Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Budget Deficit and National Debt


A new Congressional Budget Office forecast due out Wednesday is expected to put the fiscal 2009 deficit at about $1 trillion, more than double the $438 billion in red ink CBO foresaw in September.

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that would put this year's deficit at 7% of the gross domestic product, a level not seen since World War II...

The goal of the stimulus package, which will include tax breaks for businesses and individuals and is estimated to cost $775 billion, is to generate jobs and spending to jump-start the country's ailing economy. But concerns are growing over the potential, long-term cost of some of the policy changes being considered. Republicans and even some Democrats said some of the items show too little concern for the long-term impact on the national deficit...

"Potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on at this point," Mr. Obama said. "We're going to have to stop talking about budget reform. We're going to have to totally embrace it. It's an absolute necessity."

read the WSJ article

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