That's one hundred and six trillion, nine hundred and fifty-four billion dollars.This is equal to almost exactly 150% of the world's GDP. Of course, this will never happen, the existing system will have been flushed down the bog hole by then:
www.nationalreview.com/article/350983/ro...osal-jonathan-strong
But according to GOP deficit projections subsequently prepared by Johnson and obtained by National Review Online, the true size of the problem is staggering, and surprised even many of the seasoned budget negotiators involved.
$4 trillion? Try $106 trillion, the medium estimate. That’s $106,954,000,000,000. Even the lowest, extremely conservative estimate comes in at $72 trillion; the highest is over $120 trillion.
The amounts are so large that some controversial reforms appear inconsequential in comparison. Take Obama’s “chained CPI” proposal: it would save an estimated $89 billion over ten years, or 1.3 percent of the total deficit over those same ten years.
Part of the difference is time. The Congressional Budget Office pegs its cost estimates of bills to ten years. Not only has that led to a sort of CBO-score arms race on Capitol Hill, where legislation — Obamacare being the best example — is designed to exploit the ten-year window to produce a lower cost estimate. It also obscures the scope of the long-term entitlement crisis and the savings of reforms that would compound in the second and third decade.
The Senate GOP projection is for 30 years, which encompasses the retirement of the baby boomers — a far more significant problem than the deficits of the past few years.
