Let's test your assumption that the deficit has been going down. You assume that all is accounted for in the government's tracking of the deficit and that their are no under the table expenditures that are nicely hidden from those figures. The true indicator is to look at the US debt levels from year to year. The change from one year to another tells you exactly what the deficit is, unobscured by any funny accounting. Here is what we have from the US Debt to the Penny website (http://www.treasurydirect.gov):
MM/YYY = US Debt (true deficit = current debt - last period's debt)
----------------------------------------------
* 12/2008 = 10,699,804,864,612.13
* 12/2009 = 12,311,349,677,512.03 (true deficit = $1.6T, 15% increase)
* 12/2010 = 14,025,215,218,708.52 (true deficit = $1.7T, 14% increase)
* 12/2011 = 15,222,940,045,451.09 (true deficit = $1.2T, 9% increase)
* 12/2012 = 16,432,730,050,569.12 (true deficit = $1.6T, 11% increase)
* 12/2013 = 17,351,970,784,950.15 (true deficit = $0.9T, 5% increase)
* 12/2014 = 18,141,444,135,563.30 (true deficit = $0.8T, 5% increase)
* 12/2015 = 18,922,179,009,420.89 (true deficit = $0.8T, 4% increase)
* 5/2016 = 19,223,047,535,897.31 (true deficit = $0.3T first 5 months)
Conclusion? The deficit is decreasing and Congress still hasn't figured out how to balance the budget. Congress just passed a $1T deficit plan, in case you didn't notice. So the figures are likely to start going up from here. In addition, now that social security deficits are increasing massively, that will add to the debt, since there are no social security trust fund assets other than incoming cashflows from the working generation. So should we celebrate the deficit going down temporarily? Not really. All is not well. |
