‘This report by CBO presents an analysis of the proposals in the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2016. The analysis is based on CBO’s economic projections and estimating models (rather than on the Administration’s), and it incorporates estimates of the effects of the President’s tax proposals that were prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). What Is Projected to Happen to Federal Deficits and Debt Under Current Law? In conjunction with analyzing the President’s budget, CBO has updated its baseline budget projections, which were previously issued in January 2015. Those projections largely reflect the assumption that current tax and spending laws will remain unchanged; they thereby provide a benchmark against which the President’s proposals and other potential legislation can be measured. According to CBO’s current baseline projections, under current law, the federal deficit will be $486 billion in 2015 and the cumulative deficit over the 2016–2025 period will total $7.2 trillion. The deficit is projected to be 2.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, to decline to 2.4 percent of GDP in 2016 and remain at about that level for the next two years, and then to increase relative to the size of the economy, reaching 3.8 percent of GDP in 2025. Federal debt held by the public, which amounted to 74 percent of GDP at the end of 2014, is projected to reach 77 percent of GDP in 2025; it was less than 50 percent of GDP in every year between 1957 and 2008.”