The Congressional Budget Office says the deficit will hit $3.3 trillion this year. The national debt will exceed the size of America’s gross domestic product for the first time since the end of World War II.
by Eric Boehm
Reason.com
When the federal government’s fiscal year ends on the last day of September, America’s national debt will nearly match the size of the nation’s economy for the first time since the end of World War II, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The national debt will equal 98 percent of America’s gross domestic product, a rough measurement of the size of the country’s economic output, by the end of the current fiscal year, the CBO says in an updated budgetary outlook released Wednesday. The debt will continue to grow and will exceed the size of the economy by this time next year before eventually reaching 108 percent of the size of the economy in 2030.
The national debt has been rising for two decades, but it surged this year as emergency coronavirus response spending caused the federal budget deficit—the gap between what the government spends and how much it collects in tax revenue in a single year—to explode.