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Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released it's forecast for the current and future U.S. deficits. So let's take a look at what they said...

• 2004 Budget Deficit: $422 Billion (A new record!)
• Average Budget Deficit over the next 10 years: $440 Billion (If Bush's tax cuts are made permanent)
• Total increase in The Federal Debt: $4.4 Trillion Dollars(If Bush's tax cuts are made permanent)

Hmmm... those numbers seem kinda large to me. But wait, let's break it down a bit more. You see, our current national debt is around $7.5 Trillion already! So by 2014, we'll owe almost $12 Trillion. Toss on the current consumer debt of the american public (just a tad over $2 Trillion), and we're up to a $14,000,000,000,000 debt. With approximately 100 Million U.S. households, that works out to be $140,000 each (hmmm... that's roughly the equivalent of putting our children through college!).

Want to dig deeper? Need more pain? Glad I can help! You see, the estimated budget deficit doesn't factor in the U.S. government's yearly "borrowing" of $150 Billion from social security. The same social security that the baby boomers will start sucking dry in 10 years (shhhh... we don't like to mention the social security program Bush promised to fix in his 2000 campaign). Factor in any unknown costs related to the "war on terror", plus the fact tat the estimates are based on the continued expansion of the U.S. economy, and there's a decent chance these numbers are conservatively small.

Still looking for even more hurt? We gotcha covered! With Bush's tax cuts shifting the tax burden away from investment earnings and onto payroll taxes, it's going to be the middle class that pays it back. So all though this may appear invisible to you now, don't be surprised when we start hearing about mandatory, scheduled tax increases in a few years.

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