Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its new ten-year forecast of how much debt Uncle Sam will accumulate based on its projected spending and revenue estimates. Not surprisingly, CBO reports that under the current system budget deficits will grow rapidly in the next ten years, reaching $1 trillion in 2024 and $1.2 trillion in 2026. The report also shows that the deficit will grow by 35 percent over last year — growing from $438 billion to $590 billion. That means the debt will rise from $14 trillion to $23 trillion by 2026, or from 77 percent to 86 percent of GDP.

Focusing on the debt and deficits unfortunately tends to hide the real culprit behind the growth: spending. Debt and deficits are only symptoms of too much spending. As CBO shows, spending will grow from 21.1 percent of GDP in 2016 to 23.1 percent in 2026. But revenues will rise from 17.8 percent in 2016 to 18.5 percent by 2026.

Most (over 80 percent) of the spending growth comes in just three areas: Social Security, health-care spending, and interest on the debt.

The report also has some important data on employment: The share of the population that is employed (arguably the best measure of the health of the labor market) is projected to fall to 57 percent in 2026 from its current 59 percent.

Labor-force participation will fall to 60 percent in 2026 from its current 63 percent level — in large part due to the retirement of the Baby Boomers. But CBO adds that other factors also precipitate that fall in the short run:

Federal tax and spending policies are expected to lower participation rates slightly over the next several years. In particular, the amount of labor that people are willing to supply is projected to continue to decline over the next few years as people continue adjusting their employment circumstances in response to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The structure of the tax code, which pushes some people with rising income into higher tax brackets, will also lower participation rates over the next decade. Finally, long-term trends involving particular groups of people are projected to push down the participation rate slightly. Those trends include, for example, declining labor force participation rates by younger and less educated workers.

Importantly, the report shows that relatively small policy changes could be implemented in order to improve our deficit outlook in the next ten years. Simply freezing discretionary spending would bring in a lot of savings:

Policymakers could vary discretionary funding from CBO’s baseline amounts. For example, if appropriations grew each year at the same rate as inflation after 2016, discretionary spending would be $717 billion above the baseline amount for the 2017–2026 period. If, by contrast, lawmakers kept appropriations at the nominal 2016 amount, total discretionary outlays would be $738 billion lower over that 10-year period.

That said, even if we implemented spending restraints and achieve a balanced budget within ten years, it would never last without significant entitlement reforms. But imagine the savings that would follow real reforms of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare subsidies.

CBO also notes that if Congress fails once again to maintain the Budget Control Act caps, spending would be even higher than currently projected:

If lawmakers chose to prevent those automatic cuts each year—starting in 2017— without making other changes that reduced spending, total outlays over the 2017–2026 period would be $897 billion (or about 2 percent) higher than the amounts in CBO’s baseline. Total discretionary outlays would be $768 billion (or 6 percent) higher, and outlays for mandatory programs—most of which are not subject to sequestration—would be $129 billion (or 0.4 percent) higher.

Is anyone listening?

Of course, CBO notes that not implementing Obamacare taxes would reduce tax collection. But the alternative scenarios on the revenue side don’t bring the same bang for the buck, especially since they also ignore many of the dynamic effects of having higher taxes (i.e., these taxes, once implemented, will probably not collect as much revenue as projected).

Now, while balancing the budget and reducing our debt would be great, my focus, ultimately, is in reducing the size and scope of the government — in particular, its spending. This is why I would rather see Congress adopt spending restraints (the disease causing our debt problem) rather than adopt balanced-budget measures (which can be achieved — on paper at least — by raising taxes or a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes).