That could have been the headline of an article on the new economic and budget projections. After all, the article included a quote from John Boehner, the leader of of the House Republicans: “the Democrats’ out-of-control spending binge is burying our children and grandchildren under a mountain of unsustainable debt.” If we look at the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), they show that the interest burden of the debt in 2019, the last year for their projections, will be $722 billion. That comes to 3.4 percent of projected GDP. If our children will be buried under this burden, then their parents must have been comparable strangled by the debt burden created in the Reagan-Bush presidencies. The interest burden from the debt run up in these years peaked at 3.3 percent of GDP in 1991. It would be helpful for readers to put these budget and deficit projections into some context. Unlike reporters, most readers do have other jobs. Therefore they may not have the time to look up the data that shows Mr. Boehner's complaint is just empty rhetoric.
--Dean Baker
