Great news: Deficit set to blast past $1 trillion for third straight year

[OnePimpTiger]

Great news: Deficit set to blast past $1 trillion for third straight year

(Hot Air article links to a few others)

Still, through eight months of the 2011 fiscal year the nation is facing its third straight $1 trillion-plus deficit — totaling $927.4 billion so far compared with $935.6 billion during the same period in 2010, about $8 billion less, according to the report.

Taking the average of eight months and extrapolating it out to the end of the fiscal year, we will run a deficit of $1,391,100,000,000 by September 30th. That will be the third straight year of trillion-dollar deficits under Barack Obama and Democratic budgets.

Democrats claim that the problem comes from a lack of revenue, but that’s clearly not the issue:

Receipts totaled $175 billion in May, up 19 percent and nearly $30 billion higher than the same period last year while outlays were $233 billion, about $50 billion less than a year ago, according to the Treasury’s monthly budget statement. …

Total receipts for the fiscal year are $1.5 trillion, about 10 percent higher than last year, with outlays standing at $2.4 trillion, about 6 percent above last year’s levels.

So far this year, individual income tax payments were up 28 percent to $701.8 billion, while corporate tax receipts increased 5 percent.

Averaging and extrapolating the receipts shows a revenue stream for FY2011 of $2.25 trillion. That’s $335 billion less than in FY2007, when we ran a deficit of $160 billion. Had we ended up with a deficit of $500 billion, one could explain it as a result of loss of income. The deficits have run more than four times the revenue shortfall, however, which means that it’s the spending that drives the deficits — as anyone with a calculator could guess.

Democrats have a plan to resolve the economic stall that caused the revenue shortfall, however. Care to guess what it is?

Senior Senate Democrats are growing frustrated by what they see as President Obama’s passivity on the economy, and are beginning to discuss a large infrastructure package funded by tax increases.

Some Democrats, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who serves as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, think such a package could lower the unemployment rate by as much as two percentage points. …

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” he said.

Er, didn’t we already do the “economic pump-priming” in 2009? That’s when Democrats presented a blank check to Barack Obama of almost $800 billion to prime the economic pump, the amount he requested and the amount that his economic team said would keep unemployment down below 8%. It hasn’t reached 8% since, but not because joblessness hasn’t gotten that high — but because it hasn’t gotten that low, not even with record flight from the workforce. As the numbers above show, government spending is still rising well above the rate of inflation (actually closer to four times the rate of core inflation), and it’s not spurring a massive job-creation spree now.

[duane1969]

No-brainer here. As long as Obama and Co. are in control then spending will not be.

[sanfran22]

Lol....actually it's not funny. It's sad people actually bought this guys "Hope and Change" crap. I'm just waiting for the typical "it's all Bush's fault" rhetoric next.

[INTIMADATOR2007]

I for the life of me can't understand how in he-- can he keep getting away with the lies . Nothing the guy has done or tried has worked ,yet he keeps on saying everythings better . He really can't think we are this stupid can he ?