U.S. Outlook Report: Don’t Get Complacent About the Deficit
The volume of political dialogue surrounding the U.S. budget deficit and debt has dropped a few notches with the economy strengthening, tax revenues on the rise, and the tax ceiling suspended until March 15, 2015. Federal deficits have declined for five consecutive years, from a 2009 peak of 9.8% of GDP. Our current forecast is a Federal deficit of around $495 billion in FY 2014 (nearly a 30%improvement from FY 2013), falling again to $460 billion in 2015. From a longer-term perspective, however, our deficit and debt outlook under current law doesn’t look so good.
In this week’s US Outlook report, we highlight some of the takeaways from the CBO’s July Long-Term Budget Outlook that drives home the message that critical decisions must be made by our political leaders (hopefully sooner rather than later) which will have wide-ranging effects not only on the country’s finances, but our economic future as well. We are not out of the woods on our Federal budget problems despite Sequestration spending cuts and the return to growth.
To find out more, check out this week’s US Outlook report for July 25, 2014.
Tags: economy