More Hope & Change–
Obama’s October Deficit topped Bush’s Deficit for All of 2007
Team Obama was off on their October budget predictions by nearly $20 billion.
The deficit for the first month of the 2010 fiscal year reached $176 billion.
(It must be Bush’s fault, right?)
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The federal government kicked off fiscal year 2010 by posting its widest-ever October budget deficit, the Treasury Department said Thursday.
The $176.36 billion gap is more than $20 billion wider than the shortfall recorded in October 2008, driven up by lower tax receipts, stimulus-related revenue reductions and consistently high government outlays.
…The October deficit figure is wider than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate for a $175 billion deficit in the month and wider than the $165.9 billion expected by analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires.
President George Bush never did this.
Obama tripled the national deficit his first year in office and he’s off to a record-setting start in fiscal year 2010.
Despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, the Clinton Recession he inherited, and the 9-11 attacks, President Bush brought down the national budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007.
On July 11, 2006, the Bush Administration announced they were revising midyear budget estimates. They changed their projections after they discovered that greater than expected tax revenues would drop the deficit below 300 billion dollars. Budget Director Rob Portman drove home the message later that day telling reporters that this latest revision was proof that the administration’s tax cuts were working.
This wasn’t a one time event. During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.
Then again Bush cut taxes while Obama has decided to spend his way out of this recession.
