The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has a tough job. The CBO is tasked with scoring bills on diverse topics from Health Care to Climate Change while somehow maintaining impartiality. Their reports are frequently highly technical and relegated to policy wonk reading.
Last week they released a remarkably atypical report; it's blunt and sobering right from the title, "Federal Debt and the Risk of a Fiscal Crisis". Within the report CBO details the future effects of policy under two scenarios: One where taxes rise and spending is limited, another where taxes and spending remain on their "widely expected" track (optimistically referred to as the alternative fiscal scenario). On our "widely expected" track, the CBO believes debt will equal 90% of our GDP by 2020, less than 10 years from now! To quote directly from the source:
"Under the alternative fiscal scenario, the surge in debt relative to the country's output would pose a clear threat of a fiscal crisis during the next two decades."
And that's just the start. The consequences CBO lists include not just decreased wages and income, but also "harm [to] national security by constraining military spending in times of crisis". By their estimation the debt will become such a burden it will impair our country's ability to wage war and protect itself.
The report concludes by comparing and contrasting our state with three other countries that recently experienced economic meltdown, Greece, Argentina and Ireland. While we have a much larger economy than any of those countries and may be less susceptible to collapse, the CBO insists we must take important lessons from them. Among the lessons: fiscal crises stem from recession, occur abruptly, and are fueled by unsustainable levels of debt.