It just keeps getting better and better... ----------------------------------------------------------- By ALAN FRAM Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration projected Tuesday that this year's federal deficit will surge to a record $455 billion, underscoring the toll that recession, tax cuts and the costs of fighting terrorism are taking on the government's books. The White House also estimated that next year's budget shortfall will hit $475 billion, though the red ink will ease downward to $226 billion in 2008, according to the figures obtained by The Associated Press. http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/st...TE=1010WINS&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
The Bush administration projected Tuesday that this year's federal deficit will surge to a record $455 billion, underscoring the toll that recession, tax cuts and the costs of fighting terrorism are taking on the government's books. We're not in a recession and the war on terrorism isn't that costly.. More news: http://money.cnn.com/2003/07/15/news/economy/frank_greenspan/index.htm Greenspan to make new deficit warning Congressman says Fed chair's remarks warn capital needed by businesses will be limited by deficit. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will warn Congress Tuesday that federal deficits could hurt the raising of private capital needed by businesses, according a Democratic congressman who has seen the Fed chairman's prepared testimony. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told CNNfn Tuesday that Greenspan's comments to the House Financial Services Committee, set for 10 a.m. ET, will include a warning about the drop in the federal net savings rate associated with the larger government deficits. Frank quoted Greenspan's comments as warning, "If not reversed over the longer haul, such low levels of national savings could eventually impinge on the formation of private capital that contributed to the improved productivity performance of the past half decade." Frank, who fought the Bush administration tax cut plans, said the Greenspan statement is "the starkest statement I've seen about the dangers of current deficits being put forward." In my opinion, the deficit reductions in the late 1990's were a BIG part of the reason the expansion kept going with low inflation. Money was getting freed up from treasury investment to go into private investment and extend the boom. This is one major reason why a balanced budget is important in the long-run.
These deficits will wreck the economy if we don't find some fiscal responsibility. And I don't see it forthcoming. "Fiscal responsibility" nowadays is, You're fired, and YOU get to do HIS/HER job now, too.
There's a method to Bush's madness By Dave Zweifel Folks like to scoff at suggestions that what the Bush administration is really up to with all these tax cuts and deficit spending is to grease the skids for a day when they can do away with all of government's social programs enacted during the last century - Social Security, Medicare, job programs, for a few examples. They need to read a recent column that appeared in the Washington Post. It was written by Grover Norquist, the president of the ultra-conservative group called Americans for Tax Reform. The organization has considerable influence in the administration and with today's Republican Party. There, in black and white, Norquist lays out the scenario that Bush and the GOP Congress envision. If this is compassionate conservatism, I think we better go back to just plain old regular conservatism. Norquist says that Bush has wisely not proposed fundamental tax reform in a single piece of legislation. "But the president has been taking deliberate steps toward such reform with each tax cut," he wrote. "Abolish the death tax, abolish the capital gains tax, expand IRAs so that all savings are tax-free, move to full expensing of business investment rather than long depreciation schedules, and abolish the alternative minimum tax." Eventually, he says, the president will be able to move to a single flat tax rate envisioned by magazine publisher and former GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes and the snarling congressman from Texas, Dick Armey. As David Broder pointed out in a recent column, that's when janitors and CEOs give up the same percentage of their incomes to the tax man. "The economic goal is to reduce the tax rate on labor and capital and reduce the disincentives to savings, investment and work," Norquist continued, adding that eventually there will be an elimination of tariffs on manufactured goods, reforms in personnel management and "the Social Security changes that will take a generation to phase in." Bush will be able to take these small steps because he'll have eight years to do it with a Republican Congress that will also be good for at least another eight years or so because of the gerrymandered congressional districts that the GOP was able to fashion after the new census, he candidly and confidently wrote. Columnist Broder remarked that while Norquist didn't say it directly, what he really has in mind "is a massive rollback in federal revenues and what he regards as a desirable shrinkage of federal services and benefits. In short, the goal is a system of government wiped clean, on both the revenue and spending side, of almost a full century's accumulation of social programs designed to provide a safety net beneath the private economy." And that's essentially what Bill Moyers said in his recent eye-opening speech at the Take Back America conference in Washington, that Bush and his congressional allies are out to bankrupt government, giving them the excuse to privatize public services in order to enrich the corporate interests that fund their campaigns. Why else would an administration, facing a $400 billion record-shattering deficit, continually cut taxes, but spend billions more on defense? There's a method to all this madness and, frankly, the country's in big trouble.
So, now the rich people don't believe we need any of these pesky "social programs." I guess they just want to roll back the ENTIRE twentieth century. Too much progress.
Shouldn't Jorge be here by now to tell all us dummies how deficits are good? Are they just good or are they ever better the bigger they get? I can't remember.
i thought you didn't want government in your life?? (just kidding..nothing to see here..move along...move along)
Gee, I wonder which programs they'll cut. I'll give the Bush Administration this much credit: when they screw poor Americans, they REALLY screw poor Americans.
Please note that the drug war is not a social program. They want to cut social security, medicare, medicaid, higher education, etc. so that they can keep the drug war!
Heck, I want Social Security cut too...not all the way, but at least let me manage my own money for retirement. Having it in the general fund is ridiculous, it is my money, not the governments. Of course, I am for socialized medicine too...get rid of insurance companies, HMOs, PPOs, etc..etc...and just make medicine available for everyone paid for out of our taxes. I don't think Bush will eliminate all these programs, but having them be more fiscally responsible is a good thing. DD
The country may soon be bankrupt and the economy may soon tank, but I feel good about the situation because I know our President is not getting nookie on the side.
White House Foresees 5-Year Debt Increase Of $1.9 Trillion By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 16, 2003 The federal government will pile up $1.9 trillion in new debt over the next five years and will still be running an annual deficit of $226 billion by 2008, long after White House economists <b>assume</b> current war costs will have subsided and the economy will have recovered, the Bush administration projected yesterday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61607-2003Jul15.html
I agree with you 100-percent on socialized medicine. It's a travesty that millions of people in the richest country in world history can't even afford a yearly check-up.
This is the very reason that I anticipate voting Democratic or independent in the next election. It'll depend on their stance on abortion (if not rabidly pro-choice, I could vote for them) but I would have a hard time voting for Bush now because I don't think the Administration is being fiscally responsible. Not what I had hoped for in 2000
July 18, 2003 Passing It Along By PAUL KRUGMAN Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations." Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books. The numbers tell the tale. In its first budget, released in April 2001, the administration projected a budget surplus of $334 billion for this year. More tellingly, in its second budget, released in February 2002 — that is, after the administration knew about the recession and Sept. 11 — it projected a deficit of only $80 billion this year, and an almost balanced budget next year. Just six months ago, it was projecting deficits of about $300 billion this year and next. There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all. And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers. Some point out that Ronald Reagan ran even bigger deficits as a share of G.D.P. But they hope people won't remember that in the face of those deficits, Mr. Reagan raised taxes, reversing part of his initial tax cut. Furthermore, this time huge deficits have emerged just a few years before the baby boomers start retiring and placing huge demands on Social Security and Medicare. The Social Security system is running a surplus right now, in preparation for future demands; the rest of the federal government is paying one-third of its expenses with borrowed money. That's a record. But haven't administration officials said they'll cut the deficit in half by 2008? Yeah, right. I could explain in detail why that claim is nonsense, but in any case, why bother with what these people say? Remember, just 18 months ago they said they'd more or less balance the budget by 2004. Unpoliticized projections show a budget deficit of at least $300 billion a year as far as the eye can see. The last defense of the budget deficit is that it helps a depressed economy — to which the answer is "yes, but." Yes, deficit spending stimulates demand — but tax cuts for the rich, which have dominated the administration's economic program, generate very little employment bang for the deficit buck. Of the 2.6 million jobs the economy has lost under the Bush administration, 2 million have been lost since the 2001 tax cut. And yes, deficits are appropriate as a temporary measure when the economy is depressed — but these deficits aren't temporary (see above). Still, do deficits matter? Some economists worry, with good reason, about their long-run effect on economic growth. But I worry most about America's fiscal credibility. You see, a government that has a reputation for sound finance and honest budgets can get away with running temporary deficits; if it lacks such a reputation, it can't. Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger, as a share of G.D.P., than those that plunged Argentina into crisis. The reason we don't face a comparable crisis is that markets, extrapolating from our responsible past, trust us to get our house in order. But Mr. Bush shows no inclination to deal with the budget deficit. On the contrary, his administration continues to fudge the numbers and push for ever more tax cuts. Eventually, markets will notice. And tarnished credibility, along with a much-increased debt, is a problem that Mr. Bush will pass along to other Congresses, other presidents and other generations.
