Posted on 07/13/2004 5:47:58 PM PDT by Willie Green
WASHINGTON - The government's deficit ballooned to $326.6 billion in the first nine months of the 2004 budget year, according to a snapshot of U.S. balance sheets released Tuesday.
That's more than 20 percent larger than the $269.7 billion shortfall for the corresponding period last year. For the current budget year which began Oct. 1, this spending has totaled $1.73 trillion, 6.4 percent more than the same period a year ago. Revenues came to $1.40 trillion, 3.5 percent more than the previous year.
So far this year, the biggest spending categories are programs from the Health and Human Services Department, including Medicare and Medicaid, $407.1 billion; Social Security, $397 billion; military, $322.3 billion; and interest on the public debt, $274.9 billion.
(Excerpt) Read more at centredaily.com ...
ping
It's sailors not sailor.
Our private debt is just as large, and growing just as fast. The credit card offers continue at an increasing pace and the credit offers are getting ridiculous. We have to keep growing, there is no opportunity to stop. When Peak Easy sets in, massive dislocation may follow. It's the one thing Pat Robertson ever said that makes sense--get out of debt.
Out of control spending, eh? Let's hope we elect a Republican president and Republican congress this time so we can shrink the federal government.
Oh, wait a minute...
And that "It's the military costs from the war" only goes so far.
Mr Kerry: If elected president, how you will fix this?
Oh, wait a minute...
The Senate is Republican in name only, and no where near conservative. If the Congress would grow a pair and weed out a bit of the riff-raff and not leave everything on the President's plate we might make some progress. Until Congressional Rebpulicans take a stand for conservative issues, there is more than enough blame for the current spending spree to spread around...
Dsylexia Damn!
Has Dubya ever attempted even a symbolic veto over this irresponsible spending?
Heck no, of course not.
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."-- Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816
Please, someone with the numbers, please post what this represents as a percentage of our GNP.
Why? That's a totally meaningless and irrelevant statistic.
FMCDH(BITS)
You may have missed my point. The current Republican leadership has betrayed their fiscal principals. Does that mean I want Democrats in office? No. But it sure as heck doesn't mean I'm going to let those who currently hold power off the hook either. I'm dumb, but I'm not THAT dumb.
While your decision to fall on your own sword has no consequences to my well being, feel free Willie.
While your at it, miss the forest for the trees, lose the war for the battle, etc., etc., etc.,
I've never met a monday morning quarterback who scored the game winning touchdown...
You both are right.
It is not the war cost--it is the incredible social welfare cost, including the monstrous increase that our guy gave to Ted Kennedy and the Education Dept., up something like 80% in three years.
I am afraid that GWB's attempt to show the RATs that he wants "to work with them" will come back to bite him--and all of us in America--in a very big way.
Regardless, Kerry and the radical socialists will still be much worse.
Very good reasons why loyal party members ignore the conditions around them. I couldn't have said it better myself.
I didn't mean to imply that you'd vote demo. I am with you as far as the spending goes, but I am NOT willing to make it any worse by letting Kerry take the helm.
How ironic. Just tonight PBS reported that the government took in more money in June than it spent. Seems the revenues from business taxes were higher than normal.
Only to people with a naive and myopic view of economics. Debt as a percentage of GDP is really the only measure that matters. Raw numbers unadjusted for such changes in basis are meaningless.
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