The budget deficit came in $400 billion below estimates. Republicans still try and spin it as Democratic failure, how will the media run with it?
We all know that the Republican Party knocked the finances of the US out for six. So to hear House Republican Leader John Boehner complaining about the growing deficit is laughable. He told a presser, "Today's deficit numbers are yet another troubling reminder that our nation is on a dangerous and unsustainable fiscal path,", arguing that the the Democratic Congress and White House was being "irresponsible".
Funny how the Bush deficits were not considered irresponsible.
Listening to the Republicons you would have expected that the deficit data was a horror story. It is not.
The Government collected US$2.10 trillion in revenues, a 16.6 per cent drop from 2008. This was the biggest drop in revenues for over 70 years. Republicans can not escape the blame for this as it was their crash that caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs and of those that kept their jobs, many saw very real pay cuts.
Corporate taxes have also plummeted as the recession wrecked profit margins.
So whatever happened, this tax year was never going to be "deficit neutral".
Government spending jumped to US$3.52 trillion, an increase of 18.2 per cent over 2008. The largest percentage increase since 1975. This reflected increases in unemployment related expenditures as well as the $700 billion cost of the bank bail outs (the cost of Republican failure) and initial costs of the economic stimulus package.
The White House had however estimated that the deficit would be $1.8 trillion. Congress pared back some White House Programmes, including the make work pay tax cut promised by Barack Obama during the election. After cutting back on his programmes the deficit was still expected to top $1.6 trillion. It came in at $1.4 trillion.
If this was a Republican administration they would be singing the praises of the President delivering a reduced deficit, 23% lower than expected.
So what will the media do? Report this as bad news and blame the President or ignore it? You can bet that they will not report it as a success.