Figures never lie, liars figure.
Read it and weep, possums.
With new estimates due Friday from the Congressional Budget Office, the
White House is being warned to expect a grim set of deficit
projections, adding well over $1 trillion on top of the red ink already
conceded in President Barack Obama’s 10-year spending plan.
Refusing to be swayed by the numbers, top aides to the president met Wednesday evening in the Capitol with House Democratic allies on moving the plan ahead, including an effort to use expedited budget procedures to advance Obama’s healthcare initiative past Senate filibuster threats.
But New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, warned that the growing debt burden reflected in CBO figures is too big to be easily dismissed. “The CBO re-score is going to be an eye-opening event for a lot of people who want to finesse this,” Gregg told POLITICO. “You cannot finesse the coming fiscal calamity we are facing, the size of the debt in the out years and the size of the deficit in the out years.”
...
In 2014, at which point the White House projects a deficit of $570 billion, it’s now expected that CBO will show a number in excess of $700 billion. Five years later, in 2019, Obama’s budget concedes that the deficit will have widened to $712 billion; Democrats expect CBO to put the number over $1 trillion.
The cumulative impact could be substantial. The White House has already conceded that the Obama budget will produce deficits of about $6.9 trillion over 10 years. If the CBO projections were to add in the range of $1.5 trillion more, as some Democrats expect, that would be more than a 20 percent increase and would surely affect debate in Congress.
Refusing to be swayed by the numbers, top aides to the president met Wednesday evening in the Capitol with House Democratic allies on moving the plan ahead, including an effort to use expedited budget procedures to advance Obama’s healthcare initiative past Senate filibuster threats.
But New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, warned that the growing debt burden reflected in CBO figures is too big to be easily dismissed. “The CBO re-score is going to be an eye-opening event for a lot of people who want to finesse this,” Gregg told POLITICO. “You cannot finesse the coming fiscal calamity we are facing, the size of the debt in the out years and the size of the deficit in the out years.”
...
In 2014, at which point the White House projects a deficit of $570 billion, it’s now expected that CBO will show a number in excess of $700 billion. Five years later, in 2019, Obama’s budget concedes that the deficit will have widened to $712 billion; Democrats expect CBO to put the number over $1 trillion.
The cumulative impact could be substantial. The White House has already conceded that the Obama budget will produce deficits of about $6.9 trillion over 10 years. If the CBO projections were to add in the range of $1.5 trillion more, as some Democrats expect, that would be more than a 20 percent increase and would surely affect debate in Congress.
Dear God, you'd hope!
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