There has been no shortage of dire warnings about the mounting US national debt, but President Obama is now offering a different assessment: no big deal.

"We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt," President Obama said in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos for "Good Morning America." "In fact, for the next 10 years, it's gonna be in a sustainable place."

But there are two problems with that accounting:

First, the Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $845 billion - that's lower than the $1 trillion-plus deficits we've seen over the past four years and, as a percentage of the total economy, half the annual deficit of 2009.

But, CBO also warns that the deficit is projected to continue rising once again after 2015, adding a total of $7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

Second, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are now saying we are nowhere near accomplishing the amount of deficit reduction needed to put the government on sustainable path.

"They haven't done any of the tough stuff, any of the important stuff," Bowles told me last month. "They haven't reformed the tax code…they haven't done anything to slow the rate of health care, to the rate of growth of the economy, they haven't made Social Security sustainably solvent. There's about $2.4 trillion more of hard work we've gotta do."

Allan Simpson went further, calling the failure to control entitlement spending "madness."

"Ten thousand [Americans] a day are turning 65," Simpson told me. "This is madness. And life expectancy is 78.1, and in five years will be 80. Who is kidding who? This will eat a hole through America."