As I reviewed with you before, the chart is not only a bit dated, but also makes very severe assumptions regarding existing tax structures. In addition, the CBO creates "long term" projections to 2080, which I put zero stock in (they assume a 3% interest rate between 2020 and 2084, for example.) My reference is to the longer term being beyond one year, as troop withdrawals take at least that long.
Further, the chart overstates the numbers.
Direct from the CBO:
"If current laws were to remain unchanged, the budget deficit would drop markedly as a percentage of GDP in the next few years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects, and federal debt held by the public would stabilize at about 67 percent of GDP for the next decade.1 Those baseline projections, however, understate the budget deficits that would arise if policies that are in effect now or have been in effect recently were extended, instead of implementing what current laws specify for future years. Specifically, if most provisions of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 were extended rather than allowed to expire as scheduled, if provisions designed to limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) were also extended, and if annual appropriations kept pace with the growth of GDP, by 2020 the budget deficit would be growing steadily. In that case, debt held by the public would reach almost 90 percent of GDP in 2020."
