Comments on: U.S. deficit forecast masks true scope of problem

By: Marc1943

Marc1943 — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:05:12 +0000

jstaf suggests that the data has made clear that the Bush era tax cuts created no jobs during his entire administration and neither did his father’s efforts, though Clinton created millions of jobs and left a surplus. Amazing fantasy. The President is not the person who leaves deficits, it is Congress. When Clinton left office, the Republicans controlled Congress and left a surplus. The Dems. controlled Congress for the final two years of GWB’s administration, and left deficits. GWB was no poster child for being a great Republican President, and like Obama, nearly destroyed his political party through his management style. Of course, Obama has no management style because he has no management experience. People will use their brains and vote out the tax and spend Democrats and replace them with Conservative Republicans. If the Republicans screw up over the next two years, you will start seeing two new political parties representing Progressives on one side and Conservatives on the other – truly definable!

By: jstaf

jstaf — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:23:55 +0000

The problems that the Bush administration left behind, compounded by the intentional destruction of any policies to help American workers by Republicans that think that the worse they make things the more likely we are to vote for them in November.

Well the data us clear, Bush’s tax cuts created no jobs through his eight years, neither did his Dad’s policies, Clinton created millions of jobs and left with a surplus.

Vote with your brain, not your emotions, Obama is on the right track so don’t jump back into the muck that the Republicans like to wallow in.

By: Trooth

Trooth — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:31:44 +0000

I sincerely hope we Greece’s level of problems and the entitlement programs and foreign aid gets axed. The Federal government should only be providing interstate infrastructure (commerce, communication, highways, etc) and providing for national defense. Let people take care of their own retirements, or let the states run these entitlement programs at a much higher level of efficiency. I would rather see 50 competing public health care systems than the horrid one that is going to come out of the feds.

By: breezinthru

breezinthru — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:08:05 +0000

As I recall, the last conflict in Iraq and some other military operations were done “off the books” from a budgetary standpoint.

I wonder if that immense debt is included in the CBO’s current deficit estimates.

By: Alpha_Blogger

Alpha_Blogger — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:54:35 +0000

Here is the issue with all these rosy predictions about Obama cutting the deficit and how wonderful things are going. The underlying facts have the Obama administration cutting Medicare by a half trillion dollars per year as well as other programs for the next several years to front load Obama care. When Obama care kicks in, the bottom is going to fall out of the American economy. Right now the deficit only looks bad, wait until Obama care hits, the money movement is going touch off hyper inflation not to mention the possibility of a depression if the economy has not recovered and has plenty of surplus by then. The light at the end of the tunnel is the train about to run us over.

By: Philo33

Philo33 — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:32:04 +0000

Dealing with deficit won’t be easy, since it invariably touches our respective “sacred cows”.

Take for example defense budget, an obscenely huge number which reasonably should be looked at for its necessity (we maintain a defense budget that tops all the next 10 nation’s combined, and has the capability to annihilate the earth several rounds) . But if we raise that question, we would touch the nerves of those self-proclaiming “patriots”.

By: cashman57

cashman57 — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:00:14 +0000

We could very easily solve the problem. The president, Congress, and their aides should only be paid in surplus funds. If they can’t spend our money the right way they don’t get theirs.
Also retired members of Congress will get nothing unless there’s enough surplus to pay their benefits.
Then and only then will they take the deficit seriously.

By: actnow

actnow — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:03:26 +0000

Our elected representatives should stand trial for what they have done and are doing. They should be held accountable for their criminal misdeeds. Perhaps this will happen when tens of millions of citizens are living in the streets….but hopefully sooner.

By: garrisongold

garrisongold — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:28:16 +0000

Why make things hard? Why not just borrow and print more money? It’s easy. We won’t have a problem till we run out of numbers.

Remember the old days when you thought a billion dollars was a lot of money. And now it’s just chump change for our Washington politicians.

By the way, does anyone know what number comes after a gazillion?

By: Gfulmore

Gfulmore — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:13:42 +0000

If we would look at the treasury.gov numbers instead of the CBO-announced numbers, maybe we could all be on the same page. For years, the CBO numbers have not included the off-budget costs. The true deficit numbers are found at treasury.gov. (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLog in?application=np)
There, we find some potential good news? As we are headed to end the 2009/2010 fiscal year with an annual deficit of about $1.5 trillion, this will be LOWER than the $1.8 trillion annual deficit for the 2008/2009 fiscal year. The numbers I have are:

Oct 1, 2008: $10.124
Oct 1, 2009: $11.910
Aug 15, 2010: $13.356

Would this not be a big deal to have a Decrease in the annual deficit in the first full fiscal year under Obama? When he took over January 20, 2009, the debt for that fiscal year had already reached $500 billion, so that fiscal year was a combo Bush/Obama year.

Ideally, the 2008/2009 fiscal year could be the highest annual deficit ever, with decreases continuing as far as the eye can see. Ideally.