The Congressional Budget Office regularly publishes reports presenting projections of what federal budget deficits, debt, revenues, and spending—and the economic path underlying them—would be for the current year and for the following 10 years if current laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. For this report, the latest in the series, the projections are based on the laws in effect as of January 12, 2021. CBO’s economic assessment is identical to the forecast the
agency published on February 1, 2021.

• Deficits. CBO projects a federal budget deficit of $2.3 trillion in 2021, nearly $900 billion less than the shortfall recorded in 2020. At 10.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the deficit in 2021 would be the second largest since 1945, exceeded only by the 14.9 percent shortfall recorded last year. Those deficits, which were already projected to be large by historical standards before the onset of the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic, have widened significantly as a result of the economic disruption caused by the pandemic and the enactment of legislation in response.

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