What is the CBO projecting about the Federal deficit?
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday projected a federal deficit of $1.35 trillion this year, prompting top Democratic budget-makers in Congress to lash out – at the Bush administration. “C.B.O.’s new projections again highlight the fiscal mess handed to President Obama,” Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said in a statement. “A severe and the federal response to it, two costly wars, and the large unpaid-for tax cuts of the Bush era have left us in a deep hole of debt that will take years to dig out of.” Representative John Spratt, Democrat of South Carolina and chairman of the House Budget Committee, took a shot at the previous administration, but also praised the Democrats’ efforts to stabilize the economy. Sources: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.
The Senate Tuesday rejected a plan backed by President Barack Obama to create a bipartisan task force to tackle the federal deficit this year despite glaring new figures showing the enormity of the red-ink threat. The special deficit panel would have attempted to produce a plan combining tax cuts and spending curbs that would have been voted on after the midterm elections. The measure went down because anti-tax Republicans joined with Democrats who were wary of being railroaded into cutting Social Security and Medicare. The Senate vote to kill the deficit task force came just hours after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted a $1.35 trillion deficit for this year as the economy continues to slowly recover from the recession. “Yet another indication that Congress is more concerned with the next election than the next generation,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a sponsor of the plan. The budget deficits facing Obama and Congress are large and intractable, and the CBO predi
