Public Service Announcement: What 10 Years Means

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Whenever you hear tax or budget forecasts, they’re (almost) always made over a 10-year timeframe. For example, letting the high-end Bush tax cuts expire will raise about $800 billion over ten years. Last year’s debt ceiling deal reduces discretionary spending by $1.5 trillion over ten years. Etc.

But how big are these numbers? You can’t get a sense for that unless you know how big the budget and the deficit are projected to be over ten years, and those aren’t numbers most of us have at our fingertips. So here they are, courtesy of the CBO:

  • 10-Year Spending: $46 trillion.
  • 10-Year Deficit: $10 trillion

These numbers are based on CBO’s “alternative fiscal scenario,” which accounts for their best guess about what policies are likely to be in place over the next decade. Now you know.

(For the record: The CBO’s alternative fiscal scenario assumes that the Bush tax cuts are extended; the payroll tax holiday expires; the AMT is indexed for inflation after 2011; Medicare payment rates for physicians’ services are held constant at their current level; and that Congress overturns the sequestration cuts that were part of the debt ceiling agreement last year.)

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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