Deficit

(CNSNews.com) – The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its mid-year budget update, has projected that the 2010 budget deficit will be the second highest on record since the end of World War II, eclipsed only by the deficit of 2009.

The CBO says that the total 2010 deficit will reach $1.3 trillion, down slightly from 2009’s $1.4 trillion record. All told, CBO projects that the government will run up a total of $6.2 trillion in new deficits between 2011 and 2020.

Relative to the size of the economy, the 2010 deficit will reach 9.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, according to the CBO’s projection. The deficit in 2009 was 9.9 percent of GDP...

WASHINGTON – New estimates from the White House on Friday predict the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.

That's actually a little better than the administration predicted in February.

The new estimates paint a grim unemployment picture as the economy experiences a relatively jobless recovery. The unemployment rate, presently averaging 9.5 percent, would average 9 percent next year under the new estimates...

The nation's debt leapt $166 billion in a single day last week, the third-largest increase in U.S. history, and it comes at a time when Congress is balking over higher spending and debt has become a key policy battleground.

The one-day increase for June 30 totaled $165,931,038,264.30 - bigger than the entire annual deficit for fiscal year 2007 and larger than the $140 billion in savings the new health care bill will produce over its first 10 years. The figure works out to nearly $1,500 for every U.S. household, or more than 10 times the median daily household income.

Daily debt calculations jump and fall, and big shifts are common. But all three of the biggest one-day debt increases have occurred under the tenure of President Obama, and all of the top six have been in the past two years - an indication of just how quickly the pace of deficit spending has risen under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush...

Republicans have been railing against the failure of the House to pass a budget this year, with one House GOP leader erupting after President Obama sent a request Saturday night for $50 billion more in deficit spending to help financially-strapped states.

"The spending spree in Washington is continuing to run unabated. The American people are screaming at the top of their lungs, 'Stop!' And to move this without finding other offsets in spending, I think, is irresponsible," said House Majority Leader Boehner, R-Ohio.

Boehner said he agrees with the president that the states may need help to keep from laying off teachers, firemen and policemen, but argues spending should be cut elsewhere to free up the $50 billion...

Republicans on Thursday poked congressional Democrats for their failure to pass a budget -- already two months overdue -- and used a meeting at the White House to pressure President Obama and his allies to focus on cutting spending this year.

"The failure of the Democrats in Congress to move a budget really misses a significant opportunity to cut spending now," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said after the meeting, which touched on a wide range of topics.

"I pushed them hard to get serious about cutting the spending. It's important for the future of our country. Needless to say, it was little agreement," he said...

(CNSNews.com) – Everything must be on the table to reduce the massive federal deficit, said President Barack Obama on Tuesday. However, Obama did not address his campaign pledge to not raise taxes on households earning less than $250,000, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president “may not” break that pledge.

In a speech launching his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform from the Rose Garden at the White House, Obama said no proposal should be ruled out, and he also criticized the news media.

“I’ve said that it’s important that we not restrict the review for recommendations that this commission comes up with in any way,” said the president. “Everything has to be on the table”...

Taxing wealthier people is back in style with Democrats in the White House and running Congress, but the government's fiscal house is in such disarray that even that well-trodden path will prove to be no cure-all for the nation's soaring $1 trillion budget deficits.

Estimates by nonpartisan groups such as the Urban Institute and Tax Policy Center show that without any serious efforts to cut spending, tax rates on the wealthiest people earning $200,000 or more — the group targeted by President Obama — would have to rise to prohibitive levels of between 77 percent and 91 percent just to bring the yearly budget deficit down to manageable levels of around 2 percent to 3 percent of economic output.

Despite those estimates, the trend toward raising taxes on higher-income earners is well under way. Mr.  read more »

Taxpayers have a nasty surprise coming. More and more future tax dollars will go to pay off old bills and old promises the federal government made, but couldn’t pay.

The money borrowed by the federal government will result in a national debt of some $20 trillion by the end of this decade and taxpayers will have to pay almost $1 trillion a year, just in interest.

The chaos and danger of such a predicament is evident in Greece, which is so deep in debt - its economy is in chaos with national strikes, violent street protests and pensions on the verge of collapse - all because Greece owes so much money abroad. The country is now forced to beg for even more loans at higher interest rates just to stay afloat...

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration is not ready to tell Congress what cost-cutting measures it will take to pay for extending federal employee benefits to same-sex couples.

The legislation that provides health care, long-term care, family and medical leave and federal retirement benefit passed the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and is awaiting approval on the Senate floor.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman and ranking member respectively of the committee. Lieberman has expressed reluctance about bringing the bill to the floor if it adds to the federal deficit....

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

In its 2011 budget, which the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released Feb. 1, the administration projected a 10-year deficit total of $8.53 trillion. After looking it over, CBO said in its final analysis, released Thursday, that the president's budget would generate a combined $9.75 trillion in deficits over the next decade.

"An additional $1.2 trillion in debt dumped on [GDP] to our children makes a huge difference," said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "That represents an additional debt of $10,000 per household above and beyond the federal debt they are already carrying"...