Agenda: One TRILLION dollars!

Posted: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:13 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: Economy

Cue your inner Dr. Evil voice (with pinky finger touching your lip)...

Yesterday, Obama tried to prep the public for trillion-dollar deficits for years to come. The New York Times says Obama “braced Americans for the unparalleled prospect of ‘trillion-dollar deficits for years to come,’ a stark assessment of the budgetary outlook that he said would force his administration to impose tighter fiscal discipline on the government. Mr. Obama sought to distinguish between the need to run what is likely to be record-setting deficits for several years and the necessity to begin bringing them down markedly in subsequent years.”

Speaking of, per the Wall Street Journal: “A new Congressional Budget Office forecast due out Wednesday is expected to put the fiscal 2009 deficit at about $1 trillion, more than double the $438 billion in red ink CBO foresaw in September.”

More from the Journal: “Obama plans to offer states $7 billion as incentive to permanently change their unemployment-insurance laws to cover part-time workers and prevent other laid-off workers from falling through cracks in the coverage. The proposal, which is set to be included in the president-elect's two-year economic-stimulus plan, will seek to use short-term aid to cash-strapped states to force long-term changes that the Obama team believes are overdue, Obama aides said Tuesday. But the proposal, along with others to subsidize health insurance for the laid-off and expand Medicaid to out-of-work Americans, are sparking bipartisan concern over the potential, long-term impact on a federal budget deficit that is expected to hit $1 trillion this year, even before the stimulus plan.”

Some on Wall Street aren't all that optimistic that a legislative stimulus package will jolt the nation's economy back on track.

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Comments

Telling the truth about the country's economy is pretty transparent to me. Obama will tell it like it is: The good, the bad and the ugly. This is ugly news.

Ron Indiana (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:22 AM)

This is pretty much to be expected. The Bush administration is leaving us with this massive debt that has accumulated over the past 8 years, and it's going to take years to dig out of it. Unfortunately, we're going to have to dig deeper into debt to do it in the short term. If you've ever fallen behind on your mortgage, car payments, credit cards, etc., it pretty much amounts to the same thing. You have to pay extra to get out of the debt while still maintaining the essentials. I have a feeling Obama's first term is going to be spent mostly trying to stop the bleeding.

13 Days Until Inauguration Day!
http://jawillie.blog.com

jawillie, Philadelphia, PA. (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:35 AM)

Ok so someone please explain this to me. Obama just stated that "The people's business can't wait"...Yet now I hear that the stimulus package he is proposing is not ready yet as he is going to wait to get 80 votes before announcing it? ....Ummmm WHY? If the peoples business can't wait...lets just shoot for 51 or 60 or WHATEVER makes it pass. Come on ---the economy is in a freefall and now he decides it is more important to have a Magic Number above and beyond what is needed.

Just a shot in the arm please, Not a Shot at the Moon (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:37 AM)

lets see that 1 trillion dollars in deficits
so the way i do the math
12 billion per month x 5 years give or take a month = 720 billion dollars fighting a way based upon bad intelligence and lies!!!! at the same time giving a record tax cut to folks that did not need it, at the same time
wasting a record surplus the previous administration left you = the worse president in american history George Walker Bush!!!!
he messed up every thing
we are broke, banks are going under, forgen poilcy is a joke, we abuse detainees, bridges are falling down, major cities are so broke in chicago the mayor has to pick and choose streets to be plowed during a major snow storm, every day regular working folks are loosing there jobs and houses, if barack wants spend on the regular guy, THE CONGRESS AND SENATE BETTER NOT SAME A DAM WORD AGAINST IT.

jeff D Evanston IL. (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:38 AM)

Heckuva Job Georgie! One trillion dollars in the hole for a year and it's all the fault of this moron and the fools of faith that voted him into office. Thanks repugnant ones for screwing up the economy in a major way. Time to stop the freeloader market foolishness that screws the vast majority of us. Time to raise taxes on the rich and greedy to close the budget gap they have profitted from the past 28 years, ever since Raygunz started the sinful budget deficits.

Eric, Salinas, CA (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:41 AM)

The Democrats kept throwing the "fact" that during the Clinton years, they had a so-called balance budget (well, if you don't count the fact they spent every dime they took in from Social Security and didn't put it in AlGores "lockbox".). Now Obama sees trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see? Targeted tax cuts for Obama's union friends and trillion dollar deficits are the way to ruin this country. Obama will be lucky to get through the next four years without getting impeached.

Clyde Moseberry, Columbus Ohio (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:48 AM)

I have a idea. Let's ask George H.W. Bush again about Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics." I wonder what he might say about it now.

Anna Molly (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:59 AM)

Clyde...

Seeing that W and his cronies made it through 8 years of Reign or make that "Rain"

...I'm pretty sure Obama is safe. Bush set a pretty high precedent for pushing the envelope

Thanks for your concern (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:05 AM)

One more reason to hate George Bush. I don't envy Obama trying to tackle the mess Bush is about to hand him. He's starting out in a hole, thanks to Bush, and will remain there for several years, if not his entire first term. But I believe he's the one to be able to help us see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's just going to be darker than we orgianlly thought. Hope the Republicans that put Bush in office are seeing him for the moron he truly is. Jan. 20th can't come soon enough. They need to send his backside back to Texas, or better yet, jail. He should be tried as a war criminal, along with Cheney.

Diane from Illinois (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:09 AM)

jawillie -This is pretty much to be expected. The Bush administration is leaving us with this massive debt that has accumulated over the past 8 years

And the solution is to increase the debt at a more alarming rate? No, Obama just doesn't have a clue about what he's doing. When people lost confidence in the banks, we've seen what happened. Wait until the world looses confidence in the devalued dollar when Obama prints an extra trillon dollars of debt every year. You ain't seen nothing until that happens.

Kensyan Theory (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:10 AM)

ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!
I wonder how much that is per person in the US?

TEC-SPRING-TX (Sent Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:18 AM)

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