• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Bush Budget Said to Cause $2.75T Deficits

Posted on: Friday, 27 February 2004, 06:00 CST

President Bush's budget would produce deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projected Friday in the first authoritative look at the plan's longer-range implications.

The forecast - $737 billion worse than the budget office expects should Congress ignore Bush's tax and spending plans - is sure to factor into this year's presidential and congressional campaigns.

Bush sent lawmakers a $2.4 trillion budget for 2005 on Feb. 2, but it projected outward only for five years. The White House argues that longer-range forecasts are guesswork, but Democrats say the administration wants to hide future deficits that will career out of control as baby boomers begin to retire.

The nonpartisan budget office also forecast that Bush's fiscal plans would produce deficits of $478 billion this year and $356 billion in 2005. Both figures are smaller than the shortfalls Bush has projected for those years.

For the decade ending in 2014, however, annual shortfalls never would be smaller than $242 billion, which would occur in 2007, the budget office said. After that, they would bounce as high as $289 billion in 2014.

Last year's $374 billion shortfall was the largest ever in dollar terms.

Two days ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan focused attention on the government's long-term fiscal problems by suggesting cuts in Social Security benefits to ease cascading red ink. Members of both parties quickly disavowed benefit reductions.

Democrats, though, hope to use the prospect of massive, unrelenting shortfalls as a symbol of what they say is Bush's mismanagement of the economy. Republicans blame the red ink on recession and the costs of war and terror and say Bush has focused his attention on those problems instead of balancing the government's books.

More News in this Category