Do our leaders know that the deficit is NOT unsustainable?

[cthulu2016]

32. ??? (revisit what was being calculated)

You are right that the total debt is closer to 16.5 Trillion than 11.5 Trillion, counting the trust fund.

But leaving the trust fund out of the debt figure is nessecary because including it would make the sustainable deficit being calculated larger.

4% of 16.5 trillion is larger than 4% of 11.5 trillion.

What would have been eye-brow raising would be if he had NOT excluded the trust fund, which is a genuine fiscal concern but not something that adds or subtracts from the annual deficit.

How does this compare with the deficit consistent with fiscal sustainability? Well, there’s about $11.5 trillion in federal debt in the hands of the public. A reasonable, indeed fairly conservative guess is that nominal GDP will in future grow by 4 percent per year, half from real growth and half from inflation. This means that the sustainable deficit is 4 percent of $11.5 trillion, or $460 billion. Hey, we’re there!