Will Washington prove Mayans right?

Turns out that supposed ancient Mayan prophesy wasn?t that far off ? except 2012 is only the date we learn that the end of times is coming. The actual year of reckoning is more likely 2035 ? and, while time will roll on as always, the planet?s largest and most important economy might not.

Under a worst-case scenario outlined in a new report, the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office ? Washington?s fiscal scorekeeper ? predict the US national debt could grow so gigantic over the coming years that economic growth would flatline in the 2020s. Then the economy would begin a gradual, long-term descent. A gentle glide path into the Greatest Depression.

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Paul Ryan

Until the doomsday year of 2035. At that point, the debt is so monstrously massive ? 250 percent of the GDP vs. 73 percent today ? that the budget brainiacs? computer forecasting model goes kaput. Or, as the CBO puts it: ?[Our] model cannot reliably estimate output after debt reaches that amount, in the agency?s judgment.?

In other words, it?s like that 16th-century map that marked the Terra Incognita beyond the known world with the Latin phraseHic Sunt Dracones: Here Be Dragons.

What exactly would come next is anybody?s guess ? but it isn?t good.

Still, the future isn?t a complete mystery, thanks to the European debt crisis. Just as the Greeks, Italians and Spaniards were the globe?s leading geographic explorers of the past, they are the world?s leading financial explorers today ? venturing into heretofore unforeseen realms of reckless spending and debt.

And we don?t need Mayan mystics or modern computer models to know how that?s working out. The eurozone is slipping back into a recession; if its debt crisis continues to spiral, a depression could be next.

Where Old Europe goes, America might well follow. Indeed, the CBO warns that the approaching deluge of red ink would ?increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which the government would lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates.?

Big Government?s big spenders, as Margaret Thatcher once warned always happens, would finally have ?run out of other people?s money.? Then comes the sudden, awful austerity of draconian spending cuts and crippling tax increases.

Of course, the worst-case scenario isn?t necessarily the most likely scenario. But that one isn?t much better. Under the CBO?s ?alternative fiscal scenario? ? which assumes Washington doesn?t suddenly find fiscal religion by, say, adopting Rep. Paul Ryan?s debt-busting plan ? the agency predicts debt will climb to 93 percent of output by 2022.

That?s already high enough ? according to one recent and highly regarded study ? to slow economic growth so much that the economy would be 25 percent smaller two decades from now than otherwise.

But the CBO is merely acting like the Ghost of Christmas Future, showing only the shadow of things that may be rather than what will be. As Scrooge said hopefully in ?A Christmas Carol,? ?If the courses be departed from, the ends will change.?

On the other hand, such top liberal economists as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers are recommending that we stay the course, by doubling down with another mega-stimulus plan to boost growth. Indeed, the only economic mistake Team Obama will even quietly concede to having made is that the $831 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should?ve been much, much bigger.

Who knows? If a eurozone collapse spreads to America later this year, a panicky Washington might just be up for a replay of the spending binge of 2008 and 2009. Except the US debt situation is twice as bad as it was back then; financial markets might not be so acquiescent this time around. Interest rates could spike. The dollar could drop. Welcome to Great Recession 2.0 ? or worse.

Doomsday 2012? The Mayans might have been right after all.

James Pethokoukis is editor of The American Enterprise Institute?s Enterprise blog.

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