When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. By the last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi’s term as Speaker on December 22, 2010, the national debt had increased by about $5.2 trillion – a whopping 60 percent increase. The national debt is approaching $14 trillion, about a trillion dollars more than it was just last June! --link
How much is increased spending and how much is decreased revenue?
ReplyDeleteI don't have all the numbers, but the 3/4 of a trillion dollar porkulus bill is just one data point....
ReplyDeleteOK - so less than 20% of that 5 trillion is the stimulus bill.
ReplyDeleteAnd, 40% of that stimulus bill was not increased spending, but instead decreased revenue through tax rebates and credits.
So .... ?
And Darren....didn't most of that increse come after January 20, 2009....can you refresh my memory what happened on that date?
ReplyDeleteNumbers are here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
I do have an ideological bias here, but it appears that much/most of the problem is increases in spending.
Two ways to illustrate this:
(1) Between 2007 (last year before this current economic "issue" began), federal tax receipts were $2.5T and spending was $2.7T. Estimates for 2010 are that receipts will drop by $400B and spending will increase by $800B (which together make up an increase in the yearly deficit of $1.2T). It looks to me like 2/3 of the problem is spending increases, and 1/3 is tax shortfall. But note that 2007 was the *peak* year for federal tax receipts. Building a budget assuming ever increasing taxes seems to me as foolish as buying a house when it *HAS* to go up in value/price every year.
(2) Alternately, we can go back to 2000 (another year of peak taxes). Taxes were $2T and spending was $1.8T (for a surplus of $200B ... but only if you don't have a SS lockbox ... no fair double counting). Year 2010 taxes are actually 5% higher than 2000, but spending has *doubled*.
-Mark Roulo
From Instapundit today:
ReplyDeleteVICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New Sophists. “In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an addition $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly either returned to academia or Wall Street. . . . The public might have better believed the deficit nostrums of former budget director Peter Orszag had he not retired after less than two years on the job to position himself for a multimillion-dollar billet at Citigroup — itself a recent recipient of some $25 billion in government bailout funds. Are we to wonder why an angry, grassroots tea party movement spread — or why it was instantly derided by our experts and technocrats as ill-informed or worse?”