Bush: Deficit will grow by $2.25 Trillion over 5 years. [View All]

[Renew Deal]

I asked earlier if cutting the deficit by half meant annually. It does. Check this.

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How's that again? This year, under Bush's leadership, we're bleeding red ink to the tune of $521 billion! He says just stick with him and we'll only be going $237 billion in the hole for fiscal 2009, the year that Bush would hope to leave office.

Two things strike me as surpassingly odd about this.

First is the puniness of the goal and the pitiful amount of improvement it holds out.

Simply to halve the current $500 billion annual loss in five years, on a hypothetically straight glide path of $50 billion in deficit reduction annually, would mean we'd still be dumping some $2.25 trillion more onto the national debt during those five years.
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http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/7899519.htm