Bush Budget Said to Cause $2.75T Deficits

[bluedog]

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget would produce deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) projected Friday in the first authoritative look at the plan's longer-range implications.






The forecast — $737 billion worse than the budget office expects should Congress ignore Bush's tax and spending plans — is sure to factor into this year's presidential and congressional campaigns.

snip

Just two years ago, the budget office and Bush envisioned surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion for the decade ending in 2011. The projections released Friday cover a slightly different period, the 10 years running through 2014. Even so, the contrast is striking.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040227/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_budget_4

[Thrill]

1. Why in the blue

heck would anyone vote for this guy

[Atlant]

14. God, Guns, Gays, and Guys (as in, "could have a few beers with). (NT)

[Sticky]

2. Another damaging story released on Friday

Rate it a 5 and hope it has legs for Sunday talk shows.

[RobertSeattle]

3. Love the Bush "Who Me?" look in the thumbnail

Bush is responsible for the largest tax increase ever - on the future.

[jeanmarc]

7. Liked that too [nt]

[Mountainman]

4. Borrow and spend repubs

At least if we are tax and spend we don't spend what we don't have.

Who can run their households that way? We should compare the government to a family. Can a family keep on borrowing to spend today and leave the debts for the kids to pay off when they get older? What about the needs of the kids in the future? They will have no future because we would have already spent their money on ourselves!

[ramapo]

6. Common Sense is sorely lacking

You're 100% correct Mountainman. The cause is so simple.

The problem is greed. Everybody wants their entitlement, nobody wants to pay. So we get the worst of both worlds.

Politicians pander to the citizenry with their tax cut mania, extolling pithy slogans like "It's your money". Funny that Bush isn't saying "It's your debt" now that we're back in hock. To be for taxes is political suicide, remember Mondale in '84.

To cut government services and programs is also political suicide. Can't cut anything defense related because that makes you a commie/terrorist sympathizer. Farm subsidies (even though most go to corporations), forget it. And so on.

I am in favor of government spending and programs but if people won't foot the bill maybe there should be an across-the-board, even cut on all spending. Let people stew in that. Of course the problem with this approach is the incredible suffering and hardship that will occur in some segmentes of our society.

The Clinton tax policies worked pretty well although there was a hugh boost to revenue from the capital gains taken during the bubble.

[Maeve]

12. I COULD run my household that way

Not for long, mind you...but long enough for me to get out of town with a suitcase full of cash...

[Walt Starr]

5. Looking at it in real terms including the interest on existing debt

By 2015 we will not even be able to afford the Department of Defense any longer. All taxes will go to nothing but servicing of the national debt.

[TrogL]

8. I suppose this would be a really nasty place to point out that...

Canada just posted a surplus - again.

:spank:

[jeanmarc]

9. Based on some current scientific data...

Canada will be inheriting some fine farmland thanks to global warming. I think I'm moving there soon. But first, I will fight off a few fascists here.

[Yavin4]

10. There's Even More Bad News To Come

This $2.75 trillion is a gross undercount. Because of outsourcing and globalized trade, tax receipts will plummet. Minimum wage jobs don't pay all that much in taxes. So, this figure is a small, small forecast.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. federal spending is now about $2 trillion per year

so, with growth, say it will total $27.5 trillion over the next 10 years. That means they're planning to overspend by 10% (or take in 10% less taxes than they need to, depending on your point of view), year in, year out. Imagine if you spent 10% more than your take home pay, every year for 10 years. Without any saleable assets to back the loans. When you already owed three and a half times your income.

[rfkrocks]

13. end of america? How can we survive this?

Even if we win in nov. can we still stop this or is it so bad that the debt just destroys our country now no matter what? I'm looking for some comfort here people!

[ozone_man]

15. I don't know if we can survive.

A Democrat in office may make a difference by degrees. The deficit spending will continue. They are using our S.S. money to deficit spend. That's why Greenspan said can't have tax cuts and S.S., so cut S.S. But congress has been playing this game for many, many years, so there aren't any clean hands here. That's why we don't want a Washington insider like Kerry.

But I think it's going to get alot worse than even the most pessimistic projections. The debt bomb has yet to be triggered, and when it goes off, market and real estate values will plunge, joblessness sky high. Those revenue projections will be so far off, kiss S.S. goodbye.

[rfkrocks]

17. dude!

Thats not the comfort I was looking for:scared:

[Just Me]

16. As silly as this might sound, has anyone noticed how often * quotes from

,...the scrolls of St. Thomas? In addition to articulating a form of spiritual secularism, there is an advocacy for tearing everything down in order to build back up.

He seeks to tear down everything that fails to be within his naive and spoiled purview. He is sooooooooooooo f*cked up.

I am a spiritual secularist. I view him and his cabal as a scrapping "black" desperate for survival. They are quite "beastly", in my humble view.

[UpInArms]

18. kick

:kick:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4459168

Democrats and even some in Bush's own Republican Party have criticized him for the growing deficits, which have become a thorny political issue for him before the Nov. 2 election. Bush inherited a budget surplus when he took office in January 2001.



The estimated population of the United States is 293,404,684
so each citizen's share of this debt is $24,176.77.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $2.06 billion per day since September 30, 2003