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On Feb. 11, the Congressional Budget Office released its closely watched, 10-year projections for the U.S. budget, this addition covering fiscal years 2026 to 2035. As expected, the numbers were extremely dire, positing deficits and debt that by the decade’s close respectively reach 6.5% and 120% of GDP. The sundry economists and think tanks that evaluated the numbers, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, called the forecast a stern warning and our current course unsustainable. The trend sounding the loudest alarm: an explosion in interest costs that even today account for almost one-fifth of all U.S. spending.
Then came the war in Iran.
The conflict is pushing the accelerator on a train that already risked hopping the tracks. Though the conflict’s costs over its first 10 days are immense, the budget burden would be relatively light were it to end in, say, the next few days, or a week. In his Florida press conference on March 9, President Trump avowed, “The war is very complete” and should conclude “soon.” But should the the U.S. and Israel’s joint campaign to crush Iran’s nuclear program and erase its capacity to fire ballistic missiles and “kamikaze” drones drag on for even several more weeks, the damage to America’s fragile finances will prove substantial. Especially when you add a second blow that fell a week before the onslaught on Iran—the probable lost revenue arising from the Supreme Court’s decision to Read Entire Article
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