CBO to Obama’s Budget: “You Lie!”
That infamous phrase once uttered by Joe Wilson still echoes through the halls of Congress and now.. the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO Director’s blog included a post by Douglas Elmendorf that detailed some startling mis-truths – untruths for the Orwell fans – or is it minus minus truths?? The synopsis of the CBO’s analysis lays out some staggering deficit figures:
- Under the President’s proposals, the federal budget deficit would total $1.2 trillion in 2012 and smaller amounts in later years, averaging 4.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the 2012–2021 period.
- Deficits would total $9.5 trillion between 2012 and 2021 under the President’s budget, $2.7 trillion more than the amounts projected in CBO’s March baseline. Debt held by the public would rise from 69 percent of GDP in 2011 to 87 percent of GDP in 2021.
While the numbers are alarming, what’s interesting is that the CBO goes on to basically call Obama’s budget a lier:
Compared with the Administration’s estimates, CBO’s estimates of the deficit under the President’s budget are lower for 2011 (by $220 billion) but higher for each year thereafter (by a total of $2.3 trillion over the 2012–2021 period)
Obama’s budget will cost America $2.3 trillion more than his administration and he said it would. Then again, consider the kind of person coming into Jack Lew’s Office of Management and Budget: