The latest Congressional Budget Office forecast on debt and deficits over the next 30 years is plenty scary. It shows the debt as a share of our GDP catapulting to ever all time highs. The WSJ did a long column on the gloom and doom forecast.

If we believed any of this, we’d be jumping out of windows too. But it’s the prototype example of the old yarn: never assume; because when you do you make an ass out of you and me.

We’ve covered this before. The CBO keeps forecasting an annual economic growth rate of about 1.8% for the next few decades. This is only slightly more than half the yearly U.S. growth rate for the past 100 years. They predicted 2% growth last year and yet the last three quarters were twice that high.

Have they ever heard of AI? Have they heard of robotics?

If we can achieve sustained economic growth of 3% or 3.5%, the debt picture would look very different.

If we grow at 3%, the debt curve bends down, and if we grow at 3.5% we pay off the debt in 30 years. We don’t see any reason that can’t be achieved just by continuing Trump’s policies on taxes, deregulation, and energy.