It's ironic to see NeoCons flip flop and blame everything on Obama for all the budget deficit problems this country is faced with today. Bush is the real culprit for the economic turmoil this country is faced with today thanks to Bush's starting an unnecessary, expensive and genocidal war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html
White House projects record deficit for 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's budget chief blamed the faltering economy and the bipartisan stimulus package for the record $482 billion deficit the White House predicted for the 2009 budget year.
Jim Nussle, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the deficit would be about 3.3 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the measure of the nation's total economy.
The fiscal year begins October 1, 2008.
The federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in from taxes and other revenue sources. The government must borrow money to make up the difference.
While the deficit would be a record in absolute dollar terms, Nussle said it would be below the 2004 deficit, 3.6 percent of GDP, and the record deficit of 1983, 6 percent of GDP, when compared with the size of the overall U.S. economy.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the stimulus package was necessary, even if it increased the deficit.
"We do think the plan was the right one, and it will have an effect," she said. "And the best way to help reduce the deficit is to make sure you are keeping a lock on spending, but also that you can also try to help to build the economy. So we hope this will help us pull out of the economic downturn over the next few months because of the stimulus package.
"I remember that back when we were discussing the stimulus package, both parties recognized that the deficit would increase, and that would be the price that we pay in order to help improve the economy," she said.
Nussle said the $170 billion, bipartisan stimulus, which congressional Democrats and Bush agreed to earlier this year, was a major reason the deficit was expected to reach record levels next year. The deficit projection for 2009 would have been only 2.2 percent of the economy, or $272 billion, if the stimulus package is excluded, Nussle said. Watch Nussle warn Congress not to increase spending » http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
"The determination was made that getting the economy back on track was a higher priority than immediate deficit reduction," Nussle said.
He said the OMB projects that the deficit would fall after the 2009 budget year, and he predicted that the government would have a surplus in budget year 2012, if the president's budget blueprint is followed.
"Near-term deficits are temporary and manageable if -- and only if -- we keep spending in check, the tax burden low and the economy growing," Nussle said, warning that congressional Democrats were planning to add billions of dollars in spending to the federal budget.
President Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001 but has since posted a budget deficit every year. View a history of the government deficits and surpluses » http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html#cnnSTCOther1
The Bush administration has spent heavily on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and faces a large budget shortfall in tax revenue in part because of Bush's tax cuts and a souring economy.
A Democratic point man on the budget, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, blasted the administration for its "reckless fiscal policies," blaming the president's tax cuts for driving the government into deficit and saying Bush "will be remembered as the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation's history." Watch Conrad call the federal debt Bush's legacy » http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Conrad, who chairs the Senate's budget committee, accused the president of "squandering" the surplus he inherited from President Bill Clinton and said the increased debt the government has taken on to cover the deficit has undermined the value of the dollar and hurt the overall economy.
"If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, silver and bronze," Conrad said. "With his eight years in office, he will have had the five highest deficits ever recorded. And the highest of those deficits is now projected to come in 2009, as he leaves office."
But a senior administration official says the budgetary problems stem from what he called inadequate defense, intelligence and homeland security resources that were handed down from Clinton.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in March projected the deficit for the 2008 fiscal year, which ends September 30, would be $357 billion. It predicted the 2009 deficit to be $342 billion, if the president's proposals were adopted.
Both assumptions, however, were made before the economic stimulus package was passed by Congress and signed by the president this spring. The CBO said it would release revised deficit estimates in September.
The two major presidential candidates -- Democrat Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain -- used news that the United States' budget deficit will hit a record high as an opportunity to criticize each other's fiscal plans.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-progress-report/the-bush-deficit_b_169475.html
The Bush Deficit
Feb. 24, 2009
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers
To receive The Progress Report in your email inbox everyday, click here.
Tonight, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama is expected to lay out his plan to slash the federal deficit in half by the end of his term. The reduction would come in large part from drawing down in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire by 2010. On Thursday, Obama will release his first budget outline and "confirm his intention to deliver this year on ambitious campaign promises on health care and energy policy," which will help alleviate budget deficits and bring growth to the economy. And in recent days, the White House has also said that it is prepared to make "tough choices" on the budget. This fiscal situation is not a recent creation. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained yesterday, the enormous deficit Obama has to grapple with was inherited "before the stimulus." "This administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit -- the largest in our nation's history," Obama reiterated.
INHERITING RECKLESSNESS: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Vice President Cheney said in 2002 when pushing for a fresh round of tax cuts. With this attitude in hand, Bush passed on a budgetary nightmare to his successor. Bush came into office with an advantage few presidents have enjoyed -- a $230 billion surplus. But due to a $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001, a $1.5 trillion tax cut in 2003, and a massive defense buildup through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bush quickly blew through that surplus. The next president will "inherit a fiscal meltdown," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) warned in February 2008, as the Bush administration projected a budget deficit of $400 billion. After the financial crisis emerged last fall and the ensuing bailouts, Bush's budget deficit ballooned to over $1 trillion. As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger explained, budget deficits swelled under Bush because his supply-side tax policies slashed revenues while failing to deliver strong economic performance.
SIMPLE HONESTY: Obama has already made a departure from the Bush budget legacy by instilling new openness and transparency. Last week, the New York Times reported that Obama will not reject "four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller." In 2005, the Washington Post editorial board called Bush's budget proposal a "farce" for using accounting tricks.
Obama's changes include accounting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Bush relied on "emergency supplemental" war spending), assuming the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation, accounting for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements, and anticipating inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief. The result of Obama's openness is a budget that is $2.7 trillion "deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear." As The Wonk Room explained, "that debt was always there. It was just being hidden." "For too long, our budget process in Washington has been an exercise in deception -- a series of accounting tricks to hide the extent of our spending," Obama remarked yesterday.
THE NEW FISCAL HAWKS: While purporting to be deficit hawks, the Republican-led Congresses from 2001 to 2006 rubber-stamped the Bush agenda that created the current fiscal crisis. "[W]e're hopeful...that eventually the Democrats will decide...to move aside and let Republicans govern in the way that President Bush has led us to do," said former senator Rick Santorum in September 2006. The Congress shuttled through pork-stuffed legislation, massive tax cuts, and huge increases in defense spending. Yet those same members are trying to stifle the Obama agenda with concerns about the budget -- even as they proposed a $3.5 trillion tax-cut-only recovery package. The recovery package "spends far too much," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said recently. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) remarked, "It's very wasteful...if you throw in the interest it's about $1.3 trillion." Yet many of the same Republicans eagerly supported Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cuts in 2001. Influential Republicans in Congress have also indicated that they may oppose Obama's housing plan because it is allegedly too expensive.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html
White House projects record deficit for 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's budget chief blamed the faltering economy and the bipartisan stimulus package for the record $482 billion deficit the White House predicted for the 2009 budget year.
Jim Nussle, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the deficit would be about 3.3 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the measure of the nation's total economy.
The fiscal year begins October 1, 2008.
The federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in from taxes and other revenue sources. The government must borrow money to make up the difference.
While the deficit would be a record in absolute dollar terms, Nussle said it would be below the 2004 deficit, 3.6 percent of GDP, and the record deficit of 1983, 6 percent of GDP, when compared with the size of the overall U.S. economy.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the stimulus package was necessary, even if it increased the deficit.
"We do think the plan was the right one, and it will have an effect," she said. "And the best way to help reduce the deficit is to make sure you are keeping a lock on spending, but also that you can also try to help to build the economy. So we hope this will help us pull out of the economic downturn over the next few months because of the stimulus package.
"I remember that back when we were discussing the stimulus package, both parties recognized that the deficit would increase, and that would be the price that we pay in order to help improve the economy," she said.
Nussle said the $170 billion, bipartisan stimulus, which congressional Democrats and Bush agreed to earlier this year, was a major reason the deficit was expected to reach record levels next year. The deficit projection for 2009 would have been only 2.2 percent of the economy, or $272 billion, if the stimulus package is excluded, Nussle said. Watch Nussle warn Congress not to increase spending » http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
"The determination was made that getting the economy back on track was a higher priority than immediate deficit reduction," Nussle said.
He said the OMB projects that the deficit would fall after the 2009 budget year, and he predicted that the government would have a surplus in budget year 2012, if the president's budget blueprint is followed.
"Near-term deficits are temporary and manageable if -- and only if -- we keep spending in check, the tax burden low and the economy growing," Nussle said, warning that congressional Democrats were planning to add billions of dollars in spending to the federal budget.
President Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001 but has since posted a budget deficit every year. View a history of the government deficits and surpluses » http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html#cnnSTCOther1
The Bush administration has spent heavily on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and faces a large budget shortfall in tax revenue in part because of Bush's tax cuts and a souring economy.
A Democratic point man on the budget, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, blasted the administration for its "reckless fiscal policies," blaming the president's tax cuts for driving the government into deficit and saying Bush "will be remembered as the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation's history." Watch Conrad call the federal debt Bush's legacy » http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/28/2009.deficit/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Conrad, who chairs the Senate's budget committee, accused the president of "squandering" the surplus he inherited from President Bill Clinton and said the increased debt the government has taken on to cover the deficit has undermined the value of the dollar and hurt the overall economy.
"If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, silver and bronze," Conrad said. "With his eight years in office, he will have had the five highest deficits ever recorded. And the highest of those deficits is now projected to come in 2009, as he leaves office."
But a senior administration official says the budgetary problems stem from what he called inadequate defense, intelligence and homeland security resources that were handed down from Clinton.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in March projected the deficit for the 2008 fiscal year, which ends September 30, would be $357 billion. It predicted the 2009 deficit to be $342 billion, if the president's proposals were adopted.
Both assumptions, however, were made before the economic stimulus package was passed by Congress and signed by the president this spring. The CBO said it would release revised deficit estimates in September.
The two major presidential candidates -- Democrat Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain -- used news that the United States' budget deficit will hit a record high as an opportunity to criticize each other's fiscal plans.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-progress-report/the-bush-deficit_b_169475.html
The Bush Deficit
Feb. 24, 2009
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers
To receive The Progress Report in your email inbox everyday, click here.
Tonight, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama is expected to lay out his plan to slash the federal deficit in half by the end of his term. The reduction would come in large part from drawing down in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire by 2010. On Thursday, Obama will release his first budget outline and "confirm his intention to deliver this year on ambitious campaign promises on health care and energy policy," which will help alleviate budget deficits and bring growth to the economy. And in recent days, the White House has also said that it is prepared to make "tough choices" on the budget. This fiscal situation is not a recent creation. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained yesterday, the enormous deficit Obama has to grapple with was inherited "before the stimulus." "This administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit -- the largest in our nation's history," Obama reiterated.
INHERITING RECKLESSNESS: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Vice President Cheney said in 2002 when pushing for a fresh round of tax cuts. With this attitude in hand, Bush passed on a budgetary nightmare to his successor. Bush came into office with an advantage few presidents have enjoyed -- a $230 billion surplus. But due to a $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001, a $1.5 trillion tax cut in 2003, and a massive defense buildup through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bush quickly blew through that surplus. The next president will "inherit a fiscal meltdown," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) warned in February 2008, as the Bush administration projected a budget deficit of $400 billion. After the financial crisis emerged last fall and the ensuing bailouts, Bush's budget deficit ballooned to over $1 trillion. As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger explained, budget deficits swelled under Bush because his supply-side tax policies slashed revenues while failing to deliver strong economic performance.
SIMPLE HONESTY: Obama has already made a departure from the Bush budget legacy by instilling new openness and transparency. Last week, the New York Times reported that Obama will not reject "four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller." In 2005, the Washington Post editorial board called Bush's budget proposal a "farce" for using accounting tricks.
Obama's changes include accounting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Bush relied on "emergency supplemental" war spending), assuming the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation, accounting for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements, and anticipating inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief. The result of Obama's openness is a budget that is $2.7 trillion "deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear." As The Wonk Room explained, "that debt was always there. It was just being hidden." "For too long, our budget process in Washington has been an exercise in deception -- a series of accounting tricks to hide the extent of our spending," Obama remarked yesterday.
THE NEW FISCAL HAWKS: While purporting to be deficit hawks, the Republican-led Congresses from 2001 to 2006 rubber-stamped the Bush agenda that created the current fiscal crisis. "[W]e're hopeful...that eventually the Democrats will decide...to move aside and let Republicans govern in the way that President Bush has led us to do," said former senator Rick Santorum in September 2006. The Congress shuttled through pork-stuffed legislation, massive tax cuts, and huge increases in defense spending. Yet those same members are trying to stifle the Obama agenda with concerns about the budget -- even as they proposed a $3.5 trillion tax-cut-only recovery package. The recovery package "spends far too much," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said recently. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) remarked, "It's very wasteful...if you throw in the interest it's about $1.3 trillion." Yet many of the same Republicans eagerly supported Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cuts in 2001. Influential Republicans in Congress have also indicated that they may oppose Obama's housing plan because it is allegedly too expensive.
