Peter Suderman on Why Good News from the CBO is Still Bad News

The good news in the latest Congressional Budget
Office report on the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook is
still pretty bad news. The upside is that the CBO has reduced the
projected deficit for the 2012 fiscal year.

The downside is that it’s still expected to come in north of a
trillion dollars. Unemployment is projected to drop, but only quite
slowly, hovering above 8 percent through the end of next year and 7
percent through 2015. Spending on Medicare is growing slightly
slower than expected. But that’s probably because of some
combination of a sluggish economy and structural factors that
started before the recession. And when the economy eventually picks
up speed and the new health care law goes into effect, writes Peter
Suderman, that won’t last for long.

View this article.

2012-08-23 15:16:43

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/23/the-cbos-bad-good-news