AP: Budget deficit to hit $1.8 trillion this year

AP: Budget deficit to hit $1.8 trillion this year

content.usatoday.com

"The federal budget deficit for the current year will top $1.8 trillion under the latest estimates produced by congressional economists," the Associated Press reports, citing as its sources "Capitol Hill aides briefed on the figures." It says they "spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of public release of the figures later Friday."

The Congressional Budget Office had recently been forecasting a $1.2 trillion deficit for this year.

The AP adds that CBO's new estimates show "a worsening picture for 2010 as well, with a deficit of almost $1.4 trillion expected under administration policies. Obama had predicted about $200 billion less."

According to the wire service, "the latest figures, fueled by the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and diving tax revenues stemming from the worsening recession, would shatter the previous record for a federal shortfall of $459 billion, set just last year."

(visit the link for the full news article)

We are on the road to ruin people.

We have to STOP THE SPENDING...

IT HAS TO STOP!!!

We have to take our hits now. We are destroying our currency.

This is not sustainable...yet people are complaining about million dollar bonuses when we are LOSING TRILLIONS!!

Please people....tell everyone you know...tell them we can't do this anymore!!

It has to stop!!!

content.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is near 4 TIMES our deficit just last year...which was record.

Get the word out! For cripes sake!

Make them read and watch the news!!!

[edit on 20-3-2009 by David9176]

Oh yes, we are screwed!

We have to stop spending. I still say something has to be linked to China for the Fed to print 1.15 Trillion dollars in paper.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about.

The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama's budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That's $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.

In other words, Barack Obama's presidency will ultimately create approximately as much debt as that of every other administration in the entire history of the United States before him.

Yikes.

The UK is also setting new Deficit records:

www.guardian.co.uk...

I think that the world is about to test the "deficits don't matter" hypothesis!

i'm positive that's 1.8million bad mistakes

under a limited govt., 90% of that money wouldn't be used
it's just mostly used for things the govt. shouldn't be doing anyhow

most of that money was used for murder, theft, propping up govts., stealing oil, putting money is horrible people's pockets.

the amount of the deficit is horrible, but where the money went is horrific.

im sorry but i'm glad i moved!

Let me guess -

Bush's fault???

Not a one-liner.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


I honestly wish that I had the means to follow your example and just get the hell out of here. I love what this country is supposed to stand for, but I hate what it has become. Most of the people that I meet here are so shallow and self-involved, it's disgusting to me.

(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.

"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.

He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.

"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."

The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate the financial statements."

Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the "accounting games." He's still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse.

"Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year," he said.

Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded the Navy's 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary, in 1976.

In his opinion, "With good financial oversight we could findTextchange in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers."

I'm with you OP but most folks don't care, they watch American Idol and blather on about the economy. Watch Money Master's, all your questions will be answered. This is planned and not an accident.

"Once you lose everything, you then can do anything"

Does this figure include the 1.2 Trillion the Fed created this week?

We owe for that too... with interest.

Money from nothing, national economies based on debt, and they get paid for dreaming up the scheme.

Destroy the paradigm. Fractional Reserve Lending should be criminalized. Corporate law revised, the UCC revoked, corporate shills need to be removed from office. Abolish corporate citizenship, or charge them with economic terrorism and treason. They shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

If it wouldn't land me in jail I would urge the people of the world to deny all financial corporations (banks, credit card companies, insurance companies) any and all payments due until a full accounting of the world's central banks was completely disclosed. But then, I don't want to die just yet - I've too much work to do.

I hate to say it but that deficit is going to be over 2 Trillion I believe. There will be more bailouts. CONgress has proven they don't care what their constituents think. I'm going to bet FY09 deficit will be 2.2 Trillion+


I'm going to laugh my butt off when Taxes go up (like the recent %150 rise in cigarrette taxes) but revenues come down. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to quit smoking right now not only for the health benefits but because it puts less money into .gov coffers if I quit.

reply to post by jefwane


That's a great reason to quit!

I just might join you!

reply to post by jefwane


I bought a pack of cigarettes the other day for $10. I have grown tired of smoking but that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I hate all this taxation, but maybe this tax will finally get me to quit.

Edit to add: this is why you can't tax us out of a deficit. Where you increase a consumption tax, all you get is less consumption. When you increase an income tax you ecourage people to declare less income either through creative accounting or outright evasion. It also creates a disincentive to make more money. Simple example: my freind's wife tryed to make some extra cash one year and worked a ton of overtime. What this did was put her in a higher bracket where she lost most of the extra cash she earned threw the additional taxes.

This is really bad news for the hope of a recovery.

[edit on 20-3-2009 by finemanm]

Originally posted by sos37
Let me guess -

Bush's fault???

Not a one-liner.

No, it's the fault of our "borrow-and-spend" culture that has grown out of control over the past 30 years. Presidents deserve some of the blame, but so do the citizens, and all of the social institutions. This is a cultural problem, not a political problem; and frankly, anybody who tries to view it as a political problem is not looking at the whole picture.

[edit on 21-3-2009 by theWCH]

Here, let me fix the first line of the OP item...

"The federal budget deceit for the current year will top $1.8 trillion ..."

Can we make a new word out of this mess? Deficit + Deceit = Deficeit?

The budget cannot be fixed. How can future budgets go lower? Federal budgets down to the department level continue to have "use it or lose it" budgets where people spend-off their budgets so that they don't get a lower-one the next year. Happy vendors in September get a great number of orders for wasteful spending (outside the scope of budget issues such as AIG and wars). This goes back decades. I just can't see this getting better for a long long time.

Originally posted by sos37
Let me guess -

Bush's fault???

Not a one-liner.

Actually, yes. The $3.1 Trillion 2009 Federal Budget was signed into law by Bush last year, along with the $700 Billion Bank bailout, $200 Billion backstop for Fannie and Freddie, and the $300 Billion backstop for Citigroup. Obama hasn't spent any money yet that wasn't already allocated by Bush and his first budget is for fiscal year 2010.

Source

And the reason the future budgets are expected to blow out is right there in the article:

According to the wire service, "the latest figures, fueled by the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and diving tax revenues stemming from the worsening recession, would shatter the previous record for a federal shortfall of $459 billion, set just last year."

[edit on 3/21/2009 by mythatsabigprobe]