After four consecutive years of budget surpluses under the Clinton Administration, we will now have at least four years of consecutive deficits under the Bush Administration.
Why is it that Republicans like Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr always have big deficits. Seems like they need some lessons on how to manage the economy. Remember all the hot air in the Bush state of the union message about how we could afford the tax cut because of the surpluses.
Federal deficit seen through 2005
November 29, 2001: 10:31 a.m. ET
White house budget chief blames recession, war on terrorism
U.S. trade gap posts record decline - Nov. 20, 2001
What are stocks, bonds telling us about the economy? - Nov. 16, 2001
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House budget chief is blaming the recession and the war against terrorism for the return of annual federal deficits, which he says he expects for at least the next three years.
Wednesday's bleak prediction by Mitchell Daniels was the first public acknowledgment by the Bush administration that after a string of four consecutive annual surpluses under President Clinton, deficits are back. Prior to the $69 billion surplus rung up in fiscal 1998, the last federal black ink had been in 1969.
"It is regrettably my conclusion that we are unlikely to return to balance in the federal accounts before possibly fiscal '05," Daniels said in a speech at the National Press Club. He added, "Things will have to break right for us to do that."
It is regrettably my conclusion that we are unlikely to return to balance in the federal accounts before possibly fiscal '05
White House budget chief
A reversion to the deficits that long dominated the capital's fiscal wars seems to present President Bush with a significant political liability that now seems likely to haunt him right up to his 2004 re-election campaign. And it augurs a likely return to the annual partisan fights over where spending should be cut to balance the budget.
Private and congressional analysts have been saying for weeks that they expect a deficit in fiscal 2002, which began Oct. 1, well into the tens of billions of dollars. Daniels provided no figure.
Underlining the dramatic economic turnaround, fiscal 2000 saw a record $237 billion surplus that shrank to a $127 billion surplus in fiscal 2001. As recently as August, the Bush administration predicted a 2002 surplus of $173 billion, down from its $231 billion forecast made in April.
In fact, until several months ago, most forecasters were envisioning an ever-growing string of budget surpluses for the next decade, fading only when the huge baby boom generation begins to retire.
But then the recession -- now pegged as having started in March -- took hold, and the condition of the government's books weakened. The $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut Bush pushed through Congress last spring further eroded the projected black ink. |
