As expected, a surprise:

And this is still before we know the impact of whatever health care plan the President and Congress come up with:

When the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their original estimate of President Obama’s Budget , they said it was going to be expensive: in ten years the President would accumulate over $9 trillion in deficits. Turns out, that was low-balling it…

At the request of Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), CBO recently redid their estimate assuming interest rates would not be held constant, and this more realistic scenario paints a very scary picture indeed.

Looking at three different interest rate scenarios, more accurate estimates of President Obama’s deficits would cost an additional $1.2 to $5.3 trillion, bringing the grand deficit-total to as much as $14 trillion.

Of course, any ten-year estimate depends on assumptions. Assumptions about, for example, economic growth. If the economy grows faster than the assumptions, then the deficits will be lower.

Thing is, given the taxes and the interest rates, the economy is less likely to grow faster. If I had to guess, I’d guess these estimates are still too low.