The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama’s opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls.
The White House took heat for sticking with its $7.108 trillion forecast earlier this year after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that deficits between 2010 and 2019 would total $9.1 trillion.
“The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year,” said the administration official, who is familiar with the budget mid-session review that is slated to be released next week.
The White House budget office will also lower its deficit forecast for this fiscal year, which ends September 30, to $1.58 trillion from $1.84 trillion next week after removing $250 billion set aside for bank bailouts.
Record-breaking deficits have raised concerns about America’s ability to finance its debt and whether the United States can maintain its top-tier AAA credit rating.
Politically, the deficit has been an albatross for Obama, a Democrat who is pushing forward with plans to overhaul the U.S. healthcare industry — an initiative that could cost up to $1 trillion over 10 years — and other promises, including reforming education and how the country handles energy.
(Source: Reuters)
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5 Responses
1. The President can’t set a deficit. He can’t even spend a dime of public money on his own. The control of the budget is totally the responsibility of the Congress. Has been since 1789.
2. The Congress doesn’t “set” a deficit. They raise (or lower) taxes, and appropriate money, and what’s left is the deficit (or surplus).
3. Ten year projections are incredibly unreliable. They would require hiring a navi to work for the budget office.
4. The number don’t reflect guarantees and entitlements that are unpredictable, nor de facto expenditures by the Federal Reserve Board (which is technically a private agency, but in fact is the central bank and control the printing of money).
anyways by the time we have to pay it up all of us will be in Eretz Yisrael Iy”H
1.akuperma
When BO tells Congress to Jump they ask how high.
When he wants to spend, they ask how much.
and the CBO (Congressional Budget Office)is rarely off when it comes to numbers.
thank you akpuerma for your typical while-may-be-true, but certainly irrellevant points .
Do you have a point to make?
Or do you just like showing how you can point out irrelvant nuances as if this makes you sound smart some how?
and this guy ran on fiscal responsibility??? he spends like a drunken socialist!