Bush Claims: Federal Deficit now Lowest in 4 Years

By: VA Breeze
Published On: 10/11/2006 11:59:19 AM

From the AP: The federal budget deficit, helped by a gusher of tax revenues, fell to $247.7 billion in 2006, the smallest amount of red ink in four years.
The deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was 22.3 percent lower than the $318.7 billion imbalance for 2005, handing President Bush an economic bragging point as Republicans go into the final four weeks of a battle for control of Congress.

Bush called the 2006 outcome a "dramatic reduction" in the deficit which allowed him to fulfill his 2004 campaign pledge of cutting the deficit in half earlier than his original 2009 target date.

"These numbers show that we have now achieved our goal of cutting the federal deficit in half and we've done it three years ahead of schedule," Bush told reporters at a Rose Garden news conference. "The budget numbers are proof that pro-growth economic policies work."

This sounds good on the surface but there has been manipulation to make these numbers.
For example....
One place is that Medicare payment for ALL claims for the last 9 days of September, Sept.22-Sept.30, 2006 were put on hold and will be paid on Oct. 2nd. So, Doctors and Hospitals wait for payment, with no interest paid, so Bush can claim a deficit reduction.

For more information, visit www.cms.hhs.gov/MLNMattersARticles/downloads/MM5047.pdf

Comments



Smoke & Mirrors.... (buzzbolt - 10/11/2006 12:18:15 PM)
If you look carefully, no Iraq war expenditures show up.  They have always been hidden "off budget"!


Where there's smoke (Catzmaw - 10/11/2006 4:30:39 PM)
there are cooking books.  Mmmm, smell that binding glue burn.


We spend $247,700,000,000,000 more than we earn (RayH - 10/11/2006 6:14:23 PM)

That does not count all of the "off-budget" items, like the emergency expenditures for Iraq, etc.

A lot of that deficit money is financed by short term loans from China (!), where most of our trade money goes.

This is not much to brag about. Heckuva job, Bushco!



We spent $247,700,000,000 more than we earned this year (RayH - 10/11/2006 6:15:39 PM)

This is not much to brag about. Heckuva job, Bushco!