The stakes in the political stalemate over the US’s looming “fiscal cliff” are rising, with the country facing a much deeper contraction in economic activity early next year than previously estimated.
That was the message from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency that calculates the impact of legislation on the finances of the US government, in its semi-annual report on the economic and budgetary outlook.
The CBO said that if Congress took no action by January 1 – and a series of tax increases and spending cuts took effect as planned under current law – the US economy would be plunged into a double-dip recession, shrinking at a pace of 0.5 per cent in 2013.