Kathianne
03-19-2009, 07:23 PM
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20203.html
Make that $1 trillion more
By: David Rogers
March 18, 2009 07:52 PM EST
With new estimates due Friday from the Congressional Budget Office, the White House is being warned to expect a grim set of deficit projections, adding well over $1 trillion on top of the red ink already conceded in President Barack Obama’s 10-year spending plan.
Refusing to be swayed by the numbers, top aides to the president met Wednesday evening in the Capitol with House Democratic allies on moving the plan ahead, including an effort to use expedited budget procedures to advance Obama’s healthcare initiative past Senate filibuster threats.
.... But behind the scenes, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has begun to aggressively raise warnings with the administration and his colleagues about the data.
CBO said Wednesday that it has yet to complete its formal scoring of the Obama budget. But some data, including a revised economic baseline, have been provided to Congress, and Conrad appears to be using these numbers to map out where he believes the figures will end up.
In 2014, at which point the White House projects a deficit of $570 billion, it’s now expected that CBO will show a number in excess of $700 billion. Five years later, in 2019, Obama’s budget concedes that the deficit will have widened to $712 billion; Democrats expect CBO to put the number over $1 trillion.
The cumulative impact could be substantial. The White House has already conceded that the Obama budget will produce deficits of about $6.9 trillion over 10 years. If the CBO projections were to add in the range of $1.5 trillion more, as some Democrats expect, that would be more than a 20 percent increase and would surely affect debate in Congress....
Make that $1 trillion more
By: David Rogers
March 18, 2009 07:52 PM EST
With new estimates due Friday from the Congressional Budget Office, the White House is being warned to expect a grim set of deficit projections, adding well over $1 trillion on top of the red ink already conceded in President Barack Obama’s 10-year spending plan.
Refusing to be swayed by the numbers, top aides to the president met Wednesday evening in the Capitol with House Democratic allies on moving the plan ahead, including an effort to use expedited budget procedures to advance Obama’s healthcare initiative past Senate filibuster threats.
.... But behind the scenes, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has begun to aggressively raise warnings with the administration and his colleagues about the data.
CBO said Wednesday that it has yet to complete its formal scoring of the Obama budget. But some data, including a revised economic baseline, have been provided to Congress, and Conrad appears to be using these numbers to map out where he believes the figures will end up.
In 2014, at which point the White House projects a deficit of $570 billion, it’s now expected that CBO will show a number in excess of $700 billion. Five years later, in 2019, Obama’s budget concedes that the deficit will have widened to $712 billion; Democrats expect CBO to put the number over $1 trillion.
The cumulative impact could be substantial. The White House has already conceded that the Obama budget will produce deficits of about $6.9 trillion over 10 years. If the CBO projections were to add in the range of $1.5 trillion more, as some Democrats expect, that would be more than a 20 percent increase and would surely affect debate in Congress....