Since the recession ended four years ago, the federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion every year. But now the government’s annual deficit is shrinking far faster than anyone in Washington expected, and perhaps even faster than many economists think is advisable for the health of the economy.
That is the thrust of a new report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimating that the deficit for this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, will fall to about $642 billion, or 4 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, about $200 billion lower than the agency estimated just three months ago.
The agency forecast that the deficit, which topped 10 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, could shrink to as little as 2.1 percent of gross domestic product by 2015 — a level that most analysts say would be easily sustainable over the long run — before beginning to climb gradually through the rest of the decade.
“Revenues have been strong as the economy has outperformed a bit,” said Joel Prakken, a founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm based in St. Louis.
Over all, the figures demonstrate how the economic recovery has begun to refill the government’s coffers. At the same time, Washington, despite its political paralysis, has proved remarkably successful at slashing the deficit through a variety of tax increases and cuts in domestic and military programs.
Perhaps too successful. Given that the economy continues to perform well below its potential and that unemployment has so far failed to fall below 7.5 percent, many economists are cautioning that the deficit is coming down too fast, too soon.
“It’s good news for the budget deficit and bad news for the jobs deficit,” said Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-of-center research group in Washington. “I’m more worried about the latter.”
Others, however, are warning that the deficit — even if it looks manageable over the next decade — still remains a major long-term challenge, given that rising health care spending on the elderly and debt service payments are projected to eat up a bigger and bigger portion of the budget as the baby boom generation enters retirement.
“It takes a little heat off, and undercuts the sense of fiscal panic that prevailed one or two years ago when the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio was climbing,” said Prakken, referring to the growth of the country’s debt relative to the size of the economy. “These revisions probably release some pressure to reach a longer-term deal, which is too bad, because the longer-term problem hasn’t gone away.”
Read More: cnbc.com
