Henry Imler October 8th, 2006

Bizzyblog » The Federal Budget Deficit: Bush Benchmark Achieved, Ignored

I am staying pretty ignorant of specific policies. I just don’t have
the time to catch up, stay abreast of everything to where I can say
something that is not just a regurgitation of talking points. With that
said, I don’t know if what is said in the above think is completely
accurate. With those disclaimers out of the way, check this out:

A huge point has been virtually if not totally ignored
since the announcement on Friday that the reported federal deficit for
the fiscal year that ended a week ago was $250 billion — The Bush
Administration has done what it said it would do about the deficit
three years ago, and has done it a full three years early, i.e., in
half the time predicted.

A deficit of $250,000,000,000 dollars is huge and I don’t like it;
so don’t get me wrong. However, it is a whole lot better than a
$250,000,000,000 and a $250,000,000,000 deficit.

Here are some of the headlines from the article I quoted:

1. Tax receipts have soared by over 35%
2. the
   administration has accomplished its goal of cutting the reported
   deficit in half by the time it leaves office a full three years early
3. Economic growth has averaged an annualized 3.89% during the past 13 quarters since the 2003 Bush tax cuts were passed.
4. “it will be fiscal nirvana — a honest-to-goodness REAL budget surplus will occur in fiscal 2011, less than five years from now.”
   - This is without the social security surplus being added to the
   receipts, which is how Washington has made the budget deficit loot
   smaller than it really has for decades.

Every time I think about the budget, I get really, really depressed.
This has kinda given me some hope for the future of this nation’s
finances.

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