Sunday, July 12, 2009

Money & Business

Capital Commerce

Obama's $2 Trillion Dollar Budget Deficit

January 09, 2009 06:52 AM ET | James Pethokoukis | Permanent Link | Print

Paul Krugman of the NY Times is among a number of liberals who are complaining that Barack Obama's economic plan is too timid. Keep that in mind as you read Strategas analyst Dan Clifton's budget analsis:

Yesterday’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO) release of the updated FY ’09 budget numbers showed a $1.2 trillion deficit for the fiscal year (8.5% of GDP). However, a closer examination of the report demonstrates these numbers are dramatically underestimated due to the scoring of TARP expenditures and obviously the fact that the stimulus was left out of the scoring (CBO is creating a budget baseline based on current law).Based on our analysis, the deficit is actually $2.2 trillion for the fiscal year or nearly 100 percent higher than is being reported. In fact, the deficit will finish the fiscal year at an astonishing 15.5 percent of GDP! Federal spending will rise to 32 percent of GDP.

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Reader Comments

About Obama

People yell about Bush spending raising our debt 1.2 trillion dollars in 3 years.

But ya know what?! Obama has already raised our debt that much in ONE DAY!! And he's not even president yet. His stimulus's seem to come out of thin air.

Who Owns the Deficit

Actually it is Congress that is Constitutionally responsible for the budget and since the Democrat majority of 2006, the deficit has soared due to their irresponsiblity and ineptitude. The Democrats were the ones pushing the bailout packages while pursuing policies that destroyed the world economy.

The first domino to fall was the exhorbitant in crease in energy prices brought about by their stubborn refusal to permit domestic oil drilling in the face of rapidly increasing demand. Their actions caused prices to escalate so high that it choked off world economic growth. That economic slowdown exposed their financial schemes, such as forcing lenders to provide mortgages to those who could not pay them back, while blocking financial oversight of their activities. This collapse in the financial market further destroyed the world economy as those mortgages circulated thoughout the world financial system like a cancer. The Democrats own this economic meltdown and its aftermath.

Debt = Slavery

If Obama's plan goes through we the American people who actually work an honest day's work and earn an honest wage are going to be taxed 1 Trillion dollars on top of the 11 Trillion dollars that already exists in our National Debt.

Obama has also been recently quoted as saying that our our economy will be stimulated by the principal of free market and not free money.

The hypocracy of this statement is that while he is spooning these comments down the throats of millions of Americans, large corporations such as AIU, Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan, etc., are getting billions of dollars of our taxpayers dollars for free. Even worse is that many of these bailout companies aren't even owned entirely by American shareholders which means we are giving more money to international governments than our own. So how do these bailouts and economic stimulus plans help the U.S. Economy if they don't even help put money back into the pockets of American tax payers?

The answer is simple. They won't help. In fact these stimulus plans and bailouts will do nothing more than bankrupt our economy and put the burden of this debt on the shoulders of generations to come.

In retrospect, lets look at the already spent 5 trillion dollars of bailout funds plus the 1 trillion dollars of proposed economic stimulus and divide by the population of every us citizen which is roughly 306 million. That total comes to $19,608 for every man woman and child.

That would be a significant stimulus to those who just got layed off. Not enough you say? The rich don't need stimulus?

OK lets look at those who are really hurting, middle class and below. The percentage of upper middle class and above is roughly 16% of the population or about 48,640,000. This leaves about 255,360,000 middle class and below. Divided evenly into 6 trillion dollars would be $23,460 dollars for every middle-class and below citizen, man, woman and child.

I don't know about you but I shure could use another $23.5K in my wallet to support my family and I would feel one helluva lot more comfortable knowing that it would be going to the needs of my family's survival and not the multi-hundred thousand dollar celebration party that these big businesses throw when they get our taxpayer money.

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About the Capital Commerce Blog

Send an E-mail to mbandyk@usnews.com.

U.S. News business reporter Matthew Bandyk examines the issues, people, and debates that shape the nexus of political and economic life in the nation's capital. Reach him by email at mbandyk@usnews.com.

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