White House Foresees 5-Year Debt Increase Of $1.9 Trillion
Restoring a balanced budget is an important priority for this administration, but a balanced budget is not a higher priority than winning the global war on terror, protecting the American homeland, or restoring economic growth and job creation.
- Joshua B. Bolten
Gee, not all that long ago, politically speaking, I distinctly remember the Clinton Administration balancing the federal budget. Now, Shrub has completed dismantled the progress that was made, and is now justifying his lack of leadership on the economy by using the war on terror as an excuse for his Administration's profligate ways. Nice try....
The federal government will pile up $1.9 trillion in new debt over the next five years and will still be running an annual deficit of $226 billion by 2008, long after White House economists assume current war costs will have subsided and the economy will have recovered, the Bush administration projected yesterday.
The White House Office of Management and Budget officially pegged the 2003 budget deficit at a record $455 billion, up sharply from $158 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2002. It is expected to rise to $475 billion in fiscal 2004, even without additional costs for the occupation of Iraq. The deficit is then expected to dip swiftly to $213 billion in 2007 before rising again in 2008, the last year of the White House forecast.
White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten labeled the new deficit figures "a legitimate subject of concern," but he called the red ink "manageable." He offered no new proposals to bring the budget back into balance.
Interesting, isn't it, that a deficit that would have had Republicans in high dudgeon and paroxysms of righteous indignation were Bill Clinton still in office are now being spun as "manageable"? It's OK, because though the actual number is large (actually, it's almost incomprehensible), it's a smaller percentage of the size of the economy than the "Clinton deficits" were.
What craven hypocrisy. Then again, I suppose this is the quality of leadership we deserve when you consider that we allowed Shrub to steal an election....
