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10-Year (US) Federal Deficit Estimated at $855 Billion
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| ogvh5150 |
It would have been the same price had Kerry won the election, so this goes beyond partisan politics:
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_frie...,145335,00.html
| quote: | 10-Year Federal Deficit Estimated at $855 Billion
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
WASHINGTON — As Congress started to digest a new Bush administration request of $80 billion to bankroll wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its top budget analyst on Tuesday projected $855 billion in deficits for the next decade even without the costs of war and Bush's Social Security plan.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration would outline its request for more money for Iraq and Afghanistan later Tuesday. He would provide no detail, but congressional aides said the package would total about $80 billion and be mostly for U.S. military operations in the two countries.
Congress approved $25 billion for the wars last summer. Using figures compiled by the Congressional Research Service, which prepares reports for lawmakers, the newest request would push the totals provided for the conflicts and worldwide efforts against terrorism past $300 billion. That includes $25 billion already provided for rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan.
McClellan said the administration would request what is needed for U.S. troops and "to support the Iraqi people as they move forward on building a democratic and peaceful future."
Amid the White House's preparations, the Congressional Budget Office (search) predicted the government will accumulate another $855 billion in deficits over the next decade.
The projection, for the years 2006 through 2015, is almost two-thirds smaller than what congressional budget analysts predicted last fall. But the drop is largely due to estimating quirks that required it to exclude future Iraq and Afghanistan war costs and other expenses. Last September, their 10-year deficit estimate was $2.3 trillion.
The CBO also projected this year's shortfall will be $368 billion. That was close to the $348 billion deficit for 2005 that it had forecast last fall. The two largest deficits ever in dollar terms were last year's $412 billion and the $377 billion gap of 2003.
The budget office estimated if U.S. troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan declines gradually after 2006, those wars would add $590 billion to deficits over the next decade. Including war costs, this year's shortfall should hit about $400 billion, the budget office said.
Besides lacking war costs, the budget office's deficit estimates also omitted the price tags of Bush's goal of revamping Social Security, which could cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion and dominate this year's legislative agenda.
Also left out were the price of extending Bush's tax cuts and easing the impact the alternative minimum tax would have on middle-income Americans, which could exceed $2.3 trillion, the report said.
When those items are included, Bush is a long way from his goal of cutting deficits in half by 2009, Democrats said.
"Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House, but they can't control the budget and they can't escape responsibility for its dismal condition," said Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Republicans used the deficit figures to underscore the need to find budget savings this year, including from popular benefit programs, which include Medicaid.
"If we do nothing, our kids and grandkids will be overwhelmed by the costs of our inaction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Bush won't send the war financing package to Congress until after he unveils his full 2006 budget on Feb. 7, congressional aides said.
White House officials declined to comment on the war package, which will come as the United States confronts continued violence in Iraq leading up to that country's Jan. 30 elections.
Aides said about three-fourths of the $80 billion was expected to be for the Army, which is bearing the brunt of the fighting in Iraq. It also was expected to include money for building a U.S. embassy in Baghdad, estimated to cost $1.5 billion.
One aide said the request will also include funds to help the new Afghan government combat drug trafficking. It might also have money to help two new leaders the U.S. hopes will be allies, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (search) and Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko.
The aides said the package Bush eventually submits to Congress will also include money to help Indian Ocean countries hit by the devastating December tsunami.
The forthcoming request highlights how much war spending has soared past initial White House estimates. Early on, then-presidential economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey placed Iraq costs at $100 billion to $200 billion, only to see his comments derided by administration colleagues.
By pushing war spending beyond $300 billion, the latest proposal would approach nearly half the $613 billion the United States spent for World War I or the $623 billion it expended for the Vietnam War, when the costs of those conflicts are translated into 2005 dollars.
The White House had not been expected to reveal details of the war package until after the release of the full budget.
But lawmakers, as they did last year, want to include war costs in the budgets they will write. They argue that withholding the war costs from Bush's budget would open it to criticism that it was an unrealistic document, one aide said. Last year, the spending plan omitted war expenditures and received just that critique. |
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| zig |
| OW no not again....im not starting this again.....we have been debating this all day in another thread......Has China got the US by the balls...the answer is yes by the way.....but feel free if anybody wants to...:p |
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| Yoepus |
Geez, is this what's in the headlines these days?
I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Brad and Jen.. I've been off the news beat way to long it seems:( |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
Geez, is this what's in the headlines these days?
I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Brad and Jen.. I've been off the news beat way to long it seems:( |
Yeah, seriously! You're really missing out on the inert masses' world events, with their shocking headlines of celebrity babble! :toothless |
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| Trancer-X |
Greenspan: Budget Deficits Pose Big Threat
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that future budget deficits pose a bigger risk to the economy than record trade imbalances and the country's extremely low savings rate.
In a wide-ranging speech, Greenspan said he believed the United States' flexible economy would be able to deal with current concerns over trade and savings.
"The resolution of our current account deficit and household debt burdens does not strike me as overly worrisome, but that is certainly not the case for our fiscal deficit," Greenspan said in prepared remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
A copy of his remarks was distributed in Washington.
The Fed chief said the budget deficit is a problem because it is projected to rise significantly as a wave of baby boomers start to retire in 2008.
"Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability," Greenspan said.
Greenspan has been steadily beating the drum about the urgent need for policy-makers on Capitol Hill and the White House to get the nation's fiscal house in order.
While Greenspan has endorsed President Bush's move to set up personal investment accounts as part of an overhaul of Social Security, he has called for a go-slow approach to setting up such accounts. His concern is that massive government borrowing to bring them about could push up interest rates.
Greenspan also suggested that benefit cuts would be required to deal with looming funding problems within Social Security.
"What we know for sure, however, is that the 30 million baby boomers who will reach 65 years of age over the next quarter century are going to place enormous pressures on the ability of our economy to supply the real benefits promised to retirees under current law," Greenspan said.
On trade, Greenspan expressed hope that further declines in the value of the U.S. dollar would narrow the trade deficit, which mushroomed to an all-time high of $617 billion in 2004.
A weaker dollar makes U.S. exports less expensive to foreign buyers and thus more competitive on overseas markets. A weaker dollar also can raise the prices of imported goods flowing into the United States.
Greenspan said it would have been impossible a few decades ago to even fund a trade deficit the size of the current one in the United States because global investment flows wouldn't have been sufficient.
As he did in a November speech, Greenspan forecast that at some point foreigners — who are currently financing U.S. trade deficits by buying dollar-demoninated assets — will lose some of their appetite for U.S. investments.
But Greenspan said such a scenario is likely to occur in an orderly fashion without disrupting the U.S. economy.
Citing two studies done by the Federal Reserve, Greenspan said "market forces are likely to restore a more long-term sustainable current account balance here without substantial disruption."
On other issues, Greenspan repeated his belief that sharply rising home prices in recent years do not constitute a national bubble.
"A destabilizing contraction in nationwide house prices does not seem the most probable outcome," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...nk_050310235109 |
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