At least, when looked at with WAAP standards
Fuzzy Bush math
You're about to hear that the budget deficit is falling. Don't believe it, warns Fortune's Allan Sloan. The deficit is much, much bigger than you think.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Allan Sloan, Fortune senior editor-at-large
September 4 2007: 8:10 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- There will be lots of celebrating in Washington next month when the Treasury announces that the federal budget deficit for fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30, will have dropped to a mere $158 billion, give or take a few bucks.
That will be $90 billion below the reported 2006 deficit, and will be toasted by the White House and Treasury as a great accomplishment.
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Bush: Are the numbers going his way? The happy news that the budget deficit has fallen by $90 billion may produce unhappy long-term political results.
The numbers
Here's how I come up with my budget numbers, based on the Congressional Budget Office's August 2007 update, which you can find at cbo.gov.
Summary Table 1 of the introduction shows a projected total deficit of $158 billion for 2007, compared with $248 billion for 2006.
Table 1-1, on page 2 of the report, shows a $186 billion surplus for Social Security. Table 1-7, p. 16, shows $108 billion of interest paid to the SS trust fund; hence, the SS cash surplus is $78 billion (186 minus 108). Also in Table 1-7, Treasury debt held by "other government accounts" is projected to be $1.725 trillion, up $97 billion from $1.628 in 2006.
There's another $7 billion of "real" deficit that I can't account for, because these numbers total $441 billion and Table 1-7 shows an increase in "gross federal debt" of $448 billion for 2007. Let's just call it a rounding error.
But I have a nasty little secret for you, folks. If you use realistic numbers rather than what I call WAAP -- Washington Accepted Accounting Principles -- the real federal deficit for the current fiscal year is more than 2 1/2 times the stated deficit.
Full article:
http://tinyurl.com/2tdqlj