Budget deficit tops forecasts

One thing to remember, January is traditionally a month that the government posts a surplus.

The U.S. budget deficit widened more than economists forecast last month as spending soared and corporate tax receipts shrank, putting the Treasury on course for a record annual shortfall of more than $1 trillion.

The excess of spending over revenue in January rose to $83.8 billion, compared with a $17.8 billion surplus in the same month a year earlier. Spending gained 30.6 percent, while revenue dropped 11.4 percent. Corporate tax revenue in the past four months is down 44.3 percent from a year earlier.

The deficit four months into the 2009 fiscal year already is higher than the record for all of the previous year.

And this is before the Stimulus bill and the new Wall Street bailout. I have to ask the question I always ask on this topic - where is the money going to come from?

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We need to give the deficit hawks their due here

and write up an analysis on deficit spending in recessions.

How does this compare to the deficit spending at maximum during WWII? What is different? Could the U.S. be heading towards hyperinflation, a plain default on it's debt or not?

I think we need to examine the big picture here in terms of who is holding U.S. debt, the service on this level of debt, the potential future GDP growth to pay it off and imports.

I'm a firm believer in Keynesian economics, deficit spending but only using government expenditures being recirculated into that domestic economy for a stimulative effect...

and I'm not so sure that's what is really happening here.

Would be awesome if you took it on and EP is officially non-partisan and that is so you can reach conclusions based on objectivity instead of towing the partisan line regardless of your discoveries.

Is that directed at me?

Would be awesome if you took it on and EP is officially non-partisan and that is so you can reach conclusions based on objectivity instead of towing the partisan line regardless of your discoveries.

Huh? I hate what the Republican party has come to, but I've spent much of the past three weeks slamming the Obama Administration and the Wall Street tools in Congress. I think they've both sold out.
But maybe I am reading more into your statement than actually exists.

just sayin'

more of a request to write up the budget deficit projections and the various issues with foreign held debt, possible comparison/contrast with 1930's/WWII deficit spending...

What I mean to say was more a reminder because many of the political sites....you really cannot analyze from first principles if that analyze leads to a conclusion which is against a party platform or some sort of agenda...

So, nothing "to you" per say but just a another reminder that we have the freedom to look at any policy, any paper, any agenda and analyze it from first principles, regardless of where it leads us....

i.e. you have the freedom on EP because it's an economic site that I dare say isn't always available on the political sites.

Yeah, the GOP vs. the deficit hawks...I don't know what the "GOP leadership" is about but it doesn't seem to be based on any economic theory I am aware of that has been validated in statistical reality. I think they too are reading their "data" from corporate lobbyist "research" papers, most notably CATO.