama took office in 2009. Looking decades into the future, the picture only gets worse, the CBO said.

"If current laws generally remained unchanged, the deficit would grow over the next 10 years, and by 2026 it would be considerably larger than its average over the past 50 years," the report said.

"The 2016 deficit that CBO currently projects is $130 billion higher than the one that the agency projected in August 2015. That increase is largely attributable to legislation enacted since August -- in particular, the retroactive extension of a number of provisions that reduce corporate and individual income taxes," it stated.

President Obama and the Republican-run Congress struck a deal last year to increase federal spending and reduce taxes at the same time, significantly pushing up the budget deficit.

The president won significant spending hikes, and Republicans insisted on a new round of special tax breaks that, combined, reversed years of progress and added nearly $750 billion to projected deficits over the next decade.

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