As Good As it Gets

Ah… the New Normal… someday, someday soon, we’ll pine for it.

Jim Pethokoukis explains:

The Congressional Budget Office just released its 10-year budget and economic forecast. Let me boil it down for you: These are the good times. Enjoy them because things are unlikely to get much better. In fact, they are likely to get worse. For instance: CBO expects the US economy to grow at 3% this year and next, and at 2.5% in 2017. That’s a definite upturn in post-recession performance, though still below the postwar average of 3.4%.

But then deceleration: “For 2020 through 2025, CBO projects that real GDP will grow by an average of 2.2 percent per year—a rate that matches the agency’s estimate of the potential growth of the economy in those years.”

The reports continues to predict that by 2025 — just ten years from now — trillion-dollar deficits become the new normal and even meager growth is leached out of the economy in the name of “compassionate” social spending.

Obviously, we are failing to tax or spend enough.