(Brownstone Institute) If you don't think Washington is in the maws of a Fiscal Doomsday Machine, think again. And the place to start is with the 30-year CBO projections, expressed as the dollar increase from the current $29 trillion level of publicly held US Treasury debt.

If Washington does nothing except leave current tax, spending, and structural deficit policies in place (i.e. baseline policy), the publicly-held debt will grow by $102 trillion over the next three decades, reaching a staggering 154% of what would be $85 trillion of GDP by 2054.

Moreover, that outcome assumes that Rosy Scenario does not lose her footing for even a moment through the middle of the century. Stated differently, the underlying CBO projections presume that there will be no recession during the 34-year span from 2020 to 2054, and that, in fact, there will be perpetual full employment at about 4% from here on out.