July 13th, 2009Yearly Budget Deficit Tops $2 Trillion
Don’t listen to the Associated Press, who in their latest article stated that “budget deficit tops $1 trillion for the first time”. From their recent article,
The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall, intensifying fears about higher interest rates, inflation and the strength of the dollar…
The mainstream media is generally ignorant about anything related to budget deficits or national debts. A yearly budget deficit is the difference between what we bring in from taxes and what we spend in services. The national debt is the total accumulation of all those deficits. A quick way to find the REAL yearly deficit is to subtract the total national debt from any day in one year from that same day in the previous year. By those realistic calculations, our annual deficit has already topped $2 trillion. Here are a few snapshots from the United States Treasury website.
The national debt (portions of which are not hidden) is already at $11.524 trillion. It was $9.502 trillion one year ago today. The Associated Press has it wrong. The annual budget deficit did not just break the $1 trillion dollar record. It took a giant leap beyond that record and jumped to over $2 trillion dollars!
Way to go Obama! Let’s see if you can hit the $10 trillion dollar mark before you leave office!!
Also see:
October 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I visited the Treasury site from where Geldpress took its figures. They are as stated, and Geldpres’ is not untrue, as stated. However, I would like to point out that of the $2.021 trillion added to the debt from 7/10/08 to 7/10/09, 50% of that, $1.021 trillion, was accumulated in the first 105 days of the period: by 10/23/08 over $1 trillion was added. By 1/20/09 the figure is $1.124 trillion added–55.6% of the states $2 trillion. I would also like to point out that George W. Bush was president during this period. To that I would like to point out that analysis of the type presented by Geldpress represents either a boneheaded ignorance of ststistical analysis (demanding for correction at least one course in elemental statistical analysis) or a deliberate ruse of a type commonly known as misrepresentation, a hallmark of the GW Bush Administration (an incurable personal failure exibited by all congenital liars).
October 18th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Thanks for the comments, Greg. One thing I would like to add is that I am neither democrat or republican. I am equally critical of both parties for wasteful spending, and fiscal recklessness.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
So, you are not partisan, in the usual sense of the term; I apologize for the accusation of ruse. And I should like to add that the numbers displayed by the “Daily History of the Debt Results” is misleading as an indicator of the deficit, though I can’t tell by how much. I see that the deficit is the amount of money actually spent above that budgeted, and though, ultimately, that amount must be financed through borrowing or revenue collection, since there is a dynamic process of revenue collection and refinancing of matured treasury paper,the actual sum of Treasury borrowings fluctuates over short time spans. I can’t find a believable accounting of actual budget shortfalls over time–since the Bush administration seems to have taken the odd track of not including the real expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget deficit numbers. But, if the change in the Daily History can be taken literally within a modest range of error, the difference between September 30, 2007 and September 30, 2008 is $1.155 trillion; so that is actually the first time the budget deficit was over $1 trillion.
That said, yes, the jump is astounding and worrisome. But, though every element of the budget and excess expenditures is fair game for argument, I feel that the monies spent in shoring up the financial sector were necessary, and that not spending that money would have resulted in a far greater disaster spreading through the global economies.