Posted on 05/24/2012 3:48:46 PM PDT by Kaslin
Since 2009, and since Senate Democrats last passed a budget, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated $1 trillion deficits each year with 2012 being no exception. But now, a new USA Today study shows that last year's budget deficit wasn't $1 trillion....it was actually $5 trillion.
The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.
It is well known by now that even if the government confiscated 100% of the wealth held by millionaires and billionaires in America, we still couldn't pay off the $15 trillion+ national debt. But the latest $5 trillion deficit number doesn't only impact millionaires and billionaires.
The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.
A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.
So how is it that the CBO was off by $4 trillion?
The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.
Math is hard when you're not adding all the numbers.....over to you Paul Ryan.
The Path to Prosperity (Episode 1): America's two futures, visualized
The Path to Prosperity (Episode 2): Saving Medicare, Visualized
the US brings in roughly $2 trillion annually in tax revenues.
taking this article at face value, this mean in the last year... ALONE ... the US govt spent over $7 trillion
and this is with the GOP controlling the purse strings?!
doing a fantastic job up there guys ... /s
Knowing that it's this low, I can rest comfortably tonight...
The disgusting part is there is absolutely NOTHING to show for it!
Are you forgetting that we only have the House? So knock it off with your sarcasm
are you forgetting that they control the purse strings?
grow a set and stand firm on the expectations that the GOP won’t spend us into oblivion.
as is, they are ‘fighting tooth and nail’ to trim $500b from the $7 trillion being spent.
yea, they’re doing a bang up job.
/dripping-acidic-sarcasm
Think tomorrow I'll call up all my credit card accounts and max out my credit limit, then max out my cards.
Then make minimum monthly payments with monopoly money.
Hey, whats good for the gov, is good for the governed.
“..taking this article at face value, this mean in the last year... ALONE ... the US govt spent over $7 trillion..”
I don’t think they actually “spent” that much.
If the US spent the $2T in annual revenues plus an additional $1.3T over and above the revenues, it means the US spent a total of $3.3T for the year.
At the same time, nation’s obligations went up another $3-plus trillion for the year, but that’s technically not spending, until it’s actually spent. It’s just that..an obligation to spend at some point in the future. Theoretically, the money we have obligated to spend should be set aside for when we have to actually spend it. That they didn’t do, and don’t seem to have the inclination to do in the foreseeable future that I know of.
Which means we will have to either default on our obligations or do something to dramatically reduce our obligations. And there’s the rub. That would require a fiscally conservative Congress with veto-proof majority and the political backbone to make some extremely tough choices and many of our fellow Americans would scream bloody murder (or worse).
What a fine mess we find ourselves in.
I bet you the liberals who came up with this system were taught the progressive “new” math that did away with pesky things like actually getting correct answers.
when they moved social security into the general fund, they moved any social security payments into the spending category as those payments are not coming out of an investment/savings account
lay it all at the feet of big govt
“It is well known by now that even if the government confiscated 100% of the wealth held by millionaires and billionaires in America, we still couldn’t pay off the $15 trillion+ national debt.”
The deficits during recent Republican Presidencies were bad, but manageable. The debt racked up under Obama are unsustainable.
Thanks Kaslin.
What else does Obama have to do to prove his fiscal conservatism?
$5T dollars is the cost of WWII adjusted for inflation.
More than Half of the Budget Goes Towards Mandatory Spending:
In FY 2013, mandatory spending is budgeted at 60% of total Federal spending, and 2 1/2 times as much as the military budget. The mandatory budget is estimated to be $2.293 trillion, a new record. The mandatory budget was $2.252 trillion in FY 2012 and $2.073 trillion in FY 2011.
Source: http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/Mandatory.htm
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