However, even after economic and financial conditions have returned to normal, the federal budget will remain on an unsustainable path, with the budget gap becoming increasingly large over time, unless the Congress enacts significant changes in fiscal programs.
For example, under plausible assumptions about how fiscal policies might evolve in the absence of major legislative changes, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the deficit to fall from around 9 percent of GDP currently to roughly 5 percent of GDP by 2015,  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  but then to rise to about 6–1/2 percent of GDP by the end of the decade.