The Washington Post looks at an analysis of how the federal government achieved so much debt -- an analysis from the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative based on more than a decade of numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. Bottom line is that tax revenues have dipped thanks to Republican (and Bush administration) policies -- and nothing will bring us back to solvency that doesn't include a tax raise.
So whose debt is it? The details are all there and the bottom line looks like this:
Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus, a favorite target of Republicans who blame Democrats for the mounting debt, has added $719 billion — 6 percent of the total shift, according to the new analysis of CBO data by the nonprofit Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative. All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.
Other home truths include:
Polls show that a large majority of Americans blame wasteful or unnecessary federal programs for the nation’s budget problems. But routine increases in defense and domestic spending account for only about 15 percent of the financial deterioration, according to a new analysis of CBO data.
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The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts.
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The Troubled Assets Relief Program bank bailout, which infuriated voters and led to the defeat of several legislators in 2010, added just $16 billion — and TARP may eventually cost nothing as financial institutions repay the Treasury.
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Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, resigned after the White House decided to pursue the 2003 measure. “I believed we needed the money to facilitate fundamental tax reform and begin working on unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare,” O’Neill said in an interview. But the White House, he said, was focused on improving economic growth for the fourth quarter of 2004. “They wanted to make sure economic conditions were great going into the president’s reelection.”Today, the CBO forecasts are unrelievedly gloomy, showing huge deficits essentially forever. As policymakers grapple with the legacy of the past decade, a demographic wave of senior citizens is crashing at their doorstep, driving up the cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
If many of these facts take hold (lotsa luck, facts!), the tea party movement is a goner. But with or without the tea partyers, it looks like America is a goner.
