CBO Delivers Bad Budget News

[UpInArms]

Source: Courthouse News Service

WASHINGTON (CN) - As lawmakers rush to raise the debt ceiling and the Obama administration tries to tighten its belt, the Congressional Budget Office predicted Tuesday that the 2010 fiscal year would bring a towering $1.35 trillion deficit, which is slightly lower than last year. An expected decade of deficits will take the national debt from just over $12 trillion now to more than $21 trillion by 2020, said the budget office report.

While the independent budget office lauded the stimulus package and other government recovery efforts - which Republicans have decried as expensive and useless - for moderating the severity and length of the recession, it continued to predict a slow economic recovery.

The expected 2010 deficit is slightly smaller than the $1.4 trillion of the 2009 fiscal year, which ended in September, but it still constitutes a hefty 9 percent chunk of the 2010 gross domestic product.

2009 saw the largest proportion of deficit to economic output since World War II, at nearly 10 percent.

Read more: http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/01/26/24071.htm

[msongs]

1. we need to spend more money on military and endless wars nt

[UpInArms]

3. there you are - such a monger

(huh?)

and where did those un-recommend fairies come from?

busy little fellows, eh?

[Zoeisright]

2. But but but I thought that Cheney said deficits don't matter!

:sarcasm:

[rpannier]

4. How about they begin with slashing Congressional salaries

or they use the business model many of them are so fond of...
Most of them sucked badly in 2009 so most of them get squat

[Loge23]

9. Their salaries are pocket change...

...compared to what they really get from their masters.

[No Elephants]

13. Bingo! Not to mention the paychecks for their family members and the cushy jobs that wait for them

if they decide not to run or they don't get re-elected.

"Public" "servant" my brussel sprouts!

[joeglow3]

15. Agreed, but that is what people ALWAYS say

Everytime something is proposed, people say "but that is pocket change." You have to start somewhere and when you add up all this pocket change, it suddenly because a bit more substantial.

[timeforpeace]

5. Way to deflect attention from Obama. No one noticed either.

[UpInArms]

7. how's that? noticing and all

what's with the 20 trillion by 2020 - that's only 10 years away and so - do you have children or grandchildren? Can you hand that off? In 2006, the average American's share of the national debt (man, woman or child) was $32,000 - now it's $40,000. Does that work for you when the things that are "special" seem to belong to war and military spending?

[jotsy]

6. Does anybody else feel like were living the end of the Cat in the Hat?

This mess is so big and so deep and so tall.
We cannot clean it up. There is no way at all.

[bertman]

8. Are they even counting the nine or ten TRILLION the Fed loaned out at no interest?

Or is that another "off the books" item--like the wars?

[bvar22]

10. Thank god Wall Street Millionaires got their bonuses, and...

...the WARS are fully funded.

It would just be so tragic if the failed Wall Street Bankers felt any discomfort oe we ran out of bombs.

[Downwinder]

11. Green shoots withering? n/t

[Festivito]

12. No no no. I see games being played on US in this report of a report.

Note the rhetorical propoganda: Obama's "towers" ... but is LESS THAN LAST YEAR'S. (LESS THAN BUSH'S BUDGET Obama takes over on Jan 20.)

Note: Then last year's occurs in a separate paragraph and is missing .4T$ according to the daily report of the debt to the penny. Should be 1.8T$, not 1.4, borrowed by the Bush budget Obama took over in FY2009.

Republicans would put the war spending into special requests, not the budget. So, now they compare the Bush budget figures (w/o war $) to the Obama budget figures (w/ war $) and try to say Obama spends more. NO NO NO. Bush spent more. Bush did not put the war budget numbers into the reported budget numbers.

Obama is currently headed for a 1.3T$ deficit by my calculations with just about 4 months. They are probably using the first quarter figures, 3 months, which included the bailouts Bush caused and Obama payed. Those payments might not be payed again so projecting from numbers including those payments would skew the projection higher. Something RWingers love to do to Dems.

EDIT: bolded

[No Elephants]

14. Good points. Obama added in costs that Bushco had been keeping "off book."

Still, the important issue for America right now is what, if anything, we need to be doing to save ourselves from disaster.