Over at the Associated Press, Andrew Taylor, contrary to the wire service's usual practice, referenced a pre-official Congressional Budget Office report to tout the federal government's "improved" budget deficit. The CBO estimates that the deficit, which won't become official until the Treasury Department releases its final Monthly Treasury Statement of the fiscal year in the next week or two, will come in at $435 billion.
Predictably, Taylor didn't disclose three facts he could easily have relayed in his brief report's available space, instead choosing to create artificial drama over deadlines which are three weeks and two months away, respectively:
Those three missing key facts, based on the CBO's usually quite accurate estimates, are:
- The "improvement" is only a $48 billion reduction from last year's $483 billion. If such "improvements" were to continue, the budget would balance nine years from now in fiscal 2024. The Obama administration admits they won't; they're projected to head back upward in future years.
- Record tax collections of $3.249 trillion. Despite this fact, the Obama administration still wants to more tax increases.
- Record spending of $3.685 trillion. Despite this record, the White House continually warns that any kind of attempt to trim spendin back to affordable levels will be "unnecessary austerity."
Taylor's final paragraph only refers to the first deficit seen during Barack Obama's first term.
The full roster of Obama-era deficits is as follows:
- Fiscal 2009 — $1.416 trillion
- Fiscal 2010 — $1.294 trillion
- Fiscal 2011 — $1.297 trillion
- Fiscal 2012 — $1.089 trillion
- Fiscal 2013 — $680 billion
- Fiscal 2014 — $483 billion
- Fiscal 2015 — $435 billion
That's $6.69 trillion in deficits in seven years.
That over triple the total of all deficits run from during the previous seven fiscal years (2002-2008) of an also unacceptable $2.03 trillion, the previous seven-year record.
Let's see if Taylor's reporting improves in future updates, or if there even are any.
Don't count on it. He's done the barely informative report which will be read and heard on tonight's newscasts and will appear in many of tomorrow's newspapers, so in an important sense it doesn't matter how much updating he does at this point.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
