The United States will chalk up a wider budget deficit and higher national debt than projected by US President Barack Obama over the next decade, new estimates by Congress showed Friday.
Obama has underestimated the government budget deficit for the 2011-2020 period by 1.2 trillions dollars and the public debt by 1.8 trillion dollars, the Congressional Budget Office said.
Under Obama's latest budget projections, the cumulative deficit over the decade would be 8.532 trillion dollars, or 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, the nation's economic output.
But the CBO estimated Friday the deficit would snowball to 9.761 trillion dollars or 5.2 percent of GDP.
The CBO also forecast that the deficit for the next fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2011, would be 75 billion dollars higher than projected by the White House.
The White House had projected that deficit falling to 1.267 trillion dollars in 2011 from a record 1.556 trillion dollars in the current 2010 fiscal year.