by Tyler Durden
Summary from the CBO:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the federal budget deficit for 2010 will exceed $1.3 trillion—$71 billion below last year’s total and $27 billion lower than the amount that CBO projected in March 2010, when it issued its previous estimate. Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second largest shortfall in the past 65 years: At 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP. As was the case last year, this year’s deficit is attributable in large part to a combination of weak revenues and elevated spending associated with the economic downturn and the policies implemented in response to it.
And some optimism from the CBO:
The Budget Outlook
Fiscal year 2010 will mark a change in the recent trends that have prevailed for both revenues and outlays. After falling sharply during the recession, revenues are projected to increase (in nominal dollars) for the first time in three years, rising by $38 billion, or about 2 percent. Outlays, which have grown rapidly in recent years because of the recession, the turmoil in financial markets, and policies enacted in response to those events, are expected to decline by about 1 percent. On the basis of tax collections through July 2010, CBO expects federal revenues to total $2.1 trillion this fiscal year, or about 14.6 percent of GDP (see Summary Table 1). Gains in receipts in recent months indicate that federal revenues are beginning to recover from the recession.
In the period from October to December 2009, revenues were about 10 percent lower than in the same quarter a year earlier. But from January to July 2010, revenues were about 6 percent greater than in the comparable period of 2009.
Outlays are expected to total $3.5 trillion this year, or nearly 24 percent of GDP—a level slightly lower than the 25 percent share recorded last year but still much higher than the average level of roughly 21 percent of GDP over the past 40 years (see Summary Figure 1). Spending has dropped sharply this year for certain programs related to the federal government’s response to the turmoil in the housing and financial markets. For activities other than those programs, overall spending will rise by 10 percent in 2010, CBO estimates.
Over the next few years, federal budget deficits would decline markedly as a share of GDP if the current-law assumptions about fiscal policy in CBO’s baseline came to pass. Under those assumptions, the deficit would drop to 7.0 percent of GDP in 2011 and 4.2 percent in 2012 and then would reach a low of 2.5 percent of GDP in 2014. For the rest of the 10-year projection period, deficits would range between 2.6 percent and 3.0 percent of GDP, close to the average of 2.6 percent of GDP experienced over the past 40 years.
What a stunner – optimistic government projections… For exponential revenue hockeystick estimates, look no further than the chart below. Somehow we fail to see the 20% of unemployed (the real number, not the government’s) paying 50% more taxes.
The Labor Department says initial claims for unemployment benefits jumped by 12,000 to 500,000 last week. Economists were expecting a small drop in claims. That renews worries about the pace of a recovery.
