CBO: Obama’s First-Year Deficit May Quadruple Bush’s Last-Year Deficit
I’m not one to put a smiley face on Bush-era deficits (though it is fair to say that the Democrats were in charge of Congress and thus the purse strings during the last two years of his administration), but even as Obama and Democrats continue to claim that they “inherited” deficits from Bush comes news from the CBO that the deficit this year may be four times what it was under Bush.
WASHINGTON — Stagnant unemployment, shrinking tax revenue and a struggling economy threaten to quadruple the size of last year’s federal budget deficit, raising more questions about the timing of costly proposals to overhaul health care.
As the White House and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepare to release new deficit estimates this month, several economists say the news is likely to be as bad as or worse than forecasts.
“This is going to be a very depressing outlook,” predicts former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, top adviser to Republican John McCain in last year’s presidential election. “They have just a nightmare in terms of these health care bills, which do nothing but make things worse.”
A fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.8 trillion was anticipated by the White House, $1.7 trillion by Congress. Reaching that level would produce a deficit four times last year’s $459 billion deficit, just as Congress is considering health care overhaul plans that could cost $1 trillion over 10 years.
That last bit is important. The deficits are soaring even behind the worst projections to date…and the liberals aren’t done spending yet.
In the media, we keep hearing predictions about the recession maybe being over. I’ve got no comment on that now, but I will point out at we’re doomed for another recession in the future given all this debt we’re running up.
Because if we’re growing government we’re growing the burden of that government on the economy. At some point, we are going to have to pay the bill for all this debt and that’s going to mean bigger taxes. And those bigger taxes will likely plunge us into another recession.
The only thing we could do is to cut spending (including the vast majority of the so-called “stimulus” spending), end deficits and then ultimately cut taxes so that the economy can grow without the government on its back. Of course, those solutions would mean politicians admitting that they could best help the economy by getting out of its way, and that just doesn’t play well for their egos and their desire to be in charge of everything.
