[ExI] Debt tsunami

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:38 AM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> At 12:20 AM 5/4/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote:
>
>> ### Damien, did you read what they mean by "baseline" in this context?
>> Baseline is roughly what would have happened if Obama didn't exist.
>
> Ah. Christ, I'm really having a bad day with the munged quotes. But it would
> have helped the magpie mind if you'd cited Table 1-4 rather than Table 1-2.
>
> <In 2010, the deficit under the President’s budget would fall to 9.6 percent
> of GDP, or nearly $1.4 trillion, CBO estimates--$241 billion more than the
> deficit of $1.1 trillion that CBO projects under current laws and
> policies... That difference is largely attributable to additional spending
> for the government’s actions to stabilize financial markets ($125 billion);
> defense spending, primarily for ongoing military opera­tions in Iraq and
> Afghanistan and other activities related to the war on terrorism ($50
> billion); and various revenue reductions ($45 billion). In total, outlays
> next year would measure 25.5 percent of GDP under the President’s poli­cies,
> and revenues would amount to 15.9 percent.

### Or translated: A 21% increase (i.e. the "change") in budget
deficit over politics as usual after only 100 days in power. And a
projected deficit of 9.270 trillion (yes, trillion, not billion) by
2019.

Nine trillion dollars is big money. Not exactly record-breaking as USG
accounting trickery goes (the title here goes to unfunded SS
liabilities, about 44 trillion dollars) but still impressive.

Rafao