White House projects smaller deficit, slower growth

The White House expects the federal budget to shrink by more than $200 billion this fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

In its Mid-Session Review, the OMB projects the deficit for fiscal 2013 to check in at $759 billion, revised down from the $973 billion the office projected in the president’s 2014 budget. OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced the lower deficit in a blog post on OMB’s website, writing that “we do not need to choose between making critical investments necessary to help grow our economy and support middle class families and continuing to cut the deficit in a balanced way.”