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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (475544)	10/13/2003 4:52:22 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

All outlays are included in the historical figures through the current year. Once each fiscal year ends all outlays are included in the numbers regardless of whether the monies were initially in the "budget" or not. So once again, you are wrong. Even if you weren't wrong (and I notice that you haven't cited to anything but just said it as if you expect us to believe you after all of the things you've said so far which weren't true), if you add to the projected numbers for the coming year the "war costs" (that is, even if Bush were to spend an additional $87 billion and even if none of that was in the budget to begin with), the resulting fiscal 2004 budget would be $2,316,425,000,000. Instead of an increase of 4.2 percent for 2004 the increase would be 8.2 percent, which would still qualify as the second lowest spending increase in Grey Davis's first four years. The severe revenue shortfall makes it impossible to pay for these rising budgets. In 1993, when Clinton took office, total U.S. government receipts from all sources were $1,154,401,000,000. Inflation from 1993 to 2002 was 24.5 percent (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl). Therefore, if receipts were on a path to match inflation over the past nine years, one would expect the revenues under Bush in 2002 to be somewhere close to $1,437,229,000,000 (that is the 1993 figure increased by 24.5 percent). But wait... you just told us there is a severe revenue shortfall because Bush is so awful. So I guess as we sit here in 2003, our revenues from last year are a lot less than they were nine years earlier, after you adjust for inflation. A lot less than $1,437,229,000,000. In fact, revenues for 2002 as reported by the federal government were $1,853,173,000,000. Put another way, the amount of money the federal government confiscates from its citizens to conduct its business, after adjusting for inflation, and after its decline under the Bush tax cut. was still more than $400 billion (28.9 percent) higher in real terms than it had been just nine years earlier. The following year, despite all the media hype, the federal government figures still indicate a revenue decline estimated to be less than one percent. Even if that revenue decline ends up being a lot higher, even if it ends up being 20 percent, which nobody is predicting, federal revenues adjusted for inflation would remain higher than they were ten years ago. Doesn't sound to me like the government ought to be broke because revenues are too low. Doesn't sound to me like a "severe revenue shortfall" at all.