Lower tax revenue and massive government spending on the bank bailout pushed the federal deficit to $765 billion in the first five months of the budget year, well on its way to hitting the Obama administration's projection of a record annual imbalance of $1.75 trillion.
The Treasury Department also said Wednesday that the February deficit reached $192.8 billion. That's a record for the month and up 10 percent from a year ago, but below analysts' expectations of $205.7 billion.
With seven months left in the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, the deficit already has shattered last year's record annual gap of $454.8 billion.
As some one who was recently laid off, I have some recent experience in what to do when revenues suddenly drop. YOU STOP SPENDING!
If you read this article, what is the one word that never appears? "War" is the word that never appears. Yet, this is exactly where we could immediately cut back our federal spending. Obama and the Democrats have proposed a $22 billion increase in the Pentagon budget. This is in ADDITION to the money being spent on the war, which is still officially 'off-budget' for Obama and the Democrats. (That also means the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't included in this $765 billion figure in the headline ... remember, the wars are 'off-budget').
Obama and the Democrats have also proposed spending over $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between the Pentagon budget and the supplemental war funds, Obama and the Democrats want to spend about $750 billion. We simply do not have that money. We need to end both wars as soon as possible and stop spending there. We need to cut the Pentagon budget drastically. We simply can't afford it.
And this $750 billion isn't even all we are spending on 'defense'. It doesn't include for instance the billions that the Energy Dept is spending making 'nuclear sustainment' our 'top priority'. It also doesn't include the intelligence agencies like the CIA or the National Reconnaissance Office, which spends billions launching and maintaining spy satellites such that the US can spy on anyone in the world. I think I saw Winston Wheeler (writing on Counterpunch.org) estimate that last year the real 'defense' budget was over $1 Trillion. And Obama and the Democrats just keep raising every aspect of this, when instead they should be cutting hundreds of billions of dollars here. We are borrowing all of this money, and we simply can not afford it.
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