President Barack Obama wants to slash America's ballooning deficit in half by 2013 by cutting spending on the Iraq war, eliminating wasteful public programs and raising taxes on the wealthy, an administration official said Saturday."The deficit this administration inherited was $1.3 trillion or 9.2 percent of GDP. By 2013, the end of the president's first term, the budget cuts the deficit to $533 billion or 3.0 percent of GDP," the official said on condition of anonymity.
My thoughts: This is dishonest at best. FY 2008 the deficit was $455. The FY 2009 began October 1, 2008. It is Bush's budget in the sense that he proposed it, but the recently passed $787 billion that will effective balloon the budget to $1.3 trillion belongs on Obama's tab. If you look back at the Bush estimates, Bush was projecting a surplus by 2013. So a $533 deficit is hardly a victory. In addition the actually numbers will be closer to $2.0 trillion than to $1.3 trillion.
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