Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for coming to present to us today.
There are a couple of questions coming out of your remarks and something I would like to clarify, if you could give me one second here. We were talking about the money for veterans.
I found your summary table in your report. Thank you very much. I'm a numbers person; I appreciate the clarity of numbers.
Just for the record, based on the former program under the last government, the present clients would receive $22 billion. Under the pension-for-life scenario that has come in under 2019, those same present clients will receive $25 billion, an increase of $3 billion. New entrants would receive the same, as they did in the plan preceding this plan.
There is a net increase of $3 billion, just for the record. I know you were struggling there about the 5% and what have you, so I thought this would be helpful.
The other thing in your fiscal outlook and in your remarks today is that you said you project that federal debt will “decline to 30.5% of GDP in 2020-21, which is almost 1.5 percentage points below the government's official debt anchor. We also project the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to fall to 28.9% of GDP in 2023-24.”
Could you explain to people who might be watching or interested in hearing this what a “debt anchor” is?