If everything remains as is, growing budget deficits could drive federal debt held by American taxpayers to unprecedented levels over the next 30 years, according to the latest U.S. budget projections released on June 25 by the Congressional Budget Office.

That latest baseline projections incorporate CBO’s central estimates of various factors, such as productivity growth and interest rates on federal debt. CBO’s analysis indicates that even if values for those factors differed from the agency’s projections, debt several decades from now would probably be much higher than it is today, rising from 78% of annual gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 to a whopping 144% by 2049.       MORE