Two Years of the Shelf Project

A. The Impending Tax Crisis The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal budget deficit for 2009 will total $1.6 trillion, or 11.2 percent of GDP.[1] Over the coming decade, federal spending will average twice that (22.5 percent of GDP) without much chance of finding significant amounts of unpopular spending that we can cut.[2] Looking solely at 2009, federal taxes account for only half of government spending. By that measure,…