Summary
The estimates of how many hundreds of billions in new debt are in the president's budget matter only as a starting point for Congress. The administration's $521 billion deficit in the next budget is the result of several factors - a war, a recession, excessive tax cuts. But the president makes matters even worse by not addressing costs he knows Congress must, such as adequate funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, domestically, for transportation and the environment.
The president has cut revenues as a share of gross domestic product to their lowest levels in decades but he has not, and mostly cannot, cut costs to match. The result is what is being forecast: deepening debt that will be paid by the next generation of taxpayers. This is a burden on the nation's economic future and a warning, as former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin recently wrote, that the federal government could cause a "fundamental shift in market expectations and a related loss of confidence at home and abroad."See the full content of this document
Extract
Budget in a Red State
In an election year, Congress is unlikely to be held to the strict limits on discretionary spending the preside...
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