by WorldTribune Staff, June 24, 2024 Contract With Our Readers

In revised estimates of America’s economic outlook in the coming years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects the budget deficit for the current fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30) will increase by $408 billion and the 10-year budget deficit will shoot up by nearly $2.1 trillion.

By 2034, outlays for Social Security, the major health care programs [i.e., Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare], and interest account for 68 percent of projected spending, 10 percentage points more than the share projected for 2024.

The CBO projected in its June update that federal outlays will increase from $6.9 trillion in 2024 to $10.3 trillion in 2034, an average annual increase of 4.1 percent.

Outlays for Social Security and Medicare account for more than half of that $3.4 trillion increase.

“To put it bluntly, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are cannibalizing the entire federal budget,” Christopher Jacobs, founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, wrote for The Federalist on Monday.

“Unless and until Congress stops the ‘Mediscare’ rhetoric and gets serious about reforming these programs, our financial situation will continue to get worse. And Lord help the next generation if we don’t wake up and come to our senses sooner rather than later.”

The spending bills which were passed in March added nearly $1.3 trillion to the 10-year deficit, the CBO said.

Spending on Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies will increase deficits by $511 billion in the coming decade, in large part because more people will continue signing up for “free” coverage.

The budget office also noted that “the recent surge in immigration [has] made more people than CBO previously estimated eligible for” Obamacare subsidies, accounting for an increase in projected enrollment.

Team Biden’s student “loan forgiveness” will cause the deficit to grow by $145 billion this fiscal year alone, and because the administration has not finalized several of its regulatory proposals, “CBO has yet to put the full fiscal effect of these giveaways onto the federal government’s books,” Jacobs noted.

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  CBO shock: Social Security, federal outlays, Medicaid ‘are cannibalizing the entire federal budget’, Medicare, WorldTribune.com