Washington, D.C. – Today, House Armed Services Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) released the following statement about today’s report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assessing that the U.S. budget deficit will reach record levels by the mid-2030s and interest payments could double as a percentage of GDP:

“I am seriously concerned by the CBO’s finding that the national debt will break record levels and become ‘the highest in the nation’s history by far’ in the early 2030s, due to the tax cuts and spending increases Congress has passed over the previous two years. If we are worried about having an economy and a defense establishment that can compete with China and other global powers in the 2020s and 2030s, then enacting a massive, unpaid-for tax cut that will put us in a terrible position was the absolute worst thing we could do.

“President Trump and the Republicans’ extremely reckless tax cuts, combined with our ongoing unwillingness to make strategic choices about how we spend our defense dollars, will end up forcing unpleasant national security trade-offs at precisely the time we are expecting increased strategic competition. We are constantly told that we need to do everything we can to prepare for these challenges. But instead, Congress has put us in a massive hole, and those deficits will hurt the military at a time when it is most problematic.”

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