Congressional Budget Office: Budget deficit drops to $435B

For the sixth time in a row, the US budget deficit has dropped, leaving it less than a third of what it was early in President Obama's first term. I think the president has done a terrific job of slashing the deficit left by his predecessor despite unrelenting attempts to sabotage his policies at every turn by republicans in congress. This despite the cost of the Affordable Care Act factored in (remember, President Bush kept the costs of his very expensive wars out of his budgets). Obama was given all the blame early on for the 1.4 trillion dollar deficit, yet conservatives have been utterly silent since the deficit began shrinking, some even refusing to believe it (a conspiracy to hide the truth being their usual go-to talking point). Let's keep this thread on-topic shall we? I disagree with a lot of Obama's policies, as many people do, but those subjects should be discussed in individual threads that pertain to them.

https://news.yahoo.com/congressiona...t-deficit-drops-435b-213556389--finance.html#

 

Where is all the Obama hate??

 

Regardless of the critics, President Obama is doing a good job.

 

Republicans do not have an answer for this. Unless they can do better they will have to eat their words.

 

The deficit is so low only because the GOP has refused to spend more money. If Obama had his way, we would have spent much more during his presidency. That is just the reality of it.

 

Read the article. The main reason is increased tax revenue. Some of that, I have read elsewhere, is due to increased enforcement of going after tax cheats by the IRS. But the GOP continues to demonize the IRS. Is it because they don't want the deficit to go down on Obama's watch? Remember, Obama inherited this huge deficit from Bush, who kept his hugely expensive wars off the books. I don't remember any conservatives complaining about Bush's reckless spending at the time.

https://news.yahoo.com/congressiona...t-deficit-drops-435b-213556389--finance.html#

 

"CBO expects the deficit's downward trend to continue for a couple of more years but says long-term trends, driven by the continuing retirement of the baby Boom generation and its effect on benefit programs like Medicare and Social Security, will likely cause an eventual fiscal crisis."

You cant keep ignoring the issue and then claim success.

 

Obama isn't ignoring that. He has addressed these problems and hopefully come up with good solution. I hope his predecessors will, too.

I also don't think he's taking credit for it. The speech he made last week talked (in part) about how people (read: conservatives) are denying that his policies have been good for the economy. He refuted that with facts. I don't remember him trying to hog the credit for it.

 

How has he address it?

 

Gee.

And yet when you go to the Whitehouse's own numbers you find that Bush averaged -$250,702 a year in deficits and Obama has averaged -$1,042,961 or 416% of Bush's.

On what planet is 416% a "terrific job of slashing"?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2016/assets/hist01z1.xls

 

Thank you Republicans for restraining Obama's and the Democrat's outrageous spending habits.

 

The American citizen is being taxed more and the Federal government is spending more than ever and the lefties think this is a good thing. Figures.

 

In speeches.

 

On the planet where numbers aren't distorted. I've already mentioned that Bush kept his most expensive projects (two wars) off the books.

 

Because Bush used "Supplemental Spending Bills". These were mainly used in his last term. Those "bills" dont count towards the deficit until the money is actually spent. This kept the numbers low under bush, but put the costs on Obamas watch because that's when the money was actually spent. That's how supplemental bills are accounted for by the CBO. So Bush made the spending a legal obligation, but made Obama pay for it

 

Not true.

https://news.yahoo.com/congressiona...t-deficit-drops-435b-213556389--finance.html#

 

With demagoguery.

 

This is proof congress spends less when they aren't compromising. I like this congress.

 

In the Bizzaro left-wing Obama boot licker planet.

 

That is only based on what is not what would be if the GOP let Obama have his way. Where is the Free Community College For Everybody Act for instance? I don't support the GOP, but I do recognize reality. The only reason the deficit is only what it is is because the GOP is not agreeable to anything new program wise. I am not defending the GOP so much as I am criticizing Obama for not being able to move new legislation because of his impulse to taunt republicans to the point even the moderates will not work with him on these new ideas and programs. .

 

Words are meaningless.

 

Conservatives cannot have their cake and eat too. You cannot on the one hand decry the RINO's in congress as letting Obama run roughshod over them and at the same time claim it is only because of Congress being able to defeat his true plans is the reason anything good is happening. You cannot argue on the one hand that Obama is fundamentally transforming America into a socialist state and then on the other claim that conservatives are successfully preventing him from doing that which is the root cause of anything good in the economy.

 

when you say Obama has done a terrific job in lowering the budget, what has he specifically done to lower it? nothing? all he's done is wait and hope the economy recovers, thats been his plan this entire time, spending is actually UP, not down from the previous years... so he's spending more than he did the last year and the year before that... he's not reducing anything... the deficit, should be ZERO... it shouldn't be almost half a billion dollars!

what things have democrats proposed that lower spending? nothing? oh... you mean everything they have proposed, increases spending? oh, so they are part of the reason why the budget is still half a billion dollars in debt every year... so turns out they are exactly the same as republicans who keep increasing costs too? oh... so maybe thats why some folks are revolting and going against republicans who spend money too, and folks are slowly replacing the ones who are raising debt...

where would the debt be if we didn't have all the increased costs of the ACA and other things people like to cite as lowering the debt... oh you mean that raised the debt, and we had to absorb the billions that added on to the debt, so we could actually have a lower deficit if democrats didn't pass all their goody bags... what if we had free college like democrats are proposing, you mean that would add to the debt as well, tremendously? oh... so they aren't concerned about the deficit either...

gee it seems to me, the deficit is going down without any actual democrat intervention... in fact its going down despite all the spending increases, imagine where we would be today if we stopped spending money we didn't have...

maybe if we lived within our means... we wouldn't be spending nearly ONE TRILLION in interest only payments... maybe we could spend that one trillion on americans... instead, we're spending it to pay off the interest we owe instead... maybe thats a big reason we should stop spending more, so we can stop paying interest on out debt, so we can spend our money, on ourselves... instead of just handing it over to other nations...

 

Its going down because it was raised to such heights . Meanwhile the debt just keeps piling up.

 

The cost of these wars was passed as a separate appropriation for a few reasons: One, so every member of Congress could vote on a clean bill that funded nothing but the war. This is the constitutional means of re-affirming Congressional support for the war effort. The spending for both wars was reauthorized by both Houses, each year, while under both GOP and under Democrat control.

Secondly, by separate authorization, so that the cost of the war was not included in baseline budgeting and increased every year as if they were normal operational expenditures rather than special expenditures.

These costs are captured in the White House deficit numbers that I linked to. The idea that Obama slashed the budget when actually his deficits have run on average 4 times the Bush deficits is ludicrous, and Bush was terrible on the budget. To give you perspective:

Bush was so terrible on the budget that he ran up more debt than every previous president, combined.

Obama is so much worse, that he is on track to run up more debt that Bush and every previous president combined.