U.S. national debt grows so fast CBO predictions can’t keep up
Oct 9, 2012, 2:09 PM | Updated: 2:09 pm
The accelerating growth of the national debt has outpaced Congressional Budget Office predictions up to 10 years, according to George Mason University.
U.S. debt was half of the country’s total revenue in 2009, 10 years ahead of the 2019 prediction set by the CBO in 2007.
National debt is set to increase to 80 percent of GDP by 2014 according to the current projection by the CBO. This is set for five years before the projection given in 2009 and 13 years before the projection in 2007.
Analysis of over 200 years of data indicates that once a nation’s national debt climbs higher than 90 percent of GDP, growth slows. While growth only slowed by 1 percent in some places, others fell by 50 percent, according to the study “Growth in a Time of Debt” by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
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