The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2022 to 2032

"The Congressional Budget Office regularly publishes reports presenting its baseline projections of what the federal budget and the economy would look like in the current year and over the next 10 years if current laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. This report is the latest in that series

 • The Budget.

CBO projects that the federal budget deficit will shrink to $1.0 trillion in 2022 (it was $2.8 trillion last year) and that the annual shortfall would average $1.6 trillion from 2023 to 2032. The deficit continues to decrease as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) next year as spending related to the coronavirus pandemic wanes, but then deficits increase, reaching 6.1 percent of GDP in 2032. The deficit has been greater than that only six times since 1946 (see Chapter 1).

Outlays are projected to average 23 percent of GDP over that period, a level high by historical standards, boosted by rising interest costs and greater spending for programs that provide benefits to elderly people (see Chapter 3). Revenues are projected to reach their highest level as a share of GDP in more than two decades in 2022 and then to decline over the following few years but remain above their long-term average through 2032 (see Chapter 4).

Relative to the size of the economy, federal debt held by the public is projected to dip over the next two years, to 96 percent of GDP in 2023, and to rise thereafter. In CBO’s projections, it reaches 110 percent of GDP in 2032 (higher than it has ever been) and 185 percent of GDP in 2052 (see Chapter 1). Moreover, if lawmakers amended current laws to maintain certain policies now in place, even larger increases in debt would ensue (see Chapter 5)..."
Federal Budget 

"

An Update to the Economic Outlook: 2020 to 2030

July 2, 2020

Report

CBO projects that from 2020 to 2030, annual real GDP will be 3.4 percent lower, on average, than it projected in January. The annual unemployment rate, which was projected to average 4.2 percent, is now projected to average 6.1 percent.

View Document

View Document

586.73 KB

Summary

This report presents the baseline economic forecast that CBO is using as the basis for updating its budget projections for 2020 to 2030. The agency currently plans to release those budget projections later this summer.

This economic forecast provides CBO’s first complete set of economic projections through 2030 since January and incorporates information available as of June 26. The baseline forecast is being published now, rather than later with the budget projections, to provide the Congress with CBO’s current assessment of the economic outlook in a rapidly evolving environment. This economic forecast updates the interim forecast that CBO published in May, which focused on 2020 and 2021. It is similar to the May forecast for those two years, except that the projection of growth in the second half of 2020 has been revised downward..."
Economic outlook

The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2019 to 2029

"The Congressional Budget Office regularly publishes reports presenting projections that indicate what federal deficits, debt, revenues, and spending—and the economic path underlying them— would be for the current year and for the next 10 years if existing laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. This report is the latest in that series...."
Federal budget outlook

Blog CBO Director’s Statement About the Budget and Economic Outlook for 2017 to 2027

"CBO Director’s Statement About the Budget and Economic Outlook for 2017 to 2027

Posted by Keith Hall on

January 24, 2017

This morning I briefed the press about The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027, which CBO published today along with two slide decks, The Budget Outlook for 2017 to 2027 in 20 Slides and The Economic Outlook for 2017 to 2027 in 16 Slides, illustrating the report’s key findings.

The briefing opened with the following remarks.

Summary of the Baseline Economic Outlook

The economic forecast that underlies CBO’s budget projections indicates that in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, gross domestic product will expand at an average annual pace of 2.1 percent over the next two years—if current laws generally remained unchanged—after rising last year at an annual rate of 1.8 percent. We expect that growth to boost employment, virtually eliminate the remaining slack in the economy, and drop the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent by the fourth quarter of 2018..."

Economic outlook