[tvchurch]

Always hard to put these number in perspective.

Here's the one that worries me: Interest payments on the debt are projected to grow to 6.7 percent of GDP in thirty years (right now they're 1.9 percent and Social Security outlays are 4.9 percent).

Deficits are projected to be 10 percent of GDP then, meaning 2/3rds of our borrowing will be done to pay off existing borrowing. That's not good.

[sokoloff]

It’s not like the latter division is an obviously stable way to analyze the issue.

If we just ran a larger deficit, say 27% of GDP, that ratio would be (temporarily) much lower at only 25% of new borrowing. But that wouldn’t be obviously “better”.