{"id":770,"date":"2004-03-16T07:03:21","date_gmt":"2004-03-16T12:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/03\/deficit_matters\/"},"modified":"2004-03-16T07:03:21","modified_gmt":"2004-03-16T12:03:21","slug":"deficit_matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/deficit_matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Deficit Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Couple interesting articles in today’s New York Times<\/i>. President Bush and his apologists have explained our budget deficit with their trifecta of excuses: (1) inherited a recession; (2) 9\/11; (3) the media scared economy with war talk. According to a Congressional Budget Office report, the finger pointing isn’t going to fly any more<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[A] report released on Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that economic weakness would account for only 6 percent of a budget shortfall that could reach a record $500 billion this year.
\nNext year, the agency predicted, faster economic growth will actually increase tax revenues even as the deficit remains at a relatively high level of $374 billion.
\nThe new numbers confirm what many analysts have predicted for some time: that budget deficits in the decade ahead will stem less from the lingering effects of the downturn and much more from rising government spending and progressively deeper tax cuts.
\n. . .
\nThe Congressional report, though, concludes that the “cyclical” problems of slower growth are a tiny part of the overall budget problem. The Congressional agency estimated that slower growth reduced tax revenues by $53 billion in 2002, accounting for a third of the budget deficit that year. In 2003, the agency estimated that subpar growth cut tax revenues by $68 billion. The overall budget deficit in 2002 swelled to $375 billion as a result of spending on the Iraq war and Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.
\nBut this year, with the economy expanding, the Congressional agency predicted that lingering weakness would drain only $30 billion in tax revenues while the deficit hits $477 billion, less than the White House had forecast, but still a record.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Edmund Andrew’s has pulled double duty with another article examining Alan Greenspan’s changing stance on economic conditions. Despite the aforementioned federal deficit, a huge trade deficit, the falling dollar, growing personal debt, and record bankruptcies, Greenspan seems strangely “sanguine” on America’s imbalances<\/a>.
\nGreenspan has been acting a little funny recently. From his testimony on Social Security to his commentary on variable rate mortgages; makes one wonder if something is up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Couple interesting articles in today’s New York Times. President Bush and his apologists have explained our budget deficit with their trifecta of excuses: (1) inherited a recession; (2) 9\/11; (3) the media scared economy with war talk. According to a Congressional Budget Office report, the finger pointing isn’t going to fly any more: [A] report […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}