Corporate Taxes, Gov't Spending Hit Records

ASSOCIATED PRESS ^ | Jan 12, 2006 | MARTIN CRUTSINGER

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Corporate Taxes, Gov't Spending Hit Records Jan 12 2:33 PM US/Eastern Email this story

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON

The federal government posted the first budget surplus for December in three years as corporate tax payments hit an all-time high, helping offset a record level for spending, the Treasury Department reported Thursday.

The department said in its monthly budget report that government receipts surpassed spending by $10.98 billion last month. A year ago, the government ran a deficit of $2.85 billion in December.

The improvement reflected the fact that government receipts were up 12.1 percent from a year ago to $241.88 billion while government spending rose by a slower 5.6 percent to $230.9 billion. The figure for outlays still represented an all-time high for spending for any month.

Corporate income tax collections totaled a record $73.5 billion last month, surpassing the old record of $72 billion set in September.

Even with December's surplus, experts are predicting that the budget deficit for this year could well surge above $400 billion, reflecting increased government spending to help with reconstruction efforts in hurricane-ravaged states along the Gulf Coast.

The largest deficit in dollar terms was an imbalance of $413 billion in 2004. Last year, the deficit narrowed to $377 billion as a surge of tax revenues from an improving economy helped offset rising government spending.

President Bush has vowed to cut the deficit in half by 2009 and still preserve the tax cuts he pushed through Congress in his first term.

Treasury Secretary John Snow said this week that the administration plans to lower the deficit through stringent controls on spending, which he said would be evident in the budget proposal for 2007 that Bush will send to Congress in early February.

However, budget experts are already predicting that Congress will balk at making sharp cuts in the growth of popular government programs, especially in an election year.

Through the first three months of the current budget year, which began on Oct. 1, government tax receipts have totaled $530.2 billion, up 8.8 percent from the same period a year ago.

Government spending totals $649.52 billion, a 7.2 percent increase from the same period a year ago. That resulted in a deficit for the first three months of the government's budget year of $119.31 billion, up 1.1 percent from the same period a year ago.

The December surplus marked the first surplus for that month since December 2002.

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John Linder in the House(HR25) & Saxby Chambliss Senate(S25) offer a comprehensive bill to kill all income and SS/Medicare payroll taxes outright and replace them with with a national retail sales tax administered by the states.

I should point out that both Rep. Linder and Sen. Chambliss are both (R-GA), and that Georgia's other Republican senator refuses to co-sponsor S.25. Instead, Sen Isakson (R-GA) has introduced his own bill, calling for a bipartisan commission to study how to simplify the tax code. All we need is another commission... just like the last commission... Hopefully we can find someone to run against Isakson. Not only is he a RINO, but he's a do-nothing big government RINO.

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""spending beyond our means""

LOL!!! ... but painfully true.

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Great idea!