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NewsPapers
- -02-06-06 Under Bush's Budget, Deficit Would Drop, Then Rise Again (Bloomberg.com)
"Under President George W. Bush's new budget, the federal deficit would decline gradually until 2010 and then start rising again, as the full impact of his requested permanent tax cuts and other proposals is felt."
"While the health- care program for the elderly would be cut by $36 billion over the next five years, the budget sees his successor pushing through an $11 billion cut in the program in 2011 alone." 02-06
- -09-28-05 Borrowing the Money for War (ABC News)
" 'Tax cuts are always popular,' Clinton said. 'But about half of these tax cuts since 2001 have gone to people in my income group, the top 1 percent. I've gotten four tax cuts."
" 'Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina and our tax cuts,' Clinton added. 'We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong.' " 9-05
- -10-10-05 Trade Deficit Soars to New High (CBS News)
"The trade deficit soared to a record in September as the Gulf Coast hurricanes helped push America's foreign oil bill to an all-time high. The politically sensitive deficit with China also set a record."
"So far this year, the deficit is running at an annual rate of $706.4 billion. This puts the country on track to far surpass the old deficit record of $617.6 billion set last year and gives critics ammunition to argue that President Bush's trade policies are not working." 9-05
- -12-02-05 Editorial: A Crony for Chair? (CBS News)
"At the end of December, Alan Greenspan comes to the end of his long tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Between now and then, the president will nominate Greenspan’s successor."
"Today’s stock and bond prices depend to a large extent on investors’ confidence in Alan Greenspan. Take away Greenspan and nominate a lackey to replace him, and that confidence will plummet." 12-05
- -12-02-05 Greenspan Sends Trade Deficit Warning (CBS News)
"Foreign investors will likely tire of bankrolling the bloated U.S. trade deficit but the economy's flexibility should help temper any fallout, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday." 12-05
- -12-02-05 Greenspan: America's Exploding Deficit Could Disrupt the Global Economy (CBS News)
"Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan expressed concerns Friday that America's failure to deal with its exploding budget deficit and worldwide efforts to erect trade barriers could disrupt the global economy." 12-05
- CBO: Over $855 Billion Budget Deficit Projected for Decade (CNN News)
"As Congress started to digest a new Bush administration request of $80 billion to bankroll wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its top budget analyst Tuesday projected $855 billion in deficits for the next decade even without the costs of war and President Bush’s Social Security plan." 1-05
- Corporations May Stop Some Budget Cuts (ABC News)
"One of the 58 proposed cuts that survived — the Advanced Technology Program — serves as an example of how difficult it is to cut government spending."
"Since its birth in 1990, ATP has provided billions to the private sector for research and development. Almost half of that funding has been directed to Fortune 500 companies like General Motors and IBM."
" 'The Advanced Technology Program is the poster child for corporate welfare,' said Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste."
" 'Major corporations such as General Electric, who are very powerful lobbies here on their own, get millions and millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to support their research,' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. 'It's mind-boggling that a major corporation would require taxpayers' dollars to do their job, which is to research products that they will sell and make a profit on.' " 2-05
- Editorial: Deficit Increasing Because of Democrats and Republicans (MSNBC News - Scarborough)
"With big-spending Democrats at their side, President George Bush and his 'conservative' Republican Congress have controlled the government’s checkbook while the national debt has skyrocketed past seven trillion dollars." 1-05
- Entitlement Programs Nearly Half of Federal Budget (CBS News)
"Three growing entitlement programs consumed nearly half of all federal spending in 2004, and budget analysts expect them to make up an even bigger share in the future." 12-05
- Federal Budget From 1978 Optimistically Projected to 2008 (InfoPlease.com)
Provides a chart showing the national income and expenditures by category.
Editor's Note: The projection to 2008 does not include expenses for war, hurricane repairs, making tax cuts permanent, or privatizing social security. If any of these expenses are included, the budget will be in deficit. 1-05
- Huge Federal Deficit Called a "Birth Tax" (Boston Globe)
"A divided Senate approved an $800 billion increase in the federal debt limit yesterday, a major boost in borrowing that Senator John Kerry and other Democrats blamed on the fiscal policies of President Bush.
The 52-44 vote, mostly along party lines, was expected to be followed by House passage today. Enactment would raise the government's borrowing limit to $8.18 trillion -- more than eight times the total federal debt that existed when President Reagan took office in 1981."
" 'This can be called a birth tax, a birth tax that is dumped on the back of every American child unwillingly,' said Kerry, who voted against the borrowing increase." 2-05
- Parable on the Federal Deficit: A Boy with a Big Need (Awesome Library)
"Any family that reduces its income while its debts are increasing is on a road to disaster."
- Pros and Cons of Bush Proposal (Wikipedia.org)
"Bush's proposal, according to its supporters, would compensate young future retirees for needed cuts in money spent on benefits in the future, and thus spare a "crisis" in Social Security, which would occur when it exhausts its "trust fund" surplus in 2042, according to the SSA or 2052, according to the CBO. Each worker's benefit would be the combination of a minimum guaranteed benefit and the return on the private account. The proponents' argument is that high returns and ownership of the private accounts would allow lower spending on the guaranteed benefit, but possibly without any net loss of income to beneficiaries. The savings to the government would come through a mechanism called a "clawback", where profits from private account investment would be taxed, or a benefit reduction meaning that individuals whose accounts underperformed the market would receive less than current benefit schedules, although, even in this instance, the heirs of those who die early could receive increased benefits even if the accounts underperformed historical returns."
"Opponents, citing the CBO analysis, argue that the upfront borrowing costs mean that this plan would not produce a lower total deficit in the Social Security fund against current law until around 2030. The expected savings projected do not include interest on this debt nor the benefit of paying back the debt in cheaper (inflated) dollars, nor is the expected borrowing figured into their GDP and productivity assumptions in the model. Opponents also dispute the economic projections used, pointing out that they require low economic growth, and still have high stock market returns, which would require that stock price/earnings ratios reach historically unsustainable levels of 70, or corporate earnings/revenue ratios to triple over the course of the next 70 years. Neither of these events has happened in the course of modern economic history, and therefore, they argue, the projections which are used to support the plausibility of the privatization plans are contradictory." 2-05
- Trade Deficit at All Time High (USA Today)
"The U.S. trade deficit, exacerbated by surging imports of oil and textiles, soared to an all-time high of $61.04 billion in February." 4-05
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