The CBO released their budget estimates for the next ten years today, under current law. It shows that this year’s deficit is estimated at $1.342 trillion dollars, certainly a very high number and almost entirely attributable to the low tax receipts and high automatic stabilizers of the Great Recession. But by 2014, the deficit actually shrinks by well over 60%, to $438 billion dollars, before gradually increasing again. That 2014 deficit is just 2.5% of GDP.

The operative word here is “current law.” Because that assumes a whole host of tax cuts will expire and revert back to their previous state. It also assumes that Congress will not meddle and change those tax laws. If they do what is expected, just for the year 2014, they will double the federal deficit.

For example, the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. If they were to be extended, they would add a crushing burden to the deficit. Sarah Palin’s hand notwithstanding, it’s generally considered that extending all the tax cuts would increase the deficit by $3.1 trillion dollars over the next ten years. An imperfectly derived but somewhat approximate percentage of that for 2014 would be $310 billion. If you leave off the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, thought to cost $830 billion over ten years, you still have an increase of $227 billion for 2014.

Then there’s the estate tax, which is not included in those calculations. Republicans have called for the permanent repeal of the estate tax, which would cost around $330 billion over 10 years. The kinder, gentler policy would increase the threshold for the tax and lower the percentage of the marginal tax rate to 35%. That would bring down the loss of revenue to about $262 billion, according to the Treasury Department. 1/10th of that is $26.2 billion.

And, you have to factor in the alternative minimum tax patch. This is perenially done every year to protect the middle class from getting hit with this tax, which was originally designed to capture high-income earners who deduct out their federal income tax. It’s hard to say exactly how much this would cost the government if it were patched in 2014, because it continues to expand. The Tax Policy Center says that 53 million Americans would get hit by the AMT by the end of the decade, at a cost of $300 billion just in 2020. But in 2014, that number is probably significantly lower. Though it’s hard to figure, let’s use $100 billion as a guesstimate.

So, under the most extreme Republican scenario, just on these three tax changes, the federal government would lose $443 billion dollars in 2014. That’s a touch more than the number of the baseline deficit, meaning that changing those tax laws would double the deficit four years from now. Under the less extreme scenario favored by a good number of Democrats, you’re looking at $353.2 billion in revenue loss in 2014.

Those are absolute blasts into the budget deficit, and I’m just looking at 2014. That kind of impact would be felt every single year, at these rates, if not at larger ones.

And everyone who endorses these changes – namely, almost everyone in politics – would tell you that they’re fiscally responsible.

* One caveat to all of this – the CBO’s numbers are based on their projections for economic growth, which actually aren’t all that rosy. But whether you think those growth numbers are too low or too high will color your impressions of whether CBO is lowballing or highballing the deficit, since the state of the economy will have a lot to say about the tax revenue that drives the deficit projections. FWIW, CBO has unemployment still at 9% in 2011, and not getting to a more normal 5% until the period between 2015 and 2020.