Today President Bush lauded the administration for cutting the deficit in half.
WASHINGTON — The federal deficit in the budget year that just ended fell to a four-year low of $247.7 billion _ a figure President Bush touted Wednesday as “proof that pro-growth policies work.” Story.
This must be new age math if you read the story, the deficit a year ago was $318.7 billion in 2005, and dropped to $247.7 billion in 2006 a drop by 22.3% so how does the president arrive at a 50% decrease. Well here is where the new math comes in because the administration had projected the 2006 deficit to be $521 billion so in coming in at $247.7 billion they now claim to have slashed the deficit by 50%. Now don’t get me wrong I won’t say everything is bad, revenue did outpace spending 11% to 7% respectively which is always a good thing. However when the current administration first came to office they were following an administration (Clinton) who had four straight years of surplus.
People look at these numbers and immediately jump to a number of conclusions. The Democrats under Clinton had solved our budget problems, Republicans under Bush recreated the debt Clinton had eliminated. I think the thing that people fail to see is the difference between the Deficit and our National Debt. Clinton did reduce the deficit for four straight years and if I’m not mistaken had pushed the deficit to the highest surplus ever in United States history about $412 billion. Truly a great accomplishment but we have to remember the era we where in, The 90’s during the Clinton era saw the end of the Cold War, the reduction in government spending due to reduced military and government jobs, extraordinary revenue due to the dot com boom resulting in the ability to balance the deficit and in fact create a surplus. Yet and still our national debt continued to rise, if you take a look at this website National Debt Clock. The national debt of the U.S. is north of 8 trillion dollars now. So although the current administration has reduced the deficit even with the inflated 2006 projected number, giving the impression that the deficit was reduced 50% rather then 23% the problem is that we still have not made a dent into the National Debt. I would not hazard to say that I have the answers to what needs to be done but I think we need to seriously look at this as an issue. Look at the website National Debt Clock. Look at some of the info presented there make your on conclusions but I still say , Deficit? what a crock of sh….. (Boy shut your mouth)