The budget deficit will be slightly smaller than expected:
For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
A Jump in Corporate PaymentsOn Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.
Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.
Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
Of course there are tsome on the left who are claiming the previous deficit projections were artificially high (or that this is a giant PONZI scheme), making this drop inevitable. I would just like to point out that one might say that being excited about our nation only hemmorhaging $300 billion a year as opposed to $400 billion could possibly qualify as succumbing to the “SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS.” [/snark]