Show results as
Debt held by the public, 2036 (% of GDP)
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Deficits, 2027–2036
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Deficit, 2036 (% of GDP)
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Net interest share of revenues, 2036
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Debt held by the public
Percentage of GDP, fiscal years
THB US Deficit and Debt Explorer
Economic and policy assumptions, applied to CBO's February 2026 baseline for fiscal years 2027 through 2036.
Assumptions and results compared with the CBO baseline
Economic assumptions as 2027–2036 averages; budget amounts in billions of dollars for fiscal year 2036
Sources of change in deficits, 2027–2036
Billions of dollars, with each group of assumptions run alone against CBO's baseline and the remainder shown as interactions
The federal budget in 2036
Billions of dollars, fiscal year 2036
Method
Baseline
Each slider shows CBO's baseline value beside the scenario value, with economic assumptions as 2027–2036 averages and budget amounts for fiscal year 2036. The tool starts from CBO's February 2026 baseline for deficits, debt and GDP in fiscal years 2025 through 2036. Annual amounts for each revenue and spending category in 2026 through 2036 come from the 10-year baseline file CBO posts in its eval-projections repository; the categories sum to CBO's annual deficits. Other revenues combine excise, estate and gift taxes and miscellaneous receipts; other mandatory programs include CHIP, marketplace subsidies and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For fiscal year 2025, the tool uses CBO's reported actual totals and splits Medicaid from CHIP and marketplace subsidies in the 2026 proportion. The tool applies all changes starting in fiscal year 2027.
Dollars and inflation adjustment
The Share of GDP, Dollars and Inflation-adjusted dollars buttons switch the headline results and the debt, deficit and net interest charts between percentages and dollar amounts. Dollar figures carry CBO's nominal projections.
Inflation-adjusted figures divide each year's nominal amount by a price index that starts at 1 in 2026. The index follows CBO's baseline GDP price index, the ratio of nominal to real GDP, and compounds any change on the inflation slider from 2027 onward, so a higher inflation setting lowers the real value of debt and deficits. The ten-year deficit total sums each year's adjusted deficit, and the uncertainty band adjusts each draw by that draw's own inflation path.
Economic assumptions
Productivity, labor force, inflation and interest rate effects come from CBO's April 2026 rules of thumb and the Excel model CBO posts on GitHub, including CBO's interest rate and debt service matrices. With each assumption run alone at the ends of CBO's tested ranges (±0.5 point for productivity, ±0.75 point for labor force growth and ±1 point for inflation and interest rates), the tool reproduces the cumulative deficit effects in CBO's workbook to within 2 percent, and the tool flags scenarios outside those ranges. CBO's published inflation rule moves interest rates up with inflation; the tool keeps the two levers separate, so a combined scenario requires changes to both.
The tool converts a 1-point rise in labor force participation by 2036 into faster labor force growth of about 0.16 point a year, based on CBO's 2026 participation rate of about 62.2 percent (a 172.3 million labor force out of a civilian noninstitutionalized population of 277 million), before a small wage feedback in CBO's model. CBO holds population at its projected path in the labor force rule, so higher participation means more workers with no added beneficiaries. CBO's January 2026 demographic projections put net immigration at 570,000 people in 2026, rising to 1.2 million in 2035; the immigration lever adds to that path. For immigration, the tool adds residents, a share of whom (0.6 by default) join the labor force, along with federal mandatory costs per added resident ($1,000 a year in 2027 dollars by default, growing with GDP). The tool generates about $14,000 a year in revenue per added resident, in the same range as CBO's 2024 estimate of $1.2 trillion in revenue from the 2021–2026 immigration surge. The tool shows smaller net savings than CBO's surge estimate because CBO builds higher interest rates into its labor force rule.
Feedback options
CBO treats interest rates as independent of debt in its rules of thumb. With the optional debt response, the tool raises all rates by the chosen number of basis points for each percentage point of debt-to-GDP above the baseline path, with a one-year lag; CBO puts the effect at 2 to 3 basis points. With the crowding-out option, the tool lowers GDP by 0.033 percent in the following year for each percentage point of added debt-to-GDP, consistent with CBO's central estimate that each dollar of added deficit displaces 33 cents of private investment.
Policy assumptions
The tool applies tax and spending changes as percentages of CBO's baseline amounts by category, without behavioral responses. It compounds excess cost growth annually on Medicare and Medicaid. CBO projects exhaustion of the Social Security retirement trust fund in fiscal year 2032; with the payable-benefits option, the tool cuts total Social Security outlays by the chosen share from the chosen year. The tool estimates a $3.3 trillion reduction in 2036 debt from a 24 percent cut starting in 2032, near CBO's $3.4 trillion projection for benefits limited to revenue, as reported by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Plain-English description
The Interpret my Scenario button under the chart opens a description built from the scenario settings and results, and the PNG and PDF downloads include it. Historical comparisons use CBO's actual budget figures as shares of GDP (revenues from 1982; debt, deficits and outlays from 1984; Social Security, Medicare and net interest from 1992; discretionary spending from 1998) and CBO's figure of 106 percent of GDP for debt held by the public in 1946. Political notes come from past laws and votes and include no forecasts. The final part of the description, a realism judgment, follows the rules in the next section.
Realism judgment
The realism judgment rates a scenario on four levels: realistic, a stretch, unlikely and far outside experience. Each setting the reader changes gets a level from the rules below, and the scenario gets the level of its least realistic setting, one level worse when two or more settings rate a stretch or worse. A setting covered by more than one rule counts once, at its worst level. For tax and spending settings, the table's percentages give the slider value: the change from CBO's baseline amount. Settings left at CBO's values, and changes too small for any rule, count as realistic.
| Setting | Measured against | Realistic | A stretch | Unlikely | Far outside experience |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Productivity, participation, inflation, interest rates | Standard deviations of the uncertainty band; participation converted to labor force growth | Up to 0.5 | Up to 1 | Up to 2 | Beyond 2 |
| Net immigration | Shift as a share of the rise across CBO's projected path | Up to 25% | Up to 50% | Up to 100% | Beyond 100% |
| Interest rate response to debt | CBO's estimate of 2 to 3 basis points | Up to 3 bp | – | Above 3 bp | – |
| Excess cost growth in health care | Points a year | Up to 0.2 | Up to 0.5 | Up to 1 | Beyond 1 |
| Tax and spending changes together | Annual size as a share of GDP against the 2011 Budget Control Act (1.1%) for deficit cuts or the 2025 tax and spending law (0.9%) for deficit increases | Up to 25% of the law | Up to 50% | Up to 100% | Beyond 100% |
| Individual income tax increase | Percent of CBO's baseline receipts | – | Up to 3% | Up to 10% | Beyond 10% |
| Payroll tax increase | Rate unchanged since 1990 | – | – | Up to 5% | Beyond 5% |
| Corporate income tax increase | 2021 plan to raise the rate did not pass | – | Up to 10% | Up to 25% | Beyond 25% |
| Defense or nondefense cut | 2011 caps raised in later budget deals | – | Up to 3% | Up to 10% | Beyond 10% |
| Social Security benefit cut | No law has cut benefits for current retirees | – | – | Up to 2% | Beyond 2% |
| Social Security benefit increase | Recent increases such as the 2025 Social Security Fairness Act | Up to 2% | Up to 5% | Up to 10% | Beyond 10% |
| Benefits limited to trust fund income | Congress has always acted before a trust fund emptied | – | – | Always | – |
| Medicare cut | Payment cuts postponed for decades | – | Up to 2% | Up to 5% | Beyond 5% |
| Medicaid cut | Cuts already in CBO's baseline | – | Up to 3% | Up to 10% | Beyond 10% |
| Revenue or spending category | Distance beyond both CBO's baseline and the category's historical range | Up to 2% | Up to 10% | Up to 25% | Beyond 25% |
| Total revenues | Distance above both CBO's baseline and the record since 1982 | – | – | Up to 5% | Beyond 5% |
| No recession in ten years | Only two US expansions, 1991–2001 and 2009–2020, have lasted ten years | – | Always | – | – |
The rules rest on three yardsticks: the spread of the tool's uncertainty band for the economy, the size of past laws for tax and spending packages, and what Congress has and has not enacted for each kind of change. A scenario with no recession rates at least a stretch, but that rule does not count toward the two-setting step. Read the verdict as a rule of thumb, not a forecast.
Recession and uncertainty
In a recession, the tool sets output below baseline by the chosen depth in the first year, 60 percent of that depth in the second year and 30 percent in the third year. It reduces revenues with an elasticity of 1.3 to output and adds automatic-stabilizer spending of 0.1 percent of GDP per point of output gap. For the uncertainty band, the tool runs 400 draws that add persistent random shifts to productivity growth (standard deviation 0.25 point), labor force growth (0.15 point), inflation (0.4 point) and interest rates (0.6 point) on top of the chosen scenario, and plots the 10th to 90th percentiles of the results.
Source: analysis by Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker. Data from the Congressional Budget Office.