Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The federal budget deficit just keeps getting smaller.
It fell sharply in 2014 -- its fifth consecutive annual decline.
That's according to an estimate Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office. The deficit for fiscal year 2014, which ended on Sept. 30, will come in at roughly $486 billion, the CBO said. The Treasury Department will report the official number in a few weeks.
The 2014 number is $195 billion less than a year earlier. And as a share of the economy, the deficit dropped to 2.8% of GDP from 4.1% last year.
The deficit is the gap between how much the government spends and how much it takes in over the year. It borrows to make up the difference.
The biggest reason for the slide: An improving economy, higher taxes, and continued spending restraint.
Revenue grew by 9% over the prior year, or by $239 billion. That growth was fueled largely by a 7% jump in income and payroll tax receipts combined. Corporate tax revenue rose by 18%.
Looks like deficits are down about 65% from the peak.
There is no way that we are spending more and deficits drop.........I don't believe anything this administration says or does
Set up by Government manipulating the free market in Housing. Another crash caused by governments intervention in the economy yet again
That's what "free money" gets you. Booms and busts and the busts are always worse than the booms.
Lol once more at the CD mentality. 23 pages in 3 days? Really?
I don't have to read more than 2 pages to see that the bulk of the answers here are grasping at BS playbook responses as to why the OP's facts are incorrect or "meaningless. "
Come on, get real. There was no "Bush economy crash". The Democrats were in the majority in both houses of Congress for 2 full years prior to the crash. Why do liberals constantly ignore that? When it comes to the recovery, liberals have no problems blaming Republicans in Congress. The economy can't be Bush's fault when Democrats control all of Congress and then magically become Republicans' fault when Democrats control the Senate and the Presidency. That's absurd. It's pure dishonesty and misrepresentation.
Enacting an almost trillion dollar stimulus that still hasn't gotten the unemployment rate recovered is nowhere even remotely close to a pretty good achievement. It's an abject failure.
You know, it's one thing to support your side of politics. But it's quite another thing to just completely divorce yourself from reality. You know, real people suffered in that recession. Just like they did in the Depression. Liberals were more concerned with their politics then than with good governing and people suffered in a poor economy for years as a result, while other nations who didn't follow insane Keynesian policies recovered much more quickly.
But instead of learning from your mistakes, since that would require admitting you made them, you turn FDR into the hero who saved the nation. Predictably, that results in Democrats following the same misguided failure of a policy when the next great recession happens and the it has the same consequences. Recovery that takes year upon year upon year. Yet now you want to go do the same thing they did in the 30s and put your partisan politics above the health and safety of the American people. So next time the economy takes a fall, you will try implement the same thing yet again.
You should be ashamed of that selfishness. You're putting the wellbeing of future generations at risk by not admitting failures today. You can't learn from mistakes when you rewrite history to make those mistakes disappear.
It is good to see someone who remembers recent history, and has enough knowledge of civics to know who to blame.
I wish I could rep. you again, but I have to "pass it around."
There is no way that we are spending more and deficits drop.........I don't believe anything this administration says or does
Of course there is. All it requires is an increase in the budget.
In 2014 the projected revenues are $3 trillion. Yet Congress budgeted* $3.7 trillion and spent $4.349 trillion. Leaving them with a $649 billion deficit, while adding another $1.349 trillion to the National Debt.
If everything remained exactly the same in 2015, only Congress increases the budget for 2015 to $4 trillion, then the deficit will drop to $349 billion, while adding another $1.349 trillion to the National Debt.
If Congress wanted, they could make the budget $5 trillion, then there will be a $651 billion surplus, while adding another $1.349 trillion to the National Debt.
*There has not been an actual budget passed by Congress since 1998. They pass a handful of the 13 appropriation bills that constitute the federal budget, then everything else gets lumped into Continuing Resolutions, Omnibus, and Supplemental Spending bills.
Unfortunately, this respite is expected to be very short-lived. According to the CBO (The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024 | Congressional Budget Office) as soon as 2016, the deficit will begin growing again. By 2023, it is likely to once again top $1 trillion. Of course, whenever the deficit is greater than zero, our national debt also grows.
The CBO report reminds us that the national debt has doubled over the last six years. The CBO estimates that we will add an additional $9.4 trillion over the next ten years. And that’s the good news; after 2024, things really get bad.
The CBO estimates that debt held by the public, the portion of our national debt that economists consider most worrisome, will hold steady as a percent of the economy for the next few years, falling slightly from 74 percent of GDP, then rising slightly to 77 percent of GDP by 2023. But by 2039, it will rise to 106 percent of GDP.
If you include intragovernmental debt (debt owed to government trust funds such as Social Security and Medicare), our national debt today is more than 103 percent of GDP, and will reach roughly 118 percent of GDP by 2025. The future unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, beyond what is owed to the various trust funds, add another $66 trillion to that (in discounted present-value terms), bringing our real indebtedness to over 480 percent of GDP.
The CBO report also points out that interest on the debt is becoming an ever larger portion of federal spending. This year, the federal government will pay $221 billion in interest charges. By 2024, that will rise to more than $876 billion. Not long afterward, we will be paying a trillion dollars every year just for interest on the debt. By 2035, in fact, interest on the debt will be tied with Medicare as the second largest line item in the federal budget, trailing only Social Security.
The CBO also provides an alternative fiscal scenario, based on much more realistic assumptions about future spending. Under this baseline, for example, the CBO assumes that the spending limits under the sequester are breached again, as they were under the December 2013 bipartisan budget deal, that the Medicare “doc fix” is not paid for, and that discretionary federal spending is not further reduced as a share of GDP.
Under this scenario, debt held by the public alone would reach 205 percent of GDP by 2045. Shortly after that, the CBO says it is unable to make further projections because no one might be willing to buy U.S. government debt.
These are not just abstract numbers. The CBO report makes it clear that there is a very real cost to continued government profligacy. Under the baseline CBO projections, real GNP per capita will be 4 percent lower by 2039 than it would be if we followed more prudent fiscal policies. That means our children will be roughly $2,000 poorer per capita. Under the more realistic alternative scenario, real GNP per capita will be as much as 7 percent lower.
Reduction of the deficit to $486 billion is an inadequate reduction, and we remain on an unsustainable path. We have over $240,000 in federal debt per federal income taxpayer, and at our current pace that number goes up by about $7000 every year.
This is just one more problem that this president has failed to address.
It is not reasonable to lay the entire problem at the feet of the President, nor is it reasonable to lay the entire problem at the feet of either major political party. There is plenty of blame to go around.
From a practical stand point, probably the single most impactful thing any of us can do is to vote against every single incumbent. Every. Single. One.
It is not reasonable to lay the entire problem at the feet of the President, nor is it reasonable to lay the entire problem at the feet of either major political party. There is plenty of blame to go around.
From a practical stand point, probably the single most impactful thing any of us can do is to vote against every single incumbent. Every. Single. One.
It is not reasonable to blame or credit any President for deficits or surpluses. Congress is where that blame falls, and chiefly with the majority party in Congress.
Presidents have absolutely nothing to do with spending. All Presidents can do is propose a budget (a tradition that began with President Wilson), which Congress has never passed since the tradition began.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
