Even with the new spending restraints in the debt limit deal that cut borrowing by $1.5 trillion, the U.S. government’s deficits are still on course to keep climbing to record levels over the next few decades.

The projections are a sign that the two-year truce between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., might be only a pause before a far more wrenching set of showdowns over the federal budget.

The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the agreement would reduce spending by $1.3 trillion and interest payments by $188 billion over 10 years. But that sum is too modest to fully offset the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Both Biden and McCarthy ruled out any cuts to Social Security and Medicare, two programs that benefit older voters, before their teams even began their budget talks. That omission reflects the politics around two popular programs as Democrats and Republicans prepare for next year’s presidential election.

It also means the agreement finalized on Sunday keeps the risk of ever-escalating debt on the table, setting up the possibility of another bruising battle when the debt limit needs to be raised again in 2025. “You should think of this as one step,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “The question is, can they take the next step after that?” Lawmakers know there are difficult choices ahead and that the only way through them likely involves some combination of deep spending cuts, broad tax hikes and major changes to the retirement income and health care programs that consume an ever-growing share of federal spending.

Mandatory spending — which includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — already account for the majority of government spending. That category is equal in size to 14% of U.S. gross domestic product, and the CBO expects it will grow to 15.6% by 2023. By contrast, discretionary spending was 6.5% of gross domestic product last year and was already projected to fall to 6% within 10 years. Goldwein said he’s optimistic that leaders in both parties will find ways to reduce the growth in spending for health care programs. Social Security will also face a reckoning as its trust fund will be unable to pay out full benefits within a decade.

But some budget experts saw the deal as more focused on optics than sustainability. “This debt limit agreement is shaking out to be a political face-saving deal without much substance in terms of changing the U.S. debt trajectory,” said Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute.

The agreement, which still has to be approved by Congress, would hold discretionary spending essentially flat for the coming year, while allowing increases for military and veterans accounts. Spending growth would be capped at 1% for 2025, essentially a cut given the likely rate of inflation.

Some Democratic allies see the deal as problematic because it cedes ground to Republicans who want to use the debt limit fight as an opportunity to press their policy aims, despite the risk of a default. “Looking forward, we must find a path to abolish the debt ceiling and end the absurd debt ceiling hostage-taking that Republicans engage in when they can use it as a bludgeon against a Democratic president,” said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank.

Other economic analysts took issue with GOP suggestions that the U.S. was already hamstrung by debt, even though investors continue, for the moment, to buy Treasury notes. While total federal debt — including money the government owes itself — exceeds $31 trillion, the U.S. economy possesses more than $143 trillion worth of non-financial assets in a sign that the current debt loads are manageable. “It is simply not true that the United States is broke and on the verge of a debt and deficit crisis,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the consultancy RSM U.S.

But even if there isn’t an immediate reckoning over debt, there is a long-term problem that the talks purposefully ignored. The president challenged Republicans to shield Social Security and Medicare from cuts at his State of the Union address in February. GOP lawmakers jeered him for suggesting they would dare to cut the programs, leading Biden to declare, “We’ve got unanimity.”

Biden specifically hailed the bipartisan agreement on Sunday for protecting Social Security and Medicare, while saying the agreement that must pass the House and Senate would prevent a possibly catastrophic default that could occur on June 5. “This is a deal that’s good news,” the president said, “for the American people.” Yet House members received a specific briefing in March indicating that entitlement programs would drive up the debt.

CBO director Phillip Swagel gave a presentation showing that publicly held debt would more than double to 195% of gross domestic product in 2053. The key challenge is that an aging population means that programs for older people have costs that exceed tax revenues. Swagel provided 17 policy options for reducing the debt, six of which were tax hikes that could raise trillions of dollars over 10 years.

Tax increases have been a nonstarter with Republicans, while Democrats have generally shied away from reductions to benefits. His slide deck included this warning: “The longer action is delayed, the larger the policy changes would need to be.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate approved legislation Tuesday to lift the nation’s debt limit by $2.5 trillion under a deal struck between party leaders, defusing a volatile issue until after next year’s midterm elections while saddling majority Democrats with a tough vote.

The 50-49 party line vote came just one day shy of a deadline set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who warned last month that she was running out of maneuvering room to avoid the nation’s first-ever default. The measure now moves to the House where a vote could come as early as Tuesday night, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk.

“This is about paying debt accumulated by both parties, so I’m pleased Republicans and Democrats came together,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the agreement, which created a workaround that allowed Democrats to avoid a Republican filibuster.

Despite a seemingly straightforward name, the nation’s debt limit does little to curtail future debt. Established in 1917, it instead serves as a brake on spending decisions already approved by Congress and the White House — some decades ago — that if left unpaid could cripple markets, send the economy into a tailspin and shake global confidence in the U.S.

That hasn’t stopped Republican saber-rattling. For months, they’ve used the debt limit to attack Democrats’ big-spending social and environmental agenda while pledging to staunchly oppose the current effort to increase the threshold. As recently as October, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would not “be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement.”

In striking a deal, McConnell backtracked on his word. But he also got much of what he wanted: Democrats taking a politically difficult vote without Republican support, while increasing the limit by a staggering dollar figure that is sure to appear in future attack ads.

“If they jam through another taxing and spending spree this massive debt increase will just be the beginning,” the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday.

The decision, however, has proven unpopular with some Republicans, particularly Donald Trump.

The former president has railed against the deal repeatedly, calling McConnell a “Broken Old Crow” who “didn’t have the guts to play the Debt Ceiling card, which would have given the Republicans a complete victory on virtually everything.”

“GET RID OF MITCH!” Trump said in a statement issued Sunday.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah also criticized the intricate process Schumer and McConnell agreed to, which he warned could be used in the future to “launder” potentially unpopular votes while bypassing the Senate’s normal mode of operation.

Under the agreement, an amendment was made to an unrelated Medicare bill that passed last week with Republican votes. It created a one-time, fast-track process for raising the debt limit that allowed Democrats to do so with a simple majority, bypassing the 60 vote threshold to avoid a GOP filibuster.

Lee said the process was intended to make the Republican votes last week “appear as something other than helping Democrats raise the debt ceiling,” which he said Republican leadership “committed, in writing no less, not to do.”

Yet Republican arguments against debt limit increases often ignore inconvenient facts.

The nation’s current debt load of $28.9 trillion has been racking up for decades. Major drivers include popular spending programs, like Social Security and Medicare, interest on the debt and recent COVID-19 relief packages. But taxation is also a major factor, and a series of tax cuts enacted by Republican presidents in recent decades has added to it, too.

The national debt includes $7.8 trillion heaped onto the pile during Trump’s four-year presidency, an analysis of Treasury records shows. The GOP-championed 2017 tax cut is projected to add between $1 trillion and $2 trillion to the debt, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

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