Build a Responsible Federal Budget With Our New Debt Fixer Tool

Now that President Trump has unveiled his full budget proposal and Congress is working on its own budget resolution, CRFB is launching a new tool that makes it easy to create your own budget and see if you can do better than lawmakers at putting the country on a sustainable fiscal path. The Debt Fixer lets you make the types of budget choices that lawmakers face and see how the decisions affect the national debt in the near and long term.

Watch the video of our live chat showing how the new tool works.

Federal debt held by the public is currently 77 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), nearly twice the 40 percent averaged over the last 50 years. The growing gap between federal spending and revenue will continue to push debt upward, with debt projected to reach 89 percent of GDP by 2027 and an all-time high of 107 percent by 2035.

Changing course will require halting the rise of the debt as a share of the economy in the medium term and bringing the debt down to its historical levels in the longer term. Stabilizing debt at 70 percent of GDP by 2027 will require more than $4.3 trillion in savings over 10 years, while bringing debt in 2050 down to its historical average will require savings equal to 118 percent of GDP. Meeting these goals and improving our fiscal outlook will require reductions in spending, increases in revenue, or some combination of the two.

The Debt Fixer lets you make changes to health care, reform taxes, improve Social Security, decide the future of the military, and much more. And you can see how policies like repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") or some of the options in the president’s budget will affect the debt.

The new tool succeeds our extremely popular “Stabilize the Debt” budget simulator, which was viewed more than 965,000 times and used by students, policymakers, and Americans of all stripes to get a better understanding of our fiscal challenges and what it will take to address them.

New and improved features in the Debt Fixer include:

• New and timely options, including several proposals from President Trump’s budget, and changes to health care and taxes;
• An enhanced focus on the long-term implications of budget choices;
• A sleek and easy-to-use interface;
• The opportunity to share your experience with your representatives in Congress; and
• The ability to use the tool on a variety of devices.

If you’ve been frustrated by lawmakers' inability to agree on a budget and deal with rising national debt and ever thought you could do better, here’s your chance.

Click here to check out the Debt Fixer, and see our other interactive tools here.