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Written by Thomas Anderson
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Tuesday, 08 March 2011 23:33 |
The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion. That's $60 billion more than the entire ANNUAL budget deficit for 2007. Considering February is the shortest month of the year, that does not portend fiscal sanity going forward. Broken down, the February deficit equals $92,179 per second or $5.53 million per minute (just in deficit, not total spending). The February deficit is four times as large as the spending cuts the House Republicans have proposed for the entire year. The White House projected Monday that the federal deficit would spike to $1.65 trillion in the current fiscal year, the largest dollar amount ever. That equals 10.9% of GDP, the largest share of the economy since WWII. The Democrats' idea of fiscal responsibility is to cut no more than 0.28% of the budget.
It's obvious that unless we prevent the debt ceiling from being raised, there is no way that the politicians will agree on sufficient cuts to balance the budget in our lifetimes. Enforcing the current debt limit is the only barrier between solvency and hyperinflation.
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