{"id":5292,"date":"2005-09-19T10:44:38","date_gmt":"2005-09-19T14:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5292"},"modified":"2005-09-19T10:44:38","modified_gmt":"2005-09-19T14:44:38","slug":"maybe-hubbard-doesnt-understand-what-a-deficit-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maybe-hubbard-doesnt-understand-what-a-deficit-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe Hubbard doesn’t understand what a deficit is"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allan Hubbard<\/a>, the director of Bush’s National Economic Council, joined Scott McClellan on Friday for a press briefing<\/a>, and helped respond to a variety of Katrina-related questions. One exchange, in particular, stood out.<\/p>\n

Q: So where does the money come from? Obviously, you’ve got to borrow it or offsets in the budget, what?<\/p>\n

Hubbard: Well, again, the money [for Katrina relief] is going to come from the federal government, it’s going to come from the federal taxpayer. This President is committed to, as you know, cutting the deficit in half. This in no way will adversely impact his commitment to cut the deficit in half by 2009<\/b>. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s just the latest in a long line of examples in which the White House is either entirely disconnected to reality, playing the public for fools, or both.<\/p>\n

First of all, the president’s “plan” to cut the deficit in half by the end of the decade has always been something of a joke. Long before Katrina even formed, the Congressional Budget Office reported a bleak deficit outlook<\/a> in the coming years, with projected deficits never dipping below $330 billion over the next 10 years and a total of $4 trillion being added to the debt between 2006 and 2015.<\/p>\n

Second, how, exactly, does Hubbard figure a $200 billion relief effort will have no adverse effect on reducing the deficit? There are three choices: cut spending, raise taxes, or add Katrina-related costs to the already-huge deficit. Bush won’t raise taxes<\/a> and Tom DeLay said there’s no spending to cut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet, there’s the president’s top economic advisor, explaining that dealing with the worst national disaster in American history will “in no way” undermine Bush’s commitment to cutting the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

There was no subsequent explanation, but I have a follow-up: Mr. Hubbard, how’d you say this with a straight face?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allan Hubbard, the director of Bush’s National Economic Council, joined Scott McClellan on Friday for a press briefing, and helped respond to a variety of Katrina-related questions. One exchange, in particular, stood out. Q: So where does the money come from? Obviously, you’ve got to borrow it or offsets in the budget, what? Hubbard: Well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}