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The debt is due to increased spending in dealing with the recession(ie. extended UE payments, lost tax revenue from lost jobs and Corp profit decreases, increasing Medicare and SS demands, Wars ....) Yes, the economy has slowed resulting in less ability to handling expenditures. As the economy picks back up as it is, the defits will lower. Eventually we will get back to the economy growing faster than expenditures. What we do with that surplus, will be a question that, hopefully, we answer better than we have since Clinton. When Obama get there, I suspect he will act more like Clinton than Bush. With a few more Dem Presidents coming up, we have a good period to look forward to. Maybe in a decade or two, we will be able to have another Repub.
Bob, come on. There will be no surplus in the next 5 years. Why would you even assert something so absurd?
Federal spending has increased in nearly all catagories since 1990. In inflation adjusted dollars, we spend right around $7000 per person throughout the entire decade of the 90s. That increased to about $9000 per person throughout Ws terms, and increase of ~28% in spending, or 3.5% per year. Under Obama that has gone to ~$10,500, an increase of ~17% in 3 years, or 5.6% per year. Neither are sustainable.
Per the chart above, federal spending has increased in virtually all areas. At least projections show defense spending declining, by upwards of 20% by 2016. Unfortunately, increases in other areas exceed those cuts. Again...not sustainable, and who knows if those cuts will actually happen.
I don't see how you arrived at "Under Obama that has gone to ~$10,500, an increase of ~17% in 3 years, or 5.6% per year." Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009. Accord to the source we have been using, the spending rate has not increased at all. Please remember that on Jan. 7, 2009, two-weeks before Obama took office, the CBO was already projecting (see page 9) a 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion. Obama couldn't possibly be accountable for a deficit prior to him assuming office.
Quote:
CBO projects that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP. Enactment of an economic stimulus package would add to that deficit. In CBO’s baseline, the deficit for 2010 falls to 4.9 percent of GDP, still high by historical standards.
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