WASHINGTON - The U.S. federal budget deficit will hit an unparalleled $1.2 trillion for the 2009 budget year, according to a Capitol Hill aide briefed on new Congressional Budget office figures.
The aide says the CBO also sees a $703 billion deficit for 2010.
The dismal figures come a day after President-elect Barack Obama warned of "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come."
CBO's figures don't account for the huge economic stimulus bill that Obama is expected to propose soon to try to jolt the economy. At the same time, they do not reflect the immediate cost of the Wall Street bailout.
The shrinking economy has led to a sharp drop in tax revenues, which is largely responsible for the deficit, along with about $350 billion in spending so far for the financial system bailout.
Obama and Congress are promising quick enactment of the economic recovery plan, which will blend up to $300 billion in tax cuts with big new spending programs and could cost up to $775 billion over the next few years.
The flood of red ink probably won't affect that measure but could crimp other items on Obama's agenda.
The $1.19 trillion 2009 figure shatters the previous record of $455 billion, set only last year. It also represents about 8 percent of the size of the economy, which is higher than the deficits of the 1980s. The 2009 budget year began last Oct. 1.
in DEFICIT for ONE YEAR!
So we (errrr, excuse me ... THE DEMOCRATS IN CONTROL OF THIS COUNTRY FOR THE LAST 2+ YEARS) are borrowing more than $38,000 every single second of 2009. Obviously, this doesn't even comprehend actual revenue-based spending.
Our country is so screwed with this big deficit / big government / big wasteful economic interventionist crowd, now on steroids under Obama (not just continuing but compounding the disgusting outrages of the Bush big government trough-sloppers).
AND, YES, I'LL SAY IT AGAIN : THIS IS YOUR DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT.
No more "Bush is the problem" excuses. Pelosi and Reid have been driving this train since late 2006 and are responsible, along with Senators Obama and Biden, for this fiscal nightmare.
The fact that Obama wants us to swallow his and his party's version of Bush fiscal policy on crack, as the cost of his and his DC fixers' "jump-starting" our economy, shows he is just another in a long line of the same inside-the-beltway masters-of-the-universe horse shit artists who got us where we are now.
Business as usual. Government has all the answers and all the solutions. It is truly amazing that this crowd that believes the state can rig and jigger the economy back to success simultaneously disavows any whiff that government has been a major, if not THE major player in the economic problems we now face.
Yeah, Barack, it's always good to dig harder and faster when you're in a really deep hole. More government spending, more government jobs is a real creative change-oriented answer.
Bush socialism is clearly giving way to Obama socialism. (And to any of you who want to play superficial partisan games about this accurately-descriptive word or trot out your lefty talking points that this is just righty talking points - pony up your defense in substance or piss off.)
Socialism is as socialism is carried out in practice, no matter what pretty face you want to paint it with.
Spare me the nonsense that the Democrats' creeping socialism is any more positive, productive, or benevolent than Bush's rendition of it. If anything it is only more outrageous and epic.
The only "ethic" here is : screw all future generations, we want ours now...even if it isn't ours.
Call it "disaster socialism", if you will.
Ughhhh, disgusting.
Comments
Actually, I agree with the rest of your post, but not this particular point.
Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, for which the regime can be a supposed proxy.
The system we seem to be evolving into (and in many ways already have) is not one where the workers control the means of production. It's not even one where the regime controls the means of production directly on behalf of the workers.
In truth, the regime would prefer its partnered corporations to control the means of production since A) bureaucrats do not have to take the blame when things go wrong and B) it is marginally more productive than direct regime ownership of the means of production, thus can be sustained longer.
The system where the means of production are nominally private, but heavily regulated, subsidized and taxed by the regime, with the field heavily tilted to regime-partnered corporations, is the economic form of fascism. Fascism usually goes hand in hand with nationalism and an aggressive foreign policy; since the US is a multiethnic nation, it is not so racial in character here, but rather "patriotic" and imperialist.
Semi-deification of a national figurehead leader is often a hallmark of fascism; both Bush and Obama have been quasi-deified by some people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
I think we are evolving into a form of fascism - but with the difference that there are nominally "two" parties rather than one (although their differences are mainly cosmetic or staged, to create the delusion that ordinary people actually have a choice in how the country is run) - and additional parties are allowed to exist, at least so long as they do not become large enough to become a real threat to the system.
It is possible that an economic, or other crisis (terror, infectious disease, natural disasters, etc) will cause sufficient popular support for an "emergency" suspension of potemkin democracy - but equally likely that the charade will go on, so long as it does not threaten the power of the oligarchy/bureaucracy/kleptocracy.
See esp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism
Let's not forget that the German fascists called themselves "National Socialists".
Perhaps I should have dubbed what we are experiencing as "national socialism".
You point out some other disturbing parallels.
The fact that we are a modern, technological, media-driven society doesn't change a damn thing about the essentials of a fascist state. They only it make it more insidious and frightening.