PGPF Analysis of President Obama’s FY 2014 Budget

FOR RELEASE

Apr 19, 2013

CONTACT


Peter G. Peterson Foundation press@pgpf.org

Please click here for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s analysis of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget. The Foundation’s assesment: The President’s budget includes some policies that would begin to address the fundamental drivers of our long-term deficits, but its proposals are too modest to put the budget on a plausible and sustainable path for the long run.

Highlights

  • Federal net interest costs are projected to more than double, rising from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 2.9 percent of GDP in 2023. At that point, net interest would be the third largest category of federal spending after Social Security and Medicare.
  • The budget proposed by the President is similar to that of the Senate, and contains both revenue increases and substantial spending cuts.
  • Projections for the President’s budget show that discretionary spending would fall as a share of total spending, while mandatory spending would rise; this foreshadows important structural changes that will remake the federal budget as the baby boom generation retires and health care costs rise.

To read more, click here.

About the Peter G. Peterson Foundation
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization established by Pete Peterson – businessman, philanthropist, and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce. The Foundation is dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of key long-term fiscal challenges threatening America’s future and to accelerating action on them. To address these challenges successfully, we work to bring Americans together to find and implement sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results. To learn more, please visit www.PGPF.org.

Further Reading

Federal Reserve building

What Is Fiscal Dominance?

Fiscal dominance occurs when the national debt — and especially high interest costs — forces the hand of monetary policymakers.

Can We Grow Our Way Out of the National Debt?  

The gap between what economic growth can realistically deliver and what fiscal sustainability requires is too large to bridge without also addressing the structural imbalance between federal spending and revenues.