The Obama administration late last week, in classic late Friday afternoon attention-dodging mode, released its midsession budget review. The good news: the federal deficit for this year will be only $1,600,000,000,000 rather than $1,800,000,000,000. The bad news, which will be released officially Tuesday: the projected federal deficit for the next ten years is projected to increase to $9,000,000,000,000 from $7,000,000,000,000.
That’s an extra $547,000 per day every day for the next 10 years.
As Harvard economist Greg Mankiw points out, this means that the national debt is on it way to more than doubling over the next ten years.
As I wrote in my August 12 Examiner column, “the tea party and health care protesters, in their often unsophisticated way, are raising an issue that seems to have become central to our politics: Should we vastly increase the size and scope of the federal government?” It’s far from obvious that our current economic predicament requires an increase in federal indebtedness comparable to that which was necessary to prosecuting World War II.
