{"id":234,"date":"2026-05-27T16:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=234"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:40:24","slug":"if-hemingway-wrote-for-the-congressional-budget-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=234","title":{"rendered":"If Hemingway wrote for the Congressional Budget Office"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Two or three times every year, the Congressional Budget Office publishes one of the most revealing documents in American public life: \u201cThe Budget and Economic Outlook.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It is the closest thing Washington produces to an official glimpse into the country\u2019s fiscal future.\u00a0\u00a0It tells us where the federal debt is headed, what will drive federal spending, how fast the economy may grow, and whether the federal government is moving toward sustainability or (almost always) away from it.<\/p>

Read more Not everything, and everyone, is terrible<\/a><\/p>\n

Almost nobody reads it.<\/p>\n

That is understandable.\u00a0\u00a0The latest report is 173 pages long, dense with tables, institutional caveats, and the carefully sterilized prose of modern technocracy.\u00a0\u00a0It is written to avoid excitement.\u00a0\u00a0It succeeds.<\/p>\n

After decades of reading budget documents that vanish almost as quickly as they appear, I wondered whether something important gets lost in the language itself.\u00a0\u00a0The emotional reality rarely reaches the public.<\/p>\n

So I tried an experiment: rendering part of the CBO\u2019s latest outlook in the spare, declarative style Ernest Hemingway made famous \u2014 not to dramatize the numbers, not to distort them, but to make them feel real.<\/p>\n

The Budget and Economic Outlook<\/p>\n

February 2026<\/p>\n

The report was long and full of numbers.\u00a0\u00a0Men in Washington spoke calmly about trillions the way old gamblers speak about whiskey.\u00a0\u00a0The numbers were large enough that they stopped meaning anything, and yet they meant everything.<\/p>\n

America was still rich.\u00a0\u00a0The economy still grew.\u00a0\u00a0Men still worked.\u00a0\u00a0Stores still sold things.\u00a0\u00a0The stock market still opened every morning.\u00a0\u00a0But beneath it there was the steady sound of borrowing.\u00a0\u00a0Like water running under thin ice.<\/p>\n

The government would spend $7.4 trillion in 2026 and take in only $5.6 trillion.\u00a0\u00a0By 2036 the debt would rise beyond anything the country had ever known, even after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

In good times and bad, the government had always spent more than it took in.\u00a0\u00a0But not like this.<\/p>\n

The old people would need their checks.\u00a0\u00a0The sick would need their care.\u00a0\u00a0Interest on the debt would grow larger every year.\u00a0\u00a0Nobody in the report sounded surprised by this.\u00a0\u00a0They wrote it the way farmers write about winter coming.<\/p>\n

The economy itself was not dying.\u00a0\u00a0Growth would continue, though slower than before.\u00a0\u00a0Inflation would cool.<\/p>\n

The Federal Reserve would lower rates modestly, but long-term borrowing costs would stay elevated \u2014 ensuring that interest on the debt would double over the decade, crowding out everything else government does.<\/p>

Read more The WNBA doesn\u2019t market\u2013Caitlin Clark?!<\/a><\/p>\n

There was even hope in the machines.<\/p>\n

The report spoke often of artificial intelligence.\u00a0\u00a0Businesses would invest in it.\u00a0\u00a0Productivity would rise because of it.\u00a0\u00a0Men would produce more with fewer hands and less time.\u00a0\u00a0The economists wrote this plainly, but you could feel the optimism underneath their careful language.<\/p>\n

But beneath everything was the deeper reality of age.\u00a0\u00a0There were more retirees every year and fewer workers beneath them.\u00a0\u00a0Medicare and Social Security rose steadily because demographics are stubborn things and arithmetic is stubborn too.<\/p>\n

The republic was not collapsing.\u00a0\u00a0The economy still moved.\u00a0\u00a0People still built things.\u00a0\u00a0Trucks still crossed the country in the dark before dawn.<\/p>\n

But the nation was living on borrowed money.<\/p>\n

And borrowed money always comes due.<\/p>\n

That, stripped of charts and institutional language, is what the CBO is telling us.<\/p>\n

The report is not apocalyptic.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, it forecasts economic growth, modestly falling short-term interest rates, and stronger productivity as A.I. spreads through the economy.<\/p>\n

But it also projects something historically unusual: trillion-dollar-plus deficits not during war or recession, but during years of relatively low unemployment \u2014 well above the 3.8 percent of GDP that deficits have averaged over the past fifty years.\u00a0\u00a0Debt held by the public rises from 101 percent of GDP in 2026 to 120 percent by 2036 \u2014 surpassing the previous record set after World War II.\u00a0\u00a0Over thirty years, the CBO projects debt reaching 175 percent of GDP.<\/p>\n

That does not mean immediate catastrophe.\u00a0\u00a0America remains wealthy, innovative, and extraordinarily resilient.<\/p>\n

But it does mean the country is entering an era in which interest costs, entitlement spending, and demographic pressures constrain the future.<\/p>\n

The tragedy is not that the warning goes unspoken.\u00a0\u00a0It is that it is spoken in a language almost nobody hears.<\/p>\n

James Carter served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury and chief economist of the Senate Budget Committee.\u00a0\u00a0He is a principal at Navigators Global.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Read more Artificial Intelligence and the Devil<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Image via PickPik.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two or three times every year, the Congressional Budget Office publishes one of the most revealing documents in American public life: \u201cThe Budget and Economic Outlook.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It is the closest thing Washington produces to an official glimpse into the country\u2019s fiscal future.\u00a0\u00a0It tells us where the federal debt is headed, what will drive federal spending, how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,49],"tags":[123],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-economy","tag-related-topics-economics-national-debt"],"yoast_head":"\nIf Hemingway wrote for the Congressional Budget Office - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=234\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If Hemingway wrote for the Congressional Budget Office - 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