Driven by the cost of hurricane relief, the federal budget deficit is expected to balloon back above $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends in September, reversing the improvements of 2005, a White House official told reporters yesterday.
But some budget analysts cautioned that the estimate should be considered more of a political mark to inform the coming budget debate than an economic forecast.
This is the third straight year in which the White House has summoned reporters well ahead of the official budget release to project a higher-than-anticipated deficit. In the past two years, when final deficit figures have come in at record or near-record levels, White House officials have boasted that they had made progress, since the final numbers were below estimates.
Once again the fiscally conservative party has an increasing budget deficit. Yet, somehow, the Republican still argue they are the party of fiscal responsibility. I'm
still trying to figure that one out.
So, what's the problem? I know - it's those tax and spend liberals who are responsible. But wait - the Republicans have been in control of both houses since 1994. So - it's those borrow and squander Republicans who are responsible.
Actually, there are several factors involved here. The first is that "tax cuts pay for themselves" is a lie. Bush's tax cuts went into effect in 2001 (not 2003 like the Republicans are currently saying). According to the Congressional Budget Office, for the years 2001-2004 tax revenue from individual taxpayers (in billions) was from 994, 858, 793, 809. So - tax revenue decreased for the first 2 years of Bush's tax cuts.
The second problem is Bush is huge spender who continually underestimates his programs' costs. Remember how oil revenue would pay for the Iraq War? Well, we know that was a huge lie (screw the taxpayers; I want to impress Daddy). The current know cost of the war is 233 billion. But the White House has continually used special appropriations procedures to keep some of the cost of the war off the books for as long as possible. Then there was the Medicaid Prescription program. Bush again underestimated the cost of that program to ensure passage. He even threatened a career bureaucrat - preventing him from testifying before Congress --who knew Bush's costs were way too low. This is just par for the coarse in the Bush White House.
Then there are those "fiscally responsible" Republican Congressmen. Thanks to the combination of K street lobbying and the Republican's majority status, "the number of appropriation earmarks increased from 958 in FY1996 to nearly 14,000 in FY2005." The total value of Congressional earmarks in the last year was 36 billion. ( those are just the earmarks we can find.)
The end result of this budgetary nightmare is under Bush's and the Republican's stewardship in the last 5 years, the total federal debt has increased from 5.6 trillion to 8.1 trillion.
The short answer is simple: Bush is a fiscal nightmare of mammoth proportions. He has mortgaged our children's future to pay for today. While the Republicans and their noise machine have attempted to spin the numbers half a million ways, even some members of the Republican party have started to notice they are the problem. The only question is will they do something about I?