I guess we could call this part 2 to the prior post on the long-term situation of the government. The Congressional Budget Office scored Obama’s FY2011 budget, and the picture is not pretty. The summary of deficits:
- FY2010 – $1,500 billion (which The Hill notes is $56 billion less than the White House Office of Management and Budget estimate due to the CBO estimating less spending – H/T Zip)
- FY2011 – $1,341 billion (versus OMB’s $1,267 billion)
- FY2012 – $915 billion (versus OMB’s $828 billion)
- FY2013 – $747 billion (versus OMB’s $727 billion)
- FY2014 – $724 billion (versus OMB’s $706 billion)
- FY2015 – $793 billion (versus OMB’s $752 billion)
- FY2016 – $894 billion (versus OMB’s $778 billion)
- FY2017 – $940 billion (versus OMB’s $778 billion)
- FY2018 – $1,001 billion (versus OMB’s $785 billion)
- FY2019 – $1,152 billion (versus OMB’s $908 billion)
- FY2020 – $1,253 billion (versus OMB’s $1,003 billion)
The total sum of the deficits as estimated by the CBO is $9,761 billion (or $9.761 trillion), versus the OMB’s $8,532 billion estimate. That is attributable to a higher estimate of tax revenue by the OMB; both the OMB and CBO estimate that there will be about $45 trillion in government spending over the next 10 years.
Further, I note that, while the bulk of the Bush tax cuts would be allowed to expire (something the Government Accountability Office does not assume in its “alternate” scenario touched on in the prior post), and discretionary spending is lower than in the baseline (due entirely to lowered spending in defense), the increased costs of PlaceboCare make the overall picture in FY2020 look quite a bit like the free-spending “alternate”, which assumes discretionary spending remains at the bloated 8.7% GDP. Indeed, the cost of “mandatory” spending and net interest would be roughly 94.7% of the entire tax take of the federal government, higher than said GAO “alternate” (approximately 93%) or the pre-budget “baseline” (81.7%).
