Thomas Donlan‘s latest editorial commentary for Barron’s explores the latest projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The American debt problem was almost entirely ignored at the Republican National Convention last week, and we can expect nothing more when the Democrats gather this week.

Both parties support the entitlement spending system and the decrepit tax system that fails to support it. They compete on the fiscal side of politics with impossible promises to spend more and tax less. …

… The Congressional Budget Office issues a Long-Term Budget Outlook every year. To sum up this year’s report in one sentence, it says, “The federal budget outlook is projected to worsen considerably over the next three decades under current law, with debt growing larger in relation to the economy than ever recorded in U.S. history.”

By 2035, federal debt held by the public as a percentage of gross domestic product will surpass the peak of 106% set in 1946, and it will keep growing from there.

Here are the CBO’s basic expectations:

• Federal debt is projected to rise from about 75% of GDP to about 122% in 2040 and 141% in 2046. (It’s actually much worse, because the CBO is using federal debt held by the public, which does not include Social Security and other intragovernmental trust funds. Those trust funds hold Treasury securities as assets, but they will have to redeem them to discharge their liabilities to beneficiaries. Gross federal debt, which includes the trust funds, is already greater than the GDP.)

• The outlook worsened substantially from the 2015 report, which projected debt of 107% of GDP in 2040. (The difference comes partly from increased irresponsibility: At the end of last year, Congress passed and the president signed a bill that made permanent a variety of supposedly temporary tax cuts, thus reducing 30 years’ worth of projected revenues.)

• GDP growth, adjusted for inflation and population growth, is likely to be slower than the average over the past three decades, and the country also isn’t likely to see any faster growth in productivity or wages or hours worked.

• Federal spending on health care, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, is projected to keep growing faster than GDP, faster than the number of program beneficiaries, and faster than spending on other programs.