Posted on 10/14/2011 12:09:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government ran a $1.3 trillion for the budget year that ended last month, the third straight year it has operated more than $1 trillion in the red.
The 2011 budget deficit was the second highest on record. It's slightly ahead of the previous budget year's $1.29 trillion deficit but below the $1.41 trillion imbalance record in 2009.
A decade ago, the government was running surpluses and trillion-dollar deficits seemed unimaginable. But those deficits now loom over tense negotiations in Washington.
Lawmakers are under pressure to agree by Thanksgiving on where they can cut $1.2 trillion over the next decade. If they cannot, automatic cuts to Medicare, defense spending and other critical areas of the budget would go into effect in Jan. 2013.
For 2011, the government had to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spent. The string of massive debts has made interest on that debt the fastest growing budget category. For 2011, net interest payments rose 15.7 percent to $227 billion.
A slightly improved job market helped boost income tax revenue this year. From October 2010 through last month, the economy added 1.3 million net jobs. That compares with only 339,000 net job gains in the previous 12-month period.
Still, that hasn't been enough to bring the millions of Americans who lost jobs during the recession back into the work force.
The government also lost revenue because of the 2 percentage point cut in Social Security taxes, and also it had to pay for an extension of emergency unemployment benefits. Congress approved both in December to boost the sluggish economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
The less people working, the less taxes are collected with no adjustment to spending. Brilliant! AND.....no budget for the country passed or submitted by the Democrats.
Obscene.
Pass my bill! Only $1.3 trillion in the red? That’s an underachievement. And racist. And elitist. etc!
The day of reckoning cannot be far behind.
IIRC, the total net worth of this nation’s 400 billionaires is $1.5 trillion.
This is why class warfare (besides being immoral) could never work. I don’t understand why GOP candidates don’t put it in these simple terms. The money Obama spends does not even exist.
You ask a great question.
Maybe Herman Cain can get this point across.
In two years we’ll be where Greece was just a few years ago. In five years we’ll be where Greece was last year and there will be no Germany to bail us out.
I wonder if we have even that much time.
Man.. we’re either big tippers or giant suckers as taxpayers go.. incredible,, the rapid accumulation and distribution of numbers that would make Everett Dirksen stutter.. a trillion here a trillion there waalaaa.. ‘ali-obama and the 40 czars’ done real good by themselves and left a nation in tatters.. and the media partied on.
Bump.
Hey let’s give maobama another 500 billion to blow!
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