This morning, the Bush Administration’s own Office of Management and Budget released its yearly budget report in which it describes previous years’ budget surpluses and deficits and makes projections regarding the surpluses or deficits in years to come. In years past, the Bush administration has used the OMB to deliver rosy scenarios regarding its budget deficits — scenarios that have repeatedly been dashed by much harsher reality. Still, even by its unrealistically optimistic standards, the OMB projects a record budget deficit of $423,186,000,000.00 for 2006, and a deficit for 2007 that while smaller than that for 2006 is still larger than that for 2005. To place this in historical context, I’ve taken historical data back more than forty years to look at trends in the budget deficit. As a lark, I also noted the party of the president in office in the previous year (since that is the president responsible for the any year’s budget). Take a look for yourself at the trend.
Hey, I’m just saying.
Wow… Pretty startling…
Heard it said before, different seeing it on a graph like that, though…
The fact that my tax dollar is going to have to pay for this over the next god-knows-how-many years makes me queasy. The sooner we get a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, the sooner this madness ends.
Not true Mike. Bush has effed things up so badly that it will take generations to get back to a surplus, and that will only happen if taxes rise, spending is slashed and China (and Japan) don’t call in their markers. So we’re in for a loooooong journey of fiscal stringency, where programs for the poor and middle classes will be meager at best, the infrastructure will suffer some, education will have to be kept under control, and, as usual, there won’t be any national medical insurance or coverage for everyone.
Thanks George and all you politicians living off of the public tax haul (and rich to begin with), we knew you’d understand and help . . .
So much for compassionate conservatism (what a sad joke).
I’d like to see two more graphs, but instead of the President’s party in red or blue, I’d like to see one for the Senate majority and one for the House majority. Ideally, they are the ones who really control the budget, although the President is supposed to provide leadership for Congress.