March 5 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would generate bigger deficits than advertised each year for the next decade, with the 10-year shortfall totaling $1.2 trillion more than the administration estimated, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The nonpartisan CBO, in an annual analysis of the White House budget proposal, said today that under Obama’s plan deficits would never shrink below 4 percent of the economy between now and 2020. The cumulative deficits would total $9.76 trillion, and debt held by the public would amount to 90 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product by 2020, the CBO said.
By 2020, the federal debt would grow to $20.3 trillion under Obama’s budget, according to CBO.
Those figures are all higher than the administration estimated last month when it said its budget would cut the deficit to as low as 3.6 percent of GDP, with total shortfalls over 10 years totaling $8.5 trillion. The publicly held debt would grow to 77 percent of GDP in 2020, under the administration’s estimate.
This year’s deficit will total $1.5 trillion, according to the CBO report.
