CBO: 50% chance Bush budget leads to balance

[sabra]

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/cbo-50-50-chance-bush-budget/story.aspx?guid=%7BB68E358D-B39D-4181-A74B-FAE79ECA2B0E%7D


CBO: 50% chance Bush budget leads to balance

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Congress' budget-watching agency said Friday that there's a roughly 50-50 chance the federal budget would be nearly balanced under the plan President Bush says would eliminate annual budget deficits by 2012.

"Assuming that the president's policies are enacted in their entirety and that no other legislation affecting spending or revenues is enacted in the next five years, the likelihood that the budget will be in deficit in 2012 is about equal to the likelihood that it will be in surplus," the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded in a preliminary analysis of Bush's fiscal 2008 budget plan.

The White House last month sent the Democratic Congress a $2.9 trillion budget request for fiscal 2008 along with a five-year blueprint that foresees smaller deficits each year, ending with a small surplus of $61 billion in 2012.

The CBO estimate also sees declining deficits under the Bush plan, but projects smaller revenue growth over the period, producing a small deficit of $9 billion in 2012. The distance between the two figures is small in budget terms. Bush's total spending proposal for fiscal 2008 alone amounts to $2.9 trillion.

Both scenarios omit any funding for military action in Iraq or Afghanistan beyond 2009, and assume that the alternative minimum tax will be allowed to hit millions of taxpayers after 2008. Democrats say both assumptions are unrealistic.

[EVDebs]

1. ...and a broken clock is right at least twice a day. nt

[DavidDvorkin]

2. 90% chance they're wrong

But that may be an underestimate on my part.

[tanyev]

9. Yeah, you are 10% more generous than I am.

[DavidDvorkin]

12. Hah!

:)

[central scrutinizer]

3. Maybe, but.....

If balancing the budget requires that wounded vets sleep in their own urine or millions remain hungry, homeless, and without medical insurance, one might ask the question: is balancing the budget a good thing?

If everything has a price, then nothing has any value.

[Cha]

4. bush has already thrown

our money away.

[Robbien]

5. oh dear lord. what a bunch of bunk

"If the world was perfect from now until 2012, there is a 50-50 chance the budget would be in balance, and a 50-50 chance it would be severely in debt."

These guys just keep throwing a bunch of words around trying to hide the fact this Bush budget is just a huge pile of steaming crap.

[Qutzupalotl]

6. A never-ending war won't be finished by 2009.

Not if these clowns have anything to do with it. If a Democrat wins, then maybe.

Maybe THAT's what they really mean by a 50/50 chance...it depends on who wins in 2008.

[Solly Mack]

7. uh...uh..

uh...

damn

[Demeter]

8. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

Who Says Politicians have no sense of humor?

[sakabatou]

10. 84% of all statistics

are made up on the spot.

[w4rma]

11. And where did this 50%-50% chance that this legislation will either put us deeper in debt or get us

out of debt get thought up from? What a load of BS.

[struggle4progress]

13. Deficit - 1996 Dollars

http://traxel.com.nyud.net:8090/deficit/deficit-constant-dollars.png

[Lasher]

14. National Debt as a Percentage of GDP - 1950 to 2010

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

[TheWatcher]

15. 100% Bullshit.

[Lasher]

16. Junior has been keenly frugal when deciding what the next president should spend.

Analysis of the President’s Fiscal Year 2008 Budget

The budget submitted today continues the same policies that helped create the fiscal mess now facing the federal government. While the Administration’s budget claims to reach balance in 2012, unfortunately this budget is in deficit every year under realistic Bush policy assumptions. Meanwhile, the budget continues to make the wrong choices for the American people. It proposes substantial cuts to Medicare (without reinvesting the savings in program improvement) and Medicaid and cuts other critical priorities like education and the environment – all to help pay for an expensive tax agenda that heavily benefits those who need the help the least.

Administration Has Worst Fiscal Record in History — In the six years of the Bush Administration, the government has posted the highest deficits in the nation’s history. The Administration has squandered the budget surplus it inherited, transforming a $5.6 trillion projected ten-year surplus (2002-2011) into a deficit of $2.8 trillion over the same period, a swing of $8.4 trillion based on realistic estimates of the costs of the President’s policies. The President’s new budget calls for a deficit of $244 billion for 2007 and $239 billion for 2008, marking six years in a row of deficits of more than $200 billion. Meanwhile, this budget continues the climb of our nation’s debt, which has already grown by $3 trillion during this Administration.

Budget Never Reaches Balance Under Realistic Assumptions — Rather than taking a new direction, the President’s 2008 budget continues the same policies that have worsened the country’s fiscal situation. As in previous years, it relies on omissions and optimistic assumptions that have the effect of understating the size of the fiscal problems it creates. Adjusting the Administration’s numbers simply to reflect realistic costs of Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
reform and the Administration’s Iraq policy shows that the Administration’s budget never reaches balance, and under its policies the deficit totals $3.2 trillion over the next ten years.

http://majorityleader.house.gov/docUploads/HBCAnalysisPresident'sFY08Budget.pdf