Lies, damned lies and budget projections

So how much should we believe the projections that the CBO gives us about the debt ten years hence?  Well this is what they forecast ten years ago:


In any event, since so much is being made by the administration of CBO’s prowess at “basic U.S. fiscal budget math” in arriving at ten-year forecasts, thanks are in order to Zero Hedge, which dug out CBO’s 2001 forecast of where we’d be today. According to CBO, we were going to be sitting pretty: The debt would essentially be paid off (except for holders of bonds that hadn’t matured yet), the debt-to-GDP ratio would be a tiny 4.8%, Treasury would be in the black — holding $2.4 trillion more in uncommitted funds than it owed in debt obligations, and Leviathan would be collecting 2011 budget surplus of $889 billion!

Thanks to Andy McCarthy of NRO