From the Political article:

White House officials say their goal is to keep deficits stable relative to the gross domestic product and bring the long-term debt down slightly. The $474 billion deficit for next year would be about 2.5 percent of GDP, and it would end up in about the same place for 2025 even though the dollar amount would rise to $687 billion. The federal debt — the cumulative total of deficits that the government owes — would start at 75 percent of GDP in 2016 and ease down to 73.3 percent in 2025.

We can't afford "deficits stable relative to the gross domestic product". We can't afford to add, on average, another half a trillion dollars to our debt every year for the next ten years. 

This would take the federal debt from $18 trillion to $23 trillion.

This doesn't address the tens of trillions of dollars we have in unfunded future liabilities from the Social Security and Medicare programs.


The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory. - Paul Fix