At work:
The U.S. budget deficit will widen to a record of about $490 billion next year, an administration official said, leaving a deep budget hole that will constrain the next president’s tax and spending plans.
The projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is higher than the $407 billion forecast by President George W. Bush in February. The bigger shortfall reflects dwindling tax receipts because of the U.S. economic slowdown, the cost of a $168 billion economic stimulus package and spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I fully expect McCain to release a commercial by the end of the day blaming this on Obama.
Notorious P.A.T.
Don’t worry, when we “win” in Iraq, that will save us scads of money.
Scott H
Yeah, so, how did that five year plan of George W. Bush’s to half the deficit (cite 2003) work out for everybody?
The Moar You Know
Half a trillion dollars in one year?
We are so fucked.
Noah
I also think Obama is to blame for the cancerous lesion that was removed from McCain’s face today.
Dean
I had a group email sent to me the other day saying that all of the problems with foreclosures, inflation, high gas prices, etc. were all due to the Dems taking control of the congress in 2006. So this wouldn’t surprise me. I guess if we just cut taxes again we could generate enough revenue to cover this.
Jake
Worst. President. Ever.
Gregory
Remember that for the GOP, this is a feature, not a bug. A Republican president will continue Bush’s borrow-and-spend-while-cutting-taxes-for-the-rich policies. A Democrat will institute eat-your-vegetables fiscal responsibility, including raising taxes, enabling the Republicans to run on a tax-cut platform just as the Dems get things turned around again, just like 2000.
calipygian
McCain surrogate on CNN RIGHT THIS SECOND blaming Obama.
DougJ
This is just the after effects of the Clinton recession.
Alan
Yeah, but the dollar is worth about half its value than when Bush first got into office. So it’s not really that bad. heh
PaulW
I want a constitutional amendment that declares the meme of Republicans being fiscally responsible to be done away and buried forevermore.
montysano
Ah, the Republicans, always the true patriots, are getting an early start on ratfucking the next administration. During Clinton’s transition, he stole a few knickknacks and pardoned a few buddies. These assholes drive the whole country into the ditch, and then walk away from the smoking wreckage.
The Other Steve
Don’t worry. Republicans are fiscally conservative. Bush will veto this deficit.
The Grand Panjandrum
And THIS is definitely due to the ascendancy of the MUP. Looks like he causes cancer, tumors and untold millions of other afflictions upon “real” Americans. But McCain does have Joementum! Booyah!
AnneLaurie
True that. The upcoming RNC convention is due to unveil a new slogan:
Join the GOP Revolution — a proud kleptocracy since 1980!
As for the GOP nominee’s “cancerous lesion” — that was no mole, it’s just that Karl Rove has crawled so far up Old John’s arse he’s leaking out McLame’s earholes.
Zuzu's Petals
Because he made time to go to the gym.
PK
A mad part of me wishes that McCain would win and have to deal with this mess. Maybe then the republican party will finally be destroyed utterly. Because if Obama comes in, how much will he be able to fix realistically? The moment the democrats try and fix things and take some hard decisions, the republicans will bitch and moan like they always do and cough up another fascist, which the idiots will vote into power in 2012.
Tax Analyst
…pointing at the poor folks stuck in the ditch…”It’s all their own fault”.
KayDrah
The Bush Administration has wiped out any financial power of our government to deal with our problems at home. Last year, we spent $133 Billion on the Iraq war. If our elected officials had been investing in our economy here at home, we could have paid for: health care for 3,920,9905 people for one year, Head Start for 18,251,681 students for one year; and we could have powered 137,823,834 homes with renewable electricity for one year.
To bring this information home to all Americans, Progressive Future has built an online tool called the Invest in US Calculator. The calculator takes a person’s 2007 income before taxes and tells you how much of that person’s tax money went to fund the war (average: $235), and how many seconds of war that bought (average: .04 seconds). Then it tells you, with that money, how many days of health coverage that could pay for (average: 25), how many days of Head Start education (average: 12), how many days of heating a home with renewable energy (average: 78), and how many days of veterans’ higher education benefits (average: 5) that money could have paid for. Then we are asking users to sign our Invest In US petition, which we plan on taking to Congress, the Platform Committees, and the media to push for new priorities for tax spending: http://progressivefuture.org/invest-in-us-calculator?id4=BLBJ
CFisher
Sweet. We’re number one! We’re number one!
Davis X. Machina
A mad part of me wishes that McCain would win and have to deal with this mess.
What mess? It’s an opportunity. A complete collapse in asset values means the few survivors can buy everything at a pittance. That’s and ownership society: ‘See this society? We own it.
It may be the only way to reverse the arrow of economic history and take the modern economy of an industrialized nation back to feudalism.
Ted
They really will say fucking anything, won’t they?
Noah
It’s also Obama’s fault for McCain going dirty on Obama.
w vincentz
I’m really not worried about the debt. This will easily be solved by selling the furniture in the White House on Ebay, a few Smithsonian artifacts and paintings at Sotheby’s, and Laura’s soon-to-be-opened lemonade stand. Unfortunately, the Constitution no longer has any value, so I don’t advise selling it on Ebay.
I also think selling air time when the executions of the war criminals will, no doubt, remedy this unfortunate situation in a jiffy. So, quitchabitchin’.
I’ll add that the DOD budget should be completely eliminated. The “volunteers” in the military should be just that, volunteers. If they really like to kill them “rag heads”, they’ll continue to do it for free.
Next problem?
jake
I hear you. Hell throw a Repub majority in Congress while you’re at it. Watching McCoot sputter that his tax cuts for the 1% will make everything perfect any minute now would be amusing.
But we know that will never happen. It would be the “Democrat” majority of the 110th Congress and that Uppity Negro who dared to run for President, 24/7/52/12.
dslak
Yes, the modern GOP is a bunch of WATBs. Just because they whine a bit less when they’re in power is no reason to give it to them. The results of what happens then are far worse than some whining.
jaime
And I fully expect various pundits and Clinton dead enders to complain that Obama is letting that negative ad define him and he should hit back hard like Hillary would.
GSD
It’s working just as planned.
-Grover ‘Starve the beast’ Norquist
GSD
It’s working just as planned.
-Grover ‘Starve the beast’ Norquist
Just Some Fuckhead
Well, to the extent that Obama has voted YEA on all these spending bills, including the extravagant ongoing Iraq spending, he is responsible. It isn’t enough to vote for all the spending bills and oppose the tax cuts. The spending still happens that way.
Delia
Hmmm. This must mean that it’s no longer Clinton’s fault.
distributorcap
Oct. 1 is higher than the $407 billion forecast by President George W. Bush in February.
and this is a surprise
Jody
The part that terrifies me is the fact that McCain just might win this election with these kinds of tactics. That’s what makes the dead-enders all the more gruesome. There is literally no level that we could sink to that the GOP could not deflect the blame to some perceived societal ill.
In other words, it can never get so bad that the GOP can’t stop blaming brown folks/terrists/liberals, both directly and thru their medial outlets. Barack “blackety-black black/terrorist fist jab/most lib’rul senatuh EVAH” Obama is just the latest in a long line of boogey-men.
And in fact, the worse things get for some people, the more they will be inclined to believe it…to the point where they will go around shooting up Unitarian churches.
A McCain victory will do nothing to vindicate the dead-enders, or even start the pendulum swinging the other way. It will only allow a bad situation to worsen.
Heshe
I heard on the nuz that those budget numbers didn’t count the war costs.
Wasn’t it the conservative dream to starve the government and shrink it until they could drown it in a bathtub? What happened?
Medicine Man
It became their government.
The Thinking Man's Mel Torme
If you remove a cancerous lesion from McCain, is there anything left?
AnneLaurie
In other words, it can never get so bad that the GOP can’t stop blaming brown folks/terrists/liberals, both directly and thru their medial outlets. Barack “blackety-black black/terrorist fist jab/most lib’rul senatuh EVAH” Obama is just the latest in a long line of boogey-men.
And in fact, the worse things get for some people, the more they will be inclined to believe it…to the point where they will go around shooting up Unitarian churches.
Want some *hardcore* American heroes, people who put their bodies on the line every day to protect our way of life? To the usual roster of soldiers, police, and firefighters, we can now add “Obama’s Secret Service detail”.
jake
They decided to waterboard it instead.
Zifnab
No. Clinton really did screw his party when he screwed his intern. The election in 2000 was ridiculously close, and that only happened because Al Gore spent half the race running away from his predecessor. Gore should have waltzed into power with the same ease that Clinton took the White House in ’96.
When the Democrats do the right thing, people love them. When they embrace a populist agenda, they win big. But when they act irresponsibly, the GOP jumps on their transgressions and level very effective attacks. The bottom line is that Dems absolutely have to be on their best behavior. They can’t sell out. They can’t cave. They can’t be corrupt – even in the slightest. Because the moment the GOP can make something stick, it gets messy.
AnneLaurie
I’m really not worried about the debt. This will easily be solved by selling the furniture in the White House on Ebay, a few Smithsonian artifacts and paintings…
I’ve had libertarian acquaintances make this argument for yeeeears. Any article of real value, they say, some visionary entrepreneur will buy and then charge people who want to look at it. As for the possible social inutility where some rich
scumwadvisionary buys up, say, the Statue of Liberty and then stores it where nobody else can see it, well, in PerfectedLibertarianLand there is no individual so rich that he would put the snob value of exclusive access higher than the monetary value gained from exhibition fees. And if nobody wants to pay (can afford to pay) to look at the Statue of Liberty or the original Declaration of Independence… well, that proves that such objects aren’t actually so valuable after all.I also think selling air time when the executions of the war criminals will, no doubt, remedy this unfortunate situation in a jiffy.
This is America; think big! Never mind the airtime, have every stadium venue in the country compete for the ticket rights. And since these particular war criminals have been so broad-minded about the definition of “cruel & unusual punishment”, aka “torture”, maybe we can also sell lottery tickets to decide how each criminal will be executed! I myself would donate every penny I could scrape up to see Karl Rove waterboarded repeatedly, but I’m sure his many beneficiaries among the Halliburton elite would donate even more to buy him a swifter and less painful death, right?
Jasper
The sad part is the debt limit was raised by $850 billion in October, 2007, and again last week by $800 billion. So the official “deficit” of $400 billion or so horribly, unbelievably, understates the real fiscal disaster that is the Bush economic record.
It’s embarrassing there was a time when I believed the GOP=fiscal conservative mantra, and voted for those corrupt buffoons and liars.
Don’t laugh. Rudy actually proposed paying for his tax cut plan with….. more tax cuts. True.
Big E
Actually, the newest McCain ad directly ties Obama to the death of a man named Jesus Christ and, has documented video footage of Obama driving in what appears to be nails into the appendages of said Mr. Christ.
The new ad further states:
Why Obama participated in this heinous crime is unknown, but, knowledgeable sources say that it has something to do with his secret Muslim leanings.
All true Americans deserve to know the truth!
Chum
Guess MCCain has a volunteer with a lot of time on their hands to replace Phil Gramm.
Chum
Oops. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/07/mccains-son-resigns-from-silver-state.html
Nancy Irving
I love how the business press (Bloomberg in this instance) puts it:
“…will constrain the next president’s tax and spending plans.”
Bush has run huge deficits for as long as he’s been in the White House. It hasn’t “constrained” him, nor has the business press ever suggested that he should be so “constrained.” (After all, Reagan “proved that deficits don’t matter,” according to Dick Cheney.)
But as soon as a Democrat is poised to move into 1600 Penn. Ave, all of a sudden the business press is terribly “concerned” that Bush’s deficits’ will tie the hands of the new administration.
We played that game in the Clinton years. Clinton spent eight years paying down the Reagan/Bush-1 deficits by balancing the budget on the backs of Democratic constituencies. Only to have all that carefully-saved money squandered by Bush-2 on tax cuts for the top 1/10th of 1% and on Blackwater and KBR.
I pray that Obama doesn’t make the same mistake Bill Clinton did. If he wants to exercise fiscal prudence, let him raise taxes on the rich.
Magnus
Fishoffal conservatives? Self no get it…
Would throwing …stuff… at conservative politicians be terror-ism, do you think?
Richardson
Don’t worry, the ever soaring dollar will keep global creditors purchasing Greenbacks forever. I mean it’s not like the dollar is the new ruble or anything.