Word: budgeter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this the essential paradox of the age of Obama, that we have to destroy the village in order to save it, bust the budget in hopes we'll someday balance it, play to self-interest to promote the national interest? Just as the Cash for Clunkers frenzy reached its peak, the Administration quietly released new deficit projections, which pointed to a $9 trillion gap over 10 years. In the middle of a national nervous breakdown over out-of-control spending, we took a summer break from puritanical fretting and got all excited about a federal subsidy for something we already...
...right around 700,000 units. The average incentive - based on the most recent data available - was around $4,200. If we simply divide $3 billion by $4,200, we get about 714,000 units. The original forecast for 250,000 units was based on the initial $1 billion budget for the program...
...deficit in the bad ones, until the early 1980s. President Ronald Reagan's economic and foreign policies - tax cuts combined with substantial increases in Cold War-era defense spending - led to a string of deficits that averaged $206 billion a year between 1983 and 1992. The balanced-budget acts of 1990 and 1997 helped reverse this unprecedented level of peacetime spending, and in 1998 the U.S. recorded its first budget surplus in nearly 20 years...
...that doesn't mean that deficits are good, either. The U.S. covers the shortfall by issuing more government bonds, which can drive up interest rates and lead to inflation. Deficits also make it harder for a financially strapped government to deal with unexpected disasters. In fact, the last U.S. budget surplus occurred in 2001, when Washington was able to use fiscal and monetary policies to cushion the fallout following 9/11 and keep the economy from tumbling into a recession...
...mattress just yet. After all, the $9 trillion figure is just an estimate, and who knows what the economy will look like in 10 years. With any luck we won't be in a recession anymore, so revenue will be up and stimulus spending will disappear. The real budget problems lie in the long-term programs, such as Medicare and Social Security: Medicare's 2003 prescription-drug program has added nearly $1 trillion to the deficit and baby boomers' looming retirement will stress Social Security's already financially precarious situation. It's one thing to spend...