Friday, April 18, 2014

Fiscal Update, CBO Weighs In

So I've been highlighting an optimistic take on the federal fiscal deficit that is not from a clueless and/or in the tank Obamabot (those are easy to find).  See here and here.

I have conceded that Grannis's take is probably more informed than mine, although I remain firm in my view that it is not the deficit but the debt that needs our focus, and that there the news remains terribly, awfully bad.

Well, the CBO has weighed in on the Lightworker's budget and IBD has the reportage.
President Obama's budget adds $6.6 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Thursday.
That estimate is significantly worse than the $4.9 trillion in deficits predicted by the White House. The CBO used its own less rosy estimates of the economy to complete the analysis. 
So, Dear Leader's budget was only $1.7 trillion too rosy.  Shocker.  Read more for the gory details, but basically we are structurally spending $400-800 billion a year of money we don't have and we'll be taking the debt to 75% of GDP handily, precisely the levels that have gotten our quasi-socialist European friends into their current messes.

On top of all that new debt though, will be vastly higher interest payments as the Fed tapers and gets out of the interest rate manipulation business (we hope).  So, the debt scenario continues to look bad, we are running the risk of a debt crack up.  The good news, is that when you hit the wall, you are forced to make the choices you should have made all along, and small government will be a necessity rather than a option.  So, all us knuckle-dragging, right-wing nutters who would like to see more modesty in our government, like for instance a Bureau of Land Management that isn't armed to the teeth so that they can commandeer grazing cattle, should take heart.  When the day of the fiscal crack-up comes, there will be no money for a BLM, let alone a highly militarized one.

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