Projections on the deficit going up. The ten year projection is up from $7.108 trillion to $9 trillion.
Hugh Hewitt at Townhall:
President Obama was off by 2 trillion dollars in his first 10-year deficit projection.
Given this enormous error with its staggering implications, why would anyone believe any of his assurances about the costs of Obamacare?
This would be the same CBO that’s been warning us for months that ObamaCare will be a massive boondoggle. (And even CBO might be lowballing it.) I wonder: How many economic projections has Team Barry utterly cocked up so far? Is anyone keeping a list? Off the top of my head, there’s this one, the infamous guesstimate that the stimulus would keep unemployment under eight percent, and the Cash for Clunkers funding that was supposed to last three months and ran out in a week. In these capable hands does the financial viability of universal health care rest. Exit question: Is this the stake in the heart of ObamaCare? One of the main reasons The One’s polling is deteriorating is public skittishness about deficits. Suddenly, in one fell swoop, the problem’s fully 30% worse than the White House thought, which all but destroys the credibility of their health-care projections going forward. (Not that they had much credibility to begin with.) It’s time to walk away, Blue Dogs.
John Hinderaker at Powerline
Andy McCarthy at The Corner:
They will be raised next week, while the prez kicks back on the Vineyard, from an unimaginable $7.1 trillion to an incomprehensible $9 trillion. As The Hill and John point out, this brings the administration’s numbers into line with the CBO forecast. You may recall, since it was less than a month ago, that the Obama administration ripped the CBO for “exaggerating costs and underestimating savings.” (I’m betting they probably underestimated costs and exaggerated savings — and still came up with $2 trillion more in red ink than The One.)
Hey, a little $2 trillion mistake — no bit whup, right? No reason not to let this well-oil machine take over heathcare, one-sixth of the private economy. After all, look how well planned cash-for-clunkers was!
Jazz Shaw at Moderate Voice:
You’ll keep hearing more and more claims about how the Democrats’ proposed health care legislation will actually wind up saving money through the miracles of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. (Oh yes, and eliminating the evil insurance companies.) But the CBO keeps on shooting those ideas down, saying that the Dem plan will not result in any savings and putting the price tag at close to one trillion. Not to mention that some analysts are convinced that the CBO is using an outdated model and the real cost of ObamaCare will come in at closer to two trillion.
And yet some supporters still protest loudly here, saying, “Oh, Jazz. Don’t you call us tax and spend Democrats. That’s an old myth and you can’t prove it.”
You’re right about one thing. So far all we’re really seeing is the spend side of that characterization, aside from some early hits on tobacco, alcohol and “luxury” items. The real taxes haven’t started yet. But don’t worry … you can trust Congress. They wouldn’t lie to you, would they? Hisssssssssssssssssssssss.
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Manu Raju at Politico on the yearly estimates:
Sure the national debt stands at $11.6 trillion, and the annual budget deficit will be higher than any on record.
But the White House plans to project next week that the annual shortfall will be $1.58 trillion, about $262 billion less than previously estimated largely because the White House doesn’t think it’ll need to dip into $250 billion it budgeted to save Wall Street, the AP reports.
We probably won’t be seeing victory laps out of the White House for this, but Democratic leaders in Congress will breathe a sigh of relief since it’s another sign that the Obama administration may not push for additional bailout money anytime soon.
Well, I was wrong that the news on the budget would be worse than projected, but right that the Obama administration wasn’t delaying its first mid-session budget review in order to hide the bad news in the August doldrums. The budget deficit is going to be $1.6 trillion, instead of $1.8 trillion.
The good news is, we’ve spent considerably less on bailouts than we expected to, and slightly less on other programs. The bad news is, revenue was $83 billion less than expected. The revenue declines tend to lag the recession, so we’ll be in that boat for a while. The bailout money, on the other hand, is a one-year savings.
Still, it’s hard to be unhappy about a $200 billion decline in the government. $1.6 trillion to go . . .
