Federal Budget Deficit Skyrockets; $163,000 More in Taxes

“The budget deficit increased by $192.3 billion in March, and is near $1 trillion just halfway through the budget year.”

It’s going to get worse. The Obama Administration’s proposed budgets would produce $9.3 trillion in red ink, more than double the $4.4 trillion in red ink that would have been produced by Bush’s already huge budgets. Economist Michael J. Boskin estimates that Obama’s plans will result in $163,000 in increased taxes in the future for the typical tax-paying family.

Balanced budgets won’t return even in the long run. Obama claims that a revived economy will eventually cut the deficit. But the Congressional Budget Office says his $800 billion stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run, contradicting Obama’s claims that it was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” That was just one in a long line of broken promises and false claims from Obama, like his claims that he would enact a “net spending cut” and not raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year.

Economists and scholars explain some of the government mistakes that created this recession.

Obama is spending $250 billion to bail out irresponsible mortgage borrowers across the country, some of whom have high incomes and modest mortgage payments. Law professor and financial expert Todd Zywicki argues that Obama is misguided to use taxpayer money in a vain effort to to keep the housing bubble from popping. He notes that the bubble was the product of artificially low short-term interest rates promoted by the federal government, and that the mortgage crisis is concentrated in just 9 states.