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Friday, July 30, 2004

Those Don't Tax and Spend Republicans

From AP:
The White House projected Friday that this year's deficit will hit a record $445 billion, further fueling a campaign-season dispute over President Bush's handling of the economy.

The figure easily surpassed last year's $375 billion, making it the largest-ever in dollar terms. That gave ammunition to Democrats who say Bush's tax cuts and failure to prevent a loss of jobs during his term have worsened the outlook for the budget and the economy.

But in a political plus for Republicans, the new projection was also an improvement over forecasters' expectations of earlier this year. In February, the administration projected a $521 billion shortfall for 2004, while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated a month earlier that the deficit would be $477 billion.
So they planned ahead and predicted the deficit would be even larger, and now the largest deficit in history is a "political plus." Of course, the $445 billion itself is just a projection, and probably a substantially fudged one at that.

It's Friday afternoon--the Bushies don't really think this is good news, or they would have released it during the convention.