We find this common GOP claim to be false. In his recent appearance on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Senator McConnell was quoting a two year-old talking point as if it was still accurate in 2010.

As reported by FactCheck.org, Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, said that the "five years" and "ten years" in question began in fiscal year 2008, when the debt held by the public was $5.8 trillion.

It seems fair to us to apply McConnell's statement to reality in 2010, since he just made the claim last Sunday. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the national debt will grow from $9 trillion at the end of 2010 to reach $12 trillion by 2015 (a 39% increase), and $16 trillion in 2020 (a 78% increase), assuming the CBO's baseline scenario. The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan organization that does not make policy recommendations. Both parties rely on their fiscal and economic data to support their agendas.

While these numbers are certainly large, they are much smaller than those McConnell has suggested. Even measuring from 2008, the year from which this talking point originated, McConnell's claim is larger than the CBO's baseline projection.

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We find this common GOP claim to be false. In his recent appearance on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Senator McConnell was quoting a two year-old talking point as if it was still accurate in 2010.

As reported by FactCheck.org, Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, said that the "five years" and "ten years" in question began in fiscal year 2008, when the debt held by the public was $5.8 trillion.

It seems fair to us to apply McConnell's statement to reality in 2010, since he just made the claim last Sunday. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the national debt will grow from $9 trillion at the end of 2010 to reach $12 trillion by 2015 (a 39% increase), and $16 trillion in 2020 (a 78% increase), assuming the CBO's baseline scenario. The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan organization that does not make policy recommendations. Both parties rely on their fiscal and economic data to support their agendas.

While these numbers are certainly large, they are much smaller than those McConnell has suggested. Even measuring from 2008, the year from which this talking point originated, McConnell's claim is larger than the CBO's baseline projection.

The CBO's baseline projection assumes no changes in the current law, which would let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. This bump in tax revenues factors significantly into their estimates. The report says that, under that baseline scenario, "debt held by the public would reach about 80 percent of GDP by 2035." Under the alternative scenario, which assumes that current law would be changed to extend the Bush tax cuts, "debt held by the public would soar to 185 percent of GDP by 2035." Another CBO brief from summer 2010 stated that "debt would equal nearly 90 percent of GDP" by 2020 under the alternative scenario. These are all substantial increases as a percentage of GDP, but they still do not support McConnell's assertions.

Over the past couple years, McConnell and other GOP leaders have repeatedly made the same claim, but we cannot find any factual evidence to support their projections. In fact, it appears that we're "on a path to" a debt that would be much smaller than they claim, unless the Republican effort to extend the Bush tax cuts changes the current policy. And even then, it would be hard to support McConnell's forecast.

Given McConnell's outdated talking point, the CBO's much lower baseline projection, and the current fiscal policies set to restore the upper tax brackets to their pre-2003 levels, we find McConnell's statement to be false.

-- Jon Mitchell and Fabrice Florin, on behalf of NewsTrust editors
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