The latest long term budget projections from the Congressional Budget Office assume that unemployment will be very high for years to come.

As the chart shows the interest to GDP ratio is currently at a crushing 1.3 percent, near the post World War II low. However this figure overstates the burden somewhat. Last year the Federal Reserve Board refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. This was interest earned on government bonds and other assets it now holds. That leaves a net interest burden of 0.8 percent of GDP, by far the lowest of the post World War II era.

The Congressional Budget Office is out with a new report about the projected long term solvency of Social Security. The report reaffirms the basic fact that it will be roughly 27 years until the Social Security Trust Fund is exhausted.

There is a chance, if the economy slows, that a $2.1 trillion debt ceiling increase won’t be large enough to take us past the 2012 election. Even if this deal passes, we may see a repeat of this debt ceiling fight right in the middle of the election season.

Ho hum. Here we are once again. The weekly report of Initial Unemployment Claims is out, jobless claims for last week are up “more than expected,” the figures from last week’s report have been revised upwards again, economists are surprised and water is wet.

Paul Ryan’s Republican budget plan would privatize Medicare and dramatically slash Medicaid over time. The result: senior citizens, poor children and the disabled paying dramatically more for care, getting worse health insurance coverage and/or losing coverage altogether.

It is not unusual for politicians to lie, but, in his efforts to repeal health care reform, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has turned it into a metaphysical art form.

The CBO report makes it clear that unemployment insurance is not about a bunch of poor people suckling at the federal teat. It’s about keeping families from slipping into poverty.

Nevertheless, the GOP will continue to mobilize classist and racist narratives to make sure this useful benefit is not extended.

After going to one of the AmericaSpeaks community conversations Saturday, I’m even more confident that the deficit crisis being promoted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, AmericaSpeaks, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and the Obama Administration, as well of much the world’s global elite is a fantasy. There is no truth to it, and it is a dangerous fantasy, because if one believes it, then that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The austerity they recommend for the long-term can make the slow growth and difficult times they project come true. It can catch us all in a nightmare of their making. The “reasoning” behind their fantasy is simple enough.

The Congressional Budget Office just revised upwards the projected cost of the new health care law by $115 billion, a law written, supported, and sold to Americans by PhRMA and the for-profit hospitals. Until Congress is actually willing to take on these groups directly, we regular Americans will continue to get ripped off. . . and our deficit will continue to increase.