Eight Hundred Billion Dollars
According to this Heritage Foundation report, that's what the federal budget deficit may reach in 2015, if current spending trends continue on track. As the report points out, the deficit-projection figures that congressional leaders and administration spokespeople refer to in public (and in private?) are based on assumptions like, well, that the U.S. won't appropriate any more money than it already has for the war in Iraq, that the growth in domestic discretionary spending won't exceed the rate of inflation, and so on. So when--if--the president talks about the budget next week in his state of the union address, don't believe it.
P.S. Does "eight hundred billion dollars" sound like more than ".8 trillion dollars"?
posted by Number Three @ 8:40 AM
2 Comments:
A few other assumptions that are being made by administration/congressional estimates of future budget deficits:
1. All the Bush tax cuts will expire; none will be made permanent.
2. Nothing will be done about the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will be affecting very middle class Americans soon.
3. No more money for Gulf Coast reconstruction.
4. The cost of the prescription drug beneft has not been underestimated (unlike any other entitlement benefit).
5. No economic recession; strong economic growth.
The bottom line: the CBO numbers aren't good at all, but the actual situation is far, far worse than they reveal.
To call this administration's budget policy "irresponsible" is too charitable. It's not irresponsible, it is, as economist George Akerlof put it, "a form of looting."
Thanks for the additional qualifiers, Frances. I also like Krugman's "drunken sailor economics."
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