Tag: Deficit

Extending High-Income Tax Cuts Would Balloon Deficit

Trish

$3.9 trillion

Amount extending the Bush tax cuts for high-income households would add to the deficit over the next 10 years. The increase would, “slow future economic growth, saddle future generations with sizable interest payments, and leave the nation ill-prepared not only for the retirement of baby boomers but also for responding to potential future crises…”

Obama Reduced Federal Deficit By $103.6 Bil – Down 13% from 2009

Jon Ponder

More signs that Pres. Obama and the Democrats are succeeding in slowing or bringing the GOP-Bush Recession to an end, via Bloomberg:

The U.S. government posted a smaller budget deficit in August compared with the same month last year, helped by rising tax receipts.

The excess of spending over revenue totaled $90.5 billion last month, smaller than the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and down 13 percent from $103.6 billion in August 2009, according to a Treasury Department report issued today in Washington. The gap for the fiscal year that started in October was $1.26 trillion compared with $1.37 trillion last year at the same time.

The economic recovery has helped generate more tax revenue for the Treasury, even as the Congressional Budget Office forecasts the deficit this fiscal year will reach $1.34 trillion, the second-largest on record. The Obama administration faces the challenge of trying to limit the shortfall while stimulating an economy with joblessness close to 10 percent.

“We’re seeing the revenue coming back,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida. “The cumulative deficit for the fiscal year is a bit smaller, but still fairly wide. It doesn’t signal a lot of improvement.”

Hey, haters: Presidents get blamed when the economy goes bad, even when, as was the case here, the president is not responsible for the policies that caused the downturn. Conversely, they also get credit when things go well — especially when, as is the case here, their policies caused things to turn around.

So don’t even start.