It hardly came as a surprise that the Bush administration announced yesterday that it expects the federal budget deficit to soar in 2006, topping $400 billion again after dipping into the $300-billion range in the fiscal year that ended in September 2005. Officials blamed the high costs associated with hurricane relief, which could have been paid for without increasing the deficit, but the administration preferred to use the national charge card again.
But there’s the story behind the story that makes yesterday’s announcement more interesting.
[S]ome budget analysts cautioned that the estimate should be considered more of a political mark to inform the coming budget debate than an economic forecast.
This is the third straight year in which the White House has summoned reporters well ahead of the official budget release to project a higher-than-anticipated deficit. In the past two years, when final deficit figures have come in at record or near-record levels, White House officials have boasted that they had made progress, since the final numbers were below estimates.
“This administration has a history of overestimating the deficit early in the year, lowering expectations, then taking credit when it comes in below forecast,” said Stanley E. Collender, a federal budget expert at Financial Dynamics Business Communications. “It’s not just a history. It’s almost an obsession.”
When it comes to deficit projections, the Bush gang is almost comically dishonest. In 2001, the White House used projections to argue that the president’s budget plan would keep a balanced budget. They weren’t telling the truth. In 2002, the same officials said Bush’s budget plan would run a deficit that would be “small and short-term.” Again, not so much with the truthiness.
So, in 2004, they came up with a new strategy: lie more at the beginning and then beat their dishonest projections in the end.
That year, the administration projected a $521 billion early in the calendar year. By August, when the deficit proved to be about $100 billion less, they touted their “success.” The lower number was proof, they said, of the deficit “going down,” even though the deficit had actually gone up from $375 billion the year before.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Richard Kagan wrote a terrific report at the time on how the White House fraudulently runs up enormous deficits, but manipulates expectations to make it appear like Bush is making progress when, in fact, his policies are failing miserably.
I know I should be used it by now, but sometimes the White House’s mendacity manages to surprise me.