Blasphemy, many said at the time. Pure nonsense.

But the fact is, the national debt of the United States swelled to an all-time high of more than $4 trillion at the end of 2003, and the rebirth of the deficit means that debt is set to grow more.

This year, the federal deficit is expected to add $520 billion to the country’s debt load. Looking into the future, in particular at the pending retirement of the baby boomers, some estimates put the country’s obligations in the stratosphere.

Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist and research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, asked this question: If the United States collected all of the future revenue it anticipates receiving and matched that to its future obligations, in an extended time period Social Security actuaries refer to as “the infinite horizon,” would it be able to meet them? The answer was no to the tune of $45 trillion.

“It is the most dramatic way of expressing how far out of balance the budget is,” said Ed McKelvey, senior economist at Goldman Sachs Group in New York.

The election, the war with Iraq and recent legislation have dragged national debt back onto center stage.

Take the passage of the 2003 tax cut and the new prescription drug benefit package. Added together, they easily tacked on several trillion dollars to the deficit outlook over the next decade.

“The problem is that fiscal policy right now is not preparing the country for the decade of the teens and thereafter,” said Steven Hess, lead U.S. analyst at Moody’s in New York. “To prepare for these astronomical outlays, it would be desirable that government had a balanced budget. In fact, they’re moving in the opposite direction.”

Hess, whose job is to rate U.S. debt, said the country is in no imminent danger of a fiscal crisis or a ratings downgrade, for that matter. At 40 percent of gross domestic product, debt is not too much worse than that of other countries with the same pristine AAA rating. But if nothing is done, he said, the country could be imperiled.

“We still believe that because there is time, people in Washington will realize that something has to happen,” Hess said.

That “something,” Hess said, could be lowering entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare benefits – something Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan brought up recently. The other option, also politically charged, is to raise taxes.

“If they don’t do one or the other by the end of this decade, we’d have to consider lowering the country’s rating,” Hess concluded.

Goldman projects that debt as a percentage of GDP will grow to about 52 percent in the next 10 years – to $10 trillion from today’s $4 trillion.Part of the problem, as McKelvey sees it, are four federal objectives that, in the current climate, appear to be immutable. They are to maintain defense spending at current levels, increase nondefense discretionary spending at a low rate, maintain the current tax cuts and maintain entitlements.

“These four things are current, if not formally stated, objectives,” McKelvey said. “And they’re inconsistent with reducing the deficit.”