Rep. Maloney: Revised National Deficit Estimate Going From Enormous To Huge Is Not Progress Enough
The Mid-Season Review of the FY 2005 budget by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently estimated the deficit at $333 billion, $61 billion below the March 2005 Congressional Budget Office estimate. Malonely noted, however that even a $333 billion deficit is harmful long-term and that it would be the country’s third largest deficit in history. The Bush administration has for the past three years posted the worst deficits in American history with $378 billion in 2003 and $412 billion in 2004.
Congresswoman Maloney said, “The Bush administration has taken a $ 5.6 trillion surplus and turned it in the opposite direction, posting three years of record deficits. The administration’s current economic polices are projected to produce a $4.2 trillion deficit within the next ten years and that is nothing worth celebrating.”
The OMB’s national budget deficit revised estimate has not improved the long term deficit estimate of $4.2 trillion within the next 10 years. CBO Director Douglas Holz-Eakin recently said it best: “ I do hope people are taking this with a grain of salt... There’s simply no question if you take yourself to 2008, 2009 or 2010, that vision is the same today as it was two months ago” (Washington Post, 7/2/05).
Similarly, the U.S. Comptroller General David Walker said, “Don’t be deceived. We face large and growing structural deficits in the long term that are getting worse every day, and it’s time that we start to address them” (Washing Post, 7/14/05).
According to estimates by the House Budget Committee Democratic Staff, under the President’s budget, the deficit would go up to $478 billion in 2011 and increase further to $629 billion by 2015.
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