Spending on safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare continues to grow even as their trust funds face the prospect of being depleted in the next 10 years.
“Also boosting deficits are two underlying trends: the aging of the population and growth in federal health care costs per beneficiary,” Mr. Swagel said. “Those trends put upward pressure on mandatory spending.”
The national debt is likely to be even larger than the budget office is predicting, as its forecast assumes that the 2017 tax cuts that Republicans enacted will fully expire even though lawmakers are already considering extending many of the measures, including lower individual income tax brackets.
For the second time in less than a year, the budget office said it now expected Mr. Biden’s efforts to wean the nation from fossil fuels to be more popular with the public — and more expensive for taxpayers — than initially estimated.
New: U.S. Debt on Pace to Top $54 Trillion Over Next 10 Years w/ @jimtankersley https://t.co/VZ9wDWn5l2
— Alan Rappeport (@arappeport) February 7, 2024