U.S. deficit looms over stimulus talks

Yes, I know it's old news by now, just trying to get through the backlog of information I've needed to post for quite awhile now.


U.S. deficit looms over stimulus talks
Current plan to jump-start economy could push deficit to $400 billion

By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers

St. Paul Pioneer Press
Thursday January 24, 2008 Pg 3A

As the Bush administration and Congress try to craft an economic stimulus plan, a dark cloud hangs over them: the federal deficit.

Iraq war costs of $9.6 billion a month and a gaping federal deficit that's funded by borrowing from foreign governments limit how aggressively the U.S. government can cut taxes or boost spending to fend off a recession.

Just over the horizon, a fiscal crisis that some call a day of reckoning looms larger.

Statistics released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show that the federal deficit, the gap between what the government spends and the revenue it collects, is projected to leap to $250 billion in the current budget year. That's up 53 percent from the $163 billion deficit in fiscal 2007.

If Congress approves the roughly $140 billion stimulus plan now being discussed, the deficit for the 2008 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, could swell to almost $400 billion.

The CBO presented those estimates to Congress on Wednesday as part of its budget and economic outlook for 2008 to 2018.

"Ongoing increases in health care costs, along with the aging of the population, are expected to put subtantial pressure on the budget in coming decades," Director Peter Orszag told the House Budget Committee. "Those trends are already evident in the current projection period."

Lawmakers can sharply cut government spending, sharply raise taxes or pass some combination of spending cuts and tax increases, Orszag said.

The Bush administration frequently notes that although the deficit is high, it's low in hsitorical terms as a percentage of the total economy - 1.5 percent this budget year, according to CBO estimates.

That's true. But it's a snapshot of the moment. Seen in the context of what lies ahead, the deficit puts the U.S. economy on a weaker footing to address the fiscal challenges that successive Congresses have ducked.

Comptroller General David Walker, the chief auditor of the government's balance sheet, has all but shouted from the rooftop that the U.S. government had more than $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities at the close of 2006, compared with the $20 trillion in 2000. That number is the sum of everything the government has promised to pay in the future, from pensions and government healthcare to interest on the debt.

The liabilities now amount to about $170,000 per person or $440,000 per U.S. household, according to Walker. The largest drivers of this trend are big entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly. These programs will come under even more strain when the first baby boomers - Americans born between 1946 and 1964 - reach official retirement age in two years.

Some economists believe that to avoid passing the burden to future generations of Americans, lawmakers and President Bush should propose ways to pay for the stimulus - a combination of tax rebates for consumers and tax relief for business - over a longer time frame.

"If we do something right now like a tax rebate and a couple of other things, it would be sensible to pay for it over a five-year period or something like that," said Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve who's now a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research organization.

While supportive of a short-term stimulus, Rivlin said long-term challenges must be considered.

"In the long run, we are in serious deficit trouble, and the long run is not so long anymore," said Rivlin, who was the director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1975 to 1983.