Posted on 08/22/2009 5:11:48 AM PDT by kellynla
The White House is likely to dramatically increase its projected 10-year budget deficit estimate next week by nearly $2 trillion, senior administration officials said Friday.
Obama administration officials have concluded the economy was much worse last year — and tax revenues much lower — than they had initially assumed, which means that the estimated budget deficit will increase from $7 trillion to about $9 trillion over the coming decade.
The planned revision was first reported by Reuters, and White House officials confirmed that account for POLITICO.
There’s no doubt the revision will be interpreted as bad news for an administration whose deficit spending has emerged as a political Achilles' heel.
Already, Republicans have been gaining political traction by accusing Obama of budget-busting spending.
Earlier in the week, even billionaire investor Warren Buffett — a political supporter of Obama — wrote in an op-ed that massive spending leaves the nation in “uncharted fiscal territory.” Still, echoing the Obama line, he said stimulus spending is necessary in the short term, but that the government must take aggressive steps to curtail spending after the economy begins to grow again.
That’s why any worsening of the deficit forecast is likely to be seen as bad news inside the White House. The timing of the story’s release fits a classic Washington media strategy of dumping bad news late on Fridays, as voters are less likely to hear about news that breaks on Friday nights and appears on a Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at dyn.politico.com ...
The phrase “economic nitwits” comes to mind, I’m thinking.
CBO report and FDIC report also come out next week.
Should be fun.
Get ready for massive tax hikes.
This is an excellent way to say a trillion. People get it.
Or in this case, two trillion.
Two thousand billion.
Friday Night News Dump in August, while Obama is vacationing at a posh place on Marth’s Vineyard.
Speaks volumes about the clown.
Welcome to Myanmar.
This is just the next move of the chess piece.
In a month or two he will be shouting from the rooftops about how well we are doing and how the deficit dropped by billions of dollars.
Don’t fall for their shell game.
Check it out.
That’s also two million dollars... one million times!
Wow, great graphic!
It’s like saving all your life to put a kid through college. You think you have enough to send him anywhere. Then, when he gets there he calls and says it’s going to cost much more than you had planned, and he demands you go into debt to cover the difference.
Another excellent example.
I find myself almost talking to the TV screen when newscasters say trillion, wishing they would put it into these terms so that people can relate to just how BIG these numbers are.
That's right, US$14 to US$19 TRILLION. No thanks to the fact the income tax acts to discourage personal savings and capital investment, the result is Americans participating in the underground economy to the tune of US$2 trillion and using tax loopholes (and sometimes less legal means!) to send their liquid assets to offshore financial centers located around the world, most of them untouchable by the IRS. (By the way, the recent agreement with the IRS and UBS in Switzerland over offshore accounts is close to useless--UBS warned its clients at their Swiss operations about this problem a LONG time ago and just about all of them have moved their assets to Swiss banks that have no US operations, which makes them totally untouchable by the IRS.)
It is WAY past due we need to massively overhaul our taxation system to favor personal savings and capital investment staying in the USA. Do that right now and the vast majority of the US$14 to US$19 trillion now out of circulation returns to the USA, essentially a gigantic "private bailout" that far exceeds any Obama Administration government bailout plan. It would stop the economic crisis almost instantly, and because personal savings and capital investment are either taxed at far lower rates than currently or not tax at all, we'll also see a new liquidity coming in from foreigners eager to take advantage of better tax conditions, too.
The result is obvious: real economic growth, and with real economic growth it means more tax revenue to the government, helping the US government reduce its deficit size.
Some of the most interesting information these days comes out of Washington between 4:30 and 5:00PM on Friday afternoons. Hmm....
Sigh.
Thank you shrub, you idiot. You destroyed this country.
Tax hikes will be automatic when the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. I doubt Democrats will vote to renew them.
(2 Trillion)
Or TWO THOUSAND BILLION DOLLARS...
**** This is an excellent way to say a trillion. People get it. ****
Here's how big Two Trillion (2,000,000,000,000) is...
(1) generally speaking: In a straight line. Discounting for curving per Einstein
(2) generally speaking: based on 24hr, 365 day year, for 4.5 billion years.
No pun intended: Those are truly astronomical numbers. Wow.
1. Dept of Energy
2. Dept of Education
3. HHR
4. Dept of Agriculture
Torpedo all VA hospitals and fire employees and give vets health insurance they can use anywhere. Get rid of Medicaid and Medicare and give out vouchers for people to buy their own health insurance. Stop subsidizing Amtrak. No more 'grants' for anything. This is just a partial list.
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