{"id":7685,"date":"2006-06-14T14:04:12","date_gmt":"2006-06-14T18:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7685"},"modified":"2006-06-14T14:04:12","modified_gmt":"2006-06-14T18:04:12","slug":"it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-half-is-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-half-is-2\/","title":{"rendered":"It depends on what the meaning of ‘half’ is"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article<\/a>, from the Investor’s Business Daily, has the right all excited. I’m not sure if conservatives have really thought this one through.<\/p>\n

Aided by surging tax receipts, President Bush may make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in [tag]half[\/tag] in 2006 — three years early. […]<\/p>\n

The 2006 deficit through May was $227 billion, down from $273 billion at this time last year. Spending is up $130 billion, or 7.9%.<\/p>\n

The CBO forecast in May that the 2006 deficit could fall as low as $300 billion. Michael Englund, chief economist of Action Economics, has long expected a deficit of about $270 billion this year. Now he thinks there’s a chance the “remarkable strength in receipts” will push the deficit even lower.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a few reasons Bush’s supporters might want to second guess their excitement about this. First, the deficit in 2004 was $412 billion. I don’t mean to sound picky, but a $300 billion deficit, as predicted<\/a> by the [tag]CBO[\/tag], is not half of $412 billion. Even if we’re really lucky, and the deficit for the year reached $270 billion, that’s still not even close to half.<\/p>\n

Second, as ThinkProgress noted<\/a>, if [tag]Bush[\/tag]’s fiscal policies hadn’t been implemented, we were on track<\/a> to have a $500 billion surplus<\/i> for 2006. As TP put it, “The optimistic deficit number pushed by International Business Daily is still $775 billion worse.”<\/p>\n

And third, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained<\/a> two weeks ago, given this stage of the business cycle, the 4.5 years since the “recovery” began, and the national saving rate, the deficit needs to be much lower<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Note to the right: you’re supposed to be fiscal conservatives. A $300 billion [tag]deficit[\/tag] is not good news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article, from the Investor’s Business Daily, has the right all excited. I’m not sure if conservatives have really thought this one through. Aided by surging tax receipts, President Bush may make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in [tag]half[\/tag] in 2006 — three years early. […] The 2006 deficit through May was […]<\/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-7685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685","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=7685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}