Despite clear signs of expanded economic growth, the latest White House budget estimates predict that President Donald Trump is on the verge of overseeing an expansion of federal deficits which will rival that of President Barack Obama's two terms in office, as the Trump Administration now forecasts a deficit next year that will be over $1 trillion, with no signs of a balanced budget on the horizon.
The latest figures issued by the Office of Management and Budget now predict a deficit this year of $890 billion - and deficits of over $1 trillion per year in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
When you take the $665 billion deficit from Fiscal Year 2017 - Mr. Trump's first year in office - and then add the projected deficits from the White House budget office for seven more years - you get $7.3 trillion in debt for what would equal two terms of a Trump Administration.
That would be almost identical to the $7.28 trillion in deficits run up under the eight years of the Obama Administration.
Credit: Jamie Dupree
Credit: Jamie Dupree
The deficit for 2018 is already running at $607 billion, not far from the 2017 total of $665 billion; one reason for the increase this year is fairly straightforward according to figures from the Treasury Department - revenues coming in to Uncle Sam are down since the implementation of the tax cut plan earlier this year, and overall government spending is up.
The update in budget deficit estimates earlier this month by the White House drew almost no attention on Capitol Hill, where GOP demands for budget restraint have for the most part, gone silent.
The last time the budget was close to being balanced was 2007, when the deficit dropped to $161 billion. But in 2008, the Wall Street Collapse led to an extended recession, as deficits jumped to $458 billion in 2008, and $1.41 trillion in 2009.
A few weeks ago, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow boldly pronounced in a television interview that the federal deficit was coming down, because of a jump in revenues spurred by economic growth under the Trump tax cuts.
But figures clearly show, that just is not the case, as the budget estimates for the White House show flat revenues in 2018, when compared to a year earlier.
"The White House is living in an alternate economic universe," says Maya MacGuiness, the head of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
But few in Washington seem to be listening to warnings from budget watchdog groups like the CFRB, as the deficit just keeps going up, generating little consternation among GOP lawmakers in Congress who once badgered the Obama Administration about its deficit spending.
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