Aug 26

Deficit addition more likely $14 TRILLION

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image thumb41 Deficit addition more likely $14 TRILLION

The CBO has to estimate the deficit based on current law, not likely law.  But if you base it on known deficit producers and then add in likely events like revenue shrinkage from a poor economy and likely costly legislation it is $14 TRILLION more over the next decade.

Here comes stagflation!

H/T Greg Mankiw  and EconomistMom

5 Responses to “Deficit addition more likely $14 TRILLION”

  1. Carl Nelson Says:
    August 26th, 2009 at 8:27 am

    Deficits and the national debt are so-o-o useful, and so-o-o spinnable. Bad deficit is one that can be blamed on the other party, and good deficit is one that pays for your party’s stuff – tax cuts, expensive wars, and new Medicare programs, for example. Deficits are bad only in the abstract, but never bad enough to actually do something about it, like raising taxes or cutting programs. The last serious deficit remedy was Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax-and-cut deal that not a single Republican voted for. Before that GHWB and the Congress made a deal. Since GHWB lost re-election and Clinton lost the Congress after the deals, neither party will budge from its crouch posture as advocate for its base.

    I’m still waiting for a Republican to be for a tax increase or a Democrat for a program cut as a prelude to a grand deal. Each simply wants the other to pay to attack the problem.

  2. Ken Says:
    August 26th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Deficits are not bad or good. Debt interests, however, are real and will soon consume our budget.

    Republicans, correctly, beleive that taxes are too high. The only answer is to cut spending – a LOT.

  3. Carl Nelson Says:
    August 26th, 2009 at 10:50 am

    And the beat goes on; I have heard that line for my fifty years of adult life from Ike to Barrack. I’ll believe you’re serious about an actual solution when you propose giving up some of your enshrined principles in return for a deal. For without a grand deal that costs both sides a lot of pain, the screeching will go on but action will not.

  4. Ken Says:
    August 26th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    what are you talking about? A deal? That is stupid. That is all Republicans have been doing for decades. That is wrong.

    The basic problem is intractable. We just will fail. The only question is how soon and how hard.

    As I’ve said many times… next time around, no 16th amendment.

  5. TR Says:
    August 26th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Obama want more executive power as if he didn’t have much.
    Really?

    http://www.opm.gov/feddata/html/2008/may/charts.asp#branch

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