Re-estimate From CBO Due Tomorrow

[Annie]

Hopefully it will slow things down.

Make that $1 trillion more - David Rogers - POLITICO.com

Make that $1 trillion more
By: David Rogers
March 18, 2009 07:52 PM EST

With new estimates due Friday from the Congressional Budget Office, the White House is being warned to expect a grim set of deficit projections, adding well over $1 trillion on top of the red ink already conceded in President Barack Obama’s 10-year spending plan.

Refusing to be swayed by the numbers, top aides to the president met Wednesday evening in the Capitol with House Democratic allies on moving the plan ahead, including an effort to use expedited budget procedures to advance Obama’s healthcare initiative past Senate filibuster threats.

But New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, warned that the growing debt burden reflected in CBO figures is too big to be easily dismissed. “The CBO re-score is going to be an eye-opening event for a lot of people who want to finesse this,” Gregg told POLITICO. “You cannot finesse the coming fiscal calamity we are facing, the size of the debt in the out years and the size of the deficit in the out years.”

Gregg refused to discuss any of the CBO estimates. But behind the scenes, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has begun to aggressively raise warnings with the administration and his colleagues about the data.

CBO said Wednesday that it has yet to complete its formal scoring of the Obama budget. But some data, including a revised economic baseline, have been provided to Congress, and Conrad appears to be using these numbers to map out where he believes the figures will end up.

In 2014, at which point the White House projects a deficit of $570 billion, it’s now expected that CBO will show a number in excess of $700 billion. Five years later, in 2019, Obama’s budget concedes that the deficit will have widened to $712 billion; Democrats expect CBO to put the number over $1 trillion.

The cumulative impact could be substantial. The White House has already conceded that the Obama budget will produce deficits of about $6.9 trillion over 10 years. If the CBO projections were to add in the range of $1.5 trillion more, as some Democrats expect, that would be more than a 20 percent increase and would surely affect debate in Congress....

 

[WillowTree]

I have a feeling the latest round of shenanigans put forth by the congresscritters today is going to cause a lot of slowdown. I don't think after today it will be an easy matter to pass a stimulus bill.

 

[American Horse]

Hopefully it will slow things down.

It might....if the Media were to give it any coverage. But they refuse to be anything but a lapdogs, and the week-end will take care of the news cycle for that. The only mention it will probably get will be on the Sunday Morning Talk shows. There might be some penetration there but don't hold out hope on that. It's gotten to the point that the Media and therefore the public cares more about $164-million than they do $1.64-trillion.
There can be no sound judgement without a sense of proportion.

Here's a link to the transcriptions of the White House Press Briefings and Press Gaggles for anyone who wants to see how those go day-to-day.

 

[Annie]

Hopefully it will slow things down.

It might....if the Media were to give it any coverage. But they refuse to be anything but a lapdogs, and the week-end will take care of the news cycle for that. The only mention it will probably get will be on the Sunday Morning Talk shows. There might be some penetration there but don't hold out hope on that. It's gotten to the point that the Media and therefore the public cares more about $164-million than they do $1.64-trillion.
There can be no sound judgement without a sense of proportion.

Here's a link to the transcriptions of the White House Press Briefings and Press Gaggles for anyone who wants to see how those go day-to-day.

It was worse than predicted:

$1 trillion deficits seen for next 10 years

$1 trillion deficits seen for next 10 years

Mar 20 01:20 PM US/Eastern
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to the latest congressional estimates, significantly worse than predicted by the White House just last month.
The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama's budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That's $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.

Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama's policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.

The latest figures, even worse than expected by top Democrats, throw a major monkey wrench into efforts to enact Obama's budget, which promises universal health care for all and higher spending for domestic programs like education and research into renewable energy....